Thief vs. AAA Gaming (how do these old dogs stack up against the AAA gaming industry of today) - General

It's already over a year old so I have no idea if this has been posted here already. I thought it was quite interesting and worth my time. I don't agree with everything he said but he has some points. [video=youtube;jPqwDGXxLhU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPqwDGXxLhU[/video]

I really have to agree with him on those quest markers, really does dumb down the experience and I'll never forget how Dishonored did it

While he makes a lot of good points, it sounds like he's saying that being powerful is bad and story must trump gameplay (not wearing armor? die in one hit). He makes it sound as if story should come first, and if something doesn't make sense (hidden loot? unrealistic) then it's bad. It's like he's saying games that are just trying to be games and not a story are simplistic and juvenile. If he narrowed it down to RPGs or first person stealth games, then I'd agree completely but as it stands he's making a ton of blanket statements on the overall gaming industry. Again, I agree with most of his points but they can't be applied to all games like he seems to be doing. "It's not enough to put things in because they're fun" is just untrue for a vast majority of games.

This video just makes my want to see a [I][U]proper[/U][/I] spiritual successor/follow up to Thief TDP/TMA with more modern game tech compounded. Thief 4 was a pretty big disappointment compared to the original three games, I just really want to see a game closer to the first two be made nowadays.

What he says about the mechanics & story telling of the game is really interesting although nothing new. But then he starts to lose me when he goes on about how modern day games are stagnating & how older games were better. The thing is this isn't anything new either, the games industry has done this before in the 80s with platformers, the 90s with fighting games & the 2000s with FPS games. AAA games tend to do this because they're funded by huge companies who want what sells not what's "good", it just happens that "good" tends to be what sells for the most part. It's like he's just now starting to realize that AAA games are ridiculously homogenized & that they don't appeal to him anymore, but the thing is there's still niche games out there & that this homogenization doesn't apply to all games, just the AAA games. This video would be a lot better if it was just a review or analysis of the Theif games instead of tacking on a message about AAA games

I get that not everything applies to all games, but I really think quest markers have been to the total detriment of gamers and developers alike. I really agree with him that it hurts level design. I like how valve uses colored buttons and other visual cues to direct the player like a marker but without it being obvious. Having a quest marker really simplifies the need for properly designing a level. Why make visual landmarks and cleverly use lighting (or hell even fucking signs that spell things out for you) when you can just plop a marker in the exit you can't otherwise see without. I understand that its a bit different in an open world game, but even something like skyrim, they could have done this as well and just used markers for things in the overworld. It would've made the dungeons waay more interesting to actually traverse, and maybe would've stopped them from copy pasting the same rooms over and over again.

I like when he actually talks about game design, but when he starts bitching about the industry, acting like he knows better than the people within it, and writing off the majority of modern games, it's just frustrating to listen to.

[QUOTE=MacD11;49515984]This video just makes my want to see a [I][U]proper[/U][/I] spiritual successor/follow up to Thief TDP/TMA with more modern game tech compounded. Thief 4 was a pretty big disappointment compared to the original three games, I just really want to see a game closer to the first two be made nowadays.[/QUOTE] The closest you're going to get for now is The Dark Mod. [url]http://www.thedarkmod.com/main/[/url] It's a Doom 3 Mod. I know it says Doom 3, but because id Tech 4 is free & open source and the game uses entirely original assets, you can download it for free as if it were a standalone game. [editline]12th January 2016[/editline] Very interesting video, really does well to illustrate why I think Thief 2 is in my top 5 favorite games ever. That said I'd say that I think he spends way too much time on the power trip part. I think some games can be power trips. I like my Saints Rows, I like my Dooms. The two types of games can coexist peacefully. We can have a dumb, stupid super hero game, like with movies, but we can also have slow-paced suspense thrillers, also like movies.

I think something overlooked is the amazing, subtle weirdness of the Thief world that lent the games so much atmosphere.

He makes some alright points, but the vast majority of what he says about modern games giving too much choice and power is total, self-enlightened shit surrounded by thin elements of truth Yeah, atmosphere is great. Years and years ago back to the era of games like Thief, Half Life, Battlezone 1/2, Freespace 2, Starlancer etc etc you could get really immersed in games because they all revolved around atmosphere. In Half Life, you're alone and rarely meet friendlies, and when you do find the military, they shoot the shit out of you. Then things get progressively more alien as things get introduced and the level design gets more complicated as you face increasingly weird monsters . In Battlezone, you'd get rough objectives, have to soar across the map through canyons in your hover tank while a good ambient track played and your radar pinged when objects appeared on it. In Starlancer there was a crude form of having your pilot walk around the ship, attend briefings before missions and visit terminals and such. You could eject from your ship and skip a mission once, but on the second time you'd get fired, and that was game over. If your escape pod was caught by an enemy pod collector, iirc you got a gruesome death. There were some missions that were infuriating but atmospheric like the one where you come across an unexplained space station with a deathray, or another where your squadron disguises itself in enemy craft and you fly in formation through a fleet until you reach a target you'd destroy, to then have to change your craft mid-mission and shoot down nuclear missiles attacking your own carrier. I think that sort of immersion and practically pointless but thematically enhancing trivia stuff is missing from some newer games where it would do some good. I think we've also found other ways to do it, though. Think back to Bioshock Infinite's scene where you're introduced to the floating city for the first time in a scenic view as a subtle musical que plays. Remember "All Ghillied Up" from CoD 4, which was for all intents and purposes the sort of linear shooting gallery people hate these days? But if you're selling Saints Row, where the developers want to make a game about just being a badass that doesn't need to go from nothing up to greatness to the point of it being comical, where the fun comes from just causing chaos on screen and not a forced sense of having to find the game atmospheric and slowing it down or making it harder for no good reason, there's no point in it. To critescize games like that for giving a massive amount of choice is just dumb. Far Cry 3 still has a good, memorable story where there's tension in the early parts of the game because Vaas is such a great character. You begin to wonder when he'll show up again and what crazy shit will happen next time that happens.

Sounds like he has a huge hard on for the original thief tbh, and is mad that modern developers know they won't get money off games like it. the original thiefs have many more flaws than it does positive aspects. For example, he praises level design, yet each instance of level design I see makes 0 sense to what a real world would look like. Same goes for the fact that people can't seem to see a guy standing 2 feet away.

Yeah but level design in the modern thief was some of the worst in the series by miles

[QUOTE=lxmach1;49515695]While he makes a lot of good points, it sounds like he's saying that being powerful is bad and story must trump gameplay (not wearing armor? die in one hit). He makes it sound as if story should come first, and if something doesn't make sense (hidden loot? unrealistic) then it's bad. It's like he's saying games that are just trying to be games and not a story are simplistic and juvenile. If he narrowed it down to RPGs or first person stealth games, then I'd agree completely but as it stands he's making a ton of blanket statements on the overall gaming industry. Again, I agree with most of his points but they can't be applied to all games like he seems to be doing. "It's not enough to put things in because they're fun" is just untrue for a vast majority of games.[/QUOTE] i think the intention here isnt that there shouldnt be plenty of games like that, just that there arent any AAA games these days that apply his points properly. Honestly im having trouble even thinking of a single AAA game that fulfills any of his criteria at all. There's a few indies but they're always limited due to low budget.

[QUOTE=Mattk50;49517585]i think the intention here isnt that there shouldnt be plenty of games like that, just that there arent any AAA games these days that apply his points properly. Honestly im having trouble even thinking of a single AAA game that fulfills any of his criteria at all. There's a few indies but they're always limited due to low budget.[/QUOTE] What about Dark Souls? It at least has the tension and atmospheric environments that aren't *just* corridors.

idk about him but brute forcing your way through dishonored on hard will get your shit stomped quickly. Thats double if you you get later on when they have the music players that disable your abilities, slow you down, and stun you.

[QUOTE=codemaster85;49517787]idk about him but brute forcing your way through dishonored on hard will get your shit stomped quickly. Thats double if you you get later on when they have the music players that disable your abilities, slow you down, and stun you.[/QUOTE] Well there's a few people who have some pretty incredible clips of them speedrunning levels being super violent so it's possible but it's fucking hard. You have to be perfect.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49517800]Well there's a few people who have some pretty incredible clips of them speedrunning levels being super violent so it's possible but it's fucking hard. You have to be perfect.[/QUOTE] speedrunners are really not a normal player demographic. Besides, the game penalizes you for being aggressive by giving you a bad ending and giving you less money for upgrades.

[QUOTE=redBadger;49517197]Sounds like he has a huge hard on for the original thief tbh, and is mad that modern developers know they won't get money off games like it. the original thiefs have many more flaws than it does positive aspects. For example, he praises level design, yet each instance of level design I see makes 0 sense to what a real world would look like. Same goes for the fact that people can't seem to see a guy standing 2 feet away.[/QUOTE] Do levels in games really need to reflect spaces in real life all the time? Yeah, sure, its fine to have more realistic architecture in spaces, but avoiding interesting and unique areas in games that have some creativity inside of them isn't what I would call bad level design at all. And the guard "not seeing a guy standing 2 feet away" is part of the game mechanics. It's one that I would honestly say works pretty well. Using darkness to prevent yourself from being caught led to alot of interesting, fun situations within the game's gameplay. I don't agree with all of the points he makes in the video, but i dont agree with the sentiment that Thief TDP/TMA haven't aged well, aside from their graphics.

[QUOTE=codemaster85;49517844]speedrunners are really not a normal player demographic. Besides, the game penalizes you for being aggressive by giving you a bad ending and giving you less money for upgrades.[/QUOTE] Yeah but I also played and mostly beat the game doing that. it doesn't encourage you but it doesn't say "nah can't do that either"? Unless i'm misunderstanding the argument, which I could be, I'm very tired today.

I think Deadly Shadows was also pretty good. Shalebridge Cradle was damn fun, and just exploring was great as well.

[QUOTE=redBadger;49517197]Same goes for the fact that people can't seem to see a guy standing 2 feet away.[/QUOTE] For what it's worth, it's explained in-universe that Garrett is a former trainee of a mysterious, mystical group known as the Keepers. The Keepers are scholars and historians, and are dedicated to recording all the events of the world, predicting the future events, and keeping the world in balance. To that end they are expert spies and have powerful "Jedi Mind Trick" magic, that enables them to trick most people into believing they aren't there, a form of quasi-invisibility. Garrett, being a partial trainee, has limited access to this magic that allows him to appear invisible in very dark shadow, which is how people seem to ignore him when they're only inches away. However because he never completed his training and dropped out to become a thief, his magical ability is much, much more limited than that of a full Keeper. However it's implied that even among full members and even the upper elite Keeper enforces, he's considered the single stealthiest of all the Keepers due to his natural talent and wits. Of course, this is all just a roundabout explanation to handwave engine and AI quirks. This is all ironic, because the video creator here derides games which give the player superpowers without realizing that Garrett himself has superpowers.

[QUOTE=Cocacoladude;49518333]I think Deadly Shadows was also pretty good. Shalebridge Cradle was damn fun, and just exploring was great as well.[/QUOTE] Deadly Shadows was pretty great overall but i wouldnt consider it as good as TDP/TMA, mainly because the portals into different parts of levels in the game felt out of place inside of the levels when in previous installments you could travel through the entire level seamlessly. This and other minor problems I have with it though are mostly remedied through mods people have made for it by now. [editline]13th January 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;49518371]For what it's worth, it's explained in-universe that Garrett is a former trainee of a mysterious, mystical group known as the Keepers. The Keepers are scholars and historians, and are dedicated to recording all the events of the world, predicting the future events, and keeping the world in balance. To that end they are expert spies and have powerful "Jedi Mind Trick" magic, that enables them to trick most people into believing they aren't there, a form of quasi-invisibility. Garrett, being a partial trainee, has limited access to this magic that allows him to appear invisible in very dark shadow, which is how people seem to ignore him when they're only inches away. However because he never completed his training and dropped out to become a thief, his ability is much, much more limited than that of a full Keeper. However it's implied that even among full members and even the upper elite Keeper enforces, he's considered the single stealthiest of all the Keepers due to his natural talent and wits. This is all ironic, because the video creator here derides games which give the player superpowers without realizing that Garrett himself has superpowers.[/QUOTE] I'm pretty sure the darkness mechanic didnt really have much to do with him being a keeper, at least from what I remember. All I remember was that keepers knew how to use darkness more effectively in order to appear invisible, not that they had a magical power that literally turned them invisible in front of others.

[QUOTE=MacD11;49518376]I'm pretty sure the darkness mechanic didnt really have much to do with him being a keeper, at least from what I remember. All I remember was that keepers knew how to use darkness more effectively in order to appear invisible, not that they had a magical power that literally turned them invisible in front of others.[/QUOTE] They do. When Garrett first encountered Artemus (the Keeper that recruited him), he was walking down the street in broad daylight as if nobody could see him at all. Garrett was able to see him, however (it's not all-powerful), and attempted to pickpocket him. This is why he was allowed to join, he had innate talent in that he was already able to overcome the magic. In addition, in Thief 3 the Keeper Enforcers are generally invisible to the rest of the civilians and guards in the overworld.

[QUOTE=MacD11;49518376]Deadly Shadows was pretty great overall but i wouldnt consider it as good as TDP/TMA, mainly because the portals into different parts of levels in the game felt out of place inside of the levels when in previous installments you could travel through the entire level seamlessly. This and other minor problems I have with it though are mostly remedied through mods people have made for it by now.[/QUOTE] You really need to replay it with the [URL="http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138607"]Sneaky Upgrade[/URL]. Removes all the loading portals and makes it much more like the two original games.

i can relate to the sleepwalking through games recently not sure if it's the games or if i just hate video games

It really feels like graphics and gameplay have an inverse relationship. At least if we compare console generations.

I think that his criticisms of modern AAA gaming are relatively well placed. Taking his statement to their extreme absolutes and comparing it to every individual game will lead to the rare m'okay outlier. Of course one should remember that thief is the remnant of a time gone by and we remember it because it was good. All the other crap tier games have been forgotten. Still the amount of games that are currently trash or that could have gone from good to great that could have been made considerably better with just a modicum of thought and effort is pathetic.

I never played thief before. I'll definitely buy it this week when I get the time to play.

[QUOTE=codemaster85;49517787]idk about him but brute forcing your way through dishonored on hard will get your shit stomped quickly. Thats double if you you get later on when they have the music players that disable your abilities, slow you down, and stun you.[/QUOTE] I think the point is that even when you get caught you don't feel vulnerable. You can easily fight off a couple of guards, and if they're too many you can always teleport away.

[QUOTE=En_Carlson;49518421]You really need to replay it with the [URL="http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138607"]Sneaky Upgrade[/URL]. Removes all the loading portals and makes it much more like the two original games.[/QUOTE] I didn't know this existed! Thank you!