Thief - Massive Review Roundup

Couchpotato

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Thanks to Joxer I have a link with a roundup of all the reviews for Eidos Montreal's Thief Re-boot. The reviews offer different opinions, but overall the game is just average.

Once again thank you Joxer. I don't have to waste time rounding them all up now.
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More information.
 
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Aaand another legacy ruined by developers trying to bring it to the mass market, resulting in a game that is not bad per se, but likely buries the series with its mediocrity.
What a surprise.

Then again… the same happened with Fallout 3, which is just an uninspired "let's have cool random stuff in a wasteland and throw logic overboard. YAAAY!".
But, that at least lead to Fallout:NV, which managed to create a believable, fitting world with actual RPG gameplay.

Conclusion: Obsidian should take over the next Thief. Maybe that would result in a non-broken Alpha Protocol kind of thing, blended with (actual) Thief gameplay.
 
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The true predecessor for Thief was already made by one of the original Thief designers - it's called Dishonored. Harvey Smith, in my view, is one of the best game designers in the world.
 
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It seems like it may be a good (or at least decent) game, but it's not really Thief. Shame that the story is poor, though.
 
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Conclusion: Obsidian should take over the next Thief. Maybe that would result in a non-broken Alpha Protocol kind of thing, blended with (actual) Thief gameplay.

Obsidian should take on all the beloved franchise...except Dungeon Siege (although, I believe the changes were requested by the publisher for that one).
 
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Good lord...
Obsidian should buy Radon Labs, discontinue it's involvement in browser games and open offices in Europe.
After that Obsidian should resurrect S.P.E.C.I.A.L. based illfated RPG of the workname Torn.

But not before we get Eternity on our machines!
 
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Obsidian should take on all the beloved franchise…except Dungeon Siege (although, I believe the changes were requested by the publisher for that one).

I don't think it would be a good idea for a game like Thief. For a Thief game you need an excellent world design, supported by game mechanics that give freedom 'to the player' on how to progress and the pace of progression. You need people like Warren Spector and Harvey Smith for this.

Obsidian are good at making meaningful rpgs with strong and coherent stories, but not that strong on world design and game mechanics (hence alpha protocol) - at least not for an action/adventure oriented game.
 
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The true predecessor for Thief was already made by one of the original Thief designers - it's called Dishonored. Harvey Smith, in my view, is one of the best game designers in the world.

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It was THAT good for me but people do have different tastes. What stopped you from playing further?
 
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I've played Dishonred leaving out (what I think is) the very last mission only. In the beginning I really liked it, the special skills, the options to go non-lethal etc.
But as the game proceeded, I got bored. Although the missions seemed quite different, in the end it was all the same for me. So I haven't even found motivation to do the last mission.

I'm first and foremost and RPGamer. For my personal taste Dishonored has way to little RPG elements.
 
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Dishonored is not RPG, but for what it is, and it's not Thief as some suggest, it's a brilliant game.
Can't praise it more and gave it 10/10 in a short post inside "finished game" thread.

The cardinal difference between Thief and Dishonored is that in Thief you're - a thief. In Dishonored, you're an assassin!
Means what?
As a roleplayer, of course you can go play thief in Dishonored, dunno yet can you play an assassin in new Thief though. And that's just one reason why I loved Dishonored, not the only though. It is a game published by Bethesda but unlike other games they sale, it is not unpolished bug-o-rama. I've explored probably every explorable pixel inside, yet I never got bored or annoyed. To add on top of it, it contains a c&c system where your actions result in getting different "challenges" in next areas (as example if you destroy illegal cure making machine, the next chapter will contain more sick ppl).

Before I go too long with this… I don't expect this Thief game to be Dishonored. Nor I want it to.
I want to play a thief who's task is not assassination but getting rich by being undetected. Of course, I want a story included, not just puzzles and level design.
As soon as it gets unlocked in my region I'll start playing it and will post impressions.
 
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I'm replaying Dishonored again right now. I won't be able to play the new Thief until tomorrow sometime. As far as RPG elements it has as many or more than the original Deus Ex. Which isn't saying alot really but people sure seem to call it a FPS/RPG. Your choice of what (few) side missions to do and how you do them (who you spare/kill) actually have story consequences later in the game. Other than that it's just choice of skill upgrades.

To understand where I'm coming from Thief & Thief 2 are my 2 favorite games of all time. Thief 2 has been on every PC I've ever owned since it came out.

Dishonored is fantastic once you understand how the controls and stealth mechanics work. That's assuming you're trying to be stealthy of course, you can just slaughter everything and have fun that way too. But the stealth is based more on line-of sight than light/darkness. The enemy show their level of alertness with little lightning flashes above their heads. And while that's not exactly immersive it works once you get used to it.

All they would have to do is add a working light gem to dishonored and change the art direction and gadgets to match Thief and it would be perfect. I really don't see how they could have screwed up this new Thief when all they needed to do is start with Deus Ex HR and do the same thing (add light gem, etc) and it would be perfect. Like I said though, I haven't played it yet. The guy at Rock, Paper, Shotgun and the guys at Penny Arcade both say it's very good though and I tend to agree with their oppinions more than most reviews.
 
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Yes, I wouldn't say that Dishonored isn't fantastic game.
It's just that my personal taste is different.
 
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I was turned off by the very first part. I can't stand the "watch the little arrows on the mini-map, then move" vs. actually just playing. I ESPECIALLY hated Deus Ex human-whatever because of that. I liked Dishonored better once you escaped the sewers, but was distracted by something else and just put it away.

I'll give it another try.
 
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The reviews on that link seem to average at about 7/10, which is solid, if not strong.
 
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Although can't play the game for next couple of days (dunno why is it locked per region, honestly), I?m keeping an eye on reports about performance issues.
Seems there is a crash issue on some machines for yet undetermined reason, but some guy found a solution:
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=141651
I was running 8GB of ram and no pagefile. The game was crashing like many people describe here (after 5-10 seconds of loading the game or running a benchmark, for example.(

I then added an 8GB pagefile for a total of 16GB virtual memory, and the game stopped crashing.

Also a somewhat suspicious thing is discussed on Steam forums (suspicius, as the solution is illegal 3rd party piece of software, oddly links to it are not deleted by steam moderators).
Ppl get low FPS in the game and their specs are not some ancient pieces of hardware. Is it connected to the memory issues like crashes above remains to be seen.
 
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I found Dishonored to be … okay.
Far too easy for my taste, and far too short. To me, it just lacked depth across the board and I found nothing about the game mechanics really interesting. No comparison to Thief (the original), IMO.

The setting and the way the story is told is really good, though, so I would recommend it for that alone.
 
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I played Dishonored on Hard, and I thought the difficulty was fine. Not overly frustrating but certainly not too easy either. Overall, I thought it was one of the best non-RPGs released last year.
 
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I've been playing more Thief - a few hours, and I'm warming to it. One very important thing is to customize difficulty to your liking. At first, I just picked "Master" - and didn't mess around much.

But I'm now playing with "expensive resources" and I've disabled nearly everything in the hud - which makes a big difference. It's much more immersive and challenging now.

They've added a ton of minor upgrades to the Thief arsenal, both in terms of weapons and tools.

So far, the story is interesting - and I'm actually getting into it.

Not quite sure what my problem was, except that everything seemed to be very run-of-the-mill.

I've seen no AI issues - but then again, I'm the sort of stealth player that won't accept getting spotted, so I'm pretty much never engaging with an alerted AI.

Beyond that, the issue with loading screens is being blown way out of proportion. The levels aren't that big, true - but I'm not being bothered by loading screens at all. Maybe it's because I've played Thief 3 recently and those loading screens seemed more frequent and were definitely much longer.

Maybe the game gets stale down the line - but it's not bad at all right now. I like it quite a bit better than Dishonored, especially in terms of atmosphere and visuals.
 
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