EuroGamer - Thief Retrospective

Dhruin · May 17, 2009

With Thief 4 unveiled this week, John Walker has penned a nice, timely Thief: The Dark Project retrospective for Eurogamer:

But here's the thing: On the Normal setting you're charged with successfully breaking into the building and finding the sceptre. Hard raises the stakes in more predictable ways such as having to escape the manor once the prize is stolen, and asking you to loot 350 gold pieces worth of items while you're there. But it's the final requirement that's significant. "Don't kill any of the servants; they're harmless." Bring it up to Expert and now you're tasked with getting 700 gold, but also: "Don't kill anyone while you do the job. No servants, no guards, no pets... no one."

It's this that captures the spirit, the essence of this most extraordinary game. This is a game where turning the difficulty up reduces the number of enemies you have to kill. Certainly it also increases the number of guards (but slightly and smartly, never feeling unfair or unrealistic), and repositions them into more strategic patrol routes. But it doesn't make your weapons less effective, or raise enemy hit-points, or artificially hinder you in any 'gamey' way. It simply asks you to be a better, subtler, smarter thief.

More information.

Alrik Fassbauer · May 17, 2009

The exact opposite of Blizzard's Action-RPGs.

In fact, it's the exact oppoosite of ANY action-RPG.

And since the industry favours Action-RPGs, because they sell ...

I have the feeling as if this was "intellectual gameplay vs. mass-oriented gameplay".
It's just a feeling, though.

Yeesh · May 17, 2009

Blah, blah, blah. Killing stuff gameplay was dominant before stealth-based gameplay even game into being, and killing stuff gameplay never faltered in its popularity for a second. All props to Thief for its own near-perfect stealth implementation, but there's no industry conspiracy keeping stealth games less popular than Diablo (I mean, like literally I'd guess every stealth game ever made combined probably sold less than the Diablo franchise, not that this proves anything). What keeps stealth games less popular is that people would rather kill enemies than sneak past them. I sure would.

A game like Diablo II is as intellectual as you make it. People spend hours planning character builds around precise sets of gear that they acquire over weeks through runs, luck, and trading. It's a game that rewards research and collecting. It's not Double Dragon or Halo.

And CRPGer, set thy sights on thyself. How many of our classic CRPGs have really supported peaceful gameplay? There's already a whole genre devoted to not killing stuff, and it's called Adventure.

Alrik Fassbauer · May 18, 2009

Yeesh said:
And CRPGer, set thy sights on thyself. How many of our classic CRPGs have really supported peaceful gameplay? There's already a whole genre devoted to not killing stuff, and it's called Adventure.

On the converse argumnt, this means that RPGs are about killing stuff ?

Sergius64 · May 18, 2009

Alrik Fassbauer said:
On the converse argumnt, this means that RPGs are about killing stuff ?

Kinda, yeah. Well, at least that what most cRPG game companies seem to think. If not from killing, then what else would you get advancement from?

That being said, I always liked games that rewarded you much more for accomplishing quests then from killing hordes of enemies. For example in BGII you would get couple hundred experience points from killing a monster that would be spread over your 6 characters, complete a key quest however and all your characters would get like 29k experience. Bloodlines was similar as well. You wouldn't get exp for killing stuff on a level, you would get exp for completing parts of quests during that level.

EuroGamer - Thief Retrospective

Dhruin

SasqWatch

Alrik Fassbauer

TL;DR

Yeesh

Hopeless Curmudgeon

Alrik Fassbauer

TL;DR

Sergius64

Watchdog