It does have some stuttering - and it was quite bad in the beginning. Exclusive Fullscreen is a must - and I found it helped me to disable Superfetch - though I don't really understand why. It's almost 100% smooth now
Is this a custom nvidia setting?
I recommend using SweetFX for that extra colorful crispness
Looking it up, concerned about performance hits with something like that however.
A little tip: When you "stealth" takedown a guard - keep the takedown button pressed, and you will immediately pick up the body, like in Dishonored. The tutorial doesn't mention this, and I wasted a lot of time picking up bodies from the ground until I realised this.
Thanks for the tip!
As for performance issues, I played some more. Playing an actual "level" I have little to no problems. I played through the first level in Chapter 2. I can crank up to 2560x1600 and keep everything high or very high. Still SSAO off, and exclusive fullscreen, whatever that is, on.
It's the city that causes godawful stuttering at high settings. Back down to 1920x1200, and turning down many of the settings. Cut scenes can be an absolute disaster because of this. The first conversation with Basso was a jumbled mess. Mostly alleviated with settings tuned more mildly.
Joxer hopefully the fix is that simple, then a patch for the game or from nvidia should be forthcoming. I may try it and report back.
I did hit some loading screens popping in and out of windows. Obviously I could do without them, but they are pretty quick, and not so bad as the gamespot review would suggest.
Updated impressions on the game? Well, I can't stop playing. I played Dishonored stealthily, at least at the start of a level, but I really didn't need to. With Thief, you kind of HAVE to be stealthy to survive, and you want to. I think Dishonored will ultimately be the better game, but Thief holds its own. There are quirks, including performance, getting used to the control scheme(s), and fairly linear design throughout. Lots of situations where you don't have the freedom to just go where you want. Garret's voice isn't as good as in the originals, but it doesn't bother me. The save system is messed up. If you load latest save, and then try to load a manual save, you will be pushed back to an earlier save. For some reason the manual save will disappear/get overwritten as if you didn't save.
Overall, it surprisingly feels like Thief, in spite of some actiony interludes. The best moments are when it's quiet, and you're sneaking around, hearing people muttering to themselves. It's dark, creepy, and you feel rewarded when you use your tools and surroundings to your advantage, although I do wish there was more freedom. I'm still early on in the game.