Thief - Massive Review Roundup

That is exactly the beauty of games like the original DX (and even DX: IW which is a solid and competent rpg) and thief - player choice as indicated by others in this thread.

I am playing DX:IW now and I could easily see myself completing the game without killing anyone (more than in DX) - my choice.

Games now tend more towards the 'cinematic experience' and this can be very difficult, in my view, go hand in hand with a player driven game.
 
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First patch is out, v1.1 build 4110.1:
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=141833

- Fix for a crash after loading a new game or benchmark.
- Fix for DOF issue when peeking through keyholes.
- Fix for stereoscopic 3D inconsistencies in option menus. Forces VSync to be ON and Triple Buffering to be OFF.
- Fix for a bug where “Invert mouse X/Y” would not be saved.
- Minor UI improvements.
- Optimized memory usage.

Although my game is locked till midnight and is still in preload state, Steam downloaded the patch this very moment (44.3 Mb).

[EDIT]
Also Eidos added to the official forum download links for the manual on several languages. A separate one for each platform of course:
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=141759
 
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I may pick this up at some point not sure yet, I'm not a big fan of first person stealth. Third person would be a day 1 purchase but then I guess it really wouldn't be thief.

Maybe I should see if I can get through dishonored first. Only played a couple hours of it.
 
Oh, sorry - didn't notice your question before.

Yeah, I have an SSD :)

I'm sure it helps the issue - but I still think it's being blown out of proportion, unless you expect an open world streaming game, which it most certainly isn't.

It's an issue, yeah, but I find it to be minor. YMMV, obviously.

I couldn't wait, I picked up the game for $37.50 on Green Man Gaming. I have an SSD, but I don't think I've gotten far enough into the game to hit a loading screen, although I am traversing the city currently, after the first time at the clocktower, going in and out of buildings. I'm enjoying it enough so far, not ready to give a complete opinion yet. My biggest gripe is terrible optimization with a Geforce 660. (helpful tips: turn off SSAO, enable exclusive fullscreen) It's playable yet FPS drops happen frequently, especially right after loading a save, but not only then.

I can't use the gamepad in the LH with the mouse in the RH, because the mouselook gets screwy unless keyboard is being used. However I can go back and forth between the two control schemes as desired (picking up the gamepad for lockpicking/vibration feedback for example, or when I want analog control for sneaking) - a playing style I'm getting very comfortable with that I use with AC4 as well. I also use a Belkin Nostromo, not the actual keyboard.
 
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I couldn't wait, I picked up the game for $37.50 on Green Man Gaming. I have an SSD, but I don't think I've gotten far enough into the game to hit a loading screen, although I am traversing the city currently, after the first time at the clocktower, going in and out of buildings. I'm enjoying it enough so far, not ready to give a complete opinion yet. My biggest gripe is terrible optimization with a Geforce 660. (helpful tips: turn off SSAO, enable exclusive fullscreen) It's playable yet FPS drops happen frequently, especially right after loading a save, but not only then.

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 - and I only get stuttering in the beginning of a load or a new game. I have 2 x 670 in SLI.

According to the Benchmark, I'm getting ~55-60 FPS on average - which is not bad for how good the game looks.

I recommend using SweetFX for that extra colorful crispness :)

I can't use the gamepad in the LH with the mouse in the RH, because the mouselook gets screwy unless keyboard is being used. However I can go back and forth between the two control schemes as desired (picking up the gamepad for lockpicking/vibration feedback for example, or when I want analog control for sneaking) - a playing style I'm getting very comfortable with that I use with AC4 as well. I also use a Belkin Nostromo, not the actual keyboard.

Well, I'm finding just the Xbox 360 pad to be perfect for controlling this game. The controls are very well implemented.

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.
 
Last night couldn't wait so I peeked into the game when it finally got unlocked.

It looks impressive.
During the prologue you can't save the game, but it does autosave frequently - I've deliberatley got caught by guards and after that the game can be continued again from a nearby spot.
Picked the normal difficulty so I'm not sure if guards AI is good or bad, that's something to be seen later.
Had my share of fun, when prologue was over with, I saved the game and can't wait to play more of it later.
And I've seen some people say that load times are huge - they lie or there is a problem with their hardware. Loading is not instant, but definetly not time consuming as loading Aurora Engine games. And I don't have SSD.

The bad side?
It stutters. Not everywhere, mostly in cutscenes and when I'm about to knock out a guard.
I did mess with options (mbuddha's note on it is good), but honestly it didn't help much.
And I'm not the only one having microfreezes nor I'm running the game on a crap machine, steam forums and official thief forum has numerous reports on the issue. Believe me, while visuals are awsome, they are no better than FarCry3 which didn't stutter anywhere on me. Maxed. And I've left graphics options in Thief on "normal" preset.

Seems that 64bit game exe is bugged and causes stutters here and there no matter how strong the machine is. Still haven't tried (will do it later), but some people claim when they've forced the game to run with x32 exe (by renaming corresponding game folders in steam) it doesn't stuttering any more. It does mean no RAM addressing over 4Gb, but honestly who cares if the game will look the same as with x64 exe but will run flawlessly that way?

Oops, forgot the link:
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?p=1990067#post1990067
But don't delete the folder, just move it somewhere because it'll still be needed for some future patch.
 
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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.
 
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Is this a custom nvidia setting?

Nope. it's a Windows service - but I'm not convinced it was what actually did the trick.

For whatever reason, my stuttering seems all but gone after I manually added Thief to Nvidia profiles and made sure "VSYNC" was set to 3D application.

Both tweaks shouldn't really do anything - but after doing them, the game is quite smooth. Not 100%, but close enough.

Looking it up, concerned about performance hits with something like that however.

I don't seem to experience any performance drop - then again, my game performs about ~60 FPS more or less all the time.

But SweetFX is a well known tweak and I don't think I've ever seen it have a negative impact on performance.
 
My biggest performance improvement was the 32 bit folder trick that Joxer mentioned:

1. Go to: \SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\Thief\Binaries
2. RENAME the "Win64" folder to whatever you want e.g. "Win64Backup"
3. COPY the "Win32" folder, so it should be "Win32 - Copy"
4. RENAME the "Win32 - Copy" folder to "Win64"

Anyways I posted a review up on Gamespot

http://www.gamespot.com/thief/user-reviews/2200-12573885/
 
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I found that disabling SSAA made a difference as well. Performance is pretty smooth for me at all times now.

Also, I agree with your review :)

The city layout and navigation remains atrocious - and the respawning guards was a stupid design decision.

But, overall, it's a great game for a stealth fan who enjoys exploration and a challenge.
 
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