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Ion Storm closing too?

dipdipdip

Liturgist
Joined
Jul 19, 2003
Messages
629
One of the devs. was on the TTLG.com message boards, raising the possibilty of their releasing a level editor to the fans for Thief Deadly Shadows. Seeing as the Thief fan community is the most talented bunch that I've personally come across as far as those things go, it would be a real shame to see this not happen after all.

Other than that, I'm rather indifferent.
 

Surlent

Liturgist
Joined
Jul 21, 2004
Messages
825
Well the studio leader, Warren Spector has run away.
Ionstorm hasn't produced anything lately (the upcoming PS2 game, Snowblind, is from Crystal Dynamics, not from Ion).
Plus Harvey Smith left ages ago and the team who made Thief:DS was layed off after they released the game.

So there's not much ppl on Ion anymore unless they've secretly hired new employees. Ofcourse they have always hinted they might *some day* make editor for Thief games, but nothing solid is seen yet.

I guess the franchises Ion made, Deus Ex and Thief, will fall to Eidos. Ionstorm is owned by Eidos the same way Interplay pwned BIS. Eidos might put those titles in use again, but the games would be done by other studios like Crystal Dynamics. In future we'll be seeing those long awaited titles Thief4: Homeboy in da hood and Deus Ex: Invisible Mainstream. Unless ofcourse whole Eidos pulls the plug, rumor is new Hitman and Lara Croft games don't sell enough from them to manage themselves.
 

Fez

Erudite
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May 18, 2004
Messages
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I thought Hitman was being set up as the new cash cow for Eidos? I'm surprised that it isn't doing well from what I've heard.

You prefer the first Hitman? Why? Is it purely because that was the first one you played and so it felt the most original?
 

Major_Blackhart

Codexia Lord Sodom
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Partly, but also because I liked the fact that you didn't get penalized for killing every enemy you came across, though I rarely did. Plus, I felt there were alot of ways to knock off a boss, maybe more so than in the other games.
 

Fez

Erudite
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Messages
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The hotel level was probably the jewel in the crown for that first game, and I'd be willing to bet that was the one you were thinking of. :) The sequels did improve on a few things. If you play through the games and go back to the first you notice a lot of bad design errors and some bugs. The "flashback" levels were seen by many fans as a bit of a cheap and blatant reuse of the old game, if they wanted to have the flashbacks set within that time period then they could have done it in more smoothly with a few subtle (and perhaps not so subtle) references to the previous games. The single mission hit contract format lends itself ideally to this.

You were rated in the first game for a 'clean' hit, the best being if you only killed the target without anyone noticing before you escaped. There were even money penalties to pay for the 'cleaner' to remove evidence and bodies after you left if you were messy.
 

Major_Blackhart

Codexia Lord Sodom
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Yeah, but you were only monetarily penalized for killing innocents. Anywho, despite all their flaws, the first was phenominal. I enjoyed Contracts, but like others, I thought it was kind of a copout to reuse old levels from the first game. I would rather have seen more levels like the meat king or the residence of the hunters. Also, did anyone notice that the levels were noticably smaller than the previous two, in particular the first. Look at the original Lee Hong assassination mission (last one) and then look at the one for contracts. Less enemies, and what I thought to be a smaller level, though I could be mistaken. Maybe it's because they had consoles in mind for this game?
 

Fez

Erudite
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May 18, 2004
Messages
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The levels have to be cut down into segments or reduced overall in size for the consoles to handle them, same as a few other recent console/PC crossovers (such as deus ex). Shame they couldn't find a better way to work around it as I liked the huge levels, again the hotel, docks, and jungle come to mind. In the later ones it seemed cramped, even the Russian submarine base was unimpressive.
 

Shagnak

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Fez said:
In the later ones it seemed cramped, even the Russian submarine base was unimpressive.

Err...that was in the Contracts demo wasn't it?

Areas did not seem unusually small to me...but then again I havent played the previous ones extensively. Couple of rather large areas in that map though if I remember rightly.

When I read about "its been compromised for consoles" I think more of the likes of Deus Ex : IW or Thief 3 ( but DW especially).

VERY small areas that ruin any immersion -

"This is the city of IttyBattyDid."
"You mean these 4 medium-sized interconnected rooms?"
"Err...yes..."
"Oh. Hmmm. Small."
"Err...yes?"
"Must be easy to clean...and...umm...don't you actually need a population to call something a city?"
"Err...no. By putting middle-distance-view backdrops in we give the illusion that it is a thriving city. And before you say it, believe me, NOTHING was compromised for the sake of crummy console memory. Takes a lot of resources to render them comp-lee-cated backgrounds, see."
"Oh, I see."
 

Fez

Erudite
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The maps just were not very entertaining or complex. It wasn't all bad, they didn't put enough effort into it though. Too much time spent on nifty graphical effects and not enough on level design.

The midget cities bothers me too.
 

Shagnak

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Surlent said:

Thanx for the update.

<Overeaction mode ON>
MOTHERFUCKER! FUCK YOU EIDOS. EAT SHIT AND DIE. Fuck you and your "consolidation".
<Overeaction mode OFF>

Bummer. Another once-great maker of innovative games gone. Pretty soon it'll be all EA and boring sports n racing games. Bleh.

I notice they are keeping Crystal Dynamics, who are making yet another Tomb Raider game. Yeah, like we need that.
 

Fez

Erudite
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May 18, 2004
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If they hadn't ruined DX 2 and made a better Thief then maybe they'd still be alive.
 

Shagnak

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Fez said:
If they hadn't ruined DX 2 and made a better Thief then maybe they'd still be alive.

Maybe. Though I rather liked Thief 3.

And I would rather have their "failures" than another sucky EA sports title.

Im slightly depressed about it all simply because, even if they arent at the heights they were at, its another company that made games I rather liked that has gone down the tubes.

Just like Black Isle, Looking Glass, and perhaps Troika.

:cry:
 

Fez

Erudite
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May 18, 2004
Messages
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The rats had already started to leave the sinking ship. Even if they had kept them open, it'd have been a different group anyway. I still like DX, but after that they all stuck their heads up their arses and saw nothing but sunshine. They snubbed their fans by ignoring what they wanted and changing the games into watered down console crap and half-finished ideas. Thief 3 was so obviously buggy I think that it must never have had a real QA session. The bugs ended up in the console version, where they are pretty much permanent.

Once the talent started leaving though, there was little hope of survival, especially with Warren, who seems to have teams of fans and magazine reviewers who follow him and masturbate constantly over his every word.
 

Sol Invictus

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It's gone

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board. ... adid=54726

A statement issued by the Britain-based publisher outlined the closure with typically cool corporate logic. "Eidos today announced locally that it is to consolidate down its North American internal development capabilities from two studios to one," read the statement. "This will mean the immediate closure of the Ion Storm studio in Austin, Texas, which has been focused primarily on the development of PC and Xbox games. ... This is part of [Eidos'] move to consolidate and strengthen its technical and management capabilities into a smaller number of studios which are capable of scaling up in order to meet the competitive challenges that lie ahead, particularly in anticipation of next-generation technologies and platforms."

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/02/10 ... 18364.html
 

DemonKing

Arcane
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Dec 5, 2003
Messages
5,958
No great loss.

I never really got into the original DX, avoided the sequel but quite enjoyed Thief 3 (although it was missing a bit of the atmosphere from the LG originals).

It's funny though considering how much cash Eidos pumped into Romero only for him to hand them back Daikatana.
 

Shagnak

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DemonKing said:
It's funny though considering how much cash Eidos pumped into Romero only for him to hand them back Daikatana.

I think that was Ion Storm Dallas or something (and they can suck my sack for Daikatana). I assume that they were killed off or bankrupted earlier due to being crap? (anyone?)

The team that did Thief 3 and is currently under the heel of Eidos is Ion Storm Austin. I read somewhere that one of the Ion Storm operations was started up using start-up money from the other, and then became essentially separate concerns. But there will be people here that no the ins and outs of this better than me...was Dallas Ion Storm under Eidos as well? And what happened to that Romero wanker?
 

Andyman Messiah

Mr. Ed-ucated
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I'm honestly going to miss Ion Storm. I enjoyed Deus Ex and enjoyed Invisible War, although it didn't feel like Deus Ex. I enjoyed Thief 3, although it didn't feel like the original Looking Glass-games. Sad to see them go.
 

Sol Invictus

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Nope. Romero stopped making cell phone games awhile back.

Tom Hall (Anachronox) and John Romero (Daikatana) are working for Midway Games now. They're developing an unannounced title.
 

Surlent

Liturgist
Joined
Jul 21, 2004
Messages
825
Shagnak said:
I think that was Ion Storm Dallas or something (and they can suck my sack for Daikatana). I assume that they were killed off or bankrupted earlier due to being crap? (anyone?)
Yea, Romero practically gave Warren Spector his own studio at Austin.
This was named Ionstorm Austin. Romero's studio was in Dallas, but both were part of the same company and eventually taken control over by Eidos when Romero started screwing up with Daikatana. Eidos had contracted to do lots of games with Romero (5 or 6) and invested whole lot of money to Ionstorm.

After Romero finally released Daikatana Eidos decided to shut down Dallas studio, since a lot of people had already left that studio in fury and frustration because of Romero's jack asssnesss. Ionstorm's Austin studio continued to go on led by Warren Spector and owned by Eidos. After the hit title Deus Ex (Personal opinion: one of the best games evah 111) Eidos got interested again on Ionstorm and decided they should have funding for more games.

Then Warren+co hired some former Looking Glass studios devs to come to work in Ion and make Thief3. Harvey Smith and his team also started working with DX:IW. The rest is probably known to you all. DX:IW isn't as good as the previous commercially and gameplay wise, after Thief:DS gets released the whole team working on it gets layed off, Harvey Smith runs away, Warren finally leaves and Ionstorm Austin goes defunc.
 

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