OK, here we go. I was given the privilege to play two hours of the new Thief game in the stage of development it had about two weeks ago. I owe a big thank you to the guys from SE and EM in both Germany and Canada for setting up
a very atmospheric event with fancy decoration, stage props, costumes for both employees and actors (curtisans!), stylistically appropriate chairs and benches etc. etc.... The whole event alone was adorable , so I give credit where credit is due. Joe Khoury from EM gave a little introduction (similar to the one at the Eurogamer Expo) and we saw a little playthrough across Stonemarket, basically the section we were about to play later.
The first difficulty for me as a PC gamer was to get used to an xBox gamepad which we were given even though we played the PC version (never saw so huge PC towers, by the way...) but that worked after some twenty minutes. The section was part of Stone Market which apparently forms the large centre of the City together with Southquarter (?). Dayport is on the east bank and the Old Quarter with the Haunted Cathedral district seems to exist as well; Auldale being on the west bank IIRC. The different City quarters will be more and more accessible as the game progresses. The demo started with the clocktower scene as in the movie above and I had the same uneasy feeling with Garrett's slightly cartoony face. The mask thing probably indicates whether or not Garrett feels safe in some environment or not. This is new but I couldn't blame the devs for it more than an FM author describing how Garrett wears black leather all the time, which would put me off, too.
The clocktower looks great (and basically everything looks great in this game) but has a collection of jewel cases for special loot trophies. You can think about this more artistic/emotional interpretation of Garrett's stealing as you wish, but anyhow it looked like Garrett planned his private museum up there. The clocktower was a separate loading zone as was the Crippled Burrick Pub, the rest of what was accessible of Stonemarket (hard to estimate but several times larger than a single TDS City section map) worked without loading zones (or they were cleverly hidden).
The basic level design is great I think (and would be celebrated as an outstanding piece of mapping if it was an FM). Stonemarket is dirty, old, organic and highly three-dimensional. From the gutters to the streets, awnings and rooftops, this map screams "explore me!" from every trim. The AIs tend to appear a bit lifeless but that can probably still be tweaked, AI behaviour is one of the major issues at EM as we were told. The other major issue to be tweaked is the movement.
When they said every edge was to allow mantling or climbing, I had hoped the contextual jumping stuff wouldn't be so bad, but at least this demo felt heavily on rails. Spots for mantling, climbing, jumping and speed vaults looked great and gorgeously animated when they worked, but their placement was still arbitrary with e.g. desks you could vault over and other where you couldn't (or jump down/not jump down an edge or jump across/not jump across a gap). All this happens by the way with some sort of "free running" button like in AC which isn't the worst idea IMHO but the implementation is, as described, more than wanting, especially with respect to the original free-form movement in the Thief games. Joe Khoury said that they are working on making it easier for the player to spot where which movement works but he also acknowledged my interjection that this would make the rails even more obvious. So the EM guys are clearly aware of the issues with the new game (and I doubt that they are not interested in solving them), it's just the question what can be done until next February (or in this period of game development in the first place).
I'll now post my notes from the review form because I'm lazy, so please ask me which things need explanation.
Pros:
Astounding graphics (but I’m not a graphics whore anyway), pretty multidimensional level design, gritty and gloomy atmosphere from visuals and music/SFX, attention to detail, nice elements like hiding in a cupboard, free-running looks and feels great (maybe a bit too much Vertigo zoom), side-missions given by NPCs are nice but shouldn’t turn into repetitive no-brainers like in Assassin’s Creed; if the “oldschool mode” will remove all HUD indicators, loot glint, blue glowing interactive objects, aiming assistant etc. that’d be great, non-Focus lock-picking and frame searching felt great, especially when challenging
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Cons:
Movement feels heavily on rails, context-sensitive actions and animations sometimes feel arbitrarily-placed (dodging over tables, falling from edges―or not, mantling), and even if this will be fixed it will probably deviate very much from the free movement of the originals; animations take control away from the player, sometimes for seconds; some context-sensitive actions don’t seem to work when guards are alert , a general alert state like in Assassin’s Creed would be awkward, too (sometimes the screen tint wouldn’t go away forever); light-shadow and noise levels were sometimes hard to determine, three-stage light gem is insufficient, shroud takes away the awareness of the surroundings that a Thief should have ; readables as plain menu text are a bit sterile, auto-save to the notes section is well… a bit hand-holding but anyway (same goes for other one-time actions like searching drawers); contextual music (CRAMPS still?) is great but the “alert” change too obtrusive IMHO; references to the old games sometimes feel a bit lukewarm, same goes for some of the dialogue writing; Garrett’s voice lacks character both in sound and words
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Opinion on the City hub and the missions to do there:
City Hub looks and feels great, hopefully not all side-quests will be set up as such, so actual free exploration is not only possible but also rewarding; existing side quests looked great but shouldn’t turn into cheap no-brainers, so with enough “heart” this might turn out really cool
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Summa summarum, prepare for a game that is indeed the "re-imagination" of Thief that the devs have always announced. It definitely looks enjoyable but will be a deviation from the original series at least in some basic gameplay aspects, e.g. in how it treats the player.
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