The Errant Signal Thread

[Clockwork Knight]

I have a few friends I play L4D2 with occasionally. When the workshop was added to that game I had to physically show them how to use it, and explain about conflicting mods causing crashes, etc. I doubt they remembered how to use it themselves after we were done. They aren't dumb, they just don't care enough about mods to figure this stuff out on their own, and I'm sure that's how it is for most people.

You literally have to click one button

 

[AngryEddy]

Wow, Campster's managed to crawl really far up his own ass with this one.

You act as if this is a new phenomena.

 

[Xor]

I have a few friends I play L4D2 with occasionally. When the workshop was added to that game I had to physically show them how to use it, and explain about conflicting mods causing crashes, etc. I doubt they remembered how to use it themselves after we were done. They aren't dumb, they just don't care enough about mods to figure this stuff out on their own, and I'm sure that's how it is for most people.

You literally have to click one button

They wouldn't even have known it existed if I hadn't shown them.

 

[Murk]

Allosaurus Rex guy seems almost ok; he is overly verbose to a detriment and needs to practice his pacing (this is his schtick but if your schtick is detracting from the quality then it's worth changing) but the content seems alright... at least for the 2 videos I watched. I will watch the fallout video after the current one and see if his white tux is deserved.

He does sound a bit like the btongue guy; whom I lump in with errant signal as "meh".

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The video was also posted in the Thiaf threadnaught, I posted my opinion of it there. It's not bad, though not without valid points of criticism against it.

 

[Infinitron]

utbunny
5 hours ago

I believe the thieve's den mission was just an extra mission added to Thief Gold. I don't think it was in the original Dark Project.

Errant Signal
5 hours ago

Man, this is why I lament not being able to play the original version in 2014 without finding a CD at a flea market.

I mean, my overall complaints about level size and their maze-like nature remain, but that level being an expansion-based level makes too much sense and I sort of wish I played the version of the game without it.

Noob.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Both that, and Didn't Do The Research.

 

[catfood]

The problem with that guy is that he seems to be too much of a storyfag. When I played the game back when it first came out I had a pirated version of it with no cutscenes. I had no idea what was going on half the time story-wise. The only things that gave some clues to that were the mission objectives, the notes you find scattered throughout the levels and the levels themselves. I didn't play the game to get the full story, because there barely was any for me. Instead I just played it because I liked sneaking around, exploring to find hidden places and loot and to give myself a pat on my 12 year old back whenever I managed to complete a seemingly impossible to navigate-through level.

 

[Borelli]

Parts of that video that i don't like:
-talking about Garrett's role in the world (too much pretentious reading into things). Yes, you mostly steal from city and Hammer folk than Pagan, but that is because jewelry fetches a higher price than some rock and leaves.
-levels are "too large". TOO LARGE?!? Relish every single level of Thief because you will never see anything like that anymore. (you are allowed not to relish the thieves guild mission, that one was meh)
-using thieves guild mission as a criticism of the whole game

The rest is fine although i would like to add that he uses the term ghosting as "nonviolent approach". In Thief, ghosting is a self made challenge and ups the game by forbidding most interaction (in Thief the nonviolent approach already is the standard) and not one put in by the developers.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

It's all the more confusing because footage from The Sword plays as he criticizes Thief's levels for being too big and maze-like. You can level some obvious criticism at Thieves Guild (which is simply too big and the layout makes backtracking very annoying) or Escape (a rather boring and samey maze), but The Sword is easily the best level in the game.

Like a lot of people trying to analyze Thief as part of a "stealth genre", he misses an important point, which also undermines his criticism. Thief isn't a "stealth challenge room" game, like the grand majority of stealth games out there, it's a game about successfully traversing a hostile place, and as such has more to do with the likes of Ultima Underworld or System Shock than Splinter Cell. The first game even has a few straight up dungeon crawl levels. Open-ended exploration really is a major part of it, and not only as a way of serving stealth mechanics, like Campster claims, it's really there for its own sake. In a sense, you could say that the stealth mechanics are there to make exploration challenging and interactive.

Not too bad of a video all in all though.

 

[tuluse]

-talking about Garrett's role in the world (too much pretentious reading into things). Yes, you mostly steal from city and Hammer folk than Pagan, but that is because jewelry fetches a higher price than some rock and leaves.

That's the point though. Garrett needs an organized human society to leech from. If everyone lived in the woods like a treehugger, he couldn't earn a living through thievery. That push-pull between the protagonist and his environment is one of the many interesting things Thief did narrative wise.

Like a lot of people trying to analyze Thief as part of a "stealth genre", he misses an important point, which also undermines his criticism. Thief isn't a "stealth challenge room" game, like the grand majority of stealth games out there, it's a game about successfully traversing a hostile place, and as such has more to do with the likes of Ultima Underworld or System Shock than Splinter Cell. The first game even has a few straight up dungeon crawl levels. Open-ended exploration really is a major part of it, and not only as a way of serving stealth mechanics, like Campster claims, it's really there for its own sake. In a sense, you could say that the stealth mechanics are there to make exploration challenging and interactive.

This is an interesting take of Thief. If you think of it as an exploration game instead of a stealth game it really changes perceptions. For one thing. Thief probably has the best first person platforming I've played. The mantle ability gives a buffer zone which is needed when you can't see yourself. Thief is also the only game I've played that has a "lean forward" button. A lot of people disliked platforming in Half-Life because of the absence of this. It meant you had to get right up to the edge of a surface to look down which meant falling a lot and frustration (ladders are also not death traps in Thief).

Another thing to consider is the connotations of the word thief. I think LGS was using the D&D class name. It's someone who steals things, yes, but it's also someone who disarms traps, scouts ahead, picks off enemies with arrows, and sneaks behind for backstab attacks. D&D hasn't had a thief class in 15 years, and the only connotation now is a person who steals things.

So I guess The Dark Mod should rename itself "Rogue" to carry on the tradition.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Yeah, the D&D interpretation really does fit the first game very well. In the second one, LGS decided that pure stealth was their best gameplay mechanic and adjusted accordingly. On one hand, this got rid of the rather tedious combat against monsters and undead; however, they also removed the dungeon crawling altogether, which I think was a significant loss. Thief 2 would not have been worse off for having some Bonehoard/Lost City style levels, especially if they had expanded on the idea of avoiding and disarming traps, and maybe even put in some real puzzles.

 

[Infinitron]

Transcript for video haters: http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/?p=614

Spoiler

Just in time for Thief (2014), it’s Thief (1998)!


It’s February, and that means two things. Thing one, we’re in the post-Christmas slump where major games aren’t really released all that often. Oh, there’s been tons of amazing indie stuff released since the start of the new year and I heartily recommend you pick some of those titles, but in terms of a big meaty major studio release there isn’t much doin’. Thing two, Thief comes out at the end of the month! Well, Thi4f. Thief 4. Or just… Thief… again. Whatever, the new Thief comes out. And with those two things in mind I thought now would be a good time to take a look at original Thief, one of the first stealth games and the progenitor of an entire genre!

Except that’s… not really true at all. The stealth concept had been percolating for years with titles like the original Castle Wolfenstein and the original Metal Gear, so it’s not like stealth originated with Thief. And Thief actually arrived last in the same year as Metal Gear Solid and Tenchu, and all three sort of jump started the stealth genre in tandem in 1998. So while I’m comfortable saying that without Thief we probably wouldn’t have, say, Dishonored, giving it credit for the creation of the whole genre is probably overreaching. Really the majority of western stealth games can probably trace their lineage most directly back to Splinter Cell, which sort cherry picked favorite concepts from all three 1998 games – the mobility from Tenchu, the light and noise systems from Thief, and the gadgetry of MGS. Actually, sixteen years on what’s really what’s notable about Thief isn’t how it laid the groundwork for modern stealth games, but how it differs from them.

For example, movement is handled in a fundamentally different way in Thief. In Mark of the Ninja or Dishonored, movement is a sort of freedom that the guards don’t have; it’s what allows the player their stealthy abilities. Blinking out of a guard’s line of sight just in time or hiding on ceilings and in vents is what it means to be stealthy in those games; it’s the nimble and quick that are invisible. But in Thief movement is a loud, reckless, clumsy thing. Some of that is because of the way the game handles player movement physics – the player character, Garrett, has a heft and momentum about him; he slides and pushes and bumps into things in ways you might not expect, and awkward control schemes exacerbate that sense of bumbling around the dark. But a lot of it also has to do with how movement raises visibility in Thief where it doesn’t quite so much in modern stealth games. Movement over a certain speed meant raised visibility to guards even in the dark, climbing on ledges and rocks means exposure and vulnerability;; jumping around means landing with an alarming thud. In Thief speed and movement aren’t a sign of power but of impatience. There’s a constant tradeoff between mobility and visibility, and the art of stealth was knowing when to run and when to double down in the shadows. In Thief it isn’t the nimble that are invisible, but those who know when not to move at all.

Speaking of shadows: Thief’s stealth systems remain somewhat unique, even today. Looking Glass tried to simulate detectability more than other forms of subterfuge. Metal Gear Solid usually toyed with line of sight and guard view fields, and in recent iterations toyed with camouflage as its stealth tool, Hitman has always focused on disguises, and Batman just needs to go into the rafters and hop around to become invisible. Even Dishonored, perhaps Thief’s most direct descendant, focuses on line of sight more than actual visibility metrics. But Thief tried hard to systemize what it meant to be invisible and unheard. Movement speed, holding giant clunky weapons, the type of surface you were walking on, standing in degrees of light – all of these things made you easier to detect, and you had to be cognizant of all of those variables at all times as you moved through the game’s levels. Its only real rivals in terms of simulating that sort of stealth are really just Mark of the NInja (which was notable for taking Thief’s light and sound model and making it work in two dimensions) and early Splinter Cell games (which have since jettisoned that system… and most pretense of stealth… and consequently largely any relevance…). And because so few games have adopted this particular mechanic set (at least at this level), there’s something still fresh and vital about Thief’s approach to stealth; there’s still a magic about cowering in a dark corner afraid to move but also terrified of staying put.

Thief also differs from modern stealth games due to its level design. Modern stealth levels are, for the most part, intensely designed affairs. I mean, level design is important in combat focused games, sure, but it’s even more so for stealth games where guard paths, player visibility, item placement, resource scarcity, and places to run and hide all have to be balanced while still communicating to players where they need to go and what they need to do.

Thief… predates that sort of design-oriented approach to levels. Thief’s levels are obscenely large and complex – labyrinthian even – with nonsensical architecture and oddly intersecting hallways that seem designed specifically to confuse players. Sparsely decorated rooms with the same base texture sets all begin to blur together, and the player is often given only a compass and a *very* rough sketch of the level to guide them. This does have some benefits: it ensures that there are multiple entrances and exits to just about any area which provides players plenty of places to hide or to run. It also rewards exploration, as curious thieves can find extra loot or items. And it allows for various approaches to most levels, giving each player a preferred path through.

But even with those advantages, the levels on display here simply feel too large. It’s almost the opposite problem of Invisible War, really – the levels are so huge it’s easy to forget what the point of them even is; there’s no greater tension than the guard around the next corner. There’s not a strong sense of keeping your eyes on the prize or remembering your exact objective – only the minute-to-minute sense of finding loot and knocking out or avoiding guards.

I’ll give you an example – there’s a level that has you break into a restaurant. And that restaurant is a front for a secret casino underground. And under the casino is a maze of sewer tunnels that holds a thieves den. And there are two separate houses connected to opposite ends of the den. As Garrett, you have to break into the restaurant, sneak through the casino, find your way through the thieves den to the house that has the key to a safe, then sneak back through the thieves den and break into the house with the safe itself, then find your back way to the streets. And the kicker? This is complete filler. The level before has you stealing from Ramirez as revenge for trying to assassinate you, and the level after has Victoria contact you because of your success with the Ramirez job. The thieves den quest has nothing to do with the narrative, doesn’t add anything to the experience, and was just an hour and a half of “Game needed to be longer.” It’s a decent level and it does help establish that there are other active thieves than Garratt in the world who pay off the City Watch and we see why Garrett rejects that lifestyle, and I guess it works as a character building level in that sense… but c’mon. Surely there was an easier way to make that small world-building point than this sprawling level.

And I’m focusing so much on the levels because that’s really what drives the most and least enjoyable parts of the game. Thief is at its best when the level design works in favor of the core mechanics, with levels that have a tight focus on stealth and infiltration with maybe slight, minor diversions into exploration or puzzle solving for flavor. But too often levels become find-the-hidden-object games when you’ve completed story objectives but haven’t found the arbitrary amount of loot required to pass or vice versa, or when they become slogs through haunted graveyards that mix awkward combat with a downplayed emphasis on stealth. It’s as though the game wasn’t sure whether the stealth mechanics could stand on their own for a whole game, and so you seesaw between levels that still feel fresh and interesting and tightly designed even 15 years later, and levels that feel like the worst kind of confusing, objectiveless retro game levels. There’s a reason that people look back more fondly on the first set of Steampunk-heavy day-in-a-life-of-Garrett levels more than magical mage towers and dimensions of Pagan elder gods, and it has as much to do with the level design as the awkward theming.

Thief also stands apart from modern stealth games in its position on violent conflict. Your Human Revolutions and Arkham Asylums and modern Hitman and Splinter Cell games are all about sneaking around for the most advantageous angle to kill rather than ghosting a level. Even if these games offer non-violent options – and not all of them do – they’re framed as empowered player choice. You can go in guns-a-blazing or quietly, and both are valid! Yay player choice! In contrast, Thief never really wanted you to kill people, though it certainly gave you the tools to. Non-violence wasn’t the point of the game so much as a sign of highly skilled play and cleanliness on the part of the player. Combat, much like movement, was intentionally clunky and difficult. Killing all NPCs was never meant to be a viable way to play and higher difficulty levels outright forbid it. Thief was a game that allowed for physical combat but wanted both Garrett and the player to be better than that. It wasn’t an antiviolent game but rather a game that found nonviolence more difficult and therefore a mark of more highly skilled play. Stealth in modern games is an extension of the power fantasy, another tool you have to wield over your enemies. In Thief stealth was wasn’t a tool of aggression but a blanket, a shield, a defense you put up to avoid conflict all together.

But I think we often confuse the game’s values with those of its protagonist, and I sort of want to make sure we separate them. Garrett has, over time, been retconned as the perfect thief who blends into the shadows at all times, takes what he wants, and disappears without killing anyone or leaving a scrap of evidence… but that’s not how most players experienced the character, and not even the character the game itself shows us. Garrett kills a man in the opening of Thief 1 and Thief 2 – it isn’t until Thief 3 that they show a nonlethal job to open the game. Garrett is not a “good guy” or a noble thief, he’s a cipher for the player that runs the gamut from murderous home invader to invisible robber. We shouldn’t confuse the playstyle the game finds most interesting and challenging with the values of the character himself, lest we champion the values of a guy who clubs people in the back of the head for a living.

And while we’re on the subject of Garrett, let’s talk about the world he inhabits, as Garrett is more defined by what he’s not than what he is. So Thief takes place in The City, a steampunk citystate that so dominates the whole of Thief’s world that it doesn’t even get a name.

Inside The City there are three groups. There are the Hammerites, who stand for order, rule of law, and technology. They prize the machined and the intentionally designed over nature’s rough hewn fractals; they relish taking formless iron ore and blessing that ore with purpose in the forging of tools. Then there are the Pagans, or Folks of the Woodies, or Followers of the Trickster. This group is aligned with forces outside of The City, and while their human faction don’t factor heavily into the first Thief it’s clear they represent chaos, nature, and the forces of elder gods – basically anything outside of the world of humans. Also they talk kinda like Gollum. Finally there are the Keepers, whose job it is to maintain balance between the two other factions, between the structured and orderly world built by humans and the destructive chaos of nature and the elder gods.

And to that city of conflicting factions enters Garrett. Superficially, he’s a money-grubbing mercenary crossed with a stoic antihero. He’s Han Solo or Malcolm Reynolds meets Batman or The Crow; the puckish rogue who doesn’t want to get involved meets the brooding rooftop savior. The key overlap between those two archetypes is self reliance and independence from anyone and anything. He’s not aligned with the Hammerites (“fanatics make unreliable friends”), dismisses the words of the Pagans, turned his back on the Keepers years ago, and even finds himself avoiding allegiance to any city watchman. It is, in a way, his lack of commitment to others that defines him.

But perhaps what makes him thematically interesting is his role as a thief. To the world of the Hammerites and the city watch, to the world of man, a thief is a source of chaos. He operates outside of their rules and laws, and causes havoc and trouble by upsetting the system. But even though he operates outside of that system, the fact that he steals valuables and recognizes their worth means he still respects that system in a way that, say, The Trickster God does not. He operates outside of yet is still dependent upon the systems built by men. So the Keepers use Garrett as someone who is a natural bringer of balance between Hammers and Pagans; as someone who simultaneously subverts the same system he’s advocating. This bringing of balance becomes even more apparent when you view Thief and Thief 2 together – the first showing Garrett besting the chaotic Pagan god intent on destroying the world of man, and the second showing Garrett defeating an extremist hammerite sect intent on destroying the world of nature.

And this is a bit of a tangent, but this science versus nature, individual versus society, order versus chaos thing has always reinforced this game as a sister project to more Irrational-y games in my mind. 0451 games, for lack of a better geneology. System Shock 2, which shared an engine and a few developer credits with Thief, had Shodan (who was purely technological and represented the tyranny of selfish individualism) face off against The Many (a purely biological antagonist that represented an extreme sort of socialist anarchy). The player, with their cybernetic implants, was a middle ground between the two – both biological and cybernetic, both an individual and member of society. And Bioshock had the failed libertarian empire that prized the individual, while Bioshock 2 was about the tyranny of a socialist matriarch who prized the collective. And, yes, you could carry this theme of middle-ground-i-ness forward into Bioshock Infinite, but at that point it becomes sort of insulting. I know I’m sort of reaching to connect these games, but I always thought it was sort of cool that they all were thematically related in addition to tracing close developer ties. If nothing else it highlights a trend of games arguing for centrism, which makes for an interesting contrast to games with moral choices trying to push players to extremes. Anyways.

Thief is a weird game. It’s full of beautiful little touches: I love how when walking your view bobs with the clatter of each footstep; it keeps your movement and your noisiness at the center of your attention to add to the tension of sneaking. Or how Garrett can only hold an arrow fully drawn for so long before his arms get tired. Fumbling in your pockets for the right key to open a door provides a simple but lovely source of panic that would be automated in most modern games. It’s the sort of thing that seems trite until you’ve snuck your way across a large room to a door only to realize you’re now standing in bright light with no idea what key if any will open it. And it’s a subtle touch, but I love how you can’t really save money between missions; it gives a sense that despite collecting all of this fancy loot Garrett is still struggling to get by (especially as operating expenses from his next job eat most of his profits from his last job). The game also employs a sublime emphasis sound, which is the only way to detect guards not in your line of sight. In an age of Splinter Cell optical cameras that let you look under doors and Dishonored or Batman style night vision modes that let you see through walls there’s something that feels more… I don’t want to say more real, but more relatable, more human about a having to stop moving and just listen for footsteps or the chatter of guards to determine if you’re in danger.

At the end of the day there really aren’t many stealth games like this built today, and that gives Thief a place and a relevance even after all of this time. Thief 2 and Deadly Shadows helped refine the game’s mechanics, but what’s there to love about Thief has been there since the beginning. So how will the new Thief reinterpret the old Thief and modernize its mechanics while still keeping the soul of the original? We’ll find out soon!

And more: http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/?p=618

TWO LONG POSTS ABOUT TWO QUICK NOTES
Two things I’ve been mulling over in the wake of the most recent episode that I felt I wanted to share:


Note one: Yes, I have heard that the Casino level in Thief wasn’t added until Thief Gold. I have heard about it in YouTube comments, in a reddit thread, on Twenty Sided, and on Twitter. I’m really confused about why people keep bringing this up.

The original version of Star Wars: A New Hope was released in 1977. Twenty years later in 1997 The Special Editions of Star Wars were released and added a bunch of stuff, from CGI Jabba the Hutt to Greedo shooting first. While this was generally considered a Bad Decision™ for its content, it was notable more for the fact that it effectively replaced the versions that had come before. For years it was incredibly difficult to get clean, official looking, anamorphic cuts of the original films on modern formats like DVD. Meanwhile the special editions were available at every big box retailer in the country. “Han shoots first” wasn’t just a debate about which version is better but a frustrated rant against a preferred version being erased.

And that’s largely what happened with the release of Thief Gold. It has effectively replaced the original version of Thief: The Dark Project. Thief Gold is pretty much the only way to acquire the game legally these days – it’s the only version sold on GOG or Steam. Sure, one could always hit up fleamarkets or eBay for a CD-ROM copy of the original. But at that point it’s like dumpster diving for VHS copy of the original Star Wars. It’s more of a collector’s item than the way the work exists for most people today. And we certainly don’t respond to people who complain about Sy Snootles with: “Well, that wasn’t in the original edition.”

So I’m confused as to why that seems to be the reaction to criticizing extraneous missions in Thief Gold. Does the fact that the original iteration of Thief: The Dark Project didn’t have this level make it any less of a digression? Is the level’s aimless design any more exusable because you didn’t have to play it in 1998 butdo have to play it now? I’m not sure I buy the “An expansion added this forced two hour digression that goes nowhere after the fact, and that makes it okay” argument any more than I buy “This song and dance number by a horribly animated CGI monster that kills the pacing of Return of the Jedi was added later, and that makes it okay.” Just because the level was added later doesn’t make it any less meandering or tangential. Nor does it cut my overall argument down, as it was just a singular example of a problem endemic to the game as a whole – I could have just as easily chosen the first Haunted Cathedral level or The Mages Tower or Escape! or the Horn of Quintus level as my example.

Note two: I’m not sure the current way I produce these big Errant Signal episodes is working. Hm. Maybe this should have been Thing One. Anyways.

To produce a video like Thief or The Novelist or Quake I have to play through the whole game (sometimes multiple times!) to ensure I record everything of value I’d want to possibly cite. This takes several hours, as games aren’t generally a medium known for their brevity or respect for the player’s time. At the end of that arduous process I have hundreds and hundreds of gigs of raw game footage that I can’t easily store anywhere. But I also certainly don’t want to play through the game and re-record all that footage ever again. It may seem absurd to complain about not wanting to play a video game again, but try playing your favorite game not just as a player but as a camera man interested in usable footage that conveys cogent points for the entire length of the game.

So it becomes a sort of use-it-or-lose-it scenario, with a game’s worth of footage laid out in front of me destined for the trashbin if it isn’t used right now. As a result Errant Signal episodes become a huge mishmash of everything I could possibly have to say on a game. This works well enough if I have just one thing to say about a title – my looks at Hotline Miami and Sleeping Dogs are pretty focused to one idea (a single reading of the game).

But some games are just too large; too culturally relevant to boil down to a single neat perspective. Thief was one of those games and I think the episode suffered as a result. I had to talk about the stealth model, I had to talk about the changing way violence is framed in stealth games, I had to talk about how movement mattered, I had to talk about Thief’s ties to the *Shock games, I had to talk about Garrett’s position as a natural balance bringer between order and chaos… and the result was an episode that had the flimsy pretense of comparing new stealth games to Thief’s approach when really I just had to hit all of those checkboxes. And it’s not like people didn’t notice.

The real problem is that I don’t know how I want to fix this. I don’t want to stop doing in-depth, comprehensive analysis and contextualization for games. But at the same time there are going to be games that are so malleable and cover so much ground that a single topic is all but impossible. I don’t know if a structural change would be better (rigidly segmented sections instead of a freeflowing essay?) or if it would be better to do a series of smaller, shorter videos on each section of the game I want to talk about (an episode on Thief’s ties to the *Shock games and a centrist worldview followed by another brief episode about Thief’s lighting and stealth model, etc). Or maybe the rambly, aimless video essay is an aesthetic choice? I dunno. But it’s given me something to think about.

 

[Infinitron]

Admittedly, I forgot the importance of getting the Horn of Quintus.

It has no importance to the main plot, but it's the culmination of the game's little "plot-before-the-plot" (get Bafford's sceptre, try to fence it with Cutty but learn he's been arrested, break into Cragscleft to free Cutty, learn about the Bonehoard expedition from him before he dies, get the Horn from the Bonehoard)

 

[Borelli]

It is interesting to see modern hipsters/artfags try to play old games and applying their design conventions on them. "oh these levels are not important to the plot why are they in the game boo hoo" Games like Thief truly will never be made again.
(note. i don't hate campster and i like that he is generally positive about Thief but this is how he comes off in the video)

 

[Grunker]

I liked that Thief video, it was one of his best in a long time. I didn't finish Thief until sort of recently (using the excellent modding guide that mr. Tron provided), and my sentiments on most the whole game were similar.

Stealth was never my genre, but Thief won me over in a lot of ways, despite some of its kinks. With all the popularity of sandbox games, we only get linear shit like Th4ef. Come to think of it, except for Dishonored, it seems like the industry is in a production mode where only rock hard linearity or complete Skyrim-esque non-linearity is made. Most of my favourite games have linear narratives and but non-linear levels a la Thief and Deus Ex.

It is interesting to see modern hipsters/artfags try to play old games and applying their design conventions on them. "oh these levels are not important to the plot why are they in the game boo hoo"

Firstly, I don't really think that was his point. His point was that they were drawn out filler. Secondly, is there a reason they shouldn't have been made with a stronger tie to the narrative? Nothing much would be lost if they were I think.

Also, I'm kind of awestruck at you calling Franklin "modern" as though he just recently started playing games. He's from the same Gen as most of us here, and played the same games we did when we did.

That he has very dubious tastes in indie games... well, that I'll give ya.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Thief probably has the best first person platforming I've played. The mantle ability gives a buffer zone which is needed when you can't see yourself.

One question I have to level at this: Do you mean before or after NewDark Thief? NewDark Thief made mantling so much easier to perform, essentially making it possible to mantle on all surfaces, even those that were never intended to be so in the first place.

The reason I ask, sadly, is this: If Thief is the best first-person platforming you've ever played, then I don't want to play the other games that fit that category. Because it's exactly when Thief decides to become a platformer that the engine starts to show its faults. If the edges are 90° angles, it works mostly without incidents, but if the edges are slanted in any way (see: the floating platforms in the Mage Towers) you'll find out the hard way that there are TWO EDGES to grab on to: If Garrett grabs the first one, he'll do the mantle sequence right up to the point where he's supposed to move on to the surface, then he'll just fall down again. Even if you grab hold of the edge again and try again, you'll get the same results. Garrett actually has to grab the second edge to be able to mantle up successfully, but as they're REALLY close together, and one of them is invisible, you'll quickly see the problem. This mostly occurs in Thief 1 and various Fan Missions in Thief 2 that utilize Thief 1 resources, but it's there. AFAIK, NewDark didn't fix this, but the new mantle may have bypassed it.

Also, rope arrows. Grab onto one too low and you'll just slide down. Grab hold of one too high and you're very likely to get shot off into the upper stratosphere, which is very bad for Garrett's carefully preserved arrangement of internal organs. Again, much more noticeable in Thief 1 than in Thief 2, though I haven't heard anything about NewDark fixing this either.

But beyond these points, Thief has done a good job with the platforming.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

I

It is interesting to see modern hipsters/artfags try to play old games and applying their design conventions on them. "oh these levels are not important to the plot why are they in the game boo hoo"

Firstly, I don't really think that was his point. His point was that they were drawn out filler. Secondly, is there a reason they shouldn't have been made with a stronger tie to the narrative? Nothing much would be lost if they were I think.

Also, I'm kind of awestruck at you calling Franklin "modern" as though he just recently started playing games. He's from the same Gen as most of us here, and played the same games we did when we did.

That he has very dubious tastes in indie games... well, that I'll give ya.

His argument is that Thief's levels are too big and confusing, in essence, but that is, again, missing the point. The challenge of the game lies in navigating the level, that's why there's no map and higher difficulty levels add more objectives. Some of them are intentionally confusing, yes, and that's not a design flaw, for reasons similar to why old dungeon crawler levels were intentionally confusing.

You CAN criticize the levels for being confusing in a bad way, and some of them certainly are, but from the examples Campster gave in his addendum, he doesn't make the distinction, given that he mentions Bonehoard and Mage Towers.

The criticism of some of them not being relevant to the narrative, however, is just plain idiotic.

 

[tuluse]

One question I have to level at this: Do you mean before or after NewDark Thief? NewDark Thief made mantling so much easier to perform, essentially making it possible to mantle on all surfaces, even those that were never intended to be so in the first place.

My first experience with Thief was the gog version, which I think uses NewDark. So I think so.

The reason I ask, sadly, is this: If Thief is the best first-person platforming you've ever played, then I don't want to play the other games that fit that category.

The others I've played which I consider to have first person platforming as a main gameplay element are Quake, Half-Life (terrible in many ways, but I still like it), and Metroid Prime. I guess Mirrors Edge would fit the bill, but I never played it, and it doesn't appeal to me.

There's a good chance I'm forgetting some, but these come to mind.

 

[Borelli]

Also, I'm kind of awestruck at you calling Franklin "modern" as though he just recently started playing games. He's from the same Gen as most of us here, and played the same games we did when we did.

He did not play Thief until recently so that's pretty modern to me. Just kidding, i myself am a newfag that hasn't touched many of the Codex classics. My main reason for calling him modern is his persona of a games are art, searching for deep themes, using terms like ludonarrative dissonance hipster.

 

[7h30n]

Also, I'm kind of awestruck at you calling Franklin "modern" as though he just recently started playing games. He's from the same Gen as most of us here, and played the same games we did when we did.

He did not play Thief until recently so that's pretty modern to me. Just kidding, i myself am a newfag that hasn't touched many of the Codex classics. My main reason for calling him modern is his persona of a games are art, searching for deep themes, using terms like ludonarrative dissonance hipster.

I think that's fine for him to search for deep themes and games as art, but the problem is that he focuses too much on those aspects. It would be better if he dialed back down on that, turn the focus back on game systems, mechanics and their interplay (like in his older videos). Also make his videos shorter and more concise.

P.S. And yes, in Thief the enemy isn't only the guards(, monsters and other AI) but also the environment itself.

 

[Shadenuat]

Playing Thief 1 for "first time" now (played it and Thief 2 as teenager a bit, don't remember ever finishing any of the games), I agree with video, Gold levels are a bit too much. All levels before those felt less... gamist, for lack of better term. More packed.
I mean, holy shit, 4 Elemental Towers + Keep + Garden + Dungeon with sewers... it's an adventure for 6-characters D&D party, not a place for a thief to go for business.
And who was that guy who criticized Thief 2014 cause there's a ghost in it? I am fighting zombies, poison spitting dinosaurs, giant spiders, fire elementals and apparations who cast Skull Trap on me!

Okay I need to finish the fire tower. WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT AMULET ARRHHH

 

[Infinitron]

This should be good. Apparently accusations of SJWness are already flying.

 

[Ninjerk]

Accusations? Didn't that guy dive headfirst into SJW uniform months ago?