Thief fan missions and campaigns

[marbleman]

- Forcing the player to get caught in the basement is pure garbage. Thief is a game of absolute control and everytime you take it away you simply introduce a yawn with a 10% chance of player instantly quitting your fm.

There are at least two ways to avoid getting caught there. Both are intended and are not engine gimmicks or exploits. Not sure though if this would redeem the capmpaign for you.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I may have missed something... forcing the player to get caught in the basement?

Which basement exactly, for starters?

 

[marbleman]

I assume it's Miller's basement, where opening a safe unleashes a golden child.

 

[Jazz_]

The dinosaur broke muh imershun.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

That's a burrick's head.

 

[JarlFrank]

That's the joke.

 

[Arrowgrab]

I assume it's Miller's basement, where opening a safe unleashes a golden child.

Only there's a clear and intended way of preventing that from happening, people just have to be a bit more observant.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Ah. My confusion is due to cowking saying he ragequit in the 5th mission due to a forced capture, which I don't recall happening there.

 

[Yandros]

He was talking about Miller's basement in mission 1, and as Arrowgrab said there's a simple way to deactivate the cherub if you take the time to observe and think about it. Anyway, sorry you didn't finish the campaign, but as with Unkillable Cat's review, I can't say I'm the least bit surprised.

 

[marbleman]

I assume it's Miller's basement, where opening a safe unleashes a golden child.

Only there's a clear and intended way of preventing that from happening, people just have to be a bit more observant.

Which is what I was saying And there are two ways, not one. And maybe even three if you count invisibility potion as another option.

 

[SlyFoxx]

Glad I don't make missions any more.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So I looked over the results of the Lost Places contest. Congrats to "Derelict Dock District" for the win, but "Eye of the Gems" getting 2nd place just feels off.

It seems that if you can make a FM that looks and feels atmospheric but has piss-poor gameplay, you can score big at competitions.

 

[nicked]

I'm up to mission 7 of Death's Cold Embrace.

I am enjoying playing it immensely, but I definitely think it has got weaker as it's gone on. Gameplay is top notch classic Thief stuff for the most part. Visually it's lovely, and the audio is all really good.
The plot is where it's starting to wear really thin - Garrett's motivation of "name your price" is becoming harder and harder to justify. For a start, he hasn't actually agreed a price for continuing to work for Fairbanks. Fairbanks is also clearly mad, so not the most reliable employer. Even that should be enough to make Garrett wash his hands of the whole thing. But then the ritual to bring people back from the dead - hyper- convenient plot device, and again, Garrett doesn't think raising the dead is a bad idea? It seems like Garrett is the most invested out of everyone, which just doesn't make sense, especially since pains have been made to make sure he says he's just in it for the money.

And then the mission I've just finished is the one that has you digging up the corpse. So moving one body from one grave brings a horde of undead pouring forth, but the spirits are perfectly fine with the massacre of a dozen or more hammerites as long as a body is put back in the grave? And Garrett is still fine with all this? By this point, there's so many people dead from all this, what makes Julia so special? Why aren't we doing a ritual for Edwin? How happy is Julia going to be about causing a massacre just to bring her back?
There's way too much clunky exposition in the cutscenes and lots of things happening for the flimsiest of justifications.

I am having a great time in the moment to moment gameplay of the missions, but my suspension of disbelief with the story side of things is stretching to breaking point.
I think a less ambitious story would have served these levels better - simplify it, shrink it down to 4 or 5 missions so there's less repetition and reduce convolutions so that character motivations still make sense.
I'm definitely going to stick with it, but more for the well-made gameplay than the story.
Except the sub plot about the cyborg lady - that is intriguing and fascinating and told really very well!

 

[Yandros]

Thanks, nicked. All fair criticisms, which I expected from folks here. The story was written a long time ago and while I could have taken a scalpel to it at some point to make it more compact and believable, I decided just to go ahead and ride it through to the end to get it done. Also, the whole story thing and suspension of disbelief is going to probably get even crazier for you in Act 3.

UnCat: Sadly there are enough people who vote that overly appreciate lovely visuals over solid gameplay design that that will continue to be the case.

 

[JarlFrank]

I'm at mission 9 now, where you go to

Spoiler

the keep

, and I agree that the revisits to the city section are maybe one too much. Although I still like the new places you get to see on each revisit.

The story has been fine in my opinion... right until that plot twist arrives.

There was zero foreshadowing about it. It just drops out of thin air. There are so many nice little subplots in this campaign, and then the final plot twist... is something we haven't heard anything about before?

Yeah, that's the weakest point of the story. Everything else is pretty good though.

 

[Yandros]

Oh, it is foreshadowed at least a little bit.

Spoiler

The clue you had to find in mission 5 in Thaddeus' library, talking about the 4 keystones, was written 35 years ago by (then Brother) Mathien, and it also revealed his affinity for the death keystone, lamenting the fact that it did not stay with the Hammers.

And if you thought that twist was a stretch.... well, just wait.

 

[Random_Taffer]

The original campaign just ended with the ritual working and everyone being happy. Edwin wasn't even mentioned past the duel other than just vanishing. Delilah wasn't in it at all. It bored me to tears, so I suggested some pretty wild changes. It might seem crazy, but at least it's not boring. At least, IMO.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Thanks for sharing that. I can perfectly understand someone suggesting adding more to the story than just [RITUAL = TRUE, GOTO END] but IMO I would have shaved something off in the middle of the campaign to avoid stretching the yarn too much and cutting down on the repetition.

I can also imagine people that have been taffing about with this for as long as they have just going "Whatever, let's finish this!" and pushing on to wrap it up.

 

[cowking]

There are at least two ways to avoid getting caught there. Both are intended and are not engine gimmicks or exploits.

Only there's a clear and intended way of preventing that from happening, people just have to be a bit more observant.

I actually did spot both when I first played, it's just that when a player sees electrical equipment with sparks flying off, he thinks it's broken machinery instead of "that enclosed electrical lantern will surely douse off with a water arrow". In fact the sparks flying off the junction box makes it look like the power circulation is malfunctioning.

Especially when the same fm goes on 10 pages about floral patterns but has no mention of terminator kid in the basement.

It's just basically bad quick save/quick load type of design. Either you assume 95% of your players savescum religiously or you force 95% to reload from an earlier save or even restart if they're playing on expert since you probably already have some fall damage and get 1HK to the back.

 

[Yandros]

 

[nicked]

Pretty sure I just assumed it would come to life, grabbed the contents of the safe and legged it. Wasn't hard to evade, even without solving the puzzle.

 

[H3H3]

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148420&p=2375996&viewfull=1#post2375996
Cardia's latest masterpiece, FtM Life, has just been released. And yes, it features the tedious fetch-quest gameplay that you would expect from him, but maybe I should let you guys be the judge of that.

 

[Max_b5]

Okay boys, girls and mentally ill. The ultimate Thief experience, the peak of fan work productions, Cardia's greatest creation, his magnus opus, has been released, and it's under the name of FtM Life. Go check it out NOW before the surgery is done.

 

[DrKubiac]

Just browsing the texture folders is a ride in itself.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

*reads posts about cardia FM*



*reads readme with FM*



*installs and plays FM*



And then it lags like no other FM ever has when I look out the window.

This is pure NOPE.AVI material.