Gargaune
Magister
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2020
- Messages
- 3,213
I actually wouldn't call either of them "minigames", not Thief 3's and not Fallout 3's, I see them as action mechanics. Like iron sights or cover or water arrows. When you say minigames, I think of something more involved, like DX4's hacking, which would probably be a fun thing to play on your mobile waiting at the barber's, but I hate when it's distracting me from playing what I really wanna play - Deus Ex. Fo4's hacking is another example, where you have to actually stop playing the game and start doing word puzzles instead.How is it any different from than any of the other minigames? The minigames in bethesda games also involve the player.the best lockpicking mechanic ever - the one in Thief: Deadly Shadows
As to how the lockpicking in T3's different, I think the key is that it was an organic evolution from T1/2. You think back to the Dark Engine implementations, all the elements were already there - you were "fighting" against time to avoid being caught, and there was a very minor randomness factor in your selecting the correct pick the first time around and not knowing how many swaps you'd have to go through ahead of time. The rest was just sitting there waiting for the process to complete, like hacking in the original DX. With T3, you know how many stages you've got when you engage the lock, but the variability is shifted to the player's luck and speed in finding those sweet spots. It gives you something to do in the process, while not taking you out of the core gameplay experience at all, you're still looking out for the guards, might have to back away etc.
I assume you know it, but for everyone who isn't familiar, here's a video:
When it comes to Bethesda Game, the way the gameplay loops are set up, time to detection would very rarely be a factor, so it's taken completely out of the equation by pausing the game. The resource here are those breakable lockpicks, but they're such a common drop that it becomes a complete non-issue past the first hour of play. You can't really tighten the sweet spots any more than they already were in Fo4 because it'd just get too frustrating. Tightening the drop rate would work, but might make casuals complain too much that they need both the skills/perks and a rare resource.
It doesn't really bring much over a simple threshold system, but it's not too distracting either. It's less annoying than Oblivion's was, at least, and probably among the less offensive such implementations when you consider the "competition" - BioShock's plumbing, DX4's hacking, Fo4's hacking, even CBP's hacking...
Again, I can't say for Starfield, but at a glance it looks to me like it's a step back and would involve more of a distraction than the old Fo3 lockpicking.