Decline The new Thiaf game is MASSIVE decline - Eidos Forum Refugee Camp

[LESS T_T]

I think a new Thief game (if there will be one) could be a digital-first, episodic release like the new HITMAN. Given the new HITMAN is seemingly well received by both old fans and popamole players, a new Thief developed by Io Interactive may be not a bad thing.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I've dun goofed.

I'm playing Thiaf.

First 30 minutes impression: Looks nice, but screen tearing gets tiresome really quick. Garrett understudy voice actor is alright, but I'm more worried about the writing.

Reason first session didn't last longer than 30 minutes is because that's when the game crashed.

This is gonna be...something.

 

[Arrowgrab]

 

[Darth Slaughter]

I've dun goofed.

I'm playing Thiaf.

First 30 minutes impression: Looks nice, but screen tearing gets tiresome really quick. Garrett understudy voice actor is alright, but I'm more worried about the writing.

Reason first session didn't last longer than 30 minutes is because that's when the game crashed.

This is gonna be...something.

So, you gave in to the sale too?

Well, at least I bought it in a thief 1/2/3 bundle... but that's no excuse and I feel a traitor and full of shame... Haven't installed it though...

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So, you gave in to the sale too?

Well, at least I bought it in a thief 1/2/3 bundle... but that's no excuse and I feel a traitor and full of shame... Haven't installed it though...

I also bought the bundle. All those games at 80% discount...and as it turns out, I didn't have any of them on Steam.

If people are wondering "Hold! What you are doing is wrong! Why are you doing this?" the answer is this: My signature has stated the "truth" about Thiaf for 2+ years now WITHOUT me being able to prove it with hands-on experience. That's like me taking an anti-drug stance without me trying any drugs in the first place.

(For the record I have tried drugs, and taff that taffing shit.)

So I'll be correcting that as of now. Stay tuned for further updates that hopefully will last longer than 30 minutes...

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Progress has been made, but I have to vent here for a moment as I just realized something about Thiaf:

There are no odd angles present in the architecture or level design. It's almost all 90° angles, with only the occasional 45° angle creeping in.

There are no rounded or circular structures, there is no chaotic or unusual layout, and everything looks like it's built out of "blocks" of artwork, arranged on a grid.

Thiaf's architecture and level design is grid-based.

This sums up my reaction to that fact

We now return you to our regular program of decline...

 

[tormund]

How much of it have you managed to suffer trough so far? I dropped it after fourth, or was it fifth mission. One where you are infiltrating architect's mansion and saving your friend afterwards. It was like a bizarro Life of the Party, with rooftops being on rails, and with Fake Angelwatch consisting of long elevator ride, timed sections (which is what those parts with smoke were), and Metal Gear like stealth challenge on top with bunch of alerted guards. It had one of those godawful escape sections too (I hope that you aren't playing with slow movement speed selected). Architect's mansion was only Thief like part of that mission, but it was small and simple. What a steaming pile of low end design that was, and a fine example of all that was wrong with that game.

 

[skacky]

The funniest thing with the escape section in that mission is that Gorrett has a heart attack if you wait, with no one in sight or pursing you. Try it, you'll see. :D

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm still mucking about Stonemarket right after the first mission, exploring every nook and cranny and raking in as much gold as possible. I see at least 3 different tools I've yet to purchase/acquire, and that's before any possible upgrades.

One question: Immediately to the right and below of where I exit the belltower, there's a wooden beam with a crow's nest that has loot in it...yet I can't see any way to get to it. Can't drop in from above, can't mantle up to it. Any ideas?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm running into a wonderful problem: The game keeps crashing on a regular basis.

Even with all graphics settings turned down to lowest, and even with the game running in 32-bit mode, it's still too taxing for my Nvidia GTX 770 and overheats the card if I play for too long.

Any other suggestions?

 

[Melan]

Uninstall game, problem solved.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Uninstall game, problem solved.

DON'T TEMPT ME, TAFFER!

 

[Melan]

It is a wiseass comment, but I stand by it.

I tried to watch the game multiple times as a let's play, but never got to the end. The first time, I got bored and disgusted around the Clocktower. Later, I tried FenPhoenix's playthrough, but the same guy who has finished Keeper of Infinity and countless other terrible FMs while staying funny got tired of the bullshit and stopped halfway through. After that, I checked out another LPer, but burned out shortly afterwards. The game looks terrible to play, and it is dead boring to watch. No story, no gameplay, no identity. It is not even entertaining shitty like Blood 2 and other trainwrecks, it is just shitty shitty. Some guy's terrible fan mission or Quake map has more entertainment value.

 

[Dev_Anj]

Thief 4 is a great sleeping drug, especially if you watch videos of it without any commentary. And I'm not kidding, I slept midway through a video walkthrough of Thiaf.

 

[Max_b5]

The game would've attracted more players if it at least had Hammerites, Pagans and Keepers but taking them out of the story was the biggest f*** you to every old school fan in the world.

 

[Riskbreaker]

It speaks of what must be almost childlike secular humanist naivete of Thiaf's writers. In their mind, religions that existed for millennia can be utterly erased from existence during one generation, with barely a trace of them remaining. Not only that, but they give so little value to the religious that in their version of Thief setting centuries may pass without those "erased" old faiths being replaced by anything substantial.
World... doesn't work like that.
Their lukewarm handling of anything supernatural, compared to awe and otherworldliness of actual Thief games, just adds up to that.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The good news is that I've found the problem to my crashes. The bad news is that it'll take a little time to fix it. So I'm postponing further playthrough of Thiaf until later.

I could come up with a "review" right now, but I think it's only right to crucify Thiaf for what it truly is, not on some first impressions.

 

[Icewater]

What's the point? Even professional reviewers mostly couldn't defend that piece of crap.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

The good news is that I've found the problem to my crashes. The bad news is that it'll take a little time to fix it. So I'm postponing further playthrough of Thiaf until later.

I could come up with a "review" right now, but I think it's only right to crucify Thiaf for what it truly is, not on some first impressions.

What was the problem?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The CPU doesn't meet the "recommended" requirements. (The minimum CPU requirements for Thiaf are vague as fuck.)

I then checked with a few other games that I've been running recently, and my CPU is below the minimum requirements in every case.

In short, it's time for an upgrade, which I'm aiming to do during the inevitable January sales.

 

[Melan]

It speaks of what must be almost childlike secular humanist naivete of Thiaf's writers. In their mind, religions that existed for millennia can be utterly erased from existence during one generation, with barely a trace of them remaining. Not only that, but they give so little value to the religious that in their version of Thief setting centuries may pass without those "erased" old faiths being replaced by anything substantial.
World... doesn't work like that.
Their lukewarm handling of anything supernatural, compared to awe and otherworldliness of actual Thief games, just adds up to that.

Well, stranger things have happened in Thiefland, like that one year between TDP and TMA where the Hammerites were taken over by a splinter sect, the City went from techno-mediaeval to Victorian and developed a modern police force; structures like Angelwatch and the Mechanist cathedral were built from scratch; and the Mechanists went from crude and bulky Hammerite tech to submarines, phonographs, radio beacons and steam-powered robots. That doesn't happen over less than a hundred years (let's call it fifty when we factor in magic, Trickster-based disruption, and the genius inventions/leadership kills of High Priest Droopy).

But the explanation is probably much more simple and sad. Somewhere at some design meeting, some fucktard "creative" must have questioned whether their target demographic would understand all those complicamated legacy ideas, and then they brainstormed a highly original idea - they are going to be Victorian Londoners, except irrationally evil and covered in grime and shit. And then they went to play in the Square Enix ball pit.

 

[JarlFrank]

Later, I tried FenPhoenix's playthrough, but the same guy who has finished Keeper of Infinity and countless other terrible FMs while staying funny got tired of the bullshit and stopped halfway through.

Yeah that's the one thing that showed me how truly bad the game is. I watch Fen regularly and know he tends to finish a thing when he touches it. He finished some really mediocre and boring FM sets, but also most of the greats, and he always stays entertaining throughout, even when it becomes obvious from his voice and jokes that he's getting tired of the mission.

But with Thi4f? He just gave up. He couldn't take it anymore. The thing is so bad, it drained all the funny talkiness out of him because there is nothing to say about it, really. With good FMs, there are comments to be made about the cool little details, with bad FMs comments to be made about the questionable design decisions. Thi4f is just bland. If it gives you opportunities to joke about it, the jokes are way too obvious (hurr hurr cock rings hurr) to be funny. It's just entirely made of cringe. It doesn't have anything good about it, but neither does it have anything endearingly bad that makes it fun to watch. It's just a mediocre cocktail of blandness, a sterilized product made by people researching trends and focus groups and aiming to please an audience made up of statistics created by the marketing department, rather than a product of passion like the original Thief games were, and like even the worst FMs are. There is no passion, no authorship behind it. The game is a result of people just doing their job without putting anything more than the minimum required effort into it.

It's not even a particularly bad game. It's just horribly, horribly bland and mediocre, which is worse than being genuinely bad.

 

[tormund]

But that grimdark overload really is special. Snow of ashes from factory where plague victims are burned, constant swearing from NPCs in combo with constant arguing and crying from various apartments in the hub, streets covered in grime with dying (possibly dead) lying every here and there, plus loads and loads of forced vulgarity and brutality and ugliness whenever possible and so on. It's so hilariously overdone that at times it looks like it was meant to be ironic... except it isn't.

 

[Riskbreaker]

Melan
Social, technological, architectural changes to the City were indeed hard to take seriously, but the way in which Mechanists seized popular power was in itself believable. Short timeframe actually made it more believable, in that it explains why cracks weren't more visible.
Consider. We had crisis from the first game that both increased populace's fear and disdain for Pagans and, it is safe to assume, lessened their trust in the ability of Hammerites to protect them.
With Mechanists, we have this sect with strong sense of commitment, one that offers to "fix" teachings of existent faith that was so recently put to test and that obviously had less than strong popular support, and one whose teachings at the same time aren't (outwardly) so different from those of Hammerites as to demand huge expenditure of religious capital. Add to that their hand in improvement of general populace's quality of life, lessening of criminal activity, add to that their instant crusading against Pagans who so recently threatened the City. It is easy to swallow that they would hold such sway only one year after the events from original game. And consider, we still had signs of Hammerite worship in the City, as well as presence of their priesthood.
While it would be easier to accept City's state in other fields if distance from original game was say two or three decades, in this particular field it would actually be harder to swallow this state without bigger cracks and obvious signs of discontent.

 

[Arrowgrab]

That doesn't happen over less than a hundred years (let's call it fifty when we factor in magic, Trickster-based disruption, and the genius inventions/leadership kills of High Priest Droopy).

Highly appropriate typo.

Also, my memory's failing me, where exactly is it stated that only one year passed between TDM and TMA?

Anyway, I'm willing to explain away the incredibly speedy rise of Mechanists by pointing out that they're not just Fantasy Protestants in general; they're Fantasy Calvinists. On crack.