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Third Thief Title Transitions To Third-Person 81

Posted by simoniker from the alliteration-awfully-alluring dept.
Thanks to GameSpot for its article revealing further details and screenshots from the third game in the Thief series, now named Thief: Deadly Shadows, which makes a change in supporting "...what publisher Eidos is calling a 'third-person cinematic action view'." The piece continues: "This new perspective will be in addition to the series' traditional first-person view, which was first created by long-defunct developer Looking Glass Studios." Blue's News also has information from the full press release, which notes: "Characters and objects cast real shadows that effect stealth gameplay, requiring the player to manipulate darkness and light to create your own shadows to hide in."
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Third Thief Title Transitions To Third-Person More

Third Thief Title Transitions To Third-Person

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  • Damnit, not again. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MachDelta ( 704883 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @10:50PM (#8062810)
    "third-person cinematic action view"

    ARRGH! Its been consolified! :(
    • Then I remembered that third-person view isn't a bad thing for a stealth game, since stealth games don't tend to rely on aiming ability or anything. The only real problem is that it makes the game less realistic, as you'll be able to see people around corners and behind your character's head, most likely. In exchange, you have advantages such as being able to do jumps reliably as well as judge whether or not you're in shadow better.

      Rob

      • Re:That's what I thought at first (Score:5, Insightful)

        by neostorm ( 462848 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @11:28PM (#8062985)
        I think the largest factor in people being upset with this move is that it signals a similar direction that Deus Ex 2 took. Having a third person option isn't all that bad on it's own, but the potential reasons behind it and more recent releases from the same studio make me really stop looking forward to this game.

        As long as the player has the option to be in first person it should be ok, but this game is really being weighed against a hefty legacy and I myself am a huge Thief fan that recoils in pain at this news. I just don't want to be let down.
        • I loved the original Thief (still have it on my parents' computer at home), but I have no idea at all what "consolified" means. Would someone mind enlightening me? (google was no help, for once)

          • Re:That's what I thought at first (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Basically it means that the game got "dumbed down" to work on a console. DX2 had problems such as an interface that was designed to work with gamepads, which made it horribly clunky. In the old DX, the inventory was drag and drop and you could have hotkeys for everything. Nothing worked the way it should in the new one. The level sizes were tiny, probably also due to the limitations of the console. The AI sucked (which may have to do with the fact that the XBox didn't have the processor capacity to dea

          • I call it 'Consolidation' (Score:5, Insightful)

            by meowsqueak ( 599208 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:37AM (#8063961)
            According to my dictionary (and I do mean *my* dictionary):

            Consolidation \Con*sol`i*da"tion\, n. [L. consolidatio a
            confirming: cf. F. consolidation.]

            The act of removing enjoyable and involving gameplay from a promising video game in order to accommodate the less mature and undiscerning tastes of 14 year olds for the purposes of selling more units sooner. For unfortunate examples see: Deus Ex: Invisible War, Halo: Combat Evolved. It usually involves 640x480 title screens too.

            A consolidated game is pretty much guaranteed to be crap.

            • The act of removing enjoyable and involving gameplay from a promising video game in order to accommodate the less mature and undiscerning tastes of 14 year olds for the purposes of selling more units sooner.

              Haven't looked at console games and gamers recently, have you? Or PC games, for that matter...

            • please. (Score:3, Insightful)

              by *weasel ( 174362 )
              You have to admit that little 'lightness' jewel in the HUD wasn't exactly the greatest immersion tool. 3rd person, so long as its optional (as they seem to suggest it is), could only be a potential improvement. if it sucks, you never have to use it. I'll go so far as to suggest it would be an improvement. How can you convey visibly some of the more interesting 'sneaky' moves with a first person-only camera?

              propping yourself between the walls above a hallway, hanging from a chandelier, pressing up again
              • Name one 'involved' gameplay element they removed? What enjoyable or involving gameplay has been removed from a game to accomodate consoles?

                Easy. They totally removed the element of searching through files, datapads, and emails to find logons, passwords, and bank account details. I found that one of the most immersive aspects of the original. But you can't exactly type in a login name and password with a gamepad - I believe that's actually one of the things that made it so difficult for them to port D

                • several games have the capability to type passwords and such. So i don't think it's fair to suggest that it was unjustly removed. Rather, because it wasn't simplistic, they were forced to reevaluate it's worth.

                  Rather it seems that they decided that in the end, it wasn't an aspect worth the effort. I appreciated that gameplay change in that they didn't expect me to remember and retype a PIN that I'd supposedly 'learned' from a datapad.

                  So while you may argue that they lost a feature due to console restra
              • Oh sure, the 3rd person perspective might be optional, in the same sort of way that you don't have to use the lightsaber in Jedi Knight II or Knights of the old Republic. If the gameplay is designed around the 3rd person perspective, then the fact that you can switch to 1st person perspective is somewhat irrelevant.

                Thief is not about running, jumping, climbing, and swinging from ropes. If I wanted that, I'd play Tomb Raider. While the gameplay was a major factor in what made Thief & Thief 2 so great, a
            • You know, I'm really going to have to disagree with you here.

              "...in order to accommodate the less mature and undiscerning tastes of 14 year olds..."

              Now, besides that sentance being a bit imature itself, I think it's backwards.

              I've been playing games since I was very young (atari 2600). As soon as my family got our first 386 I switch to playing PC games almost exclusively. And for years I did that. Why? Well, because back then each new game didn't require a major hardware upgrade. And honestly,

      • Re:That's what I thought at first (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Babbster ( 107076 ) <aaronbabb@NOspaM.gmail.com> on Friday January 23, 2004 @12:24AM (#8063272) Homepage
        The only real problem is that it makes the game less realistic, as you'll be able to see people around corners and behind your character's head, most likely.

        Does it really make it that much more unrealistic than a first-person shooter? In real life, I always know exactly where every part of my body is (unless I'm "impaired"), I can stick just my head and eyes past a wall in order to see around (with a concomitent reduction in counter-detection), I have peripheral vision and I can turn my head without turning my entire body - all things the first-person perspective in video games traditionally has trouble with.

        Whining about this news (and there's a LOT of whining posted here so far, though not in your post) is a knee-jerk FPS-centric reaction considering nobody here has played even a minute of the game. I guess it's just the double-edged sword of hype in that a game can have interest stoked well in advance of release, and/or a game can be raked over the coals without ever having been seen or played.

    • Re:Damnit, not again. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Cecil ( 37810 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @11:09PM (#8062896) Homepage
      I feel your pain. :/

      All the major publishers are going console. There are a few big primarily or at least heavily PC developers left, but you have to keep your eye out for them. id Software, Valve, Bioware are a few that come to mind.

      I don't think anyone disputes that games are going to get shitty in the next little while, but at least the defection of the big PC publishers and developers will leave a big opening for a lot of the stronger small studios to slide into. In my opinion, a short lull will be followed by a bunch of innovation. I'm looking forward to (read: hoping for) it.
      • I really, really, really hope you're right. Because i'm not sure how much more of this consolization bullshit I can take. :(

        Now if you'll excuse me, I think i'm going to go dig out my collection of classic PC games, and cry myself to sleep while holding them.
      • Who cares about how many big developers are left? Smaller companies tend to produce just as much quality, if not quantity.
        • That's exactly what I'm saying. The age of shitty mass-produced games is ending. As soon as the big publishers get out of the way, there will be more room for the smaller developers on store shelves, in reviews, in magazines, and on Gamer's hard drives.

          I see this as a win for quality.
    • Like Heratic?

      and the original Tomb Raider?

    • Heretic 2. Total shit. Heretic is one of my favourite games. Moving ANY game to third person, when the original was first person, is a disastrous move. Heretic 2 was a terrible game.

      Yep, it's been consolified. Was interested in this. Not anymore. That's like someone buying the rights to Warcraft and saying "Okay, we're turned it into a first person shooter." Thief was NOT a third person game, it was a first person game.

      This game is Thief in name alone.

  • A bland trend. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22, 2004 @11:09PM (#8062897)
    Soon all games will be 3rd person action adventures. Why? Beats me - people keep buying them. They're the cinematic equivalent of 2 hours explosions. I hate them with a passion.

    Gamers: Stop buying them... please.
    Developers: You're hurting your games by following everyone else.

    I can tell this from a single screenshot [gamespot.com]. This is an absolutely useless perspective and completely unimmersive (as that's supposed to be me - but I can't see what I'm supposed to). See the knife in the player's hand? What happens when you throw it? Yeah, exactly - how the hell are you supposed to aim when you don't have a straight line of sight?

    Don't give me a retarded answer like: "You'll get used to it" or "the game will aim for you".

    Thanks for making Mario 64 again - the gaming world needed it. No, really.. way to keep your fanbase. I know the article says that you can play in 1st person.. but just to be completely clear to the devs (if they're reading this) understand this:

    I NEVER WANT TO SEE A 3RD PERSON PERSPECTIVE WHEN I AM PLAYING YOUR GAME. OH, AND STOP MAKING CUTSCENES - THEY'RE SHIT. K? THX, BYE!

    I want to bring a group of developers from the early 80's into the present and see what they could come up with. Deliberately not showing them the games that have been made since then so they wouldn't follow everyone's retarded cliches.
    • I agree 100% with you. I have NEVER bought a third person action game. Never bloody will either. I hate them.

      Cutscenes are tiresome.

      I like the idea of bringing 80's developers to now. That would be great. They haven't been corrupted by money or "Me-To-Itis".

      I have a hard time thinking of the last truly original game...
      • The site you link to in your .sig is begging for an RSS feed. Looks like the series is gonna be an Asia/South America series this season...

        Oh, and I wouldn't have noticed your sig if I weren't reading some posts that I agree with to find discussion about 3rd person view. Lame console crap.
      • Try Splinter Cell. 3rd person and awesome.

        Actually, thief and splinter cell look like they're copying each other.

        SC devs: "Man, Thief was cool! Let's make a game about a special forces dude like that, but make it 3rd person!"

        Thief III devs: "We own the rights to Thief, and haven't come out with a game in years. Splinter Cell is selling like crazy. Let's make a Thief version of Splinter Cell!"

        And that's how you have 3rd person Thief.
        • Splinter Cell was fun for a few minutes, but the PC version has a crippling bug in one of the early missions that renders the game unplayable because you can't complete the mission.

    • Re:A bland trend. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Rallion ( 711805 )
      Erm, maybe you've never played Thief. the first-person perspective was a bit difficult to use at times, since you need to be aware of exactly where you are. How about Splinter Cell, have you played that? The games are remarkably similar -- minimal combat, what combat you do is preferably melee -- That's a club in his hand, not a throwing knife.

      When I played the first two Thief games I often found myself wishing for a third-person perspective, to help me see how much of me was hidden in a niche, see how clo

    • Re:A bland trend. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MWoody ( 222806 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:06AM (#8063845)
      On the contrary, the third person perspective is far more realistic than first person. Once you've stopped being bothered by looking over the player's shoulder - it barely even gives me pause after hundreds of hours of GTA3 & GTA:VC - the information this view presents is far more representative of actually "being" the character. It allows a greater range of vision, avoiding the disconcerting "tunnel vision" FPS' can sometimes create, and it let's you know immediately where you're standing, if you're touching anything, what stance your body is in, etc - all things you'd know in real life, but which aren't usually communicated in first person.

      Ideally, I'd like screens or headsets that finally take advantage of the full field of human vision coupled with some sort of seperate HUD detailing the current stance of the player character (assuming full-body tactile feedback and/or neural interfaces aren't feasible in the near future ^_^). Until then, I'll crank my suspension of disbelief up a notch to believe I'm the guy whose back I'm staring at, and I'll continue to enjoy being able to actually see that demon coming at me from the side.

    • Re:A bland trend. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by drewmca ( 611245 )
      Riiiight.

      Because PC games are such an original bunch. Heaven forfend that such a bastion of originality be infected with the herd mentality. Now we have a game that is neither

      a) An FPS. (but with really good graphics and killer multiplayer!)
      b) An RTS (but this time there are 6 factions, each up to 5% different from the others!)

      What is happening to gaming?

    • If you follow the link, you'll see that the third person view is IN ADDITION to the first person view.

      If the engine is good, it just means adding a camera viewpoint.

      That said, I am going to play this in first-person mode.

    • Re:A bland trend. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by blincoln ( 592401 )
      A few PC gamers had similar complaints about the new Legacy of Kain game (also published by Eidos).

      When I see posts like this, it reminds me of the people who absolutely freaked out about the transition from 2D to 3D gaming around ten years ago. It was the same sort of mindless "I hate new things and want games to always stay the same!" mentality.

      Devil May Cry was the first game I played that used a third-person cinematic perspective, and as soon as I saw it, I loved it. It allows the designers to use so

      • Re:A bland trend. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by AuMatar ( 183847 )
        I still see 3D as a bad thing for gaming.

        Why? Because it doesn't add anything to it. An rpg is the same gameplay, wether its 2 or 3 D. An rts is the same in 2 or 3D. There's very few games where the 3D actually improves gameplay over a 2D game.

        At the same time, 3D is sginificantly harder to get right, introduces a lot of bugs, and isn't as graphically mature. Meaning the developers now spend most of their time on graphics and 3D physics instead of on gameplay. Ever wondered why there's so few innova
  • In come the consoles to ruin another PC game. Don't get me wrong, I love my consoles, but for the love of God, make console games or make PC games, when you make one for both you hobble it.

    • Re:Here we go again (Score:2, Interesting)

      by beakerMeep ( 716990 )
      while you may have been moderated flaimbait (and maybe righlty so I dunno really) you do have a point there. Trying to port games platform to platform with a little work as possible makes for some terrible games. I dont think anyone can argue against that and I think it works both ways. But, I think there are companies out there that can port and they port well. However, Ion Storm is not one of them. But off the top of my head -- rockstar and bioware have seemed to do ok so it's not impossible.

      • They do OK, but not great. In Vice City you can't change the control bindings to use a joystick with yaw control to fly the helicopter. That sucks, and makes the helicopter much harder to fly.

  • Third-person mode is no big deal (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Black Hitler ( 687112 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @12:03AM (#8063183)
    The third-person mode, by itself, is no big deal. The game already renders the player's entire body in first-person mode (meaning you can look down and see your own feet), so it was probably ridiculously simple to implement.

    The problem is the levels: DX2 had horribly tiny levels to accomodate the Xbox's limited RAM, and apparently Thief 3 is going to be the same way -- apparently levels in T3 are divided into areas roughly 1/4 the size of the average level in part 2, and to access the different areas you walk into a sort of misty thing and confirm whether or not you want to leave the current area. Again this is a complete compromise to deal with the Xbox's comparatively pitiful RAM but it's almost certainly going to be carried over to the PC version -- just as it was in the PC version of DX2 -- even though my PC has eight times the RAM of the Xbox and a lot of folks have far more. In short, screw Eidos, screw Ion Storm and screw Warren Spector for his "this is how we'd be doing it even if it was PC-only" bullshit.
  • They did it to DeusEx 2 which couldn't hold a candle to the first and now they are doing it to the thief series..

  • Peripheral Vision & the Console Market (Score:5, Insightful)

    by superultra ( 670002 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @12:22AM (#8063258) Homepage
    I anticipate comments here mirroring many of the comments on the web forums discussing this, consisting mostly of the assertion that third person loses some of the immersion that first person supposedly provides. Consoles have again "ruined" what would have otherwise been a great PC title.

    Now, I played Thief 1 & 2, and they're both great games, classics to be sure. Still, I can't deny that after having played Metal Gear Solid and especially Splinter Cell, there's something to be said for the third person perspective, particularly when used in stealth games. What the first person perspective may add in immersion, it detracts signficantly in peripheral view. Ok, sure, I can see around a corner that I probably wouldn't be able to see around without third person. But the fact remains that playing a game in first person is really like looking at the world through a narrow cardboard box. If someone is standing next to me as I type this, I can see them even though I'm not looking directly at them. Likewise, I can see things to the side in a third person game. Conversely, in a first person game, I can't do that. Personally, I'll take the "unrealism" of being able to see around corners over the lack of peripheral vision anyday in a stealth game. Besides, I'm not really sure how this unrealistic looking around corners really differs that much from the infamous lean keys in FPS, and more recent games (like Splinter Cell) add the cost of being seen when you peek around corners.

    With regards to the belief that consoles have ruined yet another title, I think that the PC industry (consumers and publishers alike) needs a good long introspect look at itself. The fact that we're sitting close to the end of this console lifespan and yet I have yet to see graphics, and far more importantly *good* gameplay, truly exceed that of what exists on my consoles as they once did at this point in the Playstation lifecycle is significant. Moreover, PC game piracy, both pre-release (i.e. HL2) and after is at least as rampant as it ever is if not much more so. The charts are dominated by The Sims, and yet PC publishers think that the market with the money will orgasm over a monthly screenshoot of Doom III with super-vexal-triple-z-buffer-120fps screenshoots. I remember when this all started at the beginning of this console cycle, and all the PC gaming magazines said it wouldn't last. Well, it's obviously lasted, and I personally think that it'll only get "worse."

    Basically, this: stop bitching about Ion Storm and kin making console games and stop pirating. Moreover, petition (and demonstrate appropriate patronage, or the lack thereof, towards) companies to release final products that don't require 4 years of IT certification to install and get operational (obviously including Ion Storm). In relation to the PC market, the console maret is merely the path of least resistance, both consumer and publisher wise. We're in a (generally) free market, and by and large companies, who are in business to make money, will go where the making money is good. If that's not in happy utopia PC land, we have only ourselves to blame.

    • Ok, you make some good points. But how are PC game sales going to improve when companies like Ion Storm take games that should be instant classics like their predecessors, and turn them into console-ish abortions that no self-respecting PC gamer would soil his hard drive with? Looks like Thief is heading in the same direction, and not because of the 3rd person view addition. I'm betting that the interface will suck as bad as DX2, and the level sizes will be tiny compared to the previous Thief games.

    • X does not follow Y. Deus Ex 2 (and presumably Thief 3) sucked. It sucked because of what Ion Storm did. As others have pointed out, it is possible to make a release for both the Xbox and PCs that doesn't suck. Therefore, if it sucks, it must be Ion Storm's fault.

      I'm not sure how pirating comes from any of your discussion.

      Hmm, upon reading your last paragraph, I can't help but wonder if you are a troll. Paraphrased:

      Don't bitch about the companies, suck it up and buy the games. Installation is the reason
      • I'm not sure how pirating comes from any of your discussion.

        Piracy is part of why console games are more profitable, which is (presumably) why IS included the Xbox in their plans from the beginning. And that caused much of the current situation.

        I think piracy causes natural selection for PC games to be much harder than it used to be. How many people confine themselves to only buying the best games while downloading the ones that aren't utterly great? I bet a big part of the first-world freeloaders do act
      • X does not follow Y. Deus Ex 2 (and presumably Thief 3) sucked. It sucked because of what Ion Storm did. As others have pointed out, it is possible to make a release for both the Xbox and PCs that doesn't suck. Therefore, if it sucks, it must be Ion Storm's fault.

        Of course it is Ion Storm's fault. But why the change of heart in Ion Storm? Why the sudden love for the console market, represented on a symbolic level, perhaps, by the shift of perspective from first (traditionally PC) to third (traditiona

    • I always move with the cursor keys and look with the mouse. That way I can look in any direction I want to. No need for peripheral vision. By default the Thief games are configured differently, but with a bit of control meddling you can get them to respond right.

      That said, what we are probably going to miss in Thief 3 is the "lean" option, which makes looking around corners from a first-person perspective a lot less viable. They scrapped it from Deus Ex:IW because it's too difficult for the console. If th

    • I think you've hit the nail on the head.

      PC gamers are approaching a cult level of devotion to what they expect out of a game, and any deviation from it is unacceptable.

      I've played PC games for almost twenty years, but two years ago I started switching to consoles because that's where all the innovation in terms of gameplay and UI is happening.

      My prediction is that in a few years, there will be three types of PC game left - the FPS, the RTS, and the MMORPG. PC gamers just don't seem to be willing to suppo
  • Who was expecting anything different? *sigh*
    What did Warren Spector do to become allowed to ruin such series?
  • Eidos today stated:"Yeah, we'd quite like Metal Gear Solid sales figures. Here's a bastardised sequel"

  • Third person? I can handle that (Score:3, Interesting)

    by obeythefist ( 719316 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:49AM (#8064004) Journal
    Okay, so everyone is complaining about third person perspective. I don't have a problem with this. Third person is excellent for an action game with a lot of melee. A good swordsman knows where his body is and is pretty aware of opponents all around him. Third person perspective fits this very well. For example, Jedi Knight II and Jedi Academy give you a first person view when shooting ranged weapons (also sensible), and a third person view when swordfighting. These games have been incredibly successful! And less successful on consoles. (Probably because you had to do adult things, like aim, think, and use more than just the fire button).

    But seriously, I agree with what everyone else has been saying about consoles and worsening games. I couldn't believe the reviews of DX2, given that DX was one of the best games in recent years to grace the PC. But yes, DX2 was atrocious. The graphics weren't optimised at all, they were clunkier in a lot of ways compared with the original DX. I couldn't even bring myself to play it long enough to get out of the first area, it was just too clunky (even after using all the third party tweak patches!).

    I grieve for the Thief franchise. I grieve for us all. The loss of great quality games on the PC lessens us all. With consoles there can be no new revolutions. There will be no "shareware" DooMs anymore, no OpenGL Quakes, no mod communities. We can't avoid change, but it is unusual in the IT world that any change brought by new technology takes so much away from us all.
    • Probably because you had to do adult things, like aim, think, and use more than just the fire button JKII that's true, but JKA can be summed up as "Protect+Absorb+Spam Dual Saber Attacks". You can beat the final boss in hard mode by holding down the fire button and running in circles fer Christ's sake
    • There is more to Thief than action. In fact, there was very little action in Thief. The game was about sneaking around. You had to stay in the shadows, stay quiet (walk instead of run, and be careful what type of surface you're walking on), etc.

      You had to snipe your enemies from the shadows, then drag their bodies away and hide them so they wouldn't be discovered, all without making a lot of noise. If you hit an enemy with an arrow, and it didn't kill him, it usually meant a lot of trouble for you, as he'd
  • Boy, with all these knees jerking and obscuring the view of your monitors, I guess nobody can see the part of the original post where it said:

    "This new perspective will be in addition to the series' traditional first-person view, which was first created by long-defunct developer Looking Glass Studios." So they added third-person mode, big whoop. It's not the end of the world.
    • True, many people seem to have missed this.

      However, adding third-person view is usually a "solution" for simplifying the controls: if you can't lean around corners, how are you going to plan your next move in a first-person view? In third-person there's no need for a lean option.

  • I have yet to see a headline about this that avoided making it sound like the perspective had been changed to only third-person. It's not really that hard though. "Thief III to Include Third-Person Perspective." There you go, free of charge.

    That is all.

  • C'mon, we all saw this coming.

    Deus Ex 2 was a pile of steaming butt nuggets. The unified ammo, lack of localized damage, console interface, grade-school voice acting and cartoon physics were all foreshadowing the fscking Ion Storm was preparing for Thief-genre fanatics. Don't forget that at some point Warren Specter was quoted as saying that he "didn't get it" referring to the Thief genre of stealth over combat.

    Somewhere, in some country, it was finally realized that "Ion Storm" could be translated to

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