Thief 3 Preview Shows Excruciating Detail, Insight

Thanks to EvilAvatar for pointing to an extremely in-depth preview of Ion Storm's PC/Xbox title Thief 3:Deadly Shadows, courtesy of fansite Thief: The Circle. The piece deals with some of the more controversial changes ("Loot glint is there whether you like it or not. It sort of clashed with the look/atmosphere to see this bright twinkling light across the room, but it aids in what has been one of the most frustrating elements in the earlier games: the loot hunt"), whether this is anything like Deus Ex 2 ("No. This game is actually finished at the time of its release") before concluding by noting: "Loot glint and arrow streaks mean exactly zip when you're actually... playing the game... and for once in the history of the series, the game actually looks GOOD." Update: 05/17 16:39 GMT by S : An anonymous reader also points to a detailed retrospective of the Thief series on the delightfully named FourFatChicks.com.

Looks Good!

[totalshredder]

I'm glad a theif game is finaly getting some recognision, I loved the games but they never made it anywhere...

Looking forward to this game.

[Nebu]

I remember when I first played a Thief 1 demo that came on a CD that came with some magazine. A friend and I decided to try out the game, and we were simply blown away by the (at the time) amazingly realistic AI.

When we shot a guard a couple of times, he actually realized he was losing and decided to run away, unlike every other grunt I've seen in every other FPS who just kept running at you. To make things worst, as he was running, he shouted "Help! Help! Thief." We knew we were screwed unless we could silence him, so we took out our sword and chased after him.

He ran into a door, and closed it behind him. This, in itself, was another impressive detail, but we our jaws dropped when we tried to open the door and discovered he locked it!

We stood around the door, not sure what to do when all of a sudden it flung open and five guards came running out and pummeled us to death.

This was the first time I had experienced actually intelligent behaviour from a computer controlled character.

They all looked good.

[BoomerSooner]

They just didn't look great. However, if the Theif series were simply looking good they would be Quake III. The gameplay is stellar and the fact you don't just hack & slash your way through a level makes it one of the best series of games I've ever purchased. Hell I'll probably buy this for the PC and XBox just to support the franchise (I'll give one to my brother).

Thief Immersion

[Bobtree]

When the original Thief came out (back in 98/99?), I spent a good 6 hours or so at it one afternoon, only to finish when I realized I was starving and everyone had left our dorm for dinner. I had just quit the game and was sitting in the dark, gathering my appetite to head for the cafeteria, when another student walked by in the hallway, scuffing their feet and whistling.

I froze. Then I realized I couldn't find my blackjack. I was, in fact, sitting in my dorm room, and no longer playing Thief. That was a very weird realization, and somewhat of a dissappointment, because that noisy student sure had it coming.

I can't wait for Thief 3.

Re:Thief Immersion

[EnglishTim]

After playing splinter cell for some time recently, I found myself witha huge urge to turn on night vision whenever I went into a dark room or shadowed area. I also found myself keeping an eye out for security cameras and wanting to shoot out streetlamps...

Re:Thief Immersion

[Imperial Tacohead]

Every time I see a cop standing out beside his car, I think, "could I take that guy? Cop cars are pretty sweet." Stupid videogames robbing me of my sense of right and wrong.

Re:Thief Immersion

[Soul-Burn666]

last time such a thing happened to me with SplinterCell where the shadows are awesomely awesome and you sometimes find yourself walking in lit rooms just to see how the shadow moves. I moved my hand (real life), looked on the shadow on the wall and said: "woah! cool shadows!"

It also stroke me a different time when I was swimmning at the pool and looked down, I saw the floor was a bit cracked and bumpy and thought: "nice bump mapping! but it looks a bit flat"

Re:Thief Immersion

[prockcore]

It also stroke me a different time when I was swimmning at the pool and looked down, I saw the floor was a bit cracked and bumpy and thought: "nice bump mapping! but it looks a bit flat"

There's a series of jokes from the demo scene, one of those "you know you're a graphics coder when" things..

one of them was you know you're a graphics coder when you're driving in a car, look out the side window, and are impressed by the parallax scrolling.

(Woah, showing my age.. parallax scrolling...)

Re:Thief Immersion

[johannesg]

After a very long Half Life game I stopped for a moment to take a sanitary break. While doing so I noticed a pipe near the ceiling, and I found myself wondering just how I was supposed to get up there...

Luckily I managed to stop myself in time ;-)

Re:Thief Immersion

[Prior Restraint]

After spending eight solid hours playing Need for Speed: High Stakes, I went out to the grocery for whatever, and a police cruiser comes up to pass me on the left. I had to suppress the urge to sideswipe him in an attempt to run him off the road.

A couple days later, I sold the game and my force-feedback steering wheel to a coworker.

Re:Thief Immersion

[k_187]

I'm really lucky I haven't broken my neck after playing way too much Jet Grind Radio and assuming I have battery powered skates and can grind like one bad mofo. The fact that I wear headphones 90% of time I'm outside doesn't help either.

Re:Thief Immersion

[TheRoachMan]

Ooh I've had this with many games:
-Back in the day when I played a lot of Counter-Strike, I regularly *thought* I heard someone saying "Bomb has been planted".
-In the period I played through Half-Life I sometimes heard the hound-eye [nextdimension.org] barking sound while sitting at home watching tv.
-I've watched the Half-Life 2 preview movies so often that I started to take on G-man type speech. Not on purpose. I would go like: "Hasssss anyone touched ... my computer while I ... wasssss absssent?" Well, not as distinct of

Re:Thief Immersion

[nicky_d]

Heh! Back in my teens, I played a lot of the Spectrum (Timex in the US) turn-based strategy game, Laser Squad (precursor to the X-Com series). It had a basic routine of moving your character, costing four points per step, and aiming to leave half your points at the end of the round for opportunity fire. So you'd become very adept at gauging how many points it would take you to get from a to b.

So after one lengthy session, I go to bed, and then wake up in the middle of the night in bad need of the bathroom.

Why is stealth action so boring?

[Tom7]

I find games in the "stealth" genre excruciatingly boring. It's not because I don't like the idea of hiding or sneaking up on people and killing them and stealing there stuff. It's because the games are always so slow. What do you guys do in all that time it takes you to creep frome one shadow to another? Ponder the mysteries of the universe? Play another game at the same time?

Re:Why is stealth action so boring?

[Anonymous Coward]

i think it's like watching a good movie, only with more immersion in the plot...

Re:Why is stealth action so boring?

[Killjoy_NL]

The game is supposed to be slow, it gives you the time to think out a strategy to the situation at hand.

Personally (I'm not an elitist or trying to flamebait) I think that strategy/stealth games are for the more intelligent gamers. To each his own I guess.

Re:Why is stealth action so boring?

[Tom7]

it gives you the time to think out a strategy to the situation at hand

But basically my strategy is "okay, I'm creeping to the next shadow...slowly." It's not like I've got my astrolabe and star chart out, planning a clever assault on the fleet. I'm just walking, and walking is boring. Right?

Re:Why is stealth action so boring?

[Sigma 7]

But basically my strategy is "okay, I'm creeping to the next shadow...slowly." It's not like I've got my astrolabe and star chart out, planning a clever assault on the fleet. I'm just walking, and walking is boring. Right?

You can use the run command in many places. I used it quite often on carpet or other placed that I knew wouldn't raise an alarm. You can also run if you need to cover long distances (such as when you get ambused at the Crippled Burrick's pub), or when you find the objective has several

Re:Why is stealth action so boring?

[beakerMeep]

Maybe the games are for smarter gamers except for that fact that they often fail to allow you do perform the smartest of actions. There have been countless times in say something like splinter cell where I could tell I would be better off crouching under some railing then the path they chose for me only to find an "invisible wall of game design" which for me totally ruins the suspension of disbelief. That said, Ion storm has also lost a lot of cred with me by making DX:IW so linear and so xboxy so I veiw

Tension

[Bobtree]

Stealth games are slow because the deliberate pacing leads to very high tension situations. Tension is important, because it gives the player a vested interest in the outcome of their planning, and the higher the tension, the more important the outcome of their actions. This makes the player's observation and planning at least as important as their active execution. The danger of discovery and combat in Thief makes it's stealth very high stakes.

If you want more action and less planning, I'd recommend the Tenchu: Stealth Assassin series - where only line of sight contributes to stealth. Tenchu characters are practically Batman (auto-coiling grapple gun included) with Ninja gear. Played very well, a Tenchu game can be practically nonstop running 1-hit stealth kills, but it takes a lot of practice.

Hitman 2 & 3 are also great, if you like elaborately planned right-under-their-noses disguise, environment, and gadget oriented stealth killing. They also gives you the option to go full-guns-blazing if you are discovered.

Stealth games aren't for everyone, so if you just want action, play an action game already.

Re:Tension

[Tom7]

Thanks for the insight. I guess that sense of tension (for me, at least) just leads to frustration, which eventually leads to discovery and annoyance. It's much worse on the second (or later) attempt!

Re:Tension

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

You nailed it on that one. My most favorite Thief moment (hell, probably my favorite *game* moment ever was sitting in the shadows at a dead end with a guard walking *straight towards me* and whistling. I was trying to win the level without killing anyone, so shooting him was out. I waited and waited and *waited* (long hallway, y'know) for him to see me, but he stopped *two feet away* and then turned to walk off. I was going to run after him and blackjack him when I realised that I was on tile and that he'd nail me instantly. There was carpet ahead that he was walking on, but he was almost to the very end! I had to stand, jump to the beginning of the carpet without moving on the tile, sprint to the end of the carpet, and blackjack him. Right as I connected with his head, my foot hit tile. He went "What?" and went down at the same time. It may not sound that exciting in print, but imagine going through all that process in the space of about three seconds.

*That's* what makes the slow stretches exciting. My heart was about to *explode* when I hit him.

Re:Tension

[analog_line]

I'd recommend the Tenchu: Stealth Assassin series - where only line of sight contributes to stealth.

Actually, that's not true. Noise does attract the guards. If you run or jump too close to a guard they'll definitely hear and come running. And I swear I think some of the dogs in Tenchu 3 smell for you, but that may just be me being paranoid.

Re:Why is stealth action so boring?

[prockcore]

It's because the games are always so slow. What do you guys do in all that time it takes you to creep frome one shadow to another?

Not all of us have severe ADHD.

Lack of information

[Leffe]

The article mentioner neither how modable the game is nor if there's multiplayer.

None of the games have had multiplayer yet, even though Thief 2 was quite close. There might be some hacks that allow for it, I've lost the install CD anyway so I do not care.

Thief 2 was actually quite moddable, or maybe not. I didn't look too much into the editor, the map editor used the scary CSG approach where you carve stuff out of the void.

Does anyone have any information on these subjects? Not that it'll stop me from b

Thief MultiPlayer

[BoomerSooner]

Free Unreal Tournament Mod, it's pretty slick!

link [gamezone.com]

Re:Lack of information

[Bobtree]

Thief 3 purportedly uses the same Unreal-derived engine as Deus Ex 2 (with extra light/shadow and Havok physics goodies).

Hopefully this will mean it is map and mod-friendly like most Unreal engine games.

This is, arguably, a more important engine feature than raw rendering capabilities and performance are these days, at least in terms of a title's longevity. Witness Half-Life for example.

Atmosphere over Poly Count

[October]

Hopefully this will mean it is map and mod-friendly like most Unreal engine games. This is, arguably, a more important engine feature than raw rendering capabilities and performance are these days

I have always felt that the Thief series did the right thing to focus on the gameplay and style, rather than on the poly count. I'm happy to see the series getting a significant visual upgrade, as hopefully this will make it more accessible to gamers who haven't played the first two, but the important thing to me is that they keep the same atmosphere. What we've seen of the City in the previous games has a wonderful feel to it - dark, mysterious, and just a touch surreal. As long as they maintain that core style, I'll be happy.

GPU intensive

[fafaforza]

The bottom of the page says the game is GPU intensive. I wonder whether it is worth buying a Geforce FX 5600 for a 1GHz AMD processor with 256MB of ram.

Re:GPU intensive

[ZosX]

I would increase your RAM to at least 512, preferably 1 gig, as XP tends to eat up a good 256 right at boot. Also, your CPU would not be a huge bottleneck for a newer 3D card, so 1 gig would probably last you for a little while longer. Your biggest bottleneck would probably be AGP (does it support 4-6x on your board?) and your limited FSB which, hopefull is at least 266mhz. You may want to look into seeing if your motherboard supports something faster. I just bought a 1.6ghz AMD Athlon XP 2000+ for like $60 off of Pricewatch a few weeks ago. All it took to recognize the chip was a bios update, you should look into maxing out your CPU if it only costs you like $50-60.

Hope this answers your question!

Re:GPU intensive

[obeythefist]

Although nVidia make excellent quality video cards, the price/performance of the FX series leaves a lot to be desired. You can get a faster Radeon for less cash.

Just about any video card you buy today will leave you bottlenecking at that 1GHz AMD cpu (presumably an old T-Bird or something from that era?). If it's a Duron then you should definately think about upgrading your GPU. You'll appreciate the snappy response from your system in everything it does.