Cutscenes Stole My Thief Game

[Shamus Young]

Cutscenes Stole My Thief Game

According to Shamus' analysis, the real thief in Thief is actually the cutscenes. The pervasive use of mo-cap has rendered a vague-but-tolerable story into the target of much derision.

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[Slycne]

I think the problem with this new game is not the story, it's the presentation.

Absolutely agree on this. The story beats themselves didn't bother me, it was the way they were dolled out. I felt the whole introduction and setup was particularly lacking in good narrative structure.

 

[Kargathia]

Aye. When the game started I found myself hoping they'd just have a bunch of cutscenes early on, setting everything up before you're let loose to pilfer to your heart's content.

Sadly, that wasn't on the menu.

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

I never wanted games to be like Hollywood. Also, the games that are considered to have the best stories have almost no cut-scenes whatsoever. It's all about in-game world building. When there are semi-scripted events, you are still maintain at least partial control of your character - able to look, listen, or ignore whatever you like.

There are plenty of games out there with absolutely fantastic cut-scenes, but they are increasingly rare, attributed mainly due to the fact that they exist to allow our characters to do things that the game engines themselves were incapable of doing.

 

[Quellist]

Totally agree and its not just Thief its so many other games too now, where far too much time and money is spent showing a piss-poor story, money that could have made a far better game

 

[maninahat]

Playing new Thief, I haven't seen a single benefit of the mo-cap. Garrett is especially afflicted by it, in that he spends almost every scene standing awkwardly, slouching, and never changing from that slightly open mouthed, spaced out expression. In that old Thief cut scene, you can immediately read Garret's personality: he's impatient, he's arrogant, he doesn't mix words, but he is also cautious and inquisitive. This new incarnation of Garrett doesn't display any apparent quality.

The thing is, most games tend to skimp on the opening credits. How many use stylised still images with voice over to set the story? And compare that with how many games have actually memorable opening scrawls? Thief: The Dark Project is uniquely memorable, and as Shamus said, it is all down to the excellent presentation.

 

[rofltehcat]

Personally, I found the cutscenes to look incredibly cheap. They are visually unpleasing (no color, no light, no real play of shadows or anything) and to be honest the animations don't look like they are done by (good?) actors. At first I thought they had just been done by some guy not that great at manually animating 3d models.

Plus the sound design (and the too low cut-scene volume). It is just so incredibly horrible and the ambient NPCs won't stop I can talking STILL in see incredibly your loud FACE! voices.

 

[svenjl]

There will always be issues when cut scenes and exposition in a game like this are made so prominent. The value of exploration and discovery is muted, and the gameplay can become mechanical to the point of making deficiencies in that realm all the more obvious as well.

 

[themilo504]

Making a game similar to a Hollywood movie can work sometimes, but it?s very hard to do and not always the best option, I really hope that game studios realize that.

 

[michael87cn]

Cutscenes suck, unless they occurr at the end of the game when you're expecting them. If they happen 5 minutes, 20 minutes, 35 minutes, 45 minutes, and 55 minutes (etc.) into a game, ITS SO DAMN BORING.

 

[Signa]

My biggest takeaway from this was that I've gotten about halfway through a Steam copy of Thief Gold which I now realise has missing cutscenes. Weird.

More on topic, this seems to be a similar situation to what happened with Metroid: Other M. The other games had hints of plot with a lot of lore behind it (just thinking of all the stuff I ignored when scanning in the Prime series boggles my mind), but when they tried to bring it into the spotlight, we got some ham-fisted detective plot with abysmal voice acting that destroyed Samus's character. Both games had a lot of potential, but the execution failed.

Look around for guides on how to register the player codecs. Thief used some strange-ass codec that somehow turns itself off and doesn't play if you look at it funny. I know there's a .bat file you can make that makes them play again.

 

[Nurb]

I'm surprised more people aren't disappointed most of the game is stealing from poor people in dumpy apartments.

 

[Hazy]

I'm surprised more people aren't disappointed most of the game is stealing from poor people in dumpy apartments.

What really gets on my tits is the 5-second QTE "tap E to open the window" every single time you want to enter those apartments.

Finding that there's only 4 gold worth of stuff in there is just the icing on the cake.

 

[The Madman]

I'd argue an equally big problem is the setting. The original Thief games had a vibrant and imaginative setting that simply oozed style. You see and hear it everywhere, from the way so many of the Thief cutscenes would begin with a passage of scripture or some rambling pagan poem to the unique dialects you found throughout the game. Hammerites being all 'thee' and 'thou' while Pagans have that weird Gollum style approach to their speech. Even the generic guards and random pedestrians have their own slang which makes them stand apart, the most obvious one being 'Taffer'.

The new game by contrast really just has no character. The city is pretty enough graphically but it's washed out and boring artistically. There's no vibrance to it, nothing unique to set it apart from any other generic medieval style city. The characters meanwhile have no life to them either. Everything is just... there.

In the original games I wanted to know more. I wanted to actively search out books I could read in-game or situations where I could listen in on conversations. The new game just completely lacks that by merit of being so damned generic. And I'd argue that's as big a problem with the story as is its presentation. Or would that could as part of the presentation? In any case it's not good.

 

[MrBaskerville]

Atleast you can skip past it, i assume. With that said, it does kinda suck that so many games rely so much on storytelling, when most games are horrible at it. It´s just a waste of time to have it front and center if all you have to show us, is a couple of creepy wax dolls acting out a c-grade straight to vhs movie. More often than not, it´s just a lot of boring and unrelateable characters spouting exposition while being void of personality. These days i only really enjoy a handful of stories, and they are mostly from japanese developers (And even they tend to be bogged down by filler dialouge, but atleast they are better at making relateable characters, take the Yakuza series for instance). But for the most part i just want it to end so that i can play the damned game.

I don´t think i´m a fan of mo-cap either, most games, even Tomb Raider and L.A. Noire look absolutely terrible in cutscenes for the most part. It´s impressive, but it´s also lifeless and unappealing. I prefer a stylized look, like in Final Fantasy XII or similar where it doesn´t look creepy and stiff.

 

[Artea]

Stopped reading when you said the hackneyed, soap opera-level story of the new Thief was better written than the subtle and atmospheric tale of the first few Thief games.

That being said, I agree with your general premise. I still don't understand why games resort to lengthy cutscenes to tell a story.

 

[Airon]

My biggest takeaway from this was that I've gotten about halfway through a Steam copy of Thief Gold which I now realise has missing cutscenes. Weird.

It's a dumb mistake with the codec of the movies. You can play them in VLC, but it does take away from the mood.

The cutscenes are like a moving comic, with the sound really setting a great mood.


I absolutely agree with Shamus. As a veteran Thief series player, this new Thief tried to be something else in those cut scenes, and every weekly TV show out there beats this multi-million-dollar game by orders of magnitude when it comes to film craft.

Oh well. Hope they do better in the next game .

 

[carpathic]

You know, I have enjoyed the thief game so far. I love the more open environments, but I have to say that not being able to jump whenever I want drives me NUTS, not being able to carry a tonne of arrows bothers me, not having a sword (just so I can ignore it, and never use it) bugs me and I just wish I could use rope arrows whenever I wanted.

That said, the game is fun, running is certainly much easier than in previous thief games and compared to Blink in dishonored, I really do miss having the ability to do a short distance teleport.