Zero Punctuation: Thief - Stealing a Classic

[Undomesticated Equine]

Oh i knew you would hate the new thief and that is why i was looking forward to this so much. And i was not disappointed good job.

 

[The Youth Counselor]

Could have been worse

They could have included online multiplayer

Honestly, I think that would have been a better decision. Thief: Deadly Shadows might have been more restrictive than its predecessors, but it had a beautifully written tale that perfectly wrapped up Garrett's character arc while setting up a potential predecessor for a sequel with the little girl he takes in. The bold move and smarter business decision judging by today's changing tastes and demographics would have been to continue the franchise, but take it in a different direction and put focus on other characters and mechanics.

Eidos Montreal decided to reboot the series and throw out the world, events, factions, and conflicts of the the true series. Yet they decided to keep on to the idea of Garrett taking in and training a young girl as an apprentice that was originally placed there to continue that continuity. Her inclusion sums up the whole game: a wasted opportunity.

A co-opt multiplayer game called Thieves or Keepers or something that is a spin-off of Thief or a standalone series set in the same universe (like Portal and Half-Life) would have sated the diehard Taffers still making maps for The Dark Mod [http://www.thedarkmod.com/main/] and posting on ttlg.com forums, yet allowed them to take liberties to appeal to modern tastes, as well as grant the developers creative freedom to experiment with and introduce new and different mechanics and the artists different aesthetics.

 

[Jhonny Malkav]

Wow, can't remember Yahtzee talking that fast in the last two years or so. Or maybe it's just the tremendous desperation affecting my reaction time... yuo brought? yu broguht?!

 

[Adept Mechanicus]

I feel like we'll be hearing about this for weeks to come. This will be for Yahtzee what Man of Steel is for Bob Chipman.

Sounds about right; thing is there's probably going to be someone saying we can't judge it by the previous games' merits because it's a reboot, but we all know that's a load of crap. If they didn't want to invite comparisons then they shouldn't have used the Thief name but instead made a new title. It's why I had to laugh whenever someone says "a reboot SHOULD be different" in order to justify clear bastardization of source material or "fuck yous" to the fans (such as the attempted DMC reboot or Lords of Shadow).

To be fair, a reboot should indeed be different, because putting a new perspective on things is the ONLY reason to pour millions into telling the same story twice. Did you know Scarface was a remake of a 1930s gangster film about Prohibition? If you're like everyone else I've ever asked this question, the answer is probably no. The remake made the wise decision to update the setting to 1980s Miami, both making the story more relevant to present audiences and drawing a parallel between the Drug War and Prohibition that adds a lot of political subtext. That being said, there is a difference between expanding a story through reinterpretation and just making a boiled-down caricature or a continuation in name only, which is what I think you're talking about.

 

[Evonisia]

I didn't think it was that bad, but I haven't gotten very far into it. It's not surprising that he hated it, though.

I do agree that it heavily attempts to just copy Dishonored which is not a good thing. It's basically copying a copy of yourself.

 

[Marik Bentusi]

Aside from the things already listed, what bothered me personally the most was all the interruptive micro-cutscenes that turned an organic chase scene into "rub [spacebar] against this bunch of crates and pray that it's actually a climbable object". At least FarCry3 had the decency of putting white ropes everywhere you were supposed to climb, but in Thief some parts have white bird poo signals on them and some don't, some lifts/beams can be shot at with rope arrows and some already have a rope hanging down by nature but that doesn't mean your rope will work.
There were tons of these inconsistencies that showed what a production clusterfuck Thief apparently was, like how you stay in first person for most of the time and climb in first person most of the time, but sometimes there's a wall you've got to climb in third person because they couldn't redo the cinematic tomb collapse with a level climbable without third person.

I don't know why they had to add to much contextual BS everywhere and frame it in a micro cutscene, it just makes everything feel stiff and sluggish and unresponsive and I think is part of the reason why people aren't allowed to stack crates anymore to reach ledges.

I did like that you could see your feet tho.

P.S.
I think the "it's what I do" line really showed the writers had no idea what Garrett's was, so they put in something neutral and ambiguous hoping it wouldn't upset any of the two audiences.

 

[Diego Floor]

This is like beating a dead horse. And it feels good.

 

[CrimsonBlack]

I've yet to see the ZP video, but I enjoyed Thief. It was limiting in it's level design, but it had decent atmosphere and if you play it without trying to knock anyone out, it can be tense. I'm currently on my second playthrough with various modes on/off.

 

[Colt47]

I felt like Yahtzee did this episode and just went, "Yup, still got it."

Probably one of the better episodes I've seen from him, especially since he literally didn't exaggerate at all or even have to exaggerate. This game is a waddling train wreck that missed the point of the original thief series worse than the third installment. Heck, I've been running into similar issues trying to play Metro Last Light after running through Quake.

If I want to go somewhere in a quake level, Quake is like "Oh yeah, just use the rocket launcher and rocket jump over there!"

If I want to go somewhere in Metro: Last Light, the game is like "Yeah, let me check the radioactive meter... nope you can't that way. Oh yeah and that ledge that's a meter high is equivalent to the grand canyon so no going that way either."

The publishers AND the developers working with them need to stop trying to make pseudo movie experiences disguised as games and get back to making real games!

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Is it my imagination or is the AAA industry getting exponentially worse?

Maybe now we'll finally wake up and realize that AAA is just some stupid marketing term for games that have huge budgets but waste them on hype rather than making the game good.

That's pretty much what it's devolved into, hasn't it?

 

[Mahoshonen]

I feel like we'll be hearing about this for weeks to come. This will be for Yahtzee what Man of Steel is for Bob Chipman.

Sounds about right; thing is there's probably going to be someone saying we can't judge it by the previous games' merits because it's a reboot, but we all know that's a load of crap. If they didn't want to invite comparisons then they shouldn't have used the Thief name but instead made a new title. It's why I had to laugh whenever someone says "a reboot SHOULD be different" in order to justify clear bastardization of source material or "fuck yous" to the fans (such as the attempted DMC reboot or Lords of Shadow).

To be fair, a reboot should indeed be different, because putting a new perspective on things is the ONLY reason to pour millions into telling the same story twice. Did you know Scarface was a remake of a 1930s gangster film about Prohibition? If you're like everyone else I've ever asked this question, the answer is probably no. The remake made the wise decision to update the setting to 1980s Miami, both making the story more relevant to present audiences and drawing a parallel between the Drug War and Prohibition that adds a lot of political subtext. That being said, there is a difference between expanding a story through reinterpretation and just making a boiled-down caricature or a continuation in name only, which is what I think you're talking about.

A more valid comparison would be if they had decided to 'remake' Scarface as a Romantic Comedy.

 

[mavrik]

So, in short: "WHIIINE, IT'S NOT A COPY-PASTE OF THIEF 2, WHIIIINE". But then again, you don't go watching Yahtzee to see an unbiased review.

As for the game itself: It's good. Not great, has issues, could be done better. But it's still fun as hell, has the "Thief" thing right if you want it to get it right (that is - disable all the new helpers, quest trackers, focus and other stuff). It can be even like Dishonored if you want (by leaving all the helpers on). It actually has one of the better difficulty systems aroudn and tons of options to customize your experience.

It also has broken sound and some real annoyances and isn't really as good as Thief II and Deadly Shadows. It's certanly better than Thief though at least due to lack of zombies and cave mazes.

 

[Windu23]

I feel like we'll be hearing about this for weeks to come. This will be for Yahtzee what Man of Steel is for Bob Chipman.

This more felt like Bob's Robocop to me. A beloved product that had all the things that made it good taken out and given a style over substance treatment, because the people who did it maybe weren't competent enough to do it properly.

 

[Under_your_bed]

For anyone who still wants to defend this game, I give you only this:


No seriously, that's the actual final level and ending. Don't ask me what the hell happened, all I know is

Spoiler

The Girl, Garrett's sister has been transformed by some kind of magical MacGuffin "for science" [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForScience]. This power is called "the primal" and it's the city's energy, so she is now the city. No, really. At one point, one of the big baddies says "She is the city! If she dies, so does it!". So, now that said villain is no longer able to use her for such ends, it appears she's just died and gone into nowhere. So does the entire city die? I dunno, I was too busy knocking off for a sandwich and so, evidently, were the creators of this abomination.

Yep, someone out there looked at that ending and thought: "yep, that'll do. Throw it in, it'll be fine". And all I'll say about the gameplay is that towards the end of the game, there's a point where you break into a tower full of guards while it explodes and all the guards die. So you just walk around running through explosions and solving some laughably easy puzzles for 10 minutes. To dubstep. Ugh.

R.I.P. Thief

EDIT:

I think he liked it...

Definitely a contender for his Top 5 this year.

At this point, I would seriously expect it be in that video....

 

[Stu35]

Maybe now we'll finally wake up and realize that AAA is just some stupid marketing term for games that have huge budgets but waste them on hype rather than making the game good.

Well, I think most gamers (of the 'follow what is going on in the gaming industry, actively look towards what is being developed and take an interest in who is developing it' variety) are well aware of that.

The trouble is that the heads of the likes of EA, Activision, Eidos/Square Enix, indeed any big multi-million dollar publisher only see bottom lines.

That is to say. They See that Call of Duty makes X amount of money. They want to replicate it as much as they possibly can in order to keep the money flowing in. They don't actually care about making anything artistically worthy - they want something that Joe 12 pack will buy, because for everybody who genuinely cares about the experience of gaming, there are 30 'average' people who will buy a game because it kinda looks like Call of Duty, Batman, Generic Sportsgame, etc.

I'm not articulating myself particularly well here...

TL;DR: People do realise, unfortunately those people aren't the ones who make millions from AAA game releases.



I miss Thief and Thief 2... Along with Tenchu: Stealth Assassins and Metal Gear Solid on the PS1, those 4 games were the epitome of stealth based gameplay in that era.

 

[Triaed]

"Queef taker general" I'm delighted to see we frequent the same dark corners of the Interwebs

I played Thief 1 and I loved it, I never got around to playing 2, 3 and remake... I feel smugly redeemed

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

I for one always have subtitles on, I never trust game developers to get the voice track properly balanced against music and sound effects.

 

[The Dead Singer]

Is it just me, or was this episode much less 'witty' than they usually are...?

I don't know if "less witty", but I wouldn't be surprised considering that you can just tell the anger that he has towards this game just on his voice - People are generally less level headed when they're upset.

It was a pretty entertaining episode though the constant metaphors with shit at the beginning got a little on my stomach. It's interesting to see him put so much emotion into something - He must've really, really loved this series more than I thought.

 

[Mike Fang]

I'm currently still playing through the new Thief game, but so far, I have been having fun with it. That said, I will admit straight up that a lot of Yahtzee's criticisms are both valid and correct. The levels do feel significantly smaller, there are irritating-as-hell points of no return, the main antagonist is a cardboard cutout with a Snidely Whiplash mustache glued to it and contextual button prompts fly up all over the place like mosquitoes in the southern U.S. in the summer.

As to "New Garrett's" personality, I haven't quite gotten the "Brooding Batman" vibe from him just yet, but I can see where some people might get that feeling. The takedown animations do create a slight feeling of disconnect between the player and the act of knocking out a guard, but I find it tolerable. Although personally I'm irritated by the way the game gauges your play style, labeling you a predator, ghost or opportunist. I'm really hoping the game doesn't create multiple endings that are akin to a good/neutral/bad ending depending on how many times you get spotted, how many guards you knock out or how much you steal.

Overall, I'm certainly going to play this new Thief through to the end and probably have fun in the process. But there's no doubt this game is divergent from the original trilogy and not often in a good way. Overall if I could, I'd tell Eidos Montreal "It's a pretty good effort, but next time, try to stick to the original source material more instead of making Dishonored crossed with Deus Ex: Human Revolution." (And I don't care what people say, DEHR was not that great a game.)

 

[themilo504]

So, in short: "WHIIINE, IT'S NOT A COPY-PASTE OF THIEF 2, WHIIIINE". But then again, you don't go watching Yahtzee to see an unbiased review.

As for the game itself: It's good. Not great, has issues, could be done better. But it's still fun as hell, has the "Thief" thing right if you want it to get it right (that is - disable all the new helpers, quest trackers, focus and other stuff). It can be even like Dishonored if you want (by leaving all the helpers on). It actually has one of the better difficulty systems aroudn and tons of options to customize your experience.

It also has broken sound and some real annoyances and isn't really as good as Thief II and Deadly Shadows. It's certanly better than Thief though at least due to lack of zombies and cave mazes.

Yahtzee's dislike of the game was not simply because it?s not thief 2, its fine if you don?t agree with him(I do it all the time) but don?t simplify his opinion to defend a game you like.