I expected this. This game could very well get my worst game of the year award. Not even because it's not Thief 2 or whatever kind of bollocks people are whining about, but because as a game it is inherently flawed and broken. Guard AI is garbage, sound design is disturbingly bad, and the graphics are a constant gritty gray. It seems like a game people would make to make fun of modern AAA game design for a video on youtube instead of an actual attempt at rebooting a franchise.
I remember losing all hope for the game initially when I watched what I think is the defining moment of the game in a stream (yes I've played the game since then). There's a slide puzzle in a crawlspace behind the wall of a brothel and it became clear at about this point that the game has no acoustic simulation so sound goes straight through all walls (something the Unreal engine has by DEFAULT so there's no fucking telling why this game doesn't have it). Meanwhile two NPCs were fucking in an adjacent room during the whole puzzle, resulting in the slide puzzle _itself_ sounding like it was yelling
"OH GOD, OH GOD, PUSH IT PUSH IT HARDER, GIVE IT ALL YOU GOT GIVE IT ALL YOU GOT". After thirty minutes of laughing at the scene that was unfolding before us, we resigned to further have our childhood memories shat upon and continued the buggy linear mess until the ending.
And
oh god the ending is terrible, if it weren't for aforementioned dirty masochistic slide puzzle it would easily top one of the greatest I-wasn't-expecting-anything-and-I'm-still-disappointed moments I can remember in modern video games.
This entire game has lead me to believe that some people have just set their standards so low that if it doesn't crash, or set their console on fire, or refuse to play, or demand that they buy DLC for the ending, then they'll be happy with just about anything. I see plenty of such people in this thread defending what amounts to another crappy linear corridor progress simulator with such
vigor that one must wonder what exactly the game must have done for them to achieve such high praises. One must wonder how high their standards are to begin with when all it takes is another by-the-numbers stealth game with terrible mechanics and mediocre design to be considered 'good enough' in their book.
I do have one stabbing question though for those defending it:
I think the game is fine for what it is, the usual mass pleasing, dime a dozen triple A game.
How did you experience the game? Did you experience the numerous framerate drops, terrible texture design, awful sound design, and NPC AI that would make even the completely clueless pillocks of Thief 1 seem like genius rocket scientists even on the hardest difficulty?
Because I certainly hope this just isn't the level of quality we've resigned ourselves to. I understand fully if it is, if those are just minor nits to you that every game seems to have these days that we just ignore because that's the polite thing to do, but those otherwise seem like serious issues to me that get a free pass for no better reason than "It's not like other modern games are any better". A phrase I'm seeing disturbingly often when it comes to AAA games (Aliens: Colonial Marines for example had the EXACT SAME RESPONSE as many have in this thread, will you look back on Thi4f in a few months and ask yourself why you ever defended this title?)
