Thief 3

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life.tfclassic (More info?)

On Sat, 29 May 2004 19:33:20 +0100, Tartychops <Tartychops@nodomain.com>
wrote:

>Demo not too bad at all.
>
>Still feels as much of a shoddy console port as DX:IW did, and
>splitting the maps up with that strange fog like stuff is a BAD design
>choice but it's still generally Thief in feel and that's no bad thing
>

Nothing much to add there, except for the fact that it was repeated before
with other games (e.g. Red Faction 2 - won't have multiplayer since the
console was SP only). It's a good way to boost short-term sales while
driving the series into the ground. The only way around it is to have very
professional reviewers take a deep look at each game they review - this
won't happen because of the time and expense required if the same number of
reviews are required. .

I don't have a first-hand opinion about the game yet, mainly because the
download hasn't really started yet. It's also difficult to even get that
download started, mainly because of the combination of poorly-designed
Flash and an overloaded FTP server.

>Movement takes a bit of getting used to and it's nice to be able to
>see Garrett in 3rd person but for a change, but ultimately, it just
>wasn't needed in there at all.

Are the movement differences compared to the other two installments in
Thief, or from differences found on other First-person games? Or is there
a movement system issue where there is latency between the time you do
something and get a response from the character? (Proably not as bad as
some cases I've seen, but it could be that.)

3rd person is probably a workaround for the lack of peeking ability. Using
this "feature" to look around a corner feels like cheating as most games
are not designed to take this into consideration.

>Still, eh? When will developers learn to not code for the weakest
>(console) platform and actually write for the PC and port that
>instead?

Coding for consoles is not the problem. Coding for consoles and forcing PC
users to suffer from console limitations is. There are ways to make the
"Console->PC" porting look less obvious, such as the method used by "Armed
and Dangerous" by LucasArts/Planet Moon. The detail and mission area is
relativly equal to a large Half-Life map, without having an excessivly long
loading time between levels. Obviously, graphics weren't top-of-the-line,
but are acceptable to most users.

Eidos/Ion Storm is effectivly a one-hit wonder in this department as the
only good product they released was Deus Ex. Their other two major
products (Daikatana and DX:IW) flopped miserably, but still sold at least
one copy.