Thief

[Trex]

Anyone else playing this?

 

I'm a big fan of the original trilogy, but I also knew this one wasn't being developed by the same people. As a result, my expectations were in a very sensible place, but this still feels like a disappointment so far.

 

Good points :

 

- Most of the stealth mechanics are good. I like the new swoop ability and the claw (even if I do think of Toy Story every time he mentions it).

 

- The city looks good, if a little confusing to navigate.

 

- Garrett's outfit looks good

 

Bad points :

 

- The writing.

 

I don't know what happened here, but I end up cocking my head to the side and staring with a puzzled look on my face with nearly every one cinematic.

My favourite so far:

- Garrett uses the door to enter Basso's place

- Basso, "Jebus, Garret! Couldn't you just use the door for once?"

- Player is confused.

 

Most of the cutscenes seem to have something like this happen in them.

 

The characters don't seem that well done either. The thief finder general (or whatever he's called) is bland and the way he killed the guard in his first scene was just weird. I know it's a tried and trusted cliché for a villain to kill one of his underlings, but normally there's some kind of provocation, even a weak one. This just came across as a heavy handed attempt to make the villain do something evil.

 

Erin is also deeply irritating. Luckily, she doesn't seem to be in it too much.

 

- There's also a certain lack of identity in the game. It feels like they've just merged together a pile of stiff from Dishonared and assassin's creed. That doesn't necessarily make it bad as I like both franchises, but it's a little disappointing thief couldn't find it's own voice.

 

Indifferent :

 

- Garrett's new voice. I don't hate it, but I don't love it either.

 

I'm currently only a few missions in though, so I'll save any real opinions until the end.

[igyman]

I finished the game on Saturday and my overall impression matches you initial one. When looked at from a technical and game mechanics standpoint, there's hardly any reason to complain. It's optimized well (runs smoothly on my PC with settings maxed out), it really is a stealth game where action is truly a last resort that only works when facing up to two, maybe three enemies at once. There's a lot of stuff to do in the game with numerous optional missions and places to rob. The atmosphere resembles the previous games, etc. There are also some pretty cool options that most other games don't offer, from additional difficulty modifiers to UI options.

 

The negative stuff for me are:

- a mediocre and predictable story (even some locations have already been seen in previous games

*cough*abandoned, haunted asylum*cough*

) and this increasingly popular vulgar style of writing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember the previous Thief games had much swearing in them. (I'm not against vulgarities, mind you, I just don't think they fit well everywhere)

- music that doesn't really fit the setting. To me at least, the music sounded way too modern in a lot of cases.

- an unnecessary reboot. There really was no need to do a reboot of Thief. The story, as mediocre as it was, would have worked perfectly as a sequel too. In fact, since this game was originally announced as Thi4f (with the old logo styling and all), I'm pretty sure it was written as a sequel and then slightly altered to work as a reboot.

 

Most importantly (and this last point is the most difficult to define), the game just doesn't have that something that keeps your attention. For me, when I play a game for the first time, if it's any good, I'm usually thinking "just a bit more, just this one more section and then I'm done", basically it draws me to see what happens next in the story and to play more. With this game I was usually thinking "I'm finishing this damn level and that's it for tonight" and then I put that thought into action. And this wasn't due to the game being difficult, it was actually relatively easy, but it quickly became cumbersome for a reason I can't really define.