Poll: Thief, will I like it?

[J Tyran]

With the mixed reviews the new Thief game is getting I don't know if I should get it, it seems that a lot of the fans of the older games hate it whilst many that never really played them like it. To be clear I really enjoyed some of the recent games with stealth elements like Dues Ex: Human Revolution and Dishonoured, I have never played the original Thief games either so I should be good but I respect the opinions and position of the original fans. If they have problems with the various stealth mechanics and level layout they are worth listening to, so with all that I don't know if its worth dropping £30 or simply waiting for a sale somewhere.

 

[The Madman]

Sound design is questionable, story is crap, levels can be annoyingly small and linear, but the actual mechanics for stealth as solid and there are a few neat elements to it as well plus there's still that innate 'coolness' to stealing something without anyone ever noticing. Also the game has absolutely nothing to do with the previous Thief games aside from the names of some of the characters, which is another reason for a lot of the hate but one you wont even notice having not played them.

So is it worth trying? Sure, if you're really hankering for a new stealth game to play there are certainly worse options out there. But at full price? ehhh not so sure... especially considering you could buy the original trilogy for a tenth the cost and even free alternatives like the Dark Mod are available.

Up to you. It's not the worst thing ever and not having played the previous games you're going in without any expectations, but you could also just buy the originals for less. Just sayin.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Depends on how you like playing stealth games.

If you like to use stealth as a means of killing everyone in the level without being seen, you'll pretty much hate Thief. You have 2 weapons, a bow and a blackjack. The blackjack is your melee weapon, and it's used to knock out enemies when they're unaware of you. If they happen to see you though it's your only melee weapon and it has a very short range and doesn't do much damage. The bow is your ranged weapon, and it has a lot of different arrow types, both combat oriented and not combat oriented, but all of the arrows cost money, and the combat oriented arrows cost a LOT of money, so every time you kill a guard you'll feel wasteful. The combat also isn't very punchy or impact-full, probably because the developers didn't actually want people to enjoy the combat, since this is not a combat oriented stealth game.

On the other hand, if you like to play your game as a ghost who gets past guards and obstacles without ever having to touch anyone, you'll probably enjoy the game a lot more.

 

[Smooth Operator]

If you like the modern stealth games and aren't spoiled by more detailed designs of old then this will be just fine, it's essentially Dishonored without magic.

But for anyone wondering why people are on the fence you should know that prior games were much much more open and detailed, getting around in stealth and stealing shit actually meant something because you had to get good at it, and the new one is another "everybody wins" design where everything is already figured out and managed for you.

 

[Shocksplicer]

Loved the old ones and I'm doing going the new. Especially the hubworld.

 

[J Tyran]

If you like the modern stealth games and aren't spoiled by more detailed designs of old then this will be just fine, it's essentially Dishonored without magic.

But for anyone wondering why people are on the fence you should know that prior games were much much more open and detailed, getting around in stealth and stealing shit actually meant something because you had to get good at it, and the new one is another "everybody wins" design where everything is already figured out and managed for you.

So is there any creativity to be had? One of the things I liked about Dishonoured was how you could be really creativity in how you approached the levels even if the basic layout was simplistic and obvious, the magic helped with that and unless there are some other tricks or ways of approaching situations it sounds like Thief might be missing that.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Not immensely, no. Most situations come with two or three angles of approach, but that's it. People liken the game to Dishonored, but it's really more Deus Ex: Human Revolution sans viable combat options.

 

[Laughing Man]

This is my shotgun review of Thief that I posted elsewhere.

Let me clarify first, I played the first Thief games and loved them all, I also like stealth games in general this review was written in response to someone complaining about people comparing the new Thief game to the old ones, so here goes.

Then lets compare it to something like Dishonoured. The objective layout feels far more open in Dishonoured, you're given an objective an indicator where in the level roughly the objective is and then you're left to your own devices on how to get there, from what I've played of this game so far it literally hand holds you through the level, showing checkpoints that are only a couple of moves away.

Okay, so that may be early game play mechanics perhaps when I get past the first hour or so the game will open up and be less go here, go there, turn left at the next junction, basically less Sat Nav. Lets take a look at the controls and gameplay. Put simply they are awful it is clear that the console limited control layout has had a huge influence on the gameplay and control methodology, multiple context sensitive actions being controlled by a single button, that button seems to be 'E'. That's fine if it works, if it is smooth and seem less but from what I have seen so far it just isn't smooth, it isn't seem less in fact in a number of cases it just doesn't work at all. EVERYTHING has an obvious lag, it really is off putting pressing a button and not having anything happen all because I am not in the right place. It's not just that, the feeling of total lack of control is worrying as well. I want to lean but I can't because I haven't pressed the button next to the right object that allows me to first press against it. Then instead of pressing E again to stop the action you have to step back, this applies to anything context sensitive action, logically I would press 'E' again to stop the action but that doesn't seem to do anything (yeah a rare instance where pressing 'E' does bugger all.) No instead you have to press, well just about ANY other action button, attack seemed to work but as does pushing back step and this weird illogical button mashing to preform an action seems to spread to other things; you can't leap down at ledges unless you press the right button combos I think it's crouch and jump, jumping is disconcerting, the first couple of minutes have you do a running jump which brought me to a dead stop because I didn't press 'SPACE' at the exact right time.

The lock picking is rubbish, full stop, clearly designed for a control pad with rumble support where I am sure it would actually work very well, I want to enter through a closed window, mash the 'E' button to open it. The flash, or sprint or Thief version of blink whatever you want to call it, well Dishonoured does it right Thief doesn't, again I assume it's context sensitive but I dunno, I pressed space while moving the first time and it did nothing, tried again it worked, tried to do it again at later point and it didn't work.

How about the crouch function that works until you do something else (jump a window ledge, move, basically any of the context sensitive actions) and instead of returning you to crouch it leaves you standing up for the world to see.

I hate to come back to it but I am not going to compare it to previous Thief games I am going to compare it to a more modern game and Dishonoured, played in a purely stealth run through, does everything Thief does and does it SO MUCH better.

I am not a graphics junky so my opinion on the way the game looks is, ok, nothing that has blown me away, but nothing that stands out. The stutter is annoying, haven't seen stutter that needs a 360 character spin to clear since Oblivion. One thing that does bug me though is constant flashing, I know it's an alert to something that's going on on screen but it seems to happen at random and often utterly pointless times.

Okay so this is based on 30 minutes of game play and this is a shotgun approach to some of the stuff I have found that stands out as being simply p*ss poor, and perhaps with some further playing some of the stuff will get better, but the awful context sensitive one button controls 90 different actions nonsense, can't see that getting better. The tedious lock picking sub game that has been done better by: Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout, can't see that going anywhere. The flow of the game which Dishonoured nailed perfectly, I mean it was beautiful to play, can't see Thief matching that, again because most of the game movement is based on context sensitive motions.

Ill reserve final judgement until I've

a). Played a good deal more of the game
b). The game itself annoys me to the point where I am too p*ssed off to keep playing it

Right here and right now, umm not a good game.

 

[ScaredScorpion]

I have a lot of thoughts on the game, anything in the first spoiler tag is just so people don't always see the wall of text, the other one is an actual spoiler.

Spoiler

I'd also like to add that the level design is not good. Every single story mission has bits that once you activate a trigger you can't go back to a previous part of the level. This is counter to the experience that thief, and even dishonored are trying to give. I can't actually think of any parts of the old thief games where the player couldn't go to any bit of the level at anytime (though it has been a while so there might be one or two). This is part of the exploration aspect that thief has always offered that is unfortunately completely lost in this game with its heavy reliance on event triggers to move the player to completely separate areas.

Another thing to do with level design is that in the old thief games, each level was bookended. Barring a few cases you began out of the main gameplay area and finished out of the main gameplay area. It helps to give the player a sense of accomplishment which this game just doesn't do. And also helps prevent the sudden story jumps like what happens at the end of one of the missions.

There's also the guards, they are not a threat. I could run past them, shoot them, or use a takedown and I'll still be fine. A stealth game needs the enemies to be a threat, one that is better to run from than fight. But this does it worse, this makes them something that is not just easy to fight, but that can just be ignored.

Also QTEs I think they looked at the engagement curve that games are supposed to have and then decided what would best break up the gameplay is QTEs. I have two problems with this 1) they are way over used, I don't have an attention span of 5 seconds I don't need a boring QTE/button-mashy cutscene every two steps, and 2) They didn't do it right, a key component of the engagement curve is the end, when you want player engagement to go back to a low state. It's why at the end of a level of the old thief games there was a sense of accomplishment and a bit of time thinking back on what you had done. This just doesn't happen in the story levels, you almost immediately go from a high engagement part to the end of level screen.

Spoiler

And lastly, the cradle-clone mission. I call it that because it's obviously meant to evoke the feeling of the old cradle mission, one of the best missions in the old games (regardless of which one you prefer). It fails for three reasons 1) it ends in the middle of the asylum when you have (if you've been stealthy) just snuck past a bunch of monsters (what I said about bookending), 2) you can't repeat the cradle, part of what made it great was not knowing about it and here it just feels like a shallow attempt to reference the past without actually trying. and 3) by that point I just didn't care, I was running through it because I knew they'd probably do the same kind of thing as the original with barely any enemies and mostly event driven gameplay. Problem is the entire game's like that so it doesn't feel special.

I honestly do not recommend it. If you want a thief-like experience then I recommend the old ones or Dishonored (that's a better thief game than the new thief), I think a lot of people might be turned off by the graphics but the games themselves are good, and there's texture packs to improve the quality.

 

[sXeth]

My first recommendation for those looking to play Thief (2014), was to buy Dishonored instead. Its cheaper at present, and the better modern Theif game.

Beyond that, its probably alright as a rental, or steam sale fodder. I wouldn't pay the full 70 bucks for it. Besides the glitchy as heck sound, and subtitles being as far off as 30 seconds, its not broken in a technical sense, but the whole thing is fairly unengaging and tedious.

 

[Chester Rabbit]

Well let me ask you this. Have you played the original Splinter Cell games? and by that I mean the first one or Pandora Tomorrow? If so and you enjoyed those games and you enjoyed Deus Ex then yeah you?ll probably like this game. I wouldn?t say it?s a great Thief game in terms of levels and openness but if you have never played a Thief game before then you should have no problem enjoying this stealth game.

 

[mistahzig1]

For me my biggest gripe I have with the game is the @#$%@#$%# map system. I've never so lost in my life! Why the hell do you include unaccessible areas in your map?

Sometimes you have to enter through a window in order to access the other part of the map, BUT the marker is not on this window. Oh no no no no no... the marker for your mission is on the inaccessible part!

If I wasn'T bald I'd tear my hair out of my skull in frustration grrr