> Among other things, Stephen sucks because he thought "Thief: The Dark Project" was a crappy video game, even though every enlightened soul on the planet thought it was the most innovative game since Doom.

First off, let me start my rebuttal by saying a few things:

1) I only played the demo of the game. I can not comment on anything beyond the content of the demo, but from what I hear it's one of the better levels from the game.

2) I didn't say the game was crappy... it was decent though (IMO) very flawed. Anything I've said in places like chat were probably just ribbing to upset Dave :P

Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and snip away at Dave's post pretty liberally from this point forward...

>
> For those who don't know, Thief is a first-person 3D game in which you, well, play a thief in a medieval-esqe world. The genre of First Person Shooter, born with Wolfenstein 3D,

Wolf3D wasn't really the first FPS, but we'll overlook it.

> But it finally came to pass that *enough* people were bored with the "if-it-moves-kill-it" games that gaming companies started coming out with first person 3D games that *weren't* based on that simple premise. And although I could name a bunch of these (Rainbow Six and Swat 3 come to mind as two of the best examples of this "new" genre), for my money Thief was and is the best of them.

Err... what about Half-Life? Generally HL is considered to be one of the best shooters of all time, and offers a helluva lot more than just "Shoot anything that moves". Incidentally, HL and Thief were released in the same year if memory serves, and HL won more than like 40 "Game of the Year" awards from major publications.

>
> It may sound boring to play a game in which you spend a good portion of your time waiting and listening, but I can tell you, it's not. Think of it this way--have you ever been in a place where you shouldn't be, or at least a place you don't want to be 'caught' in? Someone almost catches you there, and you hide in a corner or behind a piece of furniture while your heart pounds and your palms sweat. You strain your ears, listening for the sound of retreating footsteps, hoping the person doesn't come too close to where you are or look in the wrong direction at the wrong time. Does that sound boring? Nerve-wracking, exhausting, and maybe, if you get away with it, a little thrilling, but certainly not *boring*.

I'd agree with this. When you're sneaking around and whatnot, it's insanely fun. Even the waiting bits are neat.

> So now that I've gushed over the game for a bit, I'll get to the point (if indeed I ever had one). Thief was a great game, but it was by no means perfect. Ask Stephen sometime, and he'll tell you all the reasons why he thought it totally sucked (reason number one: Stephen is a doody-head.) Stephen's main problem, from what I can gather (other than the doody-head thing), is that the guards were too hard to kill. My feeling on that is that I usually tried to get through an entire level without killing anyone anyway--part of the fun of the game was sneaking by a bored guard and making off down the corridor without him ever seeing or hearing you. In fact, the "difficulty" settings in the game didn't just add more enemies or more perrils, it put restrictions on your actions--on "expert" level, you weren't *allowed* to kill anyone in most of the missions--if you did, you failed your objectives.

My point is rather simple: if you're given a bow and arrows, a sword, a blackjack and numerous other combat items, why the hell are they so ineffective? You can honestly hit a guard upwards of three times with an arrow square in the chest or head and he won't die. He'll just keep rushing you.

The thing is, there's plenty of times where killing a guard would make sense in the context of the game. Watching a few patrolling guards' patterns in order to snipe one on a tower at the right time could be very strategic and with the flow of the game. But this is virtually un-doable. And there could be consequences for doing so indiscriminately -- guards finding corpses, hearing death cries, etc. But again, if the game doesn't want you to kill anybody at all, why are you armed?

>
> Begrudingly, I will concede part of Stephen's point. It doesn't take long to realize that guards have three states--"Normal" or "patrolling" state, in which you can stand right next to them in the shadows and they'll probably never notice you. "Suspicious" or "Alerted" state, in which they're walking around cautiously, looking carefully--in this state, they can spot you in the deepest shadows from about a dozen feet away, if they look right at you. Finally, there's "Kill mode", or "Red alert". This is when they've spotted you, and they're either coming in for the kill or they're screaming for their buddies (or both!)

I can actually deal with the game's logic here to a certain extent. The game would be even *more* unforgiving if they wouldn't return to their original state after hearing a suspicious noise. But to make them physically stronger (they take more to kill) just because they're alerted is silly and inconsistent with the more realistic theme of the game (note that you die very easily).

>
> It makes sense that they can spot you more easily when they're alerted than when their just doing their routine patrol, but what doesn't make sense is that they inexplicably become harder to kill as they progress up the three levels of alertness. In normal mode, one good arrow shot will fell most any human guard (yes it *will*, Stephen, stop arguing with me. I've done it many times. All of your vaunted FPS reflexes just don't seem to get the job done in Thief.)

Look, it shouldn't be a job of incredibly finess here. I shouldn't have to hit them square in the neck. I have hit guards IN THE FACE with arrows and watched them rush me unscathed. According to Dave, you need to hit them in some mystical spot in the neck. Okay, whatever. Hitting them while they're rushing me does nothing because now they're in "even stronger" mode.

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> For Stephen, this was an unforgiveable sin. I've learned that you don't *ever* want to make killing things harder for Stephen. For me, it was a conscesion for the sake of gameplay--ideally, you should make it through an entire mission without ever alerting anyone to your presence.

Ideally, yes. But that requires an incredible amount of sneaking around and generally requires that you do it in the way the developers intended you because it's all about timing. One of the things I loved about a game like Half-Life is that I can kill people strategically. There's almost always more than one way to approach a situation. In Thief you pretty much always have to follow along the specified "route" finding the unlocked or pickable doors and avoiding guards by memorizing a bunch of timed movements. I don't really feel like I'm interacting here.

> So the fact that the guards become harder to kill after you alert them becomes moot if you're not alerting them anyway. But if it were *too* easy to just kill all the guards no matter what, then you'd just be right back to the old First Person Shooter mode--just with a bow instead of a RIAL GUN!

Since there are roughly 100 (I estimate) guards in the first level alone, I find this a little hard to believe. You might be able to take out 10 on your own, but that would be with a ton of luck and skill. You'd still end up dead, of course. And that's not unrealistic. Dave's problem is that he seems to think that it requires no skill at all to kill someone, and that the only way to experience this game is the exact way that the development team wants you to. That's silly.

>
> Have I drifted again? I think I have. Let me try to get back to the point. There *were* a few problems with Thief that I felt made it a lesser game than it could have been. One was a fairly poor AI for some of the guards. Take this scenario: You're hiding in the shadows, watching a guard patrol an area you need to get through. You finally decide that you can't get close enough to sap him without him seeing you, and you don't want to get into a stand-up sword fight with him. So you pull out your trusty bow and take careful aim at his unprotected neck as he walks away from you. Unfortunately, your aim isn't true, and you stick him in the shoulder instead of the neck. He goes from "patrolling mode" to "suspicious mode" and starts looking around for you. But you stand patiently in the shadows, and after a few minutes, he goes back to patrolling like nothing happened! I've seen that happen more than once in the game, and it irks me to no end. That was *not* a conscession for the sake of gameplay, it was just stupidity. Anybody who gets stuck with an arrow would not go back to patrolling normally under any circumstances. He'd raise an alarm and probably go to the infirmary to care for that gaping wound.

This whole problem rises due to the fact that it's not remotely possible to kill people with any sort of consistancy. If everytime you missed a shot or got spotted for a second you were fully rushed by all the guards it would be impossible. However, if after being stuck with an arrow through the shoulder the guard weakened a lot and started running for backup you could reasonably pounce and finish the job, this wouldn't be a problem. Consider this scenario:

1. A guard is patrolling. You are hiding in the shadows ten to fifteen yards away.
2. You make too much noise and he goes into suspicious noise, looking for you.
3. Fearing capture, you shoot him. Since it was a rushed shot, it doesn't kill him but weakens him considerably. He starts running away shouting for help.
4. You rush out from the shadows and run him through with your sword (I doubt a wounded guard taken by suprise would be able to offer a whole lot of resistance to a well experienced and armed thief).
5. He screams as he dies, and knowing that his buddies are coming, you get out of that area and lay low for a bit. You're alive, but now the entire place is looking for you.

That to me would be a fair situation. In Thief, what would happen is that the initial guard would just rush you and he alone would kill you seeing as how he was Superman. You rarely had the chance to get back and prepare yourself for the upcoming back up. In order to compensate for their silly "don't kill anyone, ever" policy, the designers had to allow the guards to "forget" anyone was around. This means that basically if you miss a shot you have to stay right where you are and wait a few minutes for the guards to back about their business. This is not intuitive, realistic or even very fun.

> So finally, to the point. Why the sequel, which is finally out, will ROCK! First, by all accounts they improved the AI by an order of magnitude. No more guards that go back to patrolling after you plunk an arrow into their hides. Now, they run for help, call in an archer, or just plain start screaming until someone else comes to help. Way cool.

If they weren't as strong I'd be more interested in it (note that all of Thief 2 I've played was an alpha or beta demo a while back where most of the problems still existed plus the demo was one of those fun "walk along skinny platforms and if you fall you die instantly" type scenarios).

> Second, the developers actually *listened* to the customers, and concentrated on the stealth aspects of the game and threw out nearly all of the cheap action parts that hindered the original so much. That should make 'Thief II: The Metal Age' the mostest bestest game ever.

Go play Metal Gear Solid on the Playstation which offers sneaking around, action and other great stuff in a well balanced form (you're allowed to make mistakes, and guards die as easy as you do).

Alternatively, go play System Shock 2 which runs the Thief engine and was developed by the same company and offers many of the same things. It has the bonus of having a ruling RPG/character devlopment system but suffers from the drawback that it's far too hard and complex for Dave (who apparently got confused by the menus).

Stephen