Thoughts on Thief 4, stealth genre and lowered standards

[Vik]

A bit of warning, this is a huge wall of text and I apologize for that. But I feel like this is the only way to properly explain my view on Thief 4, the once great steath genre and why I think we lowered our standards. So if you're interested in reading this, i dunno, I guess you can call it rant, here it is.

There's been a lot of discussion over the year on whether Thief 4 was good, bad and why some liked it or hated it and I wanted to throw in my 2 cents for anybody that's interested. It's long, but here goes. It's worth mentioning that I completed this game twice (second playthrough was on a custom master difficulty) and I am a big fan of the original Thief trilogy. And since this game is named THIEF, some comparisons have to be done.

So what is Thief 4 exactly? It's a decent at best and flawed stealth game, a horrible entry in the legendary franchise and a critical and commercial failure. Did I like the game? Short answer is sorta. Both yes and no.

Why YES? Because there haven't been many stealth games over the years and even fewer are worth mentioning at all. Thief 4 does tick some boxes as far as a standard modern stealth game should: it has some freedom, optional objectives, secrets, different ways t and styles of play.

Why NO? Because beyond the above, it's hardly any good. It does not live up to the classics like hitman 1-4, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and especially not Thief 1-3.

It's a waste of money, both ours and the publisher's. Why? Because it's a hollow, uninspired game. It has no reason to exist, other than to make money. There's no unique concepts behind it, no interesting ideas, no good story that somebody wanted to tell. While the same can be said for many games, the Thief series are nothing short of masterpieces, so I think it's a fair complaint.

So what is so wrong about it? Well, everything. The story is horrible, the writing is horrible, the level design is sometimes decent, mostly average, sometimes abysmal, gameplay is average.

Levels are small on their own, connected by in-game loading times, which are frequent (every time you climb through a window via the same tiresome animation, that's a hidden loading zone if anyone did not notice) and it's even progress breaking for people who want to find all unique loot items in the level. Each mission has several points of no return, where you climb a fence, jump through a window or something similar and you cannot go back. There's no indication of that, so by the time you figure this out, you're out of luck and you need to restart the level if you missed something. This is poor design, plain and simple. The people who were designing these levels were either incompetent or just did not care. Either way, it's a big flaw, since one of the game's features are hidden collectibles.

The visuals fail to deliver. Sure, textures are detailed, each room is detailed and shadows and lighting are good, but the art is generic to say the least. The city has no personality, everything looks the same and at its best, it comes slightly close to looking like Thief 3, a console-focused game on a broken engine that aimed at 64 megs of ram that the xbox had on board. Thief 1 and 2 had much better art, every level had its own feel and unique art assets. During Thief 2's development, the lead artist traveled to Europe and took many photos of old buildings and streets to take inspiration from. These days, you can google all that, but the montreal team did not even care enough to bother.

Audio. Thief 1-3 had superb music, ambient and sound design. It was immersive, haunting and sucked you in. It felt like an actual living world. Thief 4 fails miserably in that regard. Close to no footsteps can be heard, so you can't hear enemies nearby anymore like in the old games and that's disappointing for a current gen game with probably 10 times the budget all three thief games combined.

The music ranges from average ambience to generic batman-esque "epic score" that is incredibly out of place. The main menu music felt like it belonged in a Batman Arkham game. And if you ask me, it is the most memorable piece of music written for the game. Embarrassing for a Thief game, plain and simple.

And of course, let's not forget how broken the sound engine is. Ambient music would stop playing at all, killing what little atmosphere the game had. Dialogues would loop and you'd hear the same 5 lines of dialogoes over and over, sometimes even playing twice at the same time, which is a bug I've never seen before in 15 years of gaming. Many patches later, it is still not fixed, but hey, at least they addeed mantle support!

Speaking of audio, cutscenes are ruined by it as well. Garrett's voice is hardly heard, while the other characters speak loud and clear. If the game did not have subtitles, half the time we'd be missing out on some poorly written dialogue. Might that be a blessing in disguise? Oh and why do we need a two second loud music\noise clip playing every time we knock somebody out? I'm no expert on sound design, but apparently the guy who made this had similar credentials.

Gameplay is average at best. Rope arrows are gloried "push button to open a new route" events. There's no interraction with the world, besides the same animations of stealing loot that get old after an hour. You cannot jump, meaning your freedom is limited. May seem like not that big of a deal, but when you cannot jump over a simple small trap and have to look for a hidden switch somewhere in the room, it screams linearity more than anything else. Garret's focus mode is optional, but the thing is, a lot of the game's secrets and even some puzzles are build around using it, so instead of finding a clever solution to a problem you either have to use the vision mode or find the linear solution through trial and error.

Custom difficulty levels are welcomed, but sadly, those were last minute additions and the game's design shows that in full glory. I beat the game twice, once on normal and the second times on a custom master difficulty of over 700 points, where it would be mission failure if I got caught, knocked out somebody, killed anything or recieved any damage. I also had no magic vision mode, no trinkets that make it easier to play and had a limited barebones arsenal of arrows and flashbombs to chose from. It was hardly ever challenging and mostly frustrating, because the game was not designed to play like that. I started out with the idea of have zero suspicions in the stats screen, but soon realized that it is impossible. You cannot get certain loot without making the guards suspicious and even worse, the AI would freeze at certain spots and not return to their routes, blocking progress altogether. On some average difficulty, it's a decent and short game, but on those custom difficulties, the game shows just how broken and flawed it is and each of its many design flaws are doing their best to be noticed. By the end of my second playthrough, I felt miserable for all the wrong reasons.

I won't comment much on the story and writing, it's just horrible. The new Thief setting is generic and lacks personality. All the factions and everything that made the Thief universe special is gone. Why even name it Thief? Apart from cashing in on a legendary franchise that is.

It's a horrible use of license and this may sound harsh, but the woman who wrote that script is a talentless hack and I hope she never works on anything worth mentioning again. The absolute worst part is finding old Garrett's eye in that generic asylum. Really, that smart and charismatic master thief who could escape any prison just died in some basement of some hospital? Its moments like these when I am actually happy this game did not sell well, as bad as that may sound.

And isn't it funny how they replaced the original Garrett voice actor Stephen Russell? They replaced him for someone who sounds similar, but more generic, just so that they could do full motion capture for cutscenes. I could understand it if the cutscenes were actually any good, but they are not. Garrett's lip sync is off at best, non-existant mostly. So they pretty much replaced a talented voice actor for someone who did a worse job for absolutely nothing. Lip sync is broken, motion capture is average at best, nothing even close to say Max Payne 3 with its superb facial animations in cutscenes.

So, here's the thing, I played this game with zero expectations. I did not expect a good sequel to the old Thief games and I was not blinded by nostalgia. I just expected a well made game like Deus Ex HR was and it did not deliver. Clearly a big part of the talent who made DX:HR left the studio during the ugly development of Thief 4 and I don't think there's really any going back from that, especially with people getting downsized after the poor Thief 4 reception. In fact, I am not looking forward to a new Deus Ex either or anything made by this developer, since if Thief 4 is any indication, there's no talented people left there to make it.

So why do some people enjoy this title despite all the flaws? Why did even I somewhat enjoy it? The reason is simple - there are few new stealth titles out there and most AAA games these days are awful. Does Thief 4 deserve the bad reception it got? Yes and no. Yes for reasons stated above and no, because it is still better than the best selling Call of Duty and Battlefield games and in some way, it is a shame that linear mediocrity like Call of Duty sells like hot cakes, while a stealth title with lots of secrets and some mild freedom does not sell much.

But the reality is, stealth games require more effort and the standards are higher than for a AAA linear shooter. Because of a lack of such games, Thief 4 is acceptable and playable and even occassionally fun. I found myself lowering my own standards just to enjoy a new stealth title and that says a lot.

The way I see it, games can be judged by two sets of standards, one set by modern games and the other set by classics such as Thief 1-3. By modern standards, Thief 4 is decent and fun and might even be a bit of a fresh air. But classic game standards, it is a horrible game to say the least. The question is, which of the two stardards did you apply to it?

I remember a time when I would rather have a decent new Thief game than nothing at all, but these days, I am sobering up and realizing that you should not lower your standards, indeed you should stand by them. Personally, I don't need another bad Aliens or Predator or Terminator movies and I certainly don't need another bad Thief game. I'd rather keep those fond memories and move on to other things. Hell, you can replay Thief 1-3 each year and enjoy it, finding new secrets and whatnot. Same really goes for an old movie, you can always rewatch it. That or widen your horizons, look for new good things. Hell, the indie scene provided some great stuff like Hotline Miami, Sir You Are Being Hunted, Wasteland 2 and Gunpoint, inspired and creative games that are better than anything AAA had to offer in years.

In retrospect, maybe Thief 4's failure will lead to something better, maybe Eidos Montreal will hire new people and they will lead their next development with inspiration and vision. But I doubt it. I guess the point I am trying to make is that if anything, you should not lower your standards, but instead support the people who actually make creative, fresh and interesting experiences and not just do what some ignorant publisher and the shareholders want. Those creative people deserve the money, not people like the ones who made Thief 4. They failed to make a solid and interesting game and the game's failure is justified.

That said, it's simply my opinion on the game and as with any product, your mileage may vary. But the way I see it, it's an entertainment industry and if you can't entertain, you do not belong here, period. So in a way, I think it is wrong to support Thief 4 because because it's the only new decent AAA stealth game out this year. Same as it's wrong to claim Splinter Cell Blacklist is a great game just because it is better than Conviction and goes back to actual stealth, when in fact it is a shallow and generic copy of Chaos Theory at best. I disagree that by not supporting mediocre stealth games, we are killing the stealth genre. If anything, greedy publishers and talentless hacks are killing it. They are to blame, not us. I think we should vote more carefully with our wallets, otherwise generic AAA junk will ruin all our favorite genres eventually and nothing will repair the damage.

So yeah, those are my thoughts. Thanks for reading. Input is appreciated.