Matt McMuscles is a youtuber who often does well-researched videos on the development histories of troubled games, and his latest is on Thief 2014.
He managed to get in touch with some ex-Eidos Montreal staffers who spoke anonymously about their time on the project. It's a good vid.
I think it's safe to say that, however troubled the development may or may not have been, whatever ill-fitting ideas could have been cooked up, discarded, and cobbled back together, the notion of creating a stealth-focused action game in an enthusiast-oriented niche franchise lying dormant for a decade, and trying to sell that to 5+ million customers doomed the project before it even started.
Last edited by Marvin; 18th Dec 2023 at 15:26.
That was good, thanks! I haven't played Thief since 2014 but I still recall it relatively fondly, I mean, given all its deficiencies. I'd still rather play it than Human Revolution. And in some ways I liked it more than Deadly Shadows, though maybe I should replay both before I give that verdict.
That bloke talks some trash. Compared to Deus Ex, Thief 4 is awesome. There is nothing wrong with Thief 4 apart from the storyline being too short and too easy to complete.
Thief 4 was janky as hell, but I still don't think it was any worse than DXHR or DXMD. None of them had especially good world building, and I'd barely group them with ImSims, but the moment-to-moment gameplay was fun and I don't regret playing through them once. And T4 at least had enough difficulty options to create a challenge, by disabling the magic stuff and forcing ghosting and whatnot.
Question is how to combine Thief design and action game they wanted to make ?
I didn't really find that he talked any trash. It was all pretty much from the mouths of the former developers who actually worked on the game. He complimented areas of the game that he thought were good several times. He liked the game more than I did, that's for sure.Originally Posted by TheRealSlimGarrett
That's a nice retrospective with some interesting insights. Thank you for posting, henke
Stop responding to mentally ill trolls, that way you give him attention he doesn't deserve. The fact he hasn't gotten banned so far is baffling to me, the least you can do is ignore his pathetic, worthless existence.
General consensus is it's a decent standalone game, but a trash Thief game.
It wouldn't even work as a 'spiritual successor', since the main protagonist is also called Garrett, and has an associate named Basso. Way to muddy the waters.
I mean, imagine if a restaurant starts serving deep fried tofu, but calls it "chicken nuggets"THeir retort: "they ARE chicken nuggets, just not the same you knew and loved!!!"
I'm sure the reception would be different if they had used different characters entirely - e.g. no Garrett, and make Erin the main one.
Sure, some taffers would be upset at the lack of a proper sequel with Garrett, but at least we wouldn't be bitter about this reinvention
Contextual movement everywhere, load zones everywhere, no jumping, pre-programmed convenient ropes and bridges, and various other 'issues' and repetitive gamey things everywhere (audio, writing, characters, etc) helped make it a game I wouldn't even buy as a standalone non-Thief game. The only reason I had it and played it was a friend pre-ordered it for me for my birthday because they knew I loved Thief 1/2. If that hadn't happened, I may never have played it, or waited until it hit $5 or less
Aaarrgh! This sort of thing is why I've started aksing people close to me not to try to be clever with presents. And I remember saying, around the time the game came out, that I'd much prefer not to receive it.
Despite all the issues the reboot had, and it had a lot of them, it was a somewhat coherent game all things considered. With all the dev issues it turned out playable, at least. The graphics were excellent at the time, even if the style itself didn't match the Thief aesthetic we love and admire. I think the team was indeed quite talented, but the mismanagement was so big the game was bound to fail one way or another. It's important to separate the quality of assets vs the expectations, so for example the music wasn't bad, but it wasn't good for a Thief experience. Good execution but a bad fit. I hope people didn't shit on things like that just because it wasn't exactly what they wanted. Same with the aforementioned graphics, excellent on their own but not really Thief. Even Garrett's voice actor was decent, actually sounded like a rogue, a cunning scoundrel, but he got flamed because of mistreatment of Stephen Russell.
It must feel bad to work on a project where you do a good job overall, but because it's mismanaged, fans look down on you. It's tough
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