lacking

[taa2609]

okay, i've just completed the first level (or at least ive seen heartless perry afterwards. not sure if level has ended or not yet). and to be honest, i was a little disappointed. i played thief2 up to the bank level (which put me off that thief game) so i know what im doing and i know what to expect. i played on expert, naturally, and was rather clumsy for my own liking. i kept getting seen, running away a very short distance and waiting for the guards to return to their pattern. im sure this was done better in thief2.
this applies to all thief games. if i was a thief and i wanted to put an object down, i wouldnt throw it, i would place it on the nearest surface. and can garrett close doors any louder?!
the maps in thief and thief2 were good. they more or less resembled the actual layout and more or less told you which part of it you were in. in thief3, i found myself staring at the map for ages trying to work it out. another annoying thing about maps is that you cant press 'm' to close them again, unlike the other thiefs. instead there is a 'console type' button to press. i can sense console all over this title. its turning into an arcade game before my eyes.
but that castle level, i could have run through in a luminous pink jumpsuit banging and shouting all over the place. the guards would follow briefly and then go back.
i expected more from thief3, and i was quite bored by the end of that level.
incidentally, people talk about 'the major bug'. what is it? was it fixed with the patch. is it the contortionist guards. i killed one of them with a blackjack. he fell on his own sword!
does the game get better after the castle level? please say it does. how long will i have to wait for the orphanage? please say the AI gets smarter and willing to chase me at my speed or faster for longer than 3 seconds.
tommy.

[Konfuzius]

I've noticed in the Streets it's not that hard to sneak by Guards or make them give up their search

In the Castle (Second mission) It's quite big so that explain why you could run arround in a pink bunny suit if wanted

(Wich I dont see how you can. I played at Expert, and the guards were alert and didn't want to give up the search that easy if they heard a sound)

Was same with Lord Baffords Mansion in Thief 1, some places you can jump arround like crazy....Others you need to be more careful at. But really....You shouldn't complain after playing a little part of the game

Go play more and see for yourself.....I weren't disapointed, I'm sure you won't be etheir.

[taa2609]

what annoyed me was that the didnt chase me, and just went back to their patrol. i played thief2 as a blackjacker type. i imagine that i will have to ghost missions if im to enjoy them at all in this thief.
tommy.

[taa2609]

[Flashart]

Different guards act differently. Some will stop after a little, some will keep chasing.
I played with the blackjack all the way through with no problems.
I would say that the "wall-flattening" move is quite useful.

[taa2609]

but if i were one of those guards and i saw a thief, i would not give up chasing him until he was caught, and would try to alert all guards. the guards in the castle have so little attention span. please say they get more intelligent and that this level was just an easy one to get non-experienced players acclimatised. at the moment im pausing, i dont know whether to start again and play as a ghost or carry on as if it were thief2. i reckon a requirement of the expert setting is to be a ghost: totally undetected without any knockouts, and little things like closing doors (+ going back to the remote switch for the vault, adds longevity to the level) so that nobody has any proof the next day that anybody was there, except for the sudden unexplained loss of loot. hard should be about not being detected during the robbery, but leaving clues about if you so wish. normal should be about not killing people, but any amount of detection is fine. for easy, we can include the kids who just like to kill things. give garrett a gun too, why not?
also, does anybody think the loot requirement thing is wrong. on expert you should only be allowed to steal a small number of items to minimse suspicion. easy players can take all they want. what thief programmers have done (in all 3 games) is turn it into a treasure hunt. i dont so much like this.
tommy.

[bumfluff]

gotta admit, i agree with you about the treasure thing. When you have to buy your own equipment, it seems a bit daft to say during missions that you HAVE to steal x amount of loot. It should be up to you how much you steal... the more you decide to steal, the more equipment you'll be able to buy afterwards - your reward should come from that, and the challenge of seeing how much you find, rather than just searching around for ages simply because its a requirement of the mission.

Guards who have definitely seen you should organise a proper search as well. I mean, if you were guarding a castle and saw someone who's broken in, you wouldn't just give up after chasing them for about 10 seconds, would you?

On the whole tho, I do like the game. Was well worth buying, despite worries about how it would play on my GF3ti200 (fine, despite having to turn down some options).

[LobsterCreature]

Originally posted by taa2609
i played thief2 up to the bank level (which put me off that thief game)

I thought the bank level was one of the best levels in thief series; lots of loot, numerous entry points and the whole idea of a bank job. That's true thieving for you!

[taa2609]

i am well aware of the bank popularity in thief2 but i didnt like it. i think it was those infernal machines that ruined it for me. you could hear them a mile off. or was it the cameras with lasers (not sure if i made that up or not, as it was a while ago). or it could have been the lightness of it. i prefer the creepy dark atmospheric levels. i found the bank to be quite stale in terms of atmosphere.
my fave mission from thief2 was probably the street level. the one where you had to go from the pub to your house, which was guarded. break into your own house, then get away again. lots of blackjacking action for me in that one. anyone notice that garrett has moved house? i suppose he would have had to after that level.
if i could make another change to the guards, other than give them a brain, i would not make their patrols so predicatable. say, put loads of checkpoints in for them and they go to a random one each time. i would really like it if they explored the shadowy corners too during their patrol. get my pulse going a bit not knowing exactly where they are going to search/patrol. another thing ive noticed is after you put a light out, the guards say something which shows they know its out, but dont light it again, or start a search based on it (could be random, will they search or not?).
tommy.

[LobsterCreature]

Have you played the levels following the bank? Truart estate, life of the party etc.? They're excellent levels with great atmosphere.

Originally posted by taa2609
or was it the cameras with lasers (not sure if i made that up or not, as it was a while ago).

Now that would have been something!!

[taa2609]

ive heard about the life of the party. i remember the demo even though i didnt play it. i just assumed that in each subsequent level there would be more and more machines.
im sure the cameras did something. are you sure they werent able of attack themselves? maybe they just sounded an alarm.
tommy.

[LobsterCreature]

Cameras just sounded an alarm and the other head thing on the floor shot some nasty bombs at you, if there was one. Usually there was just a camera that sounded alarms.

Life of the party is a huge rooftop/mechanist tower level and there's just a couple of robots you run into. There are always couple of robots in the following missions, but they're quite rare and easy to destroy.

And there aren't any robots in Truart's estate and Gervailius' mansion (if I remember correct).

There are mechs in the final level though!