Thief on PC is surprising.

I have been playing the game since it unlocked on Steam and I have to say the game has really surprised me so far. It looks absolutely outstanding for one thing. The lighting, shadows, particles, reflections, parallax occlusion, tesselation and other graphical elements all add up to one beautiful game. I also love the art direction.

What's more surprising, however, is that it runs extremely well. I am maxing it out, aside from SSAA, and getting a solid 60fps. I only have an HD 7950 and i5 2500k and I truly didn't expect to get such good performance in this game. I can honestly say that the ratio of this game's performance to how amazing it looks is by far the best I have ever come across.

Part of the reason for it's great performance is that the devs actually properly multi-threaded the engine. pcgameshardware.de did some benchmarks and found fantastic multi-thread scaling. Read about it here: http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Thief-4-PC-98521/Specials/Thief-Grafikarten-und-Prozessor-Benchmarks-Mit-dieser-Hardware-gehen-Sie-ohne-Ruckler-auf-Diebestour-1110793/

Unfortunately, however, the game doesn't run so well on the PS4 and XB1. This is not just unfortunate for the gamers that play the game on those consoles, but also for the game and developers of the game themselves. I truly believe that part of the reason for the mediocre scores from a lot of reviewers is the poor performance of the versions they played. Choppy framerate really does drag a gaming experience down. It even gives you a more negative impression of a game's visuals than you otherwise would have. I was expecting to see this game get scores mostly around 8/10 and I think the reason we are seeing an average closer to 7/10 is due to the choppy experience it offers on the consoles.

That could be a reason, or......

• The City's choppy structure injures exploration and immersion
• Glitchy AI and other clunky issues drain the game of tension
• Incoherent story that ends without any sense of payoff

Game critics knocking a game for presentation or lack of "polish" while ignoring gameplay? highly plausible.

That said plenty of the game reviews I read point out iffy at best AI and how the design itself is devoid of any tension/challenge in the stealth. Plus some stuff about the story not being enjoyable nor the characters. Which not that I didn't like Garret(he was dope) back in the day, but I mean Thief if it was good in the story department was entirely good in the "good for a videogame story" sort of way.

I'd try it out at a cheap ass price, but I'm iffy on spending a full 60 on that game. Might pick it up during a steam sale.

Could it be that all the trailers and previews they showed were on the PS4?

Because it looked good to me but not nothing special.

Still, the game issues seem to be focused on story and level design, rather than looks or/and performance.

It is propably held to much higher standards than other stealth games. The levels are pretty linear, but not any more than other "top modern stealth games".

Any way, if you want true Thief gameplay in fresh coat of paint just go play DarkMod, it's free.

Judging from TB's "WTF is...", it actually looks like a good game and an amazing port.

interestingly, totalbiscuit remarked getting an easy 120fps+ with a single gtx titan at 1920x1080 - just as remarkable as your result.

and what you're describing is pretty shocking, I can't believe they can't get an xbox 360 / ps3 game running right on the next genners.

who does the blame lie with? the developers? well i guess one could argue they went for too many platforms at once.

but one could argue the developers are competent, the pc version works incredibly well on amd and nvidia hardware. the last cod game failed to achieve this and had a similar pattern of release.

maybe the problem is the ps4 / xbox one dev tools or something.

Yeah, TotalBiscuit really liked the game. He talked about how great it looked and how smooth it runs. He also just liked the game in general. So far I really agree with him, especially about how good it looks and runs.

I think reviewers would have scored it on average 1 point higher if it hadn't run so poorly on the consoles. I'm not saying those reviewers would have suddenly given the game 10s across the board, but I do believe that the choppy performance truly impacted many reviewers' impression of the game.

Let's not forget, though, that the game has received quite a few 8s and 9s as well. So it's not like there is any kind of unanimous agreement or anything.

Casual console gaming media (people brought up on Halo and Call Of Duty) playing on normal with "see everything" mod with a control pad a weak console system and expecting Assassins Creed non game. Not surprising my friends. Not surprising.

Crap, my whole message system is broke. I can't edit, can't reply, can't quote. Every time I try to do one of those things the message box just comes up completely empty. I also can't paste anything into the message box. What the hell is going on? Do any of you have any idea what happened?

@kalipekona:

GS is kinda broken matey, it's not just you.

Totally. In fact, Total Biscuit's video made me ignore all the bad press altogether.

yes

i can't get into it now, but the wrong gaming journalists have way too much influence.

Gameplay is pretty dull unfortunately gets pretty repetitive fast, I think Dishonored did Thief style game style alot better.

@ MlauTheDaft

Thanks for your reply. That sucks that gamespot is having difficulties, but I've actually had this problem for a while now and it's just really getting to me. Also, all of you seem to be able to quote and reply, and I was able to before. I just don't understand what happened.

I liked Dishonored but I personally think it was overrated. It is much more of an action game than Thief is. Not everybody likes slow, deliberate stealth games, but I certainly do and so far I am enjoying Thief more than I enjoyed Dishonored.

*(I can finally reply and quote and whatnot. I logged out and logged back in and that seemed to fix the problem).

Terrible series which should have remained on pc.

The first person perspective needs to stop. It's a terrible way to play games especially stealth games. Devs need to go back to strictly third person. Playing as a pair of hands, or a gun barrel isn't fun, clever, immersive, or intuitive.

@sts106mat: the last of us did stealth, and immersion, better than any stealth fp game last gen, or Thief. The immersion comes from how developed the world, and the characters are, not by trying to stimulate a fp by playing as a pair of hands. It's a tired gimmick that's worn out its welcome.

It doesn't surprise me to see such stupidity coming from a sony fanboy such as you. The first person perspective works damn good in this game and feels way better than 3rd person for stealth games.

And BTW Thief did more for gaming than you will ever realize.

I get by with some page refreshing.

I expect they're working to fix the problems, since the bugs I suffer vary in nature over time.

As of right now for example, I can't use the text editing panel because it assumes I want to leave the page with an unfinished post.

Edit:

Something like [b] text [/b] might work but I only really know C# and SQL, so I'm not sure about the specific syntax.

tpp takes away all tension from stealth and kills immersion. Also..lol....was The Last of Us the first stealth game you've played. Because it's extremely simple, even compared to many modern stealth games, let alone to masterpieces that Thief 1 and 2 were.

I watched TotalBiscuit's vid and I have to say I agree with him about the menus. The set of options they give the player to customize his/her experience is just amazing!!! I would love if this became industry standard.

Thief is new Menu-King!

The stealth aspects in The Last of Us were completely and utterly mediocre.

post some pics maxed out i want to see how it looks on pc cuz on ps4 it looks like shit and on xbone its completely laughable

@silversix_:

Just watch TB's "WTF is...". It's should give you an idea about it's spectacular shadows and lighting.

The very fact its reception is so polarizing makes me want to get it even more.

@sts106mat:

Well, no, turns out, the industry and also the community, agree with me, seeing as how the last of us won more game of the Year awards than any other game last generation and also stands at a 95 on Metacritic with a 9.1 user score:, compared to thiefs 69 score with the 4.1 user score: The last of us clearly does what it does better and in droves when compared to thief.

Does the ai get buggy sometimes, sure. But I can count on one hand the number of times it happened on my 4 playthroughs, and it obviously didnt effect many critics or users enioyment of the game considering its success.

Thiefs protaginist garrett is not interesting, nor are the characters you run across. They are cookie cutter. Thief also has issues with ai. Detection algorithms either working from too great a distance, or staight up not working at all.

The gameplay mechanics also tend to be clunky, which I find is pretty common among most games which are played in the fp.

If anything, stealth is meant to be played in 3rd p. Playing in fp is unnatural, disadvantageous, and doesnt enhance the experience.

I'm jus going to Gamefly it.

I'm glad your not a games designer. OH SO GLAD.

Screenshot that I took today. I have it basically maxed out

I'll probably pick it up eventually. The reviews have been odd. The ones that really disliked the game seem to focus an awful lot on the shitty story and the narrative disjunction in the game (see Giant Bomb's review), which is something I really could give a shit less about. TB seemed to like it, and I tend to trust his opinion.

If you want to go by scores The Last of US flopped badly here, getting 8.0 at Gamespot. It might be higher score than the new Thief, but it's lower than Thief; THe Dark Project, Thief 2, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Batman Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham City, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Far Cry 3. So much for "best stealth"..lol.

Any compared the PC/Ps4/Xboner versions yet?

The reviews I read for the PS4 & X1 focused primarily on gameplay. The visuals were actually one of the few areas that received modest praise. As R3FURBISHED mentioned up thread, the game's incoherent story, frequent linearity and inconsistencies in the city's design is what drew the ire of most critics. This game has mucho problems on all systems, and it's not frame rate or graphics related.

Exactly and considering this are the devs behind Deus Ex HR as well i have the feeling this new Thief is a really good game

The PC version was made by Nixxes, they are great when it comes to PC ports/versions.

They also made Tomb Raider, Hitman Absolution (both amazing PC versions), Deus Ex and a bunch of other Eidos/Squenix games.

Who's fault is that when the reviewers were provided the console version, and not the PC version ?

@way2funny said:

Screenshot that I took today. I have it basically maxed out

That cast lighting looks really great.

@AdrianWerner: Son, my first stealth game was Metal Gear on the MSX. I've been at this a lot longer than you have or anyone else on this forum. Fp stealth games are casual, clunky garbage.

sure you have...

It saddens me the fact that we haven't evolved much with AI in video games. There are few games that have tried, but never really reached their goal.

@lostrib: not all of us on this forum are toddler gamers, my child.

Atari 2600 my first console

Apple IIc first pc

You not believing me doesn't change the past, or present. I've done this longer than the bulk of gamers on this site.

Deal with it.

and you writing it on the internet doesn't make it true