Randy Smith gets the boot from Thief 3
Saturday, April 3rd, 2004 - 7:42pm
Quote:
Having said that, there comes a time in every project's development when the creative heavy-lifting is done and the job of final bug-fixing and preparation for ship begins. That's where Thief 3 is right now, a fact that led to some internal friction and unresolvable conflicts that led to Randy's departure.
Now what the f*ck does that mean? How the hell can a project entering the final stages of development cause unresovable conflicts? Unless of course someone wants to shove the game out the door, and someone doesn't think it's ready yet.
Reading that thread makes me a very sad panda. 
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
Between that and playing Deus Ex 2 I am very worried about the quality of Theif III. The fact that he even admitted ""some internal friction and unresolvable conflicts"" makes me think there''s some bad blood going on there. I''d sorta like to know what''s going on but I also understand Randy being reluctant to publicly say what happened. Airing dirty laundry is sorta bad form. That said, he should just tell me
"If I was Obama I'd have made a joke about that. Then again, if I was Obama I'd have f*cked up my own campaign long ago by making c*ck jokes." - 1Dgaf
"Poor Achmed, only three days away from retirement ... from Jihad." - Mike Nelson
Please, for the love of God...don''t let Thief III suck.
Money can't buy you happiness...but it can buy you a boat big enough to sell right up next to it!-David Lee Roth
Wow, and just when my hopes were boasted by the new site and some positive signs this happens.
Over at the ionstorm/TTLG forums people are set to explode regarding all the negativity and built up vitriol of the last couple of months. Whether they are right to do so or not we''ll see soon, but I think Thief III is going to be a make or break title for Ion storm''s PC development, between this and the awful sounding Deus Ex: Clan wars ... they may have some explaining to do to fans...again.
Red herring or the biggest fall from grace since Romero? The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." - Churchill
Thief III shall be the big disappointment of 2004. You heard it from me first.
"Men like sex, thus boobies! Oogaba!" - dejanzie
"If ads put your sanity to the test
come on down to Rat Boy's nest!
light up a stogie, and soon you'll see
how rock can be commercial-free!
'I'd hit it!'" - HP Lovesauce
damn you, Rat Boy!
I didnt care much about DeusEx 2 as even the first one didnt hook me THAT much. But Thief...uh...please Jesus, if you do exist and care a little, do a little miracle and gain Gamers`Love +5, alright?
I`m Artsy Partsy Gun For Hire
I''ve never played any of the Thief games. Would Thief II still be worth playing or would it just feel too dated now?
Xbox Live: hubbinsd
Can''t recommend them enough.
I''ve just replayed Thief Gold this month and despite its aged appearance it still plays wonderfully. The Gameplay, VO talent, music and cinematics are exceptionally well polished.
Thief II looks and plays even better IMO.
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." - Churchill
I think their biggest problem is their desire to ""embrace"" the console market and at the same time somehow continue to appease their PC fans..
Add to that their relative inexperience in the console market development and I think they''ve ended up creating an engine that really doesnt work for the types of games they are creating sequals too..
Both DX and Thief to work IMO need large sprawling maps with plenty of options and space to work in..
The tiny maps of DX and slightly less tiny maps of Thief 3 simply do not work.
They would have been better off developing new titles with that engine and not pursuing sequals.
Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarter
85's face the truth you're too dumb.
http://www.myspace.com/armyofthepharaohs
I agree with everything Gameguru just said. The whole ""Hay guys, let''s make it a console game! *squeal*"" attitude is what I believe screwed up Deus Ex 2. It''s not bad to make a console game, it''s not even bad to make a cross-platform game. It''s bad to make a game with the explicit purpose of making it simpler so people can understand it. It not only assumes your target audience is simpler than you''d like, you''re targeting a new demographic at the expense of your existing fanbase. Which is risky in and of itself, doubly so when you think they''re all stupid.
If you''re not making the game you want to make, and instead making a game you think other people will like if you only dumb it down enough, you''re screwed. From the interviews and behind the scenes stuff I saw during development, in retrospect that''s what it looks like happened with DX2.
"If I was Obama I'd have made a joke about that. Then again, if I was Obama I'd have f*cked up my own campaign long ago by making c*ck jokes." - 1Dgaf
"Poor Achmed, only three days away from retirement ... from Jihad." - Mike Nelson
I guess it just sneaked up on him...
What backstabbers those other guys turned out to be!
I hope Ion Storm gave him a decent slow-fall.
*badum**psssh*
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
Developers:
You can ruin my expectations for Civilization III, smash my dreams of Unreal II, and butcher Pool of Radiance II, but so help me God...
Don''t mess up Thief III!
Or I swear I''ll go out and buy a Mac!
"I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb." -Charles K.
Make a good console game and port it or make a good PC game and port it. Don''t try to make some sort of freak hybrid, it leaves both platforms flapping in the wind. So, I agree
I find this quote from the official forums mildly amusing.
If Thief III sucks I think the turn-around on Warren Spector worship will be staggering. I might even have to change the Game Section quote!
Certis beat me to it. - Elysium
I don''t see where the decisions these guys made for DX2 are directly related to the XBox port of the game. Unified ammo, no skills, these could as well happen in a PC only game.
Where I do see the correlation is the tiny levels. And when I look at Halo or Serious Sam and compare these to the levels of DX2 on the Xbox it looks to me, as if the engine is not capable of streaming level content without heavy modification. I mean look at UC2. They had to rewrite the renderer to pull this game off properly this time. UC suffered from small levels as well.
After all, what sane person would try to sell small levels as a feature? My guess is they sat down and realised that rewriting the renderer would take to long or that they had no clue how to do it.
As for Randy''s departure, I think the EIDOS execs want this game out now, because they see how SC:PT sells and they fear they will get butchered when the two games are compared. Randy disagreed and was let go. I think we will just have to wait and see what this means for the final game.
No hay banda!
Um, tons of people are complaining about the map size and loading times. It is one of the aspects to be criticized most as far as I''ve followed the feedback. You could basically have 1 Fantastillion GB of RAM in your PC and it wouldn''t matter a bit since...
To quote The Warren. They also admitted that not fully adapting the interface to PC needs (e.g. drag&drop etc.) was a mistake they made.
I''m not sure if you consider loading times a minor issue, but to me they break the flow of a game, especially if they either occure very often or are very long. I also enjoyed the occasionally huge levels Thief I&II had, like the city missions. The fog approach doesn''t sound that thrilling to me.
See I fully agree on the tiny levels and loading times. But that is not a limitation of the XBOX, but one of the engine or limited development capabilites.
A counter example to what Warren says are both Splinter Cell games, Halo and Yager. I don''t hear anyone complain about tiny levels and long loading times with these.
And if these games can pull it off, that even more means that the Xbox was not the reason the levels are so small.
No hay banda!
See, I''m not saying that the Xbox is an automated machine with ""make it tiny""-requirements, I''m not saying it couldn''t have been done better (although I wouldn''t want to compare Serious Sam or Yager to DX2 in terms of engine requirements...). But the point that matters is that Ion Storm didn''t see a better way in order to realize it. Had this been primarily (or independently) developed for PC, it certainly would have been different because they could have worked with a machine that more RAM and separate VRAM. I''m not saying that the Xbox is responsible for this, it is Ion Storm developing it for Xbox I''m referring to.
I think our arguments are not very far away from each other then
.
No hay banda!
Agreed Gameguru, that seems to be the most important thing for fans atm.
Huge levels are essential to the Thief experience, you''ve only got to look at levels such as Assassins, Song of Caverns(T1) or Life of the party (T2) to see massive levels where you start with a handful of objectives but through story telling and suprise you end up doing something totally different (usually something suitably Garrett-like)
Exploration and a feeling that when you get in, you''ve also got to get the hell out somehow are key to making Thief the thinkers shooter, where planning and the unexpected allows emergant situations to occur and less of the on-rails tiny modules setup which lets face it would damage one of the most atmospheric game settings available. (Thats the one flaw I''d level at System shock 2 if you tortured me into naming one)
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." - Churchill
From all the bigname games that will be released this year (Doom 3, HL2, etc) Thief 3 was the one I was looking forward to the most. And now it looks as if it might also be the one that disappoints me the most.
Ignoring all of the gameplay aspects and engine quibbles the thing I''m left worrying about the most is the story. To me the story was an essential element to both Thief 1 and Thief 2. I can''t imagine caring much about Thief 3 if the story is meh.
With Randy now gone are there any people left in the development team that worked on the originals?
Swing harder! Swing harder!
-- Lilarcor, Baldur's Gate 2
Chris Carollo works at Ion Storm as lead programmer, he was also lead prog/senior prog for Thief, System Shock, Deus EX and DX:IW. So the dark engine was his baby as is the modified Unreal warfare engine.
Art wise I''m not sure, the original music guys are on board as are the people who make the great cinematics... so is Stephan Russell the voice of Garrett.
On the design side there is only Warren Spector I think, and frankly he had very little hand in the Thief series, in fact he''s on record as saying he disliked the gameplay elements of the originals as being too linear and stealthy/slow.
Go figure as they say.
Edit: Sorry ALG, I thought programmer and developer were the same thing. Doh!
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." - Churchill
Eric Brosius, the sound guy, is the only full-time employee at ISA I can think of, since Lulu Lamer and Emil Pagliarulo left earlier in development. Although they did contract Terri Brosius and Dan Thron to reprise their roles as writer and director of cinematics, respectively. So there''s shouldn''t be any need to worry about the story not being up to scratch.
EDIT: Oh yes, forgot about Carollo. But he''s lead programmer, not developer, iirc.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
Thanks guys.
D''oh! I forgot they had Steven Russell back as Garrett. And a good thing it is too.
I hope Dan Thron is playing some part in the cinematics. I loved the ones from the first and second games! I did read somewhere on TTLG that the quotes in the cutscenes will be back.
At least it should be out in a few months (Gamespot speculation) so we''ll finally know if it''s good or not. No more waiting and worrying.
Swing harder! Swing harder!
-- Lilarcor, Baldur's Gate 2
Let''s not get out of hand here, just wait till it comes out and play the demo. I can''t really criticize Thief III until I play it. My gripes were with DX2 and the attitude Ion Storm displayed while developing it. I''m witholding judgement on Thief III until I play the demo.
"If I was Obama I'd have made a joke about that. Then again, if I was Obama I'd have f*cked up my own campaign long ago by making c*ck jokes." - 1Dgaf
"Poor Achmed, only three days away from retirement ... from Jihad." - Mike Nelson
Damn you and your voice of reason, Pyro! Why can''t you let us snipe and bitch and complain without any cause like you normally do?
"Men like sex, thus boobies! Oogaba!" - dejanzie
"If ads put your sanity to the test
come on down to Rat Boy's nest!
light up a stogie, and soon you'll see
how rock can be commercial-free!
'I'd hit it!'" - HP Lovesauce
Yeah! And where the hell are your clothes anyway?
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
I left them at your place baby
"If I was Obama I'd have made a joke about that. Then again, if I was Obama I'd have f*cked up my own campaign long ago by making c*ck jokes." - 1Dgaf
"Poor Achmed, only three days away from retirement ... from Jihad." - Mike Nelson
So is he a heteromexual or a homomexual?
"Men like sex, thus boobies! Oogaba!" - dejanzie
"If ads put your sanity to the test
come on down to Rat Boy's nest!
light up a stogie, and soon you'll see
how rock can be commercial-free!
'I'd hit it!'" - HP Lovesauce
Leave it up to you guys to turn a discussion about Thief 3 into something mexual...
Swing harder! Swing harder!
-- Lilarcor, Baldur's Gate 2
I ain''t washing them for you! What am I, your mom?!
I''m a metromexual BTW.
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
seems you sure had the hell of a ride
No hay banda!