Thief trailer and discussion

[KLSymph]

There is a debut trailer for Thief. I look forward to the game, as that series is still my favorite.  However, I would like to lay out a small list of modern game design concepts which I feel is inappropriate to the Thief franchise, the application of which I believe will instantly turn the game into a steaming pile of burrick.

These concepts include:

• Sandbox setting.  As discussed in my Deadly Shadows review, sandbox gameplay didn't really work out well.  It doesn't fit the standard Thief gameplay of "you have a goal, go to it, also steal everything along the way". It is better for Thief to have more focused level design.
• In-mission loading screens, in-mission cutscenes.  Anything that breaks gameplay immersion.  Immersion is really important for getting in the Thief mindset.  Chopping a level into parts with non-interaction in between is not cool. However, I'd like cutscenes for mission briefings back. Those were great.
• Dumb, pointless achievements/trophies. I thought Deus Ex: Human Revolution's popup for "you completed a level with stealth" was kind of condescending as a Deus Ex player. Getting it for playing Thief would be nothing less than a slap in the face.  Thief traditionally has interesting, real challenges worth attaching trophies to.
• Morality meters. Dichotomous morality as a theme. Let Garrett be his own character, and let the player choose his own actions. Stilted morality plays don't mesh with the series feel.
• Co-op play. Do not put it in Thief or I will moss you in your sleep.

Also, it'd be cool if we could get a good level editor right out of the gate this time.

[Brian]

Did you mean to put this into the game discussion forum?

[KLSymph]

I meant it more as an appreciation (followed by massive complaining) than for actual discussion about the game, but if you think it's more appropriate for the gaming board, please move the post. Sorry about that.

[Brian]

Massive complaining is kind of one of the things we're all about.

I think what would be better than the removal of trophies/achieves (a controversial move, I expect), the option to disable them showing up on your screen.  But that would be better in general than just in one specific game.  That being said, the trophies/achieves in DE:HR only showed up one time per mission, and then, well, you had them.

They also gave you a similar notice that you were getting bonus EXP for pulling it off, though.

That being said, I somewhat disagree with the message you share there, though for what I consider a good reason: If you're trying to pull off a 'no one has seen me, ever' run, knowing when you've blown it is really useful, as that lets you know that you need to start over.  If I remember correctly, classically Thief would let you check your status in-mission and monitor that.

DE:HR and Dishonored both give you no feedback until the end of the mission, which (I mentioned in my Dishonored review) can span as many as six different loading-screen separated areas.  So not knowing for certain if you were sneaky and knocked that guy out before he went, "Oh, no!  The dude about to knock me out is right there, knocking me out!" or if you were spotted just before you tagged the loading-screen-triggering-door-to-the-next-area....

Of course, you also comment that you'd like to see no loading screens in a mission.  I agree with that in theory, but in practice, it mandates shorter levels -- their size is generally a technical limitation, not a design limitation.

I'm starting to think that Sandbox, by and large, has been overplayed and badly done enough that people are starting to move away from it.  This is unfortunate in some regards, but in others, well, they weren't getting it right most of the time, so for now, probably it's just as well.

Morality in video games can be handled well or poorly, but unfortunately is traditionally handled poorly.  I wouldn't mind a good implementation, but it's been a while since we've seen one.  I do like the idea of letting player choice change the ending, but having that be as simple as 'actions have consequences' is entirely doable without using a morality meter.

Finally, hate for co-op?  ;_;  Why?

[Dracos]

Well, it's done with Unreal.  I guess Unreal Editor would work?

[KLSymph]

I think what would be better than the removal of trophies/achieves (a controversial move, I expect), the option to disable them showing up on your screen.

I'm not against the idea of having trophies/achievements as much as the more general idea of having those things for events which no player really should be proud of. For example, in DMC Devil May Cry, you get an achievement for receiving your new weapons, even though those are unavoidable plot events. 

Now in the original Thief: the Dark Project, probably the closest equivalent would be on level five ("Assassins") where you first pick up the lockpicks. That event simply has you standing in a black market store with the picks already bought and in your inventory along with a readable note on how to use them. That's it. When you take one step in any direction, an arrows flies into the room and kills the seller, your existing mission objectives instantly fail, and you go off to solve the mystery of who wanted you dead and then inflict hardcore vengeance.

Now imagine that there's an achievement/trophy for getting the lockpicks. What exactly would that add to this experience?  You don't need a trophy for that.  You don't need it even for beating the level (by robbing Ramirez blind).  But if, say, you not only robbed Ramirez blind without him detecting you but also locked him into his basement money room and logjammed the corridor outside with the unconscious bodies of his entire mansion guard staff, I could see that being worth a trophy.

That being said, I somewhat disagree with the message you share there, though for what I consider a good reason: If you're trying to pull off a 'no one has seen me, ever' run, knowing when you've blown it is really useful, as that lets you know that you need to start over.  If I remember correctly, classically Thief would let you check your status in-mission and monitor that.

You could do that. I support it. Though if you wanted to mandate a full ghost run rather than making it optional (a possibility for higher difficulties), you can just fail the mission when you get seen. I think I remember some fanmissions with that requirement.

Of course, you also comment that you'd like to see no loading screens in a mission.  I agree with that in theory, but in practice, it mandates shorter levels -- their size is generally a technical limitation, not a design limitation.

It's both. Technical requirements are born from designs, after all. You'll have to make design sacrifices to fit inside technical limits, but I'd rather have levels with short, focused gameplay that aren't super-pretty, over beautiful long-winded setpiece levels broken up with loads.  That's just my preference for Thief games.

I'm starting to think that Sandbox, by and large, has been overplayed and badly done enough that people are starting to move away from it.  This is unfortunate in some regards, but in others, well, they weren't getting it right most of the time, so for now, probably it's just as well.

My problem with Thief's sandbox, as done in Deadly Shadows, is that I've always felt Thief levels had a somewhat tight purpose holding together the "freedom to choose how to approach the task" business.  Garrett knew what he's there to do, even as the player chooses how he does it.  When you transition to sandbox, suddenly the player has to decide what he's there to do, which sounds a whole lot better than it is in practice because that decision tends to collapse into maximizing the amount of stuff you steal from the sandbox.  I'm not sure if I'm describing this well, but for Thief games, maximizing the amount of stuff you steal isn't the point; you're there for some other, primary purpose like grabbing a unique treasure or finding specific information, and even though you do steal everything else, doing so is actually more proof that you've fully explored a unique level than an activity of its own value, especially since you can't keep the money across multiple missions.  In Deadly Shadows, fully robbing the sandbox feels like a rote activity, there to allow you to pointlessly hoard money.  Though that was also because the sandbox environment was so small and static,

Morality in video games can be handled well or poorly, but unfortunately is traditionally handled poorly.  I wouldn't mind a good implementation, but it's been a while since we've seen one.  I do like the idea of letting player choice change the ending, but having that be as simple as 'actions have consequences' is entirely doable without using a morality meter.

Thief's implementation of the theme of choice-and-consequence has typically been mostly a part of its story narrative, and endings have been mostly "not up to choice".  There have always been the twin themes of prophecy and Garrett-being-horribly-screwed-by-the-prophecy.  That conflicts with any attempt to make a player choice mechanic, which I think is fine because that's consistent with the Garrett's snide character, the oppressive setting, and all the other elements that make the story fit together.  Gameplay-wise, there have been some attempts at player choice (for example, steal a widow's treasure, and find a hitman outside your door in the next level).  They've mostly fell flat for me.  I'd rather have uncompromised cohesion with the theme than extra player choice for the sake of choice.  As with the sandbox, choice is kind of overrated.

Finally, hate for co-op?  ;_;  Why?

As with my complaint on IRC some weeks ago, I've noticed a concerning trend of existing survival horror franchises like Dead Space, F.E.A.R., and Resident Evil suddenly having co-op grafted onto them.  It strikes me as bizarre for survival horror to have that mechanic since it really changes the fear dynamic when you have someone watching your back, and the Thief series definitely has a secondary survival horror aspect.  Co-op works well when the franchise is designed around it, like Left 4 Dead, but Thief was designed around the loner Garrett.  The existing elements don't seem to click with the concept.

Gameplay-wise it's hard to imagine what kind of changes would be need to be brought to the Thief experience to accommodate co-op. It's a pretty common situation in a Thief game to sit in one spot in the shadows just watching the world do its thing, for even ten minutes at a time... not exactly gripping teamplay.  You could make the game more action-oriented, but that's kinda not how Thief rolls.

To be fair, I don't play much co-op, so this is just my thought experiment.  There's been some attempts in the Thief community to try that concept with modding, but I don't know how they've worked out.

Well, it's done with Unreal.  I guess Unreal Editor would work?

Would it? I've never seen Unreal Editor, and I only have a shallow understanding of Dromed, the original Thief editor (mostly assorted complaints about how hard it was to use picked up from forums). It'd be nice to edit levels in the PS4 version, as is possible InFamous 2.

[KLSymph]

There is a developer interview available. I have a few thoughts on it, though I apologize that my quoting is chopped up and not completely accurate because the fellow has an accent and rambles a bit.

From the beginning, it's really not a question of how many polygons more we can push or textures or sound [...] it's really about the experience we want to give you as a player, but we need to bring you into our universe; the immersion will be just amazing.

Emphasis on immersive experience over pure technical quality?  Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about.  I'm on board with this.  Having played quite a lot of the old Thief games even into the modern graphics era, I would even go as far as saying that poorer graphics makes it somewhat easier to suspend disbelief.  I am much more interested in having top-notch voice acting than even middle-of-the-line graphics.

Unfortunately, it seems that Stephen Russell won't reprise his role as Garrett.  I think that'll hurt a bit, but on the other hand, I think if the current VA gives a similar enough delivery (and the one in the trailer seems close enough) then I can look past it.

We are kind of Medieval Victorian, we are about to be in the Industrial period [...] You have this conflict, there is this City, ruled by the Baron, the guy trying to control everything.  There is this charismatic leader, [name I can't make out], trying to speaking to the population, trying to start the revolution, because according to him it cannot continue like that.

That sounds fine, but it makes me worried: will there be a supernatural element?  The supernatural element of Thief is the foundation upon the original Hammer versus Pagan conflict in the first Thief, as well as the basis for most of the horror in the series.  Thief 2 removed a significant amount of supernatural, replacing it with something along the lines of cybernetic body-horror, which I don't think filled the void.  I don't want to lose the supernatural angle here, and miss the next Haunted Cathedral or Shalebridge Cradle.

So if you want to follow the story, there is the classic missions [...] but between each mission, you come back in your hideout, and your hideout is in the city. [...] We divided the city in different districts, [...] and these districts are open [...] so we are going to have sidequests to do.  [...] You will also see an evolution.  After each mission [...] the city will be alive and following your story.

AAAAAAHHH.  That sure sounds like sandbox, and I was disappointed last time with this talk of using the City as a hub between missions, with the City changing to reflect your actions.  That's been done, and it's not as it good as it looks on paper.

In addition to what I said in the previous post about the sandbox, the problem with a changing hub location is that there is probably no way to carry it far enough to feel real.  If we look at fairly recent games, in my case Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Assassin's Creed 3 (I haven't played Dishonored, so I don't know if that's a better parallel), what gamedevs do to evoke change in an existing map mostly involves cheap shortcuts.

One shortcut is to keep the map exactly as it is, but change the NPCs.  You know how this works, and you might think, well, this is something that happens in real life.  People come and go.  That's true, but in video games it fails to provide verisimilitude because it draws attention to how static the game world is, even where it shouldn't be.  In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you can attack some gang members in an apartment building the starting city, Detroit.  When you come back to Detroit later, the gang isn't there anymore, but apparently their furniture is still exactly the same, no police have taped off the area, the other gang hasn't expanded into the abandoned turf, and the neighbors aren't reacting to their absence.  In Assassin's Creed 3, the difference between a city controlled by the British and the same city after you've stabbed the Americans to domination seems to be that the patrolling guards have been palette-swapped from red to blue--especially galling when the game's historical notes often talk about how the British occupation involved pulling down buildings for wood, which is not at all represented in the game.  In Thief: Deadly Shadows, you can seriously rob the same house for treasure every single night, knocking out the same guard every time, and at no point I can remember does anybody seriously try to fortify the place or leave an ambush.  It doesn't follow even a cursory chain of cause and effect.

Another change-depicting shortcut is to hamhandedly control access to map sections.  The game cordons off a section of the map depending on story progression, letting you into sections that corresponding to the time position you're supposed to be in and cutting you from those you're not.  In Human Revolution, they just put down a wall in the middle of the street in front of Sarif HQ to represent the change that there is supposed to be a huge protest going on around the Sarif HQ building (shown in cutscene).  Assassin's Creed 3 kept the Valley Forge region of the frontier behind a wall of not-in-this-memory until the story's year progresses to a point in the Revolution that fits with the army camp found in that region.  Thief... well, Dark Shadows fences off the City's regions but that wasn't as much about depicting change to the City as it was plain controlling game progression. In all cases, the static parts of the sandbox are where you can can go freely, while the time-dependent parts are denied until the right time.  You can call it a depiction of change, but it feels so blatantly artificial it pulls me out of the experience.  Showing change should involve some first-hand experience of before-and-after, and this technique forbids you from experiencing one of them.  You might as well sweep it under the rug and focus on something else.

Now I won't say I can't understand why these shortcuts are necessary from a production perspective (see this timely blog post by Shamus Young), but they are so contrary to the Thief experience as found in the Looking Glass Studio games, with really not that much gain in return, that I wonder if developers should just let it go.  You don't need to show change to the city using a hub location and sandbox gameplay.  The original Thief games reused maps all the time, and it didn't feel all that bad, because there you at least have the rationale that "this part of the map is fenced off because your objective isn't in that direction" instead of "this part of the map is fenced off because the devs don't want to reveal it".  To get the right feel of change, you have to balance what you change and what you keep the same, so that a comparison can be made.  The usual shortcuts don't hit that balance for me.

It may be that the developers are thinking about using the Assassin's Creed 3 homestead model, where compartmentalized changes to a map spring into existence.  That may work (assuming the changes happen between missions instead of right in front of you after you do a sidequest like AC3), but if that's the plan, I hope they carry it out pervasively enough that it doesn't seem forced and gimmicky.

[Brian]

I'm not against the idea of having trophies/achievements as much as the more general idea of having those things for events which no player really should be proud of. For example, in DMC Devil May Cry, you get an achievement for receiving your new weapons, even though those are unavoidable plot events.

It's been said before, but evidently it bears repeating; that sort of achieve isn't actually intended for the player to enjoy and appreciate.  It's there so that the developer/producer can look at stats and say, "X people have the 'you ran our game' achieve, so we can extrapolate from there how many of our users got that far.  We also see that 'level/stage completion achieves' drop off toward the end; this informs us that around 30% of our content is enjoyed only by around 10% of our players." and so on.

Some achieves are there for you to show off and brag, certainly.  But a good number are just there for tracking purposes.

Finally, hate for co-op?  ;_;  Why?

As with my complaint on IRC some weeks ago, I've noticed a concerning trend of existing survival horror franchises like Dead Space, F.E.A.R., and Resident Evil suddenly having co-op grafted onto them.  It strikes me as bizarre for survival horror to have that mechanic since it really changes the fear dynamic when you have someone watching your back, and the Thief series definitely has a secondary survival horror aspect.  Co-op works well when the franchise is designed around it, like Left 4 Dead, but Thief was designed around the loner Garrett.  The existing elements don't seem to click with the concept.

I really didn't catch a survival horror vibe from Thief game I played.  When I got to the one level in the first game that made me give up in disgust (no, seriously ... hordes and hordes of superdurable undead that you can't sneak around very well?  What exactly is 'thief'like about this?) I felt more like, 'poorly implimented game about killing monsters forced into what had started out an interesting stealth game'.

I watched a friend finish the third game, though.  That didn't seem too bad, though there were a lot of questions that I didn't know the answer to, like the mechanical eye and the talking gem.

[KLSymph]

It's been said before, but evidently it bears repeating; that sort of achieve isn't actually intended for the player to enjoy and appreciate.  It's there so that the developer/producer can look at stats and say, "X people have the 'you ran our game' achieve, so we can extrapolate from there how many of our users got that far.  We also see that 'level/stage completion achieves' drop off toward the end; this informs us that around 30% of our content is enjoyed only by around 10% of our players." and so on.

I don't follow game development deeply enough to judge the usefulness and necessity of that for developers. My opinion as an end-user is that A) it's presented to the end-user as a thing to enjoy and appreciate even if it's not, B) it's still annoying for an end-user even if developers have a good reason for it and aren't there less annoying ways to get that information, and C) two out of four weapon achievements in DMC are in the second level so what's the point.

I really didn't catch a survival horror vibe from Thief game I played.  When I got to the one level in the first game that made me give up in disgust (no, seriously ... hordes and hordes of superdurable undead that you can't sneak around very well?  What exactly is 'thief'like about this?) I felt more like, 'poorly implimented game about killing monsters forced into what had started out an interesting stealth game'.

Sounds like Down in the Bonehoard or Haunted Cathedral.  While hordes of superdurable undead you can't sneak around easily doesn't sound too thief-ish, it's harder to say they don't sound pretty survival-horror. I can understand that some people are turned off, as that was reportedly why so much of the supernatural element was removed from Thief 2.  On the other hand, after getting used to it, I'd say that Thief is richer for having undead, because the human enemies quickly grow to be contemptible in their familiarity, and having this separate class of enemy adds variety in what kind of missions can be made.  Stealing from the dead has resonance, just as stealing from the rich, from the church, from other thieves, and so forth.

It can make you feel frustratedly helpless, I'll admit.  If you find it more frustrating than scary, I can't really speak to that, but I was more scared than frustrated.  But then again, when I played Thief the first time I was too scared to move for five minutes because of one searching (human) guard on the first level.

Regarding the impact of co-op, even if we leave aside the survival horror aspect, I think doing co-op will slide the gameplay rather sharply toward action, away from the series's slower, more methodical roots.  I don't think I can even imagine a multiplayer implementation of the existing core gameplay that wouldn't throw out the feel of the previous games, and in that case you might as well start with a new IP.  Which is fine, really.

I watched a friend finish the third game, though.  That didn't seem too bad, though there were a lot of questions that I didn't know the answer to, like the mechanical eye and the talking gem.

Well, from my second complaint post you won't be surprised to hear those depend on the supernatural elements in the first game.  Not sure if you'll care that I spoil a fifteen-year-old game, but I can say that the mechanical eye and the talking gem are the SAME THING (*scary noises*) and only be sort of lying.

The third game was not bad, but it had a lot of tradeoffs which I didn't agree with, so I can't help but look down on it a bit.

[KLSymph]

A preview editorial on a Thief tech demo.

The titular thief, Garrett, is a master at making away with items that are not his, and as the developers explained, the player is meant to feel powerful and skilled, rather than some newbie learning the ropes. To this end, Garrett has been equipped with some impressive abilities, including being able to peek around corners or objects without being spotted,

Not sure what's so impressive about it. I don't remember 1998 all that clearly, but I recall with astonishing vividness that Garrett was able to peek around corners even on my computer with less than 128 MB of RAM.  In fact, it was rather impressive how Garrett could wrap most of his body around a corner and grab something on the other side and still not be seen.

and slow down hand-to-hand combat in order to pick specific parts of your enemy's body to target.

This is something a Thief demo shouldn't brag about.  It's like I'm being sold on a lockpicking feature for a SoulCalibur game.  Why would you even put that in?  For all that is sacred in Thief, I just hope it's not a quick-time event.

Thus far, only a few of the game's weapons have been shown off - including the beloved blackjack club and a compound bow.

I'm somewhat curious if having an obviously artificial compound bow rather than a primitive shortbow means you can now hold a draw forever.

You may have bested many a stealth game in the past, but rest assured that Thief won't be a simple walk in the park. As I learned straight from the developers that showed us the game, the artificial intelligence in Thief is something that is only possible on next-gen hardware. Whereas in past games, a soldier might react in an "if, then" manner - for example, if a glass breaks, then walk towards the sound - your enemies in Thief won't be so predictable. Say you snuff out a lantern and attract the attention of a guard. At first, the enemy may simply mumble to himself that it must have been the wind, but should you do it again, the chances of the guard growing suspicious heightens. Do it a third time and he may launch an all-out sweep of the area, and each time is different.

This doesn't sound like next-gen technology. It sounds like last-last-last-gen technology, since back in 1998, you had to do action (usually jumping up and down on a noisy floor) more than once to attract a guard's attention.  Also, attracting a guard's attention by doing something suspicious multiple times is still if-then behavior.

Each guard also has a specific amount of expertise which will determine how they react to certain situations. A rookie may ignore a few more strange happenings than an experienced guard would, and if you cross paths with a particularly adept individual, you'll be given very little margin of error. This varied difficulty is designed to not only be more realistic, but also achieves the added bonus of creating more organic, original experiences for each player.

One day, instead of "we have classes of enemies with different behavior sets", I hope I'll hear "we have specific guards who have individual personalities, and behavior based on those personalities". So we have a rookie guard who's had only some basic training with a sword, so he's always stationed with a veteran guard, and while the vet fights defensively and holds the gate (because that's more important than chasing down every intruder), the rookie always run for help from another post before coming back to engage.  Or maybe this one guard, let's call him Benny, always comes to work totally drunk.  So the captain stripped him of the uniform and put him somewhere outside the wall, but if a thief comes by and thinks the drunkard singing to himself won't care when the thief tries to scale the wall, Benny suddenly shows his hobo powers and starts drunk-punching the thief out of nowhere.

That needs a lot more focused level design, but it's something already doable with existing Thief AI.  If you're trying to sell "organic, original experiences" it sells it a bit better than talk about adjusting paranoia levels between classes of enemies.  You might as well try to brag about "tougher enemies have more HP" for all the good that does.

Replacing the "gem" notification icon of previous Thief titles is a small orb that appears in the corner of the screen. The sphere appears bright when you are exposed and goes dark when you are hidden, but that's not the only mechanic in place; a dark shroud appears in the corners of the screen when you are creeping in the shadows to give you a visual cue without requiring you to look at a specific corner of the screen.

Fixing what ain't broke.  What's so bad about the light gem?  I liked the gem; it did its job rather elegantly by glowing bright when you're brightly lit to going dark when you're in the shade.  It's right there in the bottom-middle of the screen, symbolizing the central importance of the light mechanic in the Thief series.  It's easy to look for and to look at, giving you the information you need with a glance.  It also, more subtly, shows that Garrett's only really abnormal ability is his power to disappear into shadow in a way that other people can't, due to his Keeper training--the gem demonstrates that this power is really a part of him.  If you go a little meta, you can find Thief fanmissions where you play as someone other than Garrett, who must sneak but don't have the light gem.  If you don't play fanmissions, play System Shock 2, which was built using the same engine as Thief 1 and also has stealth in shadows, but again without the gem.  The added uncertainty makes sneaking quite different even if rest of the mechanics are very similar.

Conversely, I'd be happy if they got rid of the health indicator.  I think that Thief would benefit from the standard modern "screen goes red at the edges, then fades after you hide in a corner for a while" injury mechanic. That would be better for immersion than the existing method, a line of shields or crystal icons along the bottom of the screen.

Things like rain and fire are also more realistic than ever, and in a short tech demo that Eidos showed us to demonstrate this, a rainstorm poured down over the city. But this was no ordinary rain filter or overlay like you might see in most games - we were told that each individual raindrop was being rendered separately, and reacted independently when coming into contact with the terrain.

I played Assassin's Creed 3 with all its hype about day/night and realistic weather systems, and I have to say all that did was make visibility obnoxious to adjust to, while not appreciably making the gameplay interesting (deep snow in particular just made running slower, hooray).  If all that realistic rain also opens up new sneaking opportunities (for example, the guards are less sensitive to footfalls because of all the rain noise and new tactics become feasible because of it), I would certainly support it.  Otherwise, it's probably not worth the resources to make it happen.

[Brian]

I am impressed by your conviction in your ideals in game design.

I've got nothing else constructive to contribute, sorry; you have debated me to a standstill.

Hopefully they at least make the game reasonably moddable, or otherwise allow players to create custom missions.

[Dracos]

*glances briefly up*

There seems to be some discussion on Existing things.

The existing thief engine doesn't exist anymore, except maybe on some moldy backup drive somewhere in europe.  It's being done with Unreal and anything nonstandard in unreal is something that team is making themselves.  There's not some inherited AI or guard or jewel system that's being applied.

[KLSymph]

I am impressed by your conviction in your ideals in game design.

It's not so much conviction about game design as it is me liking Thief and me liking to complain. It's pretty easy for me to tell other people they're doing it wrong based on my finely-honed hindsight powers.

I've got nothing else constructive to contribute, sorry; you have debated me to a standstill.

When you say that, I feel I should hide because Rezantis is coming to mock me.

Hopefully they at least make the game reasonably moddable, or otherwise allow players to create custom missions.

Would be awesome. I used to think about making a Thief mission, before I picked up writing fanfiction as more my speed. Never managed to make Dromed work.

The existing thief engine doesn't exist anymore, except maybe on some moldy backup drive somewhere in europe.  It's being done with Unreal and anything nonstandard in unreal is something that team is making themselves.  There's not some inherited AI or guard or jewel system that's being applied.

Fair enough. My statement, as always, is strictly from an end-user perspective, in the sense that something exists in my user-familiarity because it's already been done in the series, not that it exists in any concrete, practical sense such as in actual code.  I believe it would be easy to create in Unreal what was done in the Dark Engine, and I believe this with the certainty you always find in people who don't know what they're talking about.

[KLSymph]

Dracos says that previous Thief mechanics don't necessarily exist in the new engine.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/4/26/4269912/thief-reboot-impeded-by-office-politics-high-level-departures

The current version of Thief barely resembles the initial concept, says a source. The vertical slice doesn't load inside Thief's current heavily modified version of Unreal Engine 3. Many programming tricks were necessary to run the current demonstration, like turning off non-playable character AI — the engine has trouble when too many characters are on screen.

It turns out that currently developed Thief mechanics also don't necessarily exist in the new engine.

Dracos was more right than I thought.

Now I'm sad.

[KLSymph]

Some thoughts on Thief's E3 gameplay demo, assuming that this is real and the development hell news I mentioned previous was all a horrible dream:

I got nothing to say about Eagle Vision.  I mean Focus. That mechanic continues to not especially appeal to me, especially since slap-a-filter-on-the-screen mechanics give me headaches.  Why can't one of these things make the color palette brighter instead of more faded and monochrome?  Well, okay, it's so that object highlighting will have more contrast.  But why can't I find a version that doesn't make the game more ugly?

I do like the slide.  That seems like the kind of new mechanic that opens up gameplay and level design options. Certainly more than the last one, Deadly Shadows's hug-the-wall mechanic.  The slide animation is kind of abrupt when done from a standstill or creeping walk, though. I think you should need to have a running start, to avoid Garrett becoming Mega Man.

Now that I've seen the darkened screen edge as a replacement for the light gem indicator of being hidden, it doesn't seem to fit well for me.  It seems that the screen edge creeps in when you change from running to sneaking, but blinks out if you're suddenly exposed to light.  This... yeah, I'm okay with this.  It's not the most elegant way to handle it, but I can see it being useful.  But while I can probably get used to the visual effect, this particular one suggests "tunnel vision" to me, as if when my character is hidden he's focusing on the bright portion and away from peripheral vision.  This conflicts with Thief's traditional gameplay, where being hidden is when the player is safe to take a breath, look around carefully, and think about what to do next.  It's when you're exposed that you want to focus on dealing with what's in front of you and then get out of the light as quickly as possible.  This mechanic inverts that association.

I'm not a huge fan of the Deus Ex: Human Revolutions-style takedown where the camera goes third-person for a cinematic shot and then brings you back to first person.  It's appropriate when you're a cybernetically enhanced brawler doing cool executions, but that's not what Thief is really about.  I don't think a guy who needs the hand dexterity to pick locks should go around punching guards in the face.

I'm neutral about the Assassin's Creed-style giant inventory ring.  Certainly I've used it in Assassin's Creed and Deus Ex: HR where it's been fine, and I won't say that the traditional Thief inventory selection wheel where you have to manually dial through the item list is tons better. However, the old inventory wheel (which were small icons on the corners of the screen) didn't interrupt gameplay the same way, and more readily gives the sense that you're digging through your pockets.  I can't tell from the video, but I hope that the new inventory popup doesn't pause the game while you're in there.  You haven't lived until you've found yourself elbow-deep in inventory while being attacked in melee.

There is a lot more on-screen popups than before.  While old Thief had new-objective popups and captions, this one has popups everywhere.  Tutorial stuff, context button cues, loot values, EXP, object captions, the auto-save icon, the area name, guard alertness indicator... it makes the main part of the screen very cluttered sometimes.  This is another "for gameplay" mechanic that sacrifices immersion for accessibility.  I won't judge the game poorly for having them, but hopefully most of those popups can be turned off in the options.

Wait, why does Thief have an EXP mechanic?  This better not be a prelude to Garrett leveling up.

I want to say some good things, but being a basic gameplay demo, there's not a lot of wow factor in this video.  The level looks decent, and I do appreciate the verticality point since I mentioned in my Deadly Shadows review that I like use of vertical space in Thief games.