**Thief 3 Review Thread** - You finished the game? Then get in here!

[warcrow]

My system specs:
MSI K7N
2800XP
Radeon 9700 PRO
1GB Kingston PC2700
120GB Maxtor 7200 RPM (8MB cache)


GRAPHICS:
One thing common with all the previous Thief games have been the graphic -they simply wernt very impressive. But I always accepted this without hinderance because the games were always so great! Not to mention the model's animation were always a pinnacle in the genre. But let it be know that Thief 3 is a beast (and boy does it require the horsepower to run it)! The GFX looks superb on my rig and ran smoothly once I did some tweaking.

Sound
Ah, one of my absolute favorite aspects of the game. I would just like to state now that I think the ambient music in this game is simple *one* of the most attractive and appealing in the business. I've beaten the game (just today) and as I'm writing this I still have one of the songs caught in my head. Thats pretty impressive for I can't remember the last time that has happened to me.

GAMEPLAY
Whats to say about this, eh? Everything that was in the previous games has been brought back (minus the rope arrows - boooo!) and in style. Everything has been reworked and redone for the better.

Bravo to the team responsible for the cut scenes! Very stylized! Got the story conveyed correctly! Voice action was top notch! I really have no complaints here.

Walking through a cluster of shadows only to see your own shadow creep up infront of you across the ground because of backlight completely rocked and only brought me in further into the game!

Gripes:
- No ropes arrows? Come on guys!
- This is either an ATI issue or an Ion Strom issue, but I don't care. The game was unstable for me until roughly 1/2 through the game. I eventually found out that I had to disable "Fast write" in the ATI control panel to get stability. What a pain. I was getting crashed randomly (and often!), even if I hit F10 to quick save. Ugh.
- I think the game could have been coded a little more efficiently. It took some tweaks and adjustments to get it to run smooth, but even then....it still felt kinda "slugish" when there was alot of action on the screen.

So what did you guys think of the game?

 

[skace]

How far is the asylum from the end of the game? I still don't have my pc running but it looks like it must have been close because now you are done with the game. I agree with your review, so I am just going to put down my specific comments as to what I didn't like or thought could use improvement.

AI Movement: I think they should have added people with scripted lives, much like Morrowind. Even if it was relatively simplistic, it would be cool to see a guy walk into a house and go to sleep / visa versa. They did have some scripted movements, but it was very basic: someone would only be sitting if specifically scripted and if you woke him from his seat he would never sit back down / etc.

RPG Elements: I think they could have added more stuff to buy. Maybe this doesn't fit well into the thief theme. But it would have been really cool to see a wide variety of equipment, arrows and knives. In the same instance as equipment, it would be cool to see some rpg skill elements. I think RPG elements similar to what they did in the original Deus Ex would have worked really nice in this game.

Climbing / Roofs: If they do an expansion, then I hope they put some more emphasis / focus on roof jumping and wall climbing. Right now wall climbing is pretty good, but I think they could improve it. It seems like sometimes your guy doesn't realize he is at the top of a wall and that he should pull himself up. It would be cool to see a grappling hook or some other invention thrown in to speed up the process of climbing and getting onto roofs.

AI Reactions: The AI could have used a little more work. It seems like certain situations don't trigger the right response from the AI. Let's say a guard is standing RIGHT next to a torch and you fire a water arrow at it. I think he should immediatly go into aggressive mode and head to your general area and not stop searching until he finds something or you leave the area. Because, as far as I'm concerned, any guard who is guarding anything and sees an arrow wiz by and put out a torch should be automatically assuming he is in the presence of a threat. As it is, I think I put out torches right next to guards, they'd say some random crap about "hey who put that out" and then a few seconds later "ah must be long gone by now" and they'd go right back into position. Also, it would be really cool if they relit torches and candles (maybe this happens but I never saw it happen). Another flaw with the AI is that if they open the door and you are near it or walk through it, then when they close it they will become alarmed and go "what was that sound!". As long as they opened the door, it should consider the sound expected and you should be able to sneak through the doorway behind them without alarming them.

Quest System: The quest system got a little odd at times also. Certain quests had me confused to all hell. I never found a single green mark to fire my moss arrows at. I once had a note saying someone was blackmailing a pub but I never did find out what the hell to do. The catacombs quest didn't make sense, I'd say more but I don't want to spoil anything. It didn't put uncompleted objectives at the top of the list forcing you to scroll through the list to see what your current objective was (only bad in the big city areas).

Maps: The mapping system was really stupid. I mean, it was cool that they made them look old and true to the time period. But they had just about 0 usefulness for me. A lot of the maps were missing rooms / had mishapen rooms. I'd sit and stare at a map for 10 minutes and still not know how to reach a certain room that I was trying to find. It is a shame because you have to work to get these crappy maps. It would be cool if you started with the crappy maps and they got replaced by better ones throughout the game. Also, if you had 3 pages of maps for a specific area, it would always start you on page 1 despite which map was pertinent to your current location. It would have been nice if it went directly to the map of the current area to save you the clicks (IE: If I've got an outer and inner map of an area and I'm in inner, I want it to default to inner when I hit M, especially since the maps barely make sense so I am most likely going to have to open it 20 times before I even figure out which room of the map I am currently in). The mapping system really kicked me in the ass on that mansion level, I needed to find 2 specific rooms for an obvious reason and the map was utterly retarded, it looked like a child drew it with a crayon. In the time it took me to figure out where to go, I had the entire mansion mapped out room for room in my mind.

Just some criticism. Heres to hoping they make an expansion! I don't think they should touch the graphics engine at all (It is plenty good).

 

[yhelothar]

- This is either an ATI issue or an Ion Strom issue, but I don't care. The game was unstable for me until roughly 1/2 through the game. I eventually found out that I had to disable "Fast write" in the ATI control panel to get stability. What a pain. I was getting crashed randomly (and often!), even if I hit F10 to quick save. Ugh.

i feel your pain... I just sold my POS 9800Pro... going back to my good ol 5900 that gave me 0 problems...

 

[warcrow]

Originally posted by: virtualgames0

- This is either an ATI issue or an Ion Strom issue, but I don't care. The game was unstable for me until roughly 1/2 through the game. I eventually found out that I had to disable "Fast write" in the ATI control panel to get stability. What a pain. I was getting crashed randomly (and often!), even if I hit F10 to quick save. Ugh.

i feel your pain... I just sold my POS 9800Pro... going back to my good ol 5900 that gave me 0 problems...

After disabling fast write, it ran extremely well. I just wish they would have said something about disabling it in the readme.

 

[skace]

Originally posted by: warcrow
After disabling fast write, it ran extremely well. I just wish they would have said something about disabling it in the readme.

I've had fast write disabled for at least 5 years via BIOS due to constant instability in nearly every system I've built with it. I don't run ATi cards though, I've been running nVidia for at least 5 years. I've never truely figured out the deal behind Fast Write, but it is a pretty shady "feature".

 

[warcrow]

Originally posted by: skace

Originally posted by: warcrow
After disabling fast write, it ran extremely well. I just wish they would have said something about disabling it in the readme.

I've had fast write disabled for at least 5 years via BIOS due to constant instability in nearly every system I've built with it. I don't run ATi cards though, I've been running nVidia for at least 5 years. I've never truely figured out the deal behind Fast Write, but it is a pretty shady "feature".

I hear you. I'm not even really sure what it does.

 

[skace]

*PHEW*

Had to get a new motherboard, cpu and an ATi 9800Pro! The good news is my new cpu is running at 53c (much cooler than 80c), my case is at 32c and the ATi 9800Pro is running Thief3 A LOT smoother. I can finally play through the end of the game in style . I messed with the settings a little bit, but wasn't sure exactly what settings to turn on to make it look good. Basically just turned bloom back on, 1024 res, and unchecked low res models or textures.

Fast Write is currently running as well as 8x AGP. But I think it is heat dependant? My last system couldn't run either.

Ah well, Tonight I head to aldale to cause a ruckus!

 

[warcrow]

Originally posted by: skace
*PHEW*

Had to get a new motherboard, cpu and an ATi 9800Pro! The good news is my new cpu is running at 53c (much cooler than 80c), my case is at 32c and the ATi 9800Pro is running Thief3 A LOT smoother. I can finally play through the end of the game in style . I messed with the settings a little bit, but wasn't sure exactly what settings to turn on to make it look good. Basically just turned bloom back on, 1024 res, and unchecked low res models or textures.

Fast Write is currently running as well as 8x AGP. But I think it is heat dependant? My last system couldn't run either.

Ah well, Tonight I head to aldale to cause a ruckus!

Sounds good. Just be sure to use the the Cat 4.4's. All the other versions "break" the shadow's and dont display them correctly. Also, if you have stability problems you might want to turn off VPU recovery and Fast write (both were causing me ALOt of problems).

 

[skace]

Ah crap, running the Cats 4.6. I thought the shadows looked a little weird, like they were working in some areas but not others, think I saw a shadow where light was too. I don't know where the 4.4s are and I'm kind of afraid to change drivers now that everything is working. Going to try beating it on the 4.6s