I made a brief comparison to Thief 3 earlier that I want to expound on. (not to convince anyone to like a game they don't, but perhaps to give it a chance if they enjoyed any parts of the first 3 games).

Thief: Deadly Shadows has over 400 reviews on GOG and has a rating of 4.5/5.0 stars.
Metacritic scores it an 85/100.

Those are pretty favorable. But I remember when Thief 3 launched.

No rope arrows.
Climbing gloves.
No swimmable water.
Clunky controls.
Loot bling.
Horribad rag-doll physics.
Load zones thanks to the consolization of the game.
Lizard people?
No editor (not even on the horizon at launch).

These weren't highlighted in preview trailers... we found this out after buying the game. Yet, to most people, we tweaked our INI's, we accepted the limitations, and we still found a pretty decent game hidden beneath the concessions. All that to say, I can see T4 being a great game even if it makes some changes to the game we loved. Personally I scored T3 a 7/10 (but lost my review to the bowels of the internet). Even with that score, it was tons of fun and something I would highly recommend as long as you set your expectations appropriately based on the bullets listed above.

At any rate, I've planned some convenient vacation, so hopefully I'll get Fraps installed and have everything ready to share the actual gameplay, good or bad, next week ;)

Here is a small taste of the gameplay for the new Thief, this is the 1st mission in the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL6qwre8Xa8

Well although it starts by explaining that this is one of the many possible ways to do the mission, it did appear to me to be a little linear. Maybe because this was the start of the game which usually serves as a tutorial of sort. The other thing I wonder is that stealing things on the fly like this should make people a little curious but I didn't see any reactions from the NPCs. The positive thing is that I really love the tone of the game, great atmosphere of dread with a dreary and dark setting. I also liked that the pace of the game changed at the end of the mission as Garrett was escaping thus conveying the tension of the situation quite well with the music as well. Still cautiously optimistic about this game and looking forward to the full game.

From the hands-on previews I've read about the new Thief, there seems to be a lukewarm response to it, and a lot of it has to do with the apparent linearity of the maps and some AI issues.

I'm still very cautious about it and will not consider buying it until I read reviews after release, preferably from fans of the original games.

Looks about right, given the state of the industry and the fact it's a reboot, not a remake or a sequel. Greatly looking forward to it, just hoping my computer will handle it and that it won't suffer from too much technical issues along with poor AI.

I didn't watch the whole thing to avoid too many spoilers, but I am curious if you can turn off the zoom (like when he saw the first tower). Its not a huge turn off (and other games use this), but I would like to be able to turn this off at some point.

As long as it feels like a slightly more Thief-y version of Dishonored, it should be a pretty great game. And there's always The Dark Mod for new content that actually replicates the classic Thief gameplay.

Just kinda sucks that it's yet another reboot that appears to be taking a unique world and turning it into something more generic, because writing new stories in the old world would require effort and imagination.

As a fan of the Thief games I am looking forward to this new release. I was a bit wary at first as the gameplay footage showed a dark border around the screen when sneaking through shadows. It's as though they wanted the darkness to creep into your vision. I hated it. Newer screenshots and videos do not show this shadowing effect so i'm quite pleased. I may not get it on release day, but it is in my list of must haves.

The "Shroud" as they call that "dark border" you mentioned, is not shown in the videos, because... better cinematics.

Ref: "Real answer: there's no shroud in cinematics...

I think they've also said they've "toned it down" so you will probably be happy.

Spoilers are not a problem in this gameplay video according to Feyja on the forums they were careful not to spoil any plot details:

"If you're worried about spoilers, know that we did everything we could to limit the damages. It's a really short, really early mission, no major plot details, and we purposely didn't grab all the loot or show all the different access points. It's not even the optimal route! There's even a quick fade to black so the cutscene wasn't spoiled (actually, JP skipped it out of habit, but it works!)"

That is good to know about spoilers. I quote Seinfeld when I say, "I want to go in fresh!". The official videos are nice but any contiguous play is something I want to experience on my own. Even seeing the lightning (something I know thief modders attempted on Thief 1 and 2) was a little spoilerish (I know I'm weird :p ). So I'll wait until next week.


Also, thanks for the comments, one random poster has received a gift. ;)

Not released here till friday,

how do you hide a topic....

12 more hours and it'll unlock here. I plan on playing a bit in the morning.

Well the reviews are out and its not very encouraging, majority is underwhelmed by the game. Apparently Eidos Montreal failed to revive another franchise like they did with Deus Ex, which is really sad because this was the one that really needed to be good.

They didn't care if they "lost" the fans of the originals (and the type of gameplay the first two, and somewhat the third, had) because they were going for the "modern gamer" instead.

But the "modern gamer" isn't thrilled with it either.

Eidos blew it.

Kind of like Sony did with Star Wars Galaxies (they redesigned that MMO's gameplay to attract a different audience than they had - mostly losing their original fans but yet not attracting the "new" fans they aimed for, resulting eventually in failure).

When it goes DRM-free and is cheap I'll buy it just for shits and grins. And if they release a modders-kit (SDK, whatever - one that allows fan-made missions), then I'll re-evaluate my thoughts as it will then have potentially much higher value to me.