Vintage Game Club

Help restore my faith.

bindthem — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:22:07 GMT

I love video games. They are an incredible and evolving medium. But there is one hurdle I am desperately trying to overcome; the video game community. I know there are a lot of amazing people out there who play games, as evident by this site, which I follow regularly. Michael puts into words many of my thoughts and feelings towards games, and what they're capable of. But when I go online, and attempt to play games with other people, I do not encounter this. What I usually encounter is a swarm of immaturity: extreme profanity, racism, hostility, homophobia, aggression. I know there are intelligent gamers out there; please come forward! If you understand where I'm coming from and would like to game sometime, I'll put together a list of what I'm working with:
Console: Xbox 360
Frequently Played: Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Modern Warfare 2

Forum: Off-topic conversation

Greg Tannahill on stealth games

davidcarlton — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:06:15 GMT

One of the reasons why I was curious to play Thief was Justin's comment on this post by Greg Tannahill. As somebody who isn't a stealth fan, Greg's points rang true to me, so I was curious to see how well they held up with Thief.

Going through his points:

I'm okay with stealth avoiding conflict. In general, in fact, I wish more games let me avoid conflict! (Each new Civ game promises that I'll be able to avoid more of the conflict, but they never live up to that in my experience.)
I do agree with the point about stealth not offering resolution, though - I'm always nervous about the areas I've left behind (though fortunately I'm playing Thief on the easiest setting, so I don't usually have to go back through those areas), and in general I find myself trying to find ways to kill the guards (sorry, knock them out) exactly for this reason.
I also don't like not having control over the gameplay pacing: I don't particularly enjoy sitting around waiting for the right time in the patrol cycles (and then repeating over and over again when I fail). Though this seems like an area where I have more control than I'm using: I need to get better at using the range of arrows at my disposal.
The NPC are, in general, pretty much mechanised, dialogue bits aside. Having said that, I'm not sure that's any more of a problem with stealth games than with lots of other gameplay types - it's just that you interact with individual enemies for a longer period of time than you do in a game type where you try to kill enemies immediately, so their mechanical nature is more obvious
In Thief, stealth is obviously not as binary as in some games. Having said that, for me that's more of a theoretical difference than a practical one: I try to stay in the darkest areas available to me in a section as much as possible, and if I'm seen, I'm generally screwed. (Though sometimes it's ternary, with a searching state in the middle.)

So it looks like I mostly still agree with Greg's points so far. But one of them, control over the environment, could turn out to be the key to getting me to enjoy stealth games more; I will cross my fingers.

Forum: Thief: The Dark Project

Mission 8.5 (Gold 3): Caverns

davidcarlton — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:32:29 GMT

This thread is for the discussion of the Gold-specific level "Caverns".

Forum: Thief: The Dark Project

Mission 7.5 (Gold 2): Mage Towers

davidcarlton — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:31:43 GMT

This thread is for discussion of the Gold-only level "Mage Towers".

Forum: Thief: The Dark Project

Mission 5.5 (Gold 1): Thieves' Guild

CRCasey — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:29:23 GMT

Discussion area for the gold edition level "Thieves' Guild".

Forum: Thief: The Dark Project

Synchronizing the Playthrough

davidcarlton — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:38:03 GMT

This is our traditional "synchronizing the playthrough" thread. For those of you new to the VGC, or as a reminder for others: many of us like to play through the game at about the same pace, and this thread is where we agree on which areas those doing so will post in over the course of a given week. It is strictly voluntary: if you want to play through faster or slower, you should feel completely free to do so, and to post in whatever threads you feel like.

I don't have much experience with this game, so I'm depending on the guidance of others here - does training plus three missions make sense this time, or training plus four missions, or something else? How much longer do the missions get as the game goes on, how much should we front-load the missions? What's a reasonable total length for our playthrough of the game?

Forum: Thief: The Dark Project

Thief original vs. Gold

brainygamer — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:49:29 GMT

As you may know, Eidos Interactive published an expanded re-release of Thief: The Dark Project called Thief Gold, which added three new missions. You don't need this version to play through the game with us, and the threads I've set up to guide our playthrough do not include the additional missions.

But if you do own Gold, then by all means feel free to open dedicated threads for those missions, if you wish. For your convenience, I've listed them below, including a brief description from the Thief Wikia.

"Thieves' Guild" features Garrett raiding the Downwind Thieves Guild's sewer hideout. This group was previously only read about in The Dark Project.
"The Mage Towers" introduces a reclusive magicians sect known as The Hand Brotherhood to the game.
"Song of the Caverns" has Garrett searching some underground caverns and the opera house built atop them.

Forum: Thief: The Dark Project

Installing, running, and playing Thief

brainygamer — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:27:04 GMT

Post any problems you're having here. If you're a Thief veteran, please feel free to offer helpful hints for getting the most of out playing the game.

As for coordinating the playthrough, we're thinking 2-3 missions per week should be just about right; but as always we can adjust as necessary.

Forum: Thief: The Dark Project