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Thief: Stalking the City in Shadow
Oh, the indignation of owning a totally sweet sword and struggling to hit anything with it. It was a disarming gesture in 1998's Thief: The Dark Project – to be turned into a chronic bumbler in confrontation, but a master thief in shadow and silence. The game was better when you hid from it. The skilled and unacknowledged player still has a place in the new Thief, now under the guidance of Eidos Montreal. I recently gained a sense of the first-person stealth game's priorities and its adherence to Looking Glass' foundation, thanks to a sneaky stroll inside a cordoned-off piece of a grimy city. The city connects crucial missions, but its crooked buildings hide additional objectives and its streets provide ample opportunity for pickpocketing and trouble.
Thief's use of DualShock 4 features detailed
Thief will make use of the DualShock 4's motion control and light bar features, a post to the PlayStation blog revealed this week. The controller's light bar will "reflect the light gem in the in-game UI" during gameplay to reinforce whether the game's protagonist, Garrett, is safely stowed away in the shadows. The bar will brighten as a player leaves cover and darken once they return to the stealth-favoring darkness. The DualShock 4's motion tracking can be used with Garrett's bow, allowing players to physically aim arrows at their unlucky targets. The controller's central touch pad will also be used to examine the map or pick a new weapon from your arsenal. This is Thief, of course, so its fondness for player choice involving combat means you don't have to kill everyone. If you go that route, however, you'll be able to pick your weapon of choice without bringing up a menu that covers the main screen.
Thief producer: 'We have a single shot'
In late March, Square Enix cited "weak sales" of big console titles to explain its massive restructuring, which saw the dismissal of now-former President Yoichi Wada. Games such as Hitman: Absolution and Tomb Raider were slated to reach over three million units in sales in fiscal 2013, arguably considered successful to other publishers. Meanwhile, Eidos Montreal's reboot of the long-running Thief series reportedly suffered multiple setbacks during its lengthy development cycle. When asked if he feels pressure to ship a critically-acclaimed game in light of the "disappointing" sales of other top-tier Square Enix games, Thief Producer Stefan Roy told Joystiq at E3 that the developer "cannot compromise with this one. We reinvented this franchise, I think we have a single shot." "We cannot say, 'oh sorry, we missed, so we are going to try again.' No, it doesn't work that way," he added. "So we cannot compromise, we must really give a good product, we must work closely with the marketing to make sure that the messaging around the game is really clear."%Gallery-191289%
Thievery at E3: Vlambeer developer's backpack full of games stolen
Wednesday night, a black Samsonite backpack filled with an Asus laptop, two iPads, two Vitas, a Kindle, a bunch of European-US outlet converters, and "enough power cables to power E3," disappeared from an E3 party. The bag and everything inside of it belong to Vlambeer co-founder Rami Ismail. Ismail was at the Sony mixer at the Figueroa hotel last night, and he left his bag near a table for a few minutes. When he turned to reclaim it, it was gone. Today, Ismail filed a police report, but so far no one has produced any information about the thief. "It's pretty much my entire company in that backpack," Ismail said. Vlambeer is responsible for Ridiculous Fishing, Super Crate Box and the coming multiplatform game, Luftrausers. Authorities said E3 and its surrounding events provide a hotbed for burglaries, so keep a close eye on your bags. And if you spy anyone playing Luftrausers on a Vita that isn't attached to a Sony booth, hit up Ismail's Twitter.
Thief sneaks onto Xbox One
Eidos Montreal confirmed through its official Tumblr today that Thief will be coming to Xbox One. The game, first announced in 2009, was confirmed for PS4, PC and other next-gen consoles in March, which we can now take to mean the next-generation Xbox revealed today. The Thief reboot reportedly suffered many setbacks during its five-year development period, including significant turnover in staff at Eidos Montreal. The developer included a "glimpse" at the next-gen game in its Tumblr post in the form of a screen with an alarming amount of fire in it.
The Daily Grind: Do you avoid 'evil' classes?
Having started to play a Necromancer in Guild Wars 2 lately, I've been thinking about how odd it is that some MMO classes are kind of, well, evil. Or at least really, really gross, unless you think that playing with corpses is something a normal, well-adjusted citizen does. Summoning zombies, consorting with demons, even stealing from others -- sometimes our classes do unsavory activities. One could even call them... evil. Perhaps this depends on the morality of the beholder, but I know that I've spoken to players from time to time who just don't pick classes that can be construed as evil even if they're using their corpse-exploding habits for the greater good. Usually it just doesn't fit in with their perception of what a hero is, and that is that. What about you? Do you avoid "evil" classes, are you attracted to them, or do you not think about it one way or the other? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Report: Thief reboot suffered multiple setbacks
Citing an anonymous source close to Eidos Montreal, Polygon reports that the team's planned reboot of the Thief series has run aground of several major issues over its troubled five-year development period. According to the source, many senior members of Thief's team previously worked together at Ubisoft Montreal, and favoritism played a role in subsequent hiring practices, alienating fellow developers. High-ranking design roles saw an unusually quick turnover; some key members would leave the project less than two years after joining, and replacement designers would bog down the project by rebuilding or scrapping content. Amidst office politics, the project was sidetracked by difficult-to-create press demos that strayed from initial concepts greenlit by publisher Square Enix. Polygon's source claims that Thief's production costs have inflated beyond initial estimates, and the project has changed so much over its development that content originally pitched to Square Enix no longer loads in the current build's heavily modified version of Unreal Engine 3. Square Enix is expected to show off Thief at E3 in June.
'Thief' graces cover of latest Game Informer
The Thief reboot announced back in 2009 re-emerges from the shadows as the cover of next month's Game Informer magazine. The game is planned for PS4, PC and "other next-gen platforms" in 2014.Game Informer mentions Thief finds series hero Garrett returning to the "Gothic, industrial metropolis" known as the City in the midst of social tension and a plague. Hopefully Garrett can make it through his adventure without becoming Dishonored.The previous update we had about the project were rumors from last summer that development was in trouble.The best news of all: It's not called Thi4f anymore.
Steam Holiday Sale day 15: Thief series, Civilization V, Bastion
What are you doing to help pack the coffers at Valve? Seriously, you guys, it's up to each and every one of us to cough up dough for reduced-price games during Steam's annual ludicrous sales. If not you, then who?Today's Steam Holiday Sale deals run the gamut from meticulous murder simulators to football management simulators called Football Manager. The Thief series is 75% off, allowing you to grab all three entries for $6.74 – if you're into piecemeal, they're $2.49 each. Civilization V and its two predecessors (plus corresponding expansions) are also 75% off each, while Football Manager 2013 is marked down to $19.99 and Bastion is a paltry $3.74.For the full list of deals, head on over to Steam – oh, yeah, you're already over there. Okay then.
Thieves steal 7,000 Wiis from a warehouse in Seattle [Update]
In the dead of night between Saturday and Sunday, thieves stole 7,000 Wiis from a Seattle Air Cargo warehouse, Seattle PI reported.The thieves made off with 7,000 consoles, two 53-foot trailers and a box van from the warehouse, for an estimated haul of $2 million. The King County Sheriff's Office is looking into the theft. Not to say that we're professionally trained investigators here, but we would suggest officers keep an eye on Ebay. That's what we would do, at least.Update: The consoles were, in fact, Wii Us, an officer told Kotaku. Our source at the Seattle PI and ABC News reported that the stolen consoles were Wiis, and Kotaku was not one of our original sources. Thank you for the kind tips, lovely, wonderful commenters.
Garriott shares Ultima Online anecdotes for 15th anniversary
It's been a week of remembrances for past and present members of the Ultima Online dev team. The title's 15th anniversary has offered ample opportunity for stories from the early days, the latest of which come courtesy of Lord British himself (and no, it's not the one about his in-game death). Richard Garriott tells of his run-in with a player thief bent on ruining the game experience for a new player. It's an amusing anecdote that illustrates how UO's early incarnation led to plenty of unexpected gameplay scenarios. "After [the incident], I began to think more carefully about the rules we ourselves put in the game, and the inevitable play styles that would come of it," Garriott writes.
EVE Evolved: Making your first billion ISK
A lot of the people I introduce to EVE Online ask about the possibility of playing for free by buying game time codes with in-game ISK. It's a legitimate way to turn EVE into a free-to-play game, but the rising price tag of a 30-day PLEX can make it seem as if only veteran players can afford to do it. New players typically scrape together just a few million ISK by the end of their free trial periods, making the 500 million per month required to pay via PLEX seem like a tall order. With the right guidance, a new player can actually pull in over a billion ISK in his first month or two of play and quickly become able to afford a PLEX each month. Farming missions requires a bit of time investment but can pull in 20-30 million ISK per hour once you're set up, and exploration and salvaging can lead to some unexpected big hauls. There are also plenty of newbie-friendly corps that run group activities, and those who aren't interested in grinding to their first billion ISK might try their hands at trading or turn to a life of crime. It's all possible in the sandbox. In this week's EVE Evolved, I give some practical tips on making your first billion ISK, from scraping together the seed capital to buy your first big ship to reliable farming methods and some more underhanded methods.
Apple granted patent for accelerometer-aided theft-detection system
Despite the added risk brought on by Apple's Find My iPhone feature, the iOS handset remains a frequent target for smartphone thieves, thanks to the device's resale value and compatibility with networks around the world. There's not much you can do to deter sticky fingers short of keeping your iPhone or MacBook in view at all times, but the issue does appear to have crossed the desks of Apple's design team, which was just granted patent number 8,217,792 for a sophisticated anti-theft scheme. The acceleration-based system would detect a "known theft condition" based on acceleration characteristics, sounding an alarm and disabling the device. The smartphone or laptop would ignore vibrations from passing cars or those caused by items being dropped onto a nearby surface, instead focusing on undisclosed scenarios that likely involve direct movement. The device owner would use a GUI to configure and disable the system, at which point the handset or computer would return to its pre-disturbed mode. Overall, it sounds like a fairly straightforward hardware/software solution, with the added benefit of a technique to filter out regular motion in an attempt to reduce the number of false alarms. You'll find the full patent at the source link below.
Report: Thief 4 development in trouble
As disconcerting as it may be that we haven't heard or seen anything regarding Thief 4 in quite a while, recent career changes for several key folks at Eidos Montreal suggest there may be trouble with the game's development. After all, it took Eidos Montreal four years to bring Deus Ex: Human Revolution to retail – almost how long Thief 4 has been in development.According to a report on Kotaku from internet sleuth Superannuation, not only did audio director and composer Paul Weir leave Eidos Montreal, but so did lead level designer Adam Alim, senior concept artists Nicolas Ferrand and Dan Blomberg, senior technical level designer Eugene Kuczerepa, senior animator Marie-Chantal Larocque and senior level designer Patrick Garon. In addition to the departures, there's also apparently a completed CG trailer created by Goldtooth Creative – the same firm responsible for Deus Ex: Human Revolution's CG and cutscenes – that never saw the light of day, and was planned for a December 2011 unveiling, according to this resume.So what could be the situation? One level designer still at Eidos Montreal says he designed the last level in the game – take from that what you will. In light of all this, we've followed up with Eidos Montreal and Square Enix for official comment.
ArenaNet releases a sneak peek of The Making of Guild Wars 2
Whether you've reserved one of the coveted Guild Wars 2 collector's edition or are too poor or uninterested to have done so, ArenaNet has a special treat for each and every one of you today. Continuing its blog series highlighting the collector's editions insides, ArenaNet posted three spreads (that's six pages) of the book The Making of Guild Wars 2. The revealed pages discuss the creation of the Mesmer class (which was apparently never in doubt), the difficulty of mastering the Necromancer and Thief professions, how the game was designed, the differences between Guild Wars' and Guild Wars 2's hex mechanics, and the effort that went into producing the game's many and varied creatures. This hardcover book is 112 pages and comes with full-color concept art, screenshots, and developer insights into the construction of the game. Earlier today we reported on ArenaNet's glimpse into the creation of the collector's edition statue.
Google Wallet gets prepaid security fix, but 'brute-force' issue still hangs in the air
Google says it's fixed a Wallet security flaw that potentially allowed a phone thief to spend a user's prepaid balance. The ability to provision new prepaid cards had been suspended pending the update, but has now been restored. Things aren't quite back to normal in the Big G's world of mobile money, however. Users still find themselves caught between two competing arguments over an entirely different vulnerability, which involves a 'brute-force' attack on rooted devices. Google insists that this isn't a major concern, so long as Wallet users refrain from rooting, and that the system still "offers advantages over the plastic cards and folded wallets in use today." On the other hand, the company that discovered this issue -- zvelo -- has come back at Google with an equally blunt response. It acknowledges that a handset must be rooted to be vulnerable, but crucially its researchers also say that a device doesn't have to be rooted before it's stolen. In other words, they allege that a savvy thief can potentially steal a phone and then root it themselves, and they won't be happy with Wallet until it requires longer PIN number. Whichever argument sways you, it's worth bearing in mind that there's no evidence that anyone has yet managed to exploit these weaknesses for criminal purposes.
Pilfer Thief Gold on GOG
As we predicted, the introduction of Square Enix titles on Good Old Games has led to another Eidos classic appearing on the service. Here we are, only a week since the publisher's induction and Thief Gold, an expanded version of the original Thief: The Dark Project, has been added to the GOG catalogue. You can sneak up on the granddaddy of modern stealth games for a mere $10.*The above headline is a joke. Please don't steal Thief, even though it's DRM-free.
Transmog your way to a roguish look
I used to play a lot of Dungeons & Dragons in college, back when v.3.5 was all the rage. At the time, a series of companion books was being released with titles like Complete Adventurer or Complete Divine; these books listed additional abilities and classes that players could use to expand upon the core classes in the original D&D rule books. Warlocks, for example, were added in Complete Arcane as a spin-off from the mage core class. Instead of using classic D&D mage spells like Magic Missile, they used invocations, which the book provided. What I liked most about these books is that they made you think outside the box about your class. A warrior wasn't just a guy with a sword and a lot of armor proficiency; he could be a swashbuckler of the high seas or a graceful, dancing dervish. Both classes were warriors, but they fought in distinctively different ways. So when it comes to WoW and transmogrification, I think a lot about the possible archetypes certain classes could have and try to explore those in different outfits. Leather wearers, for example, don't always have to look like members of the Defias Brotherhood or the audience at a Grateful Dead concert. They could also be mud-splattered bandits, solitary rangers from the Hinterlands, or sneaky Warsong scouts. Oddly enough, today's outfit might just work for all three.
Guild Wars 2 dev blog talks achievements, Thief tweaks
It's been a trying year for impatient Guild Wars 2 fans, but 2011 is closing on something of a high note due to recent beta rumblings as well as an increase in the ArenaNet information trickle. The latest blurb is a year-end development update courtesy of Eric Flannum and Jon Peters, and Flannum kicks things off with a fairly detailed look at the game's achievement system. As it turns out, GW2's achievements come in three flavors, and they comprise long-term goals, dailies, and monthly tasks that "encourage a variety of play and reward you with gold and experience." Peters details recent changes to Thief class gameplay, and he pays particular attention to the steal and backstab abilities. He also spends a bit of time talking about improvements to combat timing and animations. "Making these improvements has been really interesting and fun because it has shown us how our game can feel appropriately action-oriented without taking away the familiarity of the MMO genre," Peters explains.
The Daily Grind: Now that all Guild Wars 2 professions are revealed, which will you play?
Earlier this week, the internet exploded with a leaked reveal of Guild Wars 2's eighth profession: the Mesmer. The official reveal soon followed, with some of the most amazing skill videos and game mechanics to ever hit an MMO class. OK, so I'm a Mesmer fanboi. Sue me. But now that we can flip through the entire array of Guild Wars 2 professions, we're left with the question about what class to play... or play first. Will you be burning stuff with the Elementalist, bashing stuff with the Warrior, or shooting stuff with the Ranger? Perhaps you'd like to pander to your inner kleptomaniac by playing a Thief or dance with the dead as a Necromancer. Throw in the Guardian, Engineer, and Mesmer, and it's fairly impossible to pick just one. So which will you play first? Let us know your profession plans for Guild Wars 2 in the comments below. Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
