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Thief...what have they done!?


Arkan

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They changed the voice actor who voiced GARRETT! I just saw a trailer for the game through Steam and was immediately turned off by it because of that.

 

Stephen Russell IS GARRETT!

 

Bad decision. They lost a sale :(

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"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

 

- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

 

"I have also been slowly coming to the realisation that knowledge and happiness are not necessarily coincident, and quite often mutually exclusive" - meta

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In case you missed it, the developers did at least explain their decision. It might sound like a joke, but nope, it's the real way their thought processes operated (or didn't operate, as the case may be).

 

"...we made the decision to record our actor's voices and their movement at the same time using a full performance capture technique. Being able to capture the voice at the same time as the actors' movements and facial expressions, all while the actors play off each other, delivers a much more convincing experience than traditional techniques of recording each characters' dialogue separately and then animating everything by hand afterwards. With the new visual of Garrett we'd created, we found that there was a disconnect that we couldn't ignore between the concepted character and Stephen's voice today."

 

"...the actor playing Garrett needed to be able to perform his own stunts. Garrett's a really athletic guy. We could have pasted Stephen's voice on top of the actions and stunts of someone else, but this wouldn't appear natural. It really wouldn't make any sense to capture the full performance for our other characters, but not for our star."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-03-thief-dev-explains-why-it-ditched-original-garrett-voice-actor

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In case you missed it, the developers did at least explain their decision. It might sound like a joke, but nope, it's the real way their thought processes operated (or didn't operate, as the case may be).

 

"...we made the decision to record our actor's voices and their movement at the same time using a full performance capture technique. Being able to capture the voice at the same time as the actors' movements and facial expressions, all while the actors play off each other, delivers a much more convincing experience than traditional techniques of recording each characters' dialogue separately and then animating everything by hand afterwards. With the new visual of Garrett we'd created, we found that there was a disconnect that we couldn't ignore between the concepted character and Stephen's voice today."

 

"...the actor playing Garrett needed to be able to perform his own stunts. Garrett's a really athletic guy. We could have pasted Stephen's voice on top of the actions and stunts of someone else, but this wouldn't appear natural. It really wouldn't make any sense to capture the full performance for our other characters, but not for our star."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-03-thief-dev-explains-why-it-ditched-original-garrett-voice-actor

 

 

Yeah, I had read that.

 

I also hear that's the same fate that befell the voice actors for Solid Snake and Sam Fisher. What a joke.

  • Like 1

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

 

- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

 

"I have also been slowly coming to the realisation that knowledge and happiness are not necessarily coincident, and quite often mutually exclusive" - meta

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What new Thief? There is no new Thief. 

 

I do hear there's some terribly mediocre Dishonoured clone out there that's selling pretty well. 

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In case you missed it, the developers did at least explain their decision. It might sound like a joke, but nope, it's the real way their thought processes operated (or didn't operate, as the case may be).

 

"...we made the decision to record our actor's voices and their movement at the same time using a full performance capture technique. Being able to capture the voice at the same time as the actors' movements and facial expressions, all while the actors play off each other, delivers a much more convincing experience than traditional techniques of recording each characters' dialogue separately and then animating everything by hand afterwards. With the new visual of Garrett we'd created, we found that there was a disconnect that we couldn't ignore between the concepted character and Stephen's voice today."

 

"...the actor playing Garrett needed to be able to perform his own stunts. Garrett's a really athletic guy. We could have pasted Stephen's voice on top of the actions and stunts of someone else, but this wouldn't appear natural. It really wouldn't make any sense to capture the full performance for our other characters, but not for our star."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-03-thief-dev-explains-why-it-ditched-original-garrett-voice-actor

 

 

Yeah, I had read that.

 

I also hear that's the same fate that befell the voice actors for Solid Snake and Sam Fisher. What a joke.

 

 

I've worked with actors in both the Vicon and XSENSE Motion Capture Systems and I can tell you that what they say is actually correct. Motion capture actions combined with voices by someone else causes an unnatural disconnect... when you have super high quality CG and a lot of dialogue spoken during face close-ups as the character goes through the action - while I haven't played this game, I really doubt this is the case.

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So it was the voice acting that turned you off?  Not the dumbed down gameplay, not the nonsensical story, not the various technical problems?

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I do hear there's some terribly mediocre Dishonoured clone out there that's selling pretty well. 

That borders on insult to us Dishonored-fans, since Dishonored offers a protagonist agile and powerful enough to roam the city whichever way he prefers. He can climb and jump and whatnot as he sees fit. Thief 4 is, well, Thief 4. ;)

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*** "The words of someone who feels ever more the ent among saplings when playing CRPGs" ***

 

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So it was the voice acting that turned you off?  Not the dumbed down gameplay, not the nonsensical story, not the various technical problems?

 

I heard about Thief 4 a while ago, then saw it was available on Steam and watched the trailer. It looked okay, but then was flabbergasted when it wasn't Russell doing the voice. Upon research I read about a bunch of the other problems.

 

Can't jump whenever? Wha?

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

 

- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

 

"I have also been slowly coming to the realisation that knowledge and happiness are not necessarily coincident, and quite often mutually exclusive" - meta

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Share on other sites

 

 

In case you missed it, the developers did at least explain their decision. It might sound like a joke, but nope, it's the real way their thought processes operated (or didn't operate, as the case may be).

 

"...we made the decision to record our actor's voices and their movement at the same time using a full performance capture technique. Being able to capture the voice at the same time as the actors' movements and facial expressions, all while the actors play off each other, delivers a much more convincing experience than traditional techniques of recording each characters' dialogue separately and then animating everything by hand afterwards. With the new visual of Garrett we'd created, we found that there was a disconnect that we couldn't ignore between the concepted character and Stephen's voice today."

 

"...the actor playing Garrett needed to be able to perform his own stunts. Garrett's a really athletic guy. We could have pasted Stephen's voice on top of the actions and stunts of someone else, but this wouldn't appear natural. It really wouldn't make any sense to capture the full performance for our other characters, but not for our star."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-03-thief-dev-explains-why-it-ditched-original-garrett-voice-actor

 

 

Yeah, I had read that.

 

I also hear that's the same fate that befell the voice actors for Solid Snake and Sam Fisher. What a joke.

 

 

I've worked with actors in both the Vicon and XSENSE Motion Capture Systems and I can tell you that what they say is actually correct. Motion capture actions combined with voices by someone else causes an unnatural disconnect... when you have super high quality CG and a lot of dialogue spoken during face close-ups as the character goes through the action - while I haven't played this game, I really doubt this is the case.

 

 

The thing with Garrett is that most of his dialogue always seem to take place in his head, as thoughts to himself, rather than something that is spoken, so I don't know why there would be a disconnect.

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

 

- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

 

"I have also been slowly coming to the realisation that knowledge and happiness are not necessarily coincident, and quite often mutually exclusive" - meta

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That's not even dialogue, that's just voice over.

Well then there wasn't much dialogue in the previous Thief games, except for the guard banter, of which Russell was a big part, as well.

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

 

- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

 

"I have also been slowly coming to the realisation that knowledge and happiness are not necessarily coincident, and quite often mutually exclusive" - meta

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Can't jump whenever? Wha?

 

One of the big problems with the earlier Thief games was that free jumping allowed people to run around the levels, jumping everywhere. Which was silly, and looked silly. So now you can only jump where it's sensible to do so, it also saves on all those pesky times you want to explore somewhere the developer doesn't want you to be able to.

 

Makes perfect sense, as I for one was constantly bunny hopping around and trying to do 360 degree plus rotations while playing the earlier Thiefs.

 

Hmm, now that I think about it that may have actually been in Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance rather than Thief.

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In case you missed it, the developers did at least explain their decision. It might sound like a joke, but nope, it's the real way their thought processes operated (or didn't operate, as the case may be).

 

"...we made the decision to record our actor's voices and their movement at the same time using a full performance capture technique. Being able to capture the voice at the same time as the actors' movements and facial expressions, all while the actors play off each other, delivers a much more convincing experience than traditional techniques of recording each characters' dialogue separately and then animating everything by hand afterwards. With the new visual of Garrett we'd created, we found that there was a disconnect that we couldn't ignore between the concepted character and Stephen's voice today."

 

"...the actor playing Garrett needed to be able to perform his own stunts. Garrett's a really athletic guy. We could have pasted Stephen's voice on top of the actions and stunts of someone else, but this wouldn't appear natural. It really wouldn't make any sense to capture the full performance for our other characters, but not for our star."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-03-thief-dev-explains-why-it-ditched-original-garrett-voice-actor

 

Perhaps it was originally intended to be a FMV game? They did change directions a lot.

You see, ever since the whole Doritos Locos Tacos thing, Taco Bell thinks they can do whatever they want.

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So it was the voice acting that turned you off?  Not the dumbed down gameplay, not the nonsensical story, not the various technical problems?

 

I heard about Thief 4 a while ago, then saw it was available on Steam and watched the trailer. It looked okay, but then was flabbergasted when it wasn't Russell doing the voice. Upon research I read about a bunch of the other problems.

 

Can't jump whenever? Wha?

 

Yeah, jumping is a context-sensitive action now. "You're at a large chasm. Press Jump button now to jump over it." I imagine it's kind of like how the Mass Effect games for instance handled jumping. Most elements are directed like that, rope arrows for example are used when you have all but a big neon sign pointing to a surface saying "hey, shoot rope arrow at this!"

Edited by Humanoid

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So it was the voice acting that turned you off?  Not the dumbed down gameplay, not the nonsensical story, not the various technical problems?

 

I heard about Thief 4 a while ago, then saw it was available on Steam and watched the trailer. It looked okay, but then was flabbergasted when it wasn't Russell doing the voice. Upon research I read about a bunch of the other problems.

 

Can't jump whenever? Wha?

 

Yeah, jumping is a context-sensitive action now. "You're at a large chasm. Press Jump button now to jump over it." I imagine it's kind of like how the Mass Effect games for instance handled jumping. Most elements are directed like that, rope arrows for example are used when you have all but a big neon sign pointing to a surface saying "hey, shoot rope arrow at this!"

 

 

How disappointing :(

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

 

- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

 

"I have also been slowly coming to the realisation that knowledge and happiness are not necessarily coincident, and quite often mutually exclusive" - meta

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Remember: Argue the point, not the person. Remain polite and constructive. Friendly forums have friendly debate. There's no shame in being wrong. If you don't have something to add, don't post for the sake of it. And don't be afraid to post thoughts you are uncertain about, that's what discussion is for.
---
Pet threads, everyone has them. I love imagining Gods, Monsters, Factions and Weapons.

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JFSOCC: Thanks for the link and the hilarious review! He's really spot on and wittingly cruel about it too. I have no idea how he can speak faster than Busta Rhymes, but he does! :D

Edited by IndiraLightfoot
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*** "The words of someone who feels ever more the ent among saplings when playing CRPGs" ***

 

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