I wanted to start this piece by quoting a comment posted at the bottom of the Community Q&A post over at Eidos Montreal’s blog : “I’ve just registered to say thank you for ditching the QTE’s, even if there were only a few.” I want to say thank you too, not specifically for removing QTEs, but for listening to the Thief community and making these kinds of changes.
Only a couple of weeks ago, we ran a piece on the negative feedback being left on a recently released Thief video and it’s no secret that the folks at Eidos have been having a hard time convincing the Thief community that the new game is going to be true to the lore, so to speak, but what the recent Community Q&A post shows is that they are listening to the community and implementing changes when they feel they’ve trodden just a little too hard on our toes…
In the latest post, Daniel Schmidt writes, “If Garrett went swimming, he would probably freeze to death,” confirming that there will be no swimming in the game; he also give us a few details about a new “hardcore mode”: “This allows players to customize the game in a number of ways. One of my favorites is the Ironman: if you die, game over. Hey, what is life without a little risk? We even added a ‘If the enemy detects you, you die’ mode … There is also the possibility to disable Focus and related abilities, as promised. This is in addition to the option to disable specific elements of the UI, like the reaction icons for NPCs.” Great, great, great news. I know when I picked up my copy of Dishonored, the first thing I did after starting it up was to remove the entire UI.
He also chats a little about stealth upgrades and hints at gear and focus improvements to help stealth players: these include reduced detectability, smooth lockpicking, and quieter footsteps as well as Focus abilities that aid your hearing and ability to see distant shiny gold things. Also, Valerie confirms that QTEs are out “given the strong reactions it evoked in the press and the community, it was an easy decision to do away with them entirely.”
This is great stuff. That Daniel has to refer to “stealthy players” is a little disarming though, shouldn’t everyone picking up the new Thief be a stealth player? But seriously, great stuff. Thank you Eidos!