The more I play Thief, the more fun I’m having, and the more that some of the issues annoy me. How these can both be true at the same time I have no idea, but that’s humans for you.
My major bugbear at the moment is a part of the game that’s rather important to the whole Thief feel and play: lighting and shadows. Shadows cast by those lights that are static (torches and lamps) seem to behave properly. However it appears lights carried by people can shine straight through some scenery, which often leaves you lit up, even if you should be nicely hidden at this point.
From what (very) little I know, dynamic lighting can be a pain computationally, so I’m assuming they’ve taken some short cuts to keep frame rates up, and still get a ‘reasonable’ result. Normally, I wouldn’t whine about things like that. Except that this is core Thief gameplay. A lot of the point is to make judgments on how hidden you are, or can be. When that’s broken, the game-play is broken.
Speaking of ‘dark’, the whole game is set at night – as you’d expect. Unfortunately, with whatever they’re doing for lighting and textures, it means that unless I turn the brightness up to at least ¾ (it defaults to ½ on their options slider), I can’t see a damned thing in most areas. It’s just too dark. And my TV (Full HD) is not that old …
On the other hand, that brightness slider does provide some amusement. ‘Move the slider until the logo is only just visible’ would make more sense if, oh I don’t know, they actually showed a logo …
Also, while I’m whining. Could someone either solve the side quest Smuggler’s Maps: Eels End. Or a patch be released to fix it? This is seriously annoying me.
