Stealth in a thief game is essential. There is no way they won't focus on that.
Thief had a steampunk setting, so the retractable bow makes sense. However, it would be cool if it made a noise while extending into bow mode, which could alert guards.
Thief had little details concerning how weapons would affect your visibility. if you were wielding a sword, you would become slightly more visible. Makes sense having this, but i get the impresion sound will be binary. Probably you will have an upgrade that would make the bow completely silent.
IMO they should give multiple fighting styles that you can upgrade in rpg fashion by pumping in skill points or whatnot: Single sword, Sword + Dagger, and Dual Daggers. Since the game should be first person, not much in the way of expense in animations. However, don't go overboard by allowing him to slaughter hordes of guards. More than one guard simultaneous should always present a problem including instan death if one of them starts flanking you. Also, combat should be fluid if you are facing more than one guard. That is, fighting while moving to disallow opponents to flank you and also allow you to escape should you need it.
I like the idea of chosing the style and weapons, but upgrades are a bad idea. Implementing this would make the game easy by the end levels, therefore, combat would become a piece of cake. The idea of having different style of fighting would be good if different enemies had different weakness to different styles. but it should be as is, garrett being already at his maximum possible proficiency from the beggining to end. And not being the focus of gameplay, since you're not supposed to kill at all. Meleé combat in thief is just like making bread in ultima 7: it's there for fun, because it's realistic and you can do that. but you shouldn't.
Garett should have more steampunk gadgets. Smokebombs, mechanized grappling hools, poison needles with blowgun, etc. I would also like if his cape had the option to allow him to slowfall down from a larger height; kinda like batman's cape. I think that's fitting and not really overpowered or popamole. If steampunk has advanced so much in that world they can make functioning eyes with it, which even we cannot do today with modern tech, all sorts of shit should be possible
The cape idea could work, since there was the slowfall potion in thief. Then again, this looks like the same effect, but the cape really looks like it would be there for cool animations. Anyway, I aways pictured garrett as an badass anti-batman. Only he is not a martial artist and do-gooder. Everytime batman disappears and leave comissioner gordon talking alone, I remeber garrett.
No zombies. No mutants. No supernatural bullshit. PLEASE. Secret Societies are cool and quite fitting, and steampunk guards with steampunk armors/weapons are fine as well. But no undead plz and no dragons and shit.
they should be part of the lore at least. Thief 2 had not many supernatural elements, but were part of the same thief 1 universe. You don't need to face them directly, but they should be referenced, and even have some ghost, even if it's a friendly AI. But I have no objections to undead in my thief games. Nor the lack of it.
Please stop brinigng up Thief 3. It was pure and utter shit, completely unlike Thief 1 + 2 (the real Thief games). It was solely due to Xbox version; they had to make the game for xbawx as well so it was really really dumbed down. Area's were extremely small, AI was utterly shit to the point of non existent, and there were constant area loading times. Guards would forget about you in seconds. Dead bodies would be ignored. No wonder the series went into hiatus with that shit sequel. This game will have a long long way to go before it can be surpassed with Thief 3. Yes this is for consoles too, but next next gen consoles with more processing power. Hopefully it will mean a proper Thief Game, with retarded elements of Thief 1 and 2 removed (zombies, mutants, etc).
Thief 3 is a technical mess, because of xbox, but it is a real thief game. It is like thief 1 and 2. Gameplay-wise, nothing really changed, but all gadgets except for rope arrow worked the sameway. Areas are small, and I hated the "hub" city with random NPCs. Area loading times were constant if you went back and forth. Normally happen in city hub. but in normal levels, it was ok. considering the pace of playing a thief game, you would take a long time before reaching the loading transition. Light and shadow worked exactly as in the originals. Sound worked the same way, which i doubt it will happen in thief 4. Well, I say this but I have to mention I tweaked the AI and used the minimalist project, that took away the 3rd person view, loot glints and most of the handholding and the big ugly HUD, and made lots of changes in the user and default.ini files. But I felt the same way and I think the series ended in a satisfactory way. And even having small levels, they managed to make nice and well constructed levels, even if separated in sections. But they were well done and believable. The hub city was shit, and it is my main complain about the game.
Other nice things in thief 3 is that the sound direction and voice acting were on the same level as the originals, and though it missed the briefing cutscenes, it had nice animated cutscenes in the style of the originals, mixed with the shit "in-engine-turned-into-.bmk-files" style. And it respected canon, even when that game was trying so hard to be a reboot.
