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Or: Let's Bumble Through Thief 2 Or: Let's Bumble Through Let's Playing Thief 2: Because nobody told me not to  Thief 2: The Metal Age is a first person stealth game that was developed by Looking Glass Studios and released in the year 2000. It's the sequel to 1998s Thief: The Dark Project, which was the first stealth game to be played from a first person perspective- I remember marketing material describing it as an FPS (First Person Sneaker). These games are also important examples of the immersive sim genre. The game and stealth systems are designed around a heavy focus on light and sound. The player character Garrett has a nearly supernatural ability to blend into dark areas and become invisible, so to remain undetected you have to stick to the shadows and sometimes create your own. Sound is how you know where guards are but if you're not careful it's also how they know where you are. A lot of attention was given to creating the soundscapes of these games both in the engine and the levels themselves. The sound design is so good that even today they make up for the relatively weak graphics to make each of these games a uniquely engrossing experience. What about the first game? Thief: The Dark Project is great but I'm skipping it because I think it will be much more difficult for me to Let's Play. The two games are very similar- same engine, same systems, same UI, same art style. Other than a graphical upgrade and some new tools the biggest difference between the two games is the level design. If you're familiar with Deus Ex Thief II feels like a prototype of that in terms of level design. Each map is big, detailed, and logically constructed. You have a lot of room to plan your own route and can often make informed decisions ahead of time. You're probably not going to get lost in most Thief II missions. Thief: TDP's levels on the other hand are much more abstract. They feel twisty and chaotic, and the in game maps contribute to this by being vague to the point of almost uselessness. You are going to spend a lot of time lost. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; I think TDP overall has a stronger and more powerful tone and atmosphere and that feeling of traveling deeper into madness plays a part in that. About the LP This is not a rehearsed, completionist LP and it's not a blind LP either. I don't know it inside and out and I haven't mastered the systems- I'm just good enough to make it through on expert. I just played through it about 3 weeks ago and I'm going to make it more challenging for myself by not constantly saving. I hope people will see that you don't have to be good at this game to have an absolute blast. I'm also learning all of this as I go so it's going to rough around the edges, hopefully less so as it goes on. Has this game been LPd here before? Yes! Bobbin Threadbare covered the entire series quite thoroughly. The game accommodates different playstyles well and his approach almost feels like a different game. I've heard about a blind LP of the series that predates that one but it's not in the archives. How hard is it to buy and get this game running? Very easy these days! It's available on both Steam and GOG, and the fan community has made some very useful unofficial updates. I've found the site pcgamingwiki.com to be a very useful resource for information and links to help get the game running and add improvements and tweaks. The only thing it doesn't tell you is that you'll need to install it outside of the Program Files directory- somewhere like C:\\Games . If you're using Steam you'll need to first create that folder and then make it a Steam library. For some reason Steam doesn't like having multiple libraries on the same hard drive so it's going to make you jump through a hoop or two- this page has instructions https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/5uqy2u/is_there_any_way_to_set_up_multiple_library/ I have T2fix installed with some optional tweaks and the Enhanced Pack 2 texture mod, and I think a mod that cleans up the audio. There are two other HD texture mods, I'll show them both as well as the vanilla textures. I'd encourage everyone reading to play along and talk about their experiences in the thread, or even record their own videos. I like the idea of emphasizing the Let's of Let's Play. My aim for average episode length is 40-55 minutes, like an hourlong TV show. It really depends on how it all divides up. My current plan is to release two episodes a week, possibly on Monday and Friday. Contents Running Interference Episode 1 (updated- skip to :20) Addendum: Basso's Rescue (with vanilla textures) Shipping... and Recieving Episode 2 (reworked) Episode 3 (reworked) Addendum: Hammerite Conversation (with NecroAge texture pack) Framed Episode 4 (with NecroAge texture pack) Episode 5 Ambush! Episode 6 Episode 7 Eavesdropping Episode 8 First City Bank and Trust Episode 9 Episode 10 Blackmail Episode 11 Episode 12 Tracing the Courier Episode 13 Blood Episode 14 Life of the Party Episode 15 Episode 16 Precious Cargo Episode 17 Episode 18 Kidnap Episode 19 Episode 20 Casing the Joint Episode 21 Episode 22 Masks Episode 23 Episode 24 Episode 25 Sabotage at Soulforge Episode 26 Episode 27 Episode 28 Soundtrack: Redd Kross- Stay Away from Downtown-- Used in episode 7 Shuggie Otis- Strawberry Letter 23-- Lyrics referenced in episode 3, used in episode 8 Television Personalities- The Glittering Prizes-- Used in episode 9 New Order- Ceremony-- Used in episode 10 Roky Erickson and the Aliens- I Walked with a Zombie-- Used in episode 11 Angelo Badalamenti- The Pink Room (from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me)-- Used in episode 12 Sonic Youth- Death Valley '69-- Used in episode 12 Stevie Wonder- Living for the City- Used in episode 13 Wussy- Jonah- Used in episode 14 Marvin Gaye- What's Going On- Used in episode 15 The Replacements- Skyway- Used in episode 15 Patti Smith- Free Money- Used in episode 16 Teenage Fanclub- Metal Baby- Used in episode 16 Meat Puppets- Climbing- Used in episode 17 Tom Waits- Singapore- Used in episode 18 The Soft Boys- Wading Through a Ventilator- Used in episode 19 Pixies- River Euphrates (artwork may be NSFW)- Used in episode 20 Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers- Born to Lose- Used in episode 20 William Bell- I Forgot to Be Your Lover- Used in episode 21 Camper Van Beethoven- Wasted- Used in episode 22 Black Flag- Wasted- Used in episode 22 Vic Chesnutt- She Doesn't Exist- Used in episode 23 The Dramatics- In the Rain- Used in episode 24 Wussy- Home- Used in episode 25 The Sound- Missiles - Used in episode 27 Husker Du- How to Skin a Cat- Used in episode 27 Wussy- Teenage Wasteland- Used in episode 28 drygear fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Sep 21, 2019 |
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Jun 22, 2019 18:34
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My first update is the first two levels. There's going to be a steady improvement in quality because I'm learning as I go. Running Interference Episode 1 (updated- skip to :20) Addendum: Basso's Rescue These first two levels are a little more rehearsed than the rest because this is at least my second time recording both. I decided to skip a scripted sequence in this mission and then decided to show it so I made a separate video. In the addendum video I used the vanilla textures so you can see what they look like. The differences can be subtle, especially on Youtube. This addendum video is the last I made of this first batch and I use some color grading to brighten the dark areas, something I'll be doing more from now on. Shipping... and Recieving Episode 2 (reworked) Episode 3 (reworked) Addendum: Hammerite Conversation In the second of these videos is the first time I try out color grading to brighten a dark area. I missed a conversation I really liked so I jumped back in and recorded it. In the next level I try out the NecroAge texture mod and I recorded that at the same time as the addendum, so I use it here. Also my microphone was plugged in and I didn't realize it would automatically pick it up, so I'm making a racket here, sorry. drygear fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Jun 29, 2019 |
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Jun 22, 2019 18:43
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Hey, I hope this turns out well for you. I'll be following this thread as I plan on doing Thief Gold myself, so it'll be a way to see what works and what doesn't.
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Jun 23, 2019 12:10
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That's cool! I think you're going to have the harder job, but other than waiting for things to process and upload this is a lot of fun. My overall approach can be summed up with this image  Except instead of chords it's shotcut, audacity, and my Nvidia capture
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Jun 23, 2019 19:19
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Well, it sure isn't easy, especially since it's my first ever playthrough and I'm doing it on expert difficulty. That means that I am going to have to cut a ton out, but also try to make the transition between cuts not so jarring. So, you use Nvidia Shadowplay? I use OBS personally. Are you using a dual monitor setup?
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Jun 24, 2019 05:27
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Oh wow, a blind playthrough on expert? You're setting yourself up for some pain with some of the levels, but on the plus side it can make for a fun LP. I think you'd learn more useful things from watching other blind LPs than you would from this. I don't know what is cutting edge these days but Slowbeef's Super Metroid/ Metroid Prime LPs are a good example of one way to do exploration based games blind Yep, shadowplay. Just one monitor drygear fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Jun 24, 2019 |
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Jun 24, 2019 23:30
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It's always fun to watch someone play the Thief games! With respect to blackjacking, some levels make it tougher to knock everyone out than to ghost the whole thing. One of the hardest things I did in Thief Gold was knocking out every guard in the casino. Of course, you're generally expected to only KO the ones you need to and sneak past the others. The other great thing about this engine is of course the crate stacking. Shipping/Receiving has enough crates to stack all the way to the skybox if I remember rightly. Getting Basso to ghost the first mission requires crate abuse as well.
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Jun 25, 2019 15:17
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Framed Episode 4 This mission was a lot of fun. I've made some improvements to my process and am going to be fixing up the first three videos a little, one of the major things I do is apply color grading to the gameplay to make it easier to see everything in less than optimal conditions and through Youtube's compression. It's not going to look perfectly like the game, but I think the benefit of making it more accessible makes up for it. In dark areas I apply a stronger color grading filter to make those even more visible. I have the reworked first episode uploaded and I'll put the link in the OP and first post of this thread. Next episode might come on Sunday or I might hold off until next Wednesday, it depends on how much I can get done. Kangra posted:It's always fun to watch someone play the Thief games! That's great that you can wall off guards to have Basso ghost his rescue. I love how the Thief fans come up with crazy things like that. drygear fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Jun 26, 2019 |
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Jun 26, 2019 20:10
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drygear posted:It's totally more difficult to blackjack everyone than to skip some. I'm prone to verbal gaffes, one kind is where I say the exact opposite of what I mean to, and another is where I really overstate something. I'm tempted to edit that part of the commentary out when I rework the episode but I don't want to be too George Lucas about it so I might not. Nah, no need to go in and change it, because your point is entirely valid - blackjacking guards makes things a whole lot easier. I just wanted to bring up a sort of extreme that you can go to it where it goes back around to being harder again. And even then it's only in some situations and by following self-imposed restrictions (e.g. if I go for a total KO mission, I allow no level two alerts and no body dragging). I'll see how the re-upped videos look, but yeah, a few dark areas might be improved by tweaking. Shipping & Receiving really shows the contrast in some parts. I found it somewhat harder to watch when my room was bright, but it was fine at night and with slightly dimmed lights.
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Jun 27, 2019 06:27
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Kangra posted:I'll see how the re-upped videos look, but yeah, a few dark areas might be improved by tweaking. Shipping & Receiving really shows the contrast in some parts. I found it somewhat harder to watch when my room was bright, but it was fine at night and with slightly dimmed lights. I went ahead and did the second and third last night. Second one is uploaded but still processing, third one is uploading now and probably won't be done until tonight. I'm leaving for work soon so I'll put the links here now in case you want to check them out later. When I'm in the editor the brightening I do seems like too much, but after exporting them I think they look ok. I don't know how the compression works but it appears that the darker areas of the screen get more heavily compressed so this might improve the final video quality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsErKpUzgZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdvN1hlmrv0 Okay, both are up. Youtube still seems unkind to the first of these, but it is what it is I suppose. Next update will be early tomorrow afternoon. drygear fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jun 29, 2019 |
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Jun 28, 2019 19:19
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New update is here! Framed Episode 5 It might seemed desynced because about 2 and a half minutes in it takes me a couple of seconds to react to something on screen but that's just me being left speechless from surprise even though I'd just been editing and watching the video before recording commentary. It's hard to judge the quality of my own work but that tells me I'm onto something. I feel good about this one. Next update will be on Wednesday. Looking ahead I've decided to do a fan mission between Casing the joint and Masks as a palate cleanser. I haven't played any but I'm thinking of doing The Inverted Manse.
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Jun 30, 2019 19:27
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This is a Good LP, and it inspired me to install the game again! It's one of those games that I've started to play half a dozen times, but never finished. Possibly because I am bad at stealth. 
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Jul 1, 2019 23:57
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Covski posted:This is a Good LP, and it inspired me to install the game again! It's one of those games that I've started to play half a dozen times, but never finished. Possibly because I am bad at stealth. I used to be in the same boat with starting this a bunch of times. I bought the first two Thief games at the same time (in late 2001 at the Funcoland on the first floor of the Mall of America) and I mostly cheated and skipped my way around the first game and didn't actually play the second properly until the early part of this decade, and just played it the second time like a month ago. Anyway, thank you, hearing that this got someone to reinstall this makes me really happy. In fact, I think I'll use it as an excuse to post the next update a day early   New update!Ambush! Episode 6 I think with this video there's a chance everyone will take back everything nice they ever said, destroy their copies of the game, and want to forget it exists
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Jul 3, 2019 02:46
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I think the problem you're having with the texture mods is that they tend to be made without much concern with preserving a game's art style, or colour palette, which ends up loving with the aesthetics and making it feel weird at the very least at a subconscious level. This is when they don't outright insert ill-fitting poo poo into the game for the hell of it, or just badly plaster their stuff over low-poly models that clearly weren't meant to handle that kind of stuff. Generally speaking I try to go with mods that just upscale existing textures, rather than substituting them. Good work with your run though, I'm enjoying it, especially since I never got to play this game back when it was fresh, so I don't have the nostalgia goggles to put up with outdated stuff in it now.
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Jul 3, 2019 21:42
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I just finished recording the bank and I have two hours of footage before editing. I had to do it in two sessions over two nights because it was too intense for me to do all at once. Actually I just remembered that I recorded about half an hour of it a couple of days before that I scrapped and started over on too. Next episode will go up on Sunday. It'll be a short one so I may post the one after that a couple of days early depending on how much progress I can make. mortons stork posted:I think the problem you're having with the texture mods is that they tend to be made without much concern with preserving a game's art style, or colour palette, which ends up loving with the aesthetics and making it feel weird at the very least at a subconscious level. This is when they don't outright insert ill-fitting poo poo into the game for the hell of it, or just badly plaster their stuff over low-poly models that clearly weren't meant to handle that kind of stuff. Generally speaking I try to go with mods that just upscale existing textures, rather than substituting them.
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Jul 5, 2019 06:18
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Ambush! Episode 7 This one is short so I might post my next one tomorrow or Tuesday. Edit: The next one is going up tomorrow and then the one after will be on Sunday. It's tempting to post it now because I like how it turned out and I want to show it off, but I don't want to step on this one. Ambush! gave me some trouble when I played it and I considered scrapping the footage and starting over, but I feel like I did a pretty good job of editing them into something enjoyable even if it meant doing the most tired and hacky joke for the first video. Also I tried to play The Inverted Manse and LOL at the idea of me doing that one. I am really really bad at the combat in this game and I died over and over and over to the first couple of zombies. drygear fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Jul 8, 2019 |
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Jul 7, 2019 19:11
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Eavesdropping Episode 8 I made another mistake and so this has 5 seconds of nothing at the start. These can take over 12 hours to upload so it's not worth redoing for a small thing like that! This starts with my favorite cutscene if you couldn't guess by the thread title. I didn't mention in the video but the objectives say to be at the door at midnight to listen to the conversation. You don't actually have to worry about any of the timing for that- when you get to the door it rings midnight. There's nothing stopping you from exploring and clearing the rest of the map before going to the door, but it would probably make for a less interesting video. Audio is very important here and there's a place where you just have to listen to a conversation. I opted to darken the screen during that except for one particular moment. It wasn't intentional but I hint in this video at what my next project will be after Thief 2.
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Jul 9, 2019 18:57
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I've been continuing to play along with the LP, and managed to finish Framed without too much trouble - it was actually a lot less punishing than I remembered it, even without being able to knock out guards. I think a lot of it has to do with the level being very well designed with this in mind, with predictable guard patrols, plenty of hiding spaces, and infinity water arrows to allow you to move around pretty much the entire level in darkness. It especially stuck out to me how the level is quite tightly designed, what with having much clearer goals and immediate objectives than the previous levels. Especially the warehouse one overstayed its welcome a bit when I was playing it, since even after knocking out every single guard I still had half an hour of running around which was mostly backtracking. Even more so since expert difficulty kinda requires you to hunt for secrets, which kinda feels like a remnant of an earlier generation of games. I've also started on Ambush!, which is a level I've always had kind of mixed feelings about (and its been the reason for me to put the game down at least a couple of times on previous attempts iirc), but I'll probably say more words about it once I'm done with it. The LP is getting into the levels I haven't played several times myself now, so still really excited to follow along!
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Jul 9, 2019 21:22
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^^^ I was kind of thinking too about how well designed Framed is. I know the environments were built first and then the story and missions were designed around them so I wonder at what point in the design of this they decided to make it a mission where you can't knock anyone out- did they conceptualize the police station as a mission with that restriction or did they realize somewhere along the way that the layout lends itself well to that? It also kind of deceptive because it isn't obvious that it's a place that's relatively easy to stay hidden in; there's no shortage of guards and most of the lights are electric. It's impressive how well they hid their work there. I'm with you on Ambush! I want to like it more than I do. It's cool to have a wide open city map like that and I like it better than the third game's city hubs but it doesn't do much for me. I do like the area in and around the apartment and the places you have to sneak to in the end. The other mission that uses this map makes Ambush! come off better but I'll gripe about that one later. Anyway, I hope you keep posting about how your playthrough is going.
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Jul 10, 2019 02:33
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To me, Framed almost seems too much designed for a no-KO run. The layout is fine, but a lot of it feels empty, as if they took out stuff in order to make it more accessible to players who aren't used to that style. But with all the back and forth you have to do, it's a bit tiresome. The later non-KO mission is a lot better in the guard design and I don't hate it for the one after it, I reserve my dislike for that one; since there's a lot more overlap in zones, and it's far more open-ended. I would agree that Ambushed is the superior city mission, as it's one of the few that lets you wander through various parts of the city, and it has a mostly-authentic feel of the city at night. If you ever play T2X, that's one thing it does really well. You feel like you're sneaking through a city, instead of some impossibly large building complex.
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Jul 13, 2019 23:02
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Here begins one of the most famous missions from this game. To me it's one of the most difficult. It's in a well detailed realish environment like most of Thief 2 but it's still maddening like a lot of the first Thief game. Will Garrett and yours truly manage to survive the dangers of First City Bank and Trust Episode 9 Kangra posted:To me, Framed almost seems too much designed for a no-KO run. The layout is fine, but a lot of it feels empty, as if they took out stuff in order to make it more accessible to players who aren't used to that style. But with all the back and forth you have to do, it's a bit tiresome. I like the other one you mention as well, and the one after that. I do worry it'll get tiresome to watch both of them back to back, which is why I'm thinking of doing a mod in between. I'll get more into my opinions about that later. I like the city missions in this a lot better than in Thief 3 but I think both could use improvement. I tried out T2X right around the time I started this LP and found it very off-putting on a surface level. I hated the first mission where you walk in the city with an NPC because I was killed near the end and had to do the whole thing again. I suppose I should give it another chance for the level design if nothing else.
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Jul 14, 2019 19:06
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I suppose what really bothers me in Shoalsgate Station is the way the guards are spread out unevenly. There are a few areas that are densely packed and amount to puzzles you have to get by, and then a fair amount of empty unpatrolled space. It seems just a bit too contrived based on where Garrett has to go. Contrast that with the bank, which is enormous but has most of this space interconnected via sound and odd architecture. As bizarre as it is, it works quite well and makes for a very deep experience. And while there are the more lightly-guarded locations in the level, it feels a lot more natural and serves to heighten the tension as you work towards the vault. As for T2X, the first mission is awful and does so much wrong and made me give up on it. I won't say that the rest is all better than it, but it shows how low it can go. You can see the ambition in it, but it does not always work. The second mission is immediately better and much more Thief-like.
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Jul 16, 2019 20:08
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I think I get what you mean about Shoalsgate. I mostly just think about the 2nd floor hallway where all the guards are when I think about how well designed it is but when I try to see where you're coming from I think about that outside courtyard where you're free to run and jump around with no worries, and how there aren't many guards near the vault or secure records storage. When playing I found those all to be a welcome relief and didn't question them. I'm coming to appreciate First City Bank and Trust more and more. I said at the beginning of the LP that the first Thief is more atmospheric and now I'm not so sure. This bank is like a dream of a bank with its sprawl of offices. There's almost no symmetry except for a few rooms with walkways on both sides and no floor in between. There's danger all around and even though there are no real horror elements it feels like a place I shouldn't and don't want to be in.
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Jul 17, 2019 04:52
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I have to do something before work tomorrow so I'll post the next one 12 hours early. First City Bank and Trust Episode 10 A few things I want to mention about this:
Next one will be up on Sunday.
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Jul 17, 2019 07:02
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gently caress yeah Thief 2 LP. I literally grew up on my fathers knee with him playing through 1 and 2. And then when Deadly Shadows came out I was super in on it despite the level design, in retrospect, being not as good as Metal Age was. Let us not talk about THIEF
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Jul 17, 2019 14:26
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I played Thief 3 on the Xbox around the time it first came out and liked it a lot. I just played it again last month in between a playthrough of Thief 2 and starting this LP. I mostly didn't like it this time but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I played it on medium instead of hard. I don't know if it has a higher percentage of loot required than Thief 2 or if there's less loot so you need nearly every piece, but I kept having to scour the maps looking in every corner for loot after I'd cleared them out. I also disliked the city hubs. I love the idea of them and think they would have been really cool if the engine allowed for them to be more open but what they amounted to is having to sneak through the same alleys past the same guards. The Cradle is so influential that it doesn't have as much impact, but the mission right before that where you rob the captain's widow- that impressed the hell out of me. The atmosphere is so thick that I kept expecting ghosts to pop up, but the place is only haunted by grief. I actually enjoyed the reboot when it came out, but I haven't felt any need to revisit it or even thought about it much since.
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Jul 19, 2019 02:36
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It always disturbs the gently caress out of me when the game introduces the servants, what they are made of, what they can do. Karras is one twisted motherfucker. I also appreciate the courage in depicting a powerful villain with a speech impediment. It is an interesting thematic choice.
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Jul 20, 2019 19:19
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^^^ I like that it's enough to provoke a response from the seemingly stone cold Garrett, I think that's a big part of his arc in this game and I like where it goes. Karras has a lot of interesting thematic stuff going on, and he's really well built given how you can piece together a lot of small details- including the way he talks- to get an idea of his motivations. I forget if I said this already, but back in like my first video I said that the story of this game isn't great and it's mostly good because of how it's told; I'm going to go ahead and walk that the gently caress back because this game is full of great story. The plot as a whole and how it progresses mission to mission is the weakest part, but there's so much care in the writing of this game. Anyway I guess I'm a little premature because it's in the next few missions that it really starts to shine. Blackmail Episode 11 Oh jeez, I forgot that I let myself go on a mini rant in this one that culminates in me saying "gamers loving suck". I think I can trust the SA readership to know this isn't an attack on my audience- just because you and I are part of a plurality that I criticize doesn't mean that statement includes us individually. Anyway, I enjoy this mission a lot. There's some really cool stuff going on with the architecture and atmosphere.
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Jul 21, 2019 19:57
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I think that's a fair assessment of the way the plot and characters worked in this game. It's like each individual mission was written with all the requisite nuance and flavor of contributing to the narrative, but then nobody actually worked on telling that main story. As a result you get a Truart who's barely there as a character or even antagonist, and even Karras doesn't get fleshed out much until the end. It's not that it's bad, it's just a flaw, especially compared to the first. Recently I was kind of stuck dealing with an illness that left me unable to move around much, and this thread made me re-install T2 to try out the updated Dark engine and the enhanced textures. It looks fine and is still a lot of fun to play through even today.
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Jul 23, 2019 22:12
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^^^ Framed where you go to the police station suffers from this. The notes you read introduce some major characters and their stories so from that perspective it's important to the story of the game, but what you actually do has no bearing on anything. You never hear anything else about Lieutenant Hagen or whose agenda it served to frame him. It might seem like the whole thing was a setup for the city watch to come after you, but then that should invalidate the frame job on Hagen and he should be an active player in that case, and anyway the reason you get ambushed at the pub is because the mechanists hired Truart to kill you. And hell yeah, this game is still great to play. I think the clean lines of the architecture work really well as an aesthetic style but also make the environments easy to read from a player perspective. The guards too with their exaggerated animations for looking around- you can tell from far away just by their silhouettes what state they are in. Looking Glass made System Shock which has the busiest and most complicated HUD ever so Thief feels like a very intentional step in the opposite direction where you can get the information you need from observing the environment- you don't need special HUD markers. New update! Blackmail Episode 12 I guess it's turned into part of my style to use a lot of songs. I don't know if that's considered a bad practice around these parts because I don't see other people doing it, but I enjoy it. Anyway starting with the last update I've been making a list in the OP of the songs I use.
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Jul 24, 2019 20:26
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Tracing the Courier Episode 13 I was dreading this one but it actually was mostly ok. I looked at a guide beforehand for the early parts of the mission and after that it went well. I have more thoughts about it in the episode itself. I'm not sure everything I was trying to do with the editing of this worked as well as I had hoped, but that's why I tried it- to learn if it would work. This one is short but I have some longer ones coming up. I've been spending some extra time on an upcoming mission and have a guest commentator for that one as well.
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Jul 28, 2019 18:54
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Blood Episode 14 I like this mission a lot. As a Thief mission it's atypical- it's very linear and doesn't really try to hide it. It focuses on environmental storytelling across a wide range of tones. For Thief 2's story to work it needs to shift the sympathies of the player and believably shift Garrett's too, and in my opinion this mission succeeds with both.
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Aug 1, 2019 01:16
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Wow, you did this much better than I did the first time. I ran into that last cutscene being chased by a few monsters. the disconnect between gameplay and cuscene was great.
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Aug 1, 2019 04:44
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That last room can be crazy if you explore it, I learned that the hard way my last time playing. I was surprised by how easily I got away this time because I remember a lot more running around before finding the corpse. I wonder if its location is one of those things that's randomized.
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Aug 2, 2019 00:58
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This is a mission that shouldn't succeed, since you aren't doing much thievery, and yet it does. Did you know that Dewdrop can do something special? Get some mechanists to chase/attack you while carrying him. The courier mission prior is a lot of fun if you lure the zombie out of the graveyard. None of the city guards can kill it (though I think the mechanist hammers might) so you can take your pet zombie all over the place and watch him devour everyone.
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Aug 2, 2019 14:55
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^^^ I'd heard that about Dewdrop but I thought the requirements were a lot more specific. I might have to show that off in another video. The zombie thing reminds me of one of the ways I liked to play Doom as a kid. I'd turn on invincibility and pick an enemy to follow me around and use enemy infighting to have it fight for me. I came here to post the new update and was really excited, but I just noticed that the video quality is *horrible* even at 1080p. I ran into technical issues where it wouldn't export and thought I'd fixed it, but I didn't realize it would compromise the quality so much. This one's gonna be late :-(
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Aug 4, 2019 19:09
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No worries about waiting, the update pace has been good. Dewdrop just needs at least two mechanists actively chasing you and close by. Possibly you have to go near one of the floating fairy lights. The times I've tried it I had to go near those lights anyway since it's the easiest place to get multiple enemies noticing you and not stuck on a tree or something. The patch (1.18) is required but you'll have it if you're using T2Fix.
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Aug 5, 2019 02:44
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New update is done processing again! That's actually a lot faster than usual. Life of the Party Episode 15 This one might be something of a mixed bag. I've tried to make it something special. There's a famous archer scene that I wanted to present in a different way than anything else I've done, and it was a lot of fun to make. For the first time I also have my brother on as a co-commentator. I like what he adds in this and the next episode, and I think everyone will agree. On the other hand, I've run into a lot of technical problems with this and they all hurt the final quality in some way or another. There's a persistent background noise in my commentary track, and even though the video quality is better than my last attempt at uploading it's still worse than what I normally get. I hope you all can enjoy this one anyway. The next one doesn't have these problems.
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Aug 5, 2019 06:56
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I've taken pride in keeping to my schedule but this next one is going to be late again because I've hit some snags with uploading it. I started before I left for work on Monday and it was only at 2% when I got home so I started it over. Tried to upload overnight and when I woke up it was at 75% and seemed to have stalled. I restarted my router, made sure it was going, and left for a couple of days and it must have stalled again because 12 hours later it's not on my channel. I'll have to start again on Thursday morning when I get home, maybe reupload the whole thing.
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Aug 7, 2019 06:16
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Next episode is processing now, Youtube says 6 minutes left so by the time anyone sees this it should be up! Life of the Party Episode 16 For better or worse I can't resist the chance to get a little arty so I did that again with the intro to this. My brother is in this one as well, once again I like what he adds. This one is probably overall louder than my other ones, I'm figuring out my sound levels. I do all my work with headphones on and I've come to realize that it makes me hear things better than most people will.
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Aug 8, 2019 19:13
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