Seeing one's baby all grown up

[jducoeur]

I have to say, it's a little weird seeing the preview article for Thief III. I mean, this isn't like Thief I or II, which were built on the engine I did some underpinnings for (I did the mundane but critical resource management system under the hood); it isn't even based on the Siege Engine that I was working when Looking Glass shut down, which was going to be the original basis for Thief III. In no way am I responsible for this terribly cool-looking game. And yet, there's this little frission of pride that tickles my hindbrain when I see articles about it.

I have to wonder if there's an irrational part of the brain that's programmed for parenthood, that takes pride in accomplishments performed at a remove. It's not my game, but I get to at least be one of the small army of ancestors involved in it...

Comments

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Okay, look, you had quite a lot of influence on the single most amazing video game experiences I've ever had. I think you can be proud that the games you helped with were great enough that even after the original company vanished, they were loved enough that somebody cool took the time and went through the trouble to acquire the rights to the sequel.

If Thief III doesn't ship for the Mac, I'm going to acquire a new gaming PC, and I'll start off by playing The Dark Project and The Metal Age through again from start to finish. I'm looking forward to that. Even the resource-management stuff is important, because the game doesn't work at all without it. 8)

[jducoeur]

Thanks for the thoughts. But in the interest of strict accuracy:

they were loved enough that somebody cool took the time and went through the trouble to acquire the rights to the sequel.

There wasn't actually any acquiring involved. Eidos essentially had half ownership of the rights to start with, and took the remainder of the rights to the Thief intellectual property as (part?) of their payment for what LG owed when we went under. Ion Storm is a wholly owned subsidiary of Eidos, so it was really just a matter of assigning the project.

That said, they did go to the effort of hiring a bunch of key folks from LG and moving them to Texas to work on the game, so there was some continuity of the creative talent on both the design and programming sides. And it was produced by Warren Spector (aka "the guy at Ion Storm with the clue"), who is an old friend and associate of LG. So while they didn't exactly revive the company, I'm pleased that they kept at least some of it together. And that bodes well for the new game...