Breaking my idle promise to myself not publically comment on any more pre-release games I've fiddled with preview code on, I post on TTLG - because they're generally more reasonable than the Ion Storm forum mob - a few idle, if baiting, thoughts about the ongoing Thief-III-to-include-loot-glint controversy.

Now, if you don't know what loot-glint is: i) Honestly, don't bother finding out. It's just make you blink disbelievingly. ii) Feel better about yourself.

Anyway - onwards...

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Idly been thinking about loot glint since playing preview code a month and a bit back.

Now me, I saw it in the game, thought for a second that it was clearly a good idea because any game which has virtually identical items, one which you need to collect pretty much all of to complete a level at the higher difficulties and the other which is worthless and required to be guard-alertingly dropped, is clearly in need of a similar system. And then I forgot all about it.

Which made me genuinely surprised over the intervening weeks when shiny gold somehow becomes the single most genuinely sneered at element.

Immersion breaking, they say. Not realistic, says the hate mob.

Now... this is Thief.

You're playing the greatest master thief on the surface of the planet. He's a man capable of hiding in a door-frame's shadow with someone an inch away from his face, so great is his aptitude. His entire life is bent towards avoiding people and taking their stuff.

Are you saying it's honestly unrealistic that he'd be able to appraise, at a glance, whether something is worth stealing or not?

Compared to his other superhuman powers, no, I honestly don't think so.

In fact, no, don't be fucking stupid.

In fact Mrk 2: On the contrary - for a man of this supreme ability not to be able to walk into a room and be able to work out exactly what he wants to sell would be totally unrealistic. He is (I am!) Garrett, for fuck's sake. If you speak to me, I'm working out how much I can sell your fillings for.

The realism people can't have it both ways. Either we have true realism, and Garrett loses all his ludicrous and consoley hiding in shadows ability, or... well...

You draw the lines between the dots, Taffers.