Perusing the sound design tracks for the upcoming Game Developers Conference reveals a great many things, not the least of which is that Thief 4 will be finally discussed at some length.
After being announced as far back as 2009, the game has gone dark, so to speak, lurking in the shadows, so to speak, completely undetectable….until now.
The complete lecture description is below:
Stealing Sound: Generative Music in THIEF
SPEAKER/S: Paul Weir (Eidos Montreal)
DESCRIPTION: Innovative audio has been at the heart of the original THIEF titles and Eidos Montreals new THIEF is no exception, this presentation will mark the first time that the game has been spoken about publicly. This talk will argue for the benefits of using generative music in games and will present a theoretical framework for its justification. Developers should more enthusiastically embrace alternative music models to resolve ongoing issues with linearity and to create a musical aesthetic that pushes away from the shadow of film. I will show our custom generative system (GRAMPS), demonstrate its key design features and suggest some best practice techniques. Ill also discuss how using a single person as the composer, sound designer and audio director on a AAA title can help create a unified sound field, blurring the lines between sound design and music.
I didn’t play Thief III because it was dumb, but I loved me some Thief 1 and 2. Let’s hope this is more like those…
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