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Peanut · 02-14-2008, 01:36 PM

The game that defined cover systems as they are today was easily Kill.Switch, which was an Xbox/PS2 game. Gears borrowed from that game in a big way, and ever since Gears, cover has become huge.

But the game that started it all? I dunno, you'd be hard pressed to find an actual answer, as so very many games have used cover. As far as what your friend said, which Thief was he talking about? If he's talking about Deadly Shadows, which is easily the best known of the Thief games, that came out sometime in 2004, so that's clearly not it, it's cover system was really very similar to the kind in Splinter Cell. And if he's talking the late 90's early 00's Thief games, I can't remember them clearly, but I don't remember there being any kind of extensive cover system used in those.

And on the whole subject of cover systems, you've got to define what you're talking about. Does your cover system need to involve blind-firing, or anything like that? If so, I'm going to go ahead and say Kill.Switch was the first one to pull off a cover-system that was actually an important game mechanic, but in terms of general cover? I mean, there are NES games where you need to take cover from enemies. It can go so many ways, it would be better if you had a more specific definition of "cover system".

02-14-2008, 01:36 PM	#2
Peanut Second Gear Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: The New World Posts: 15,422	The game that defined cover systems as they are today was easily Kill.Switch, which was an Xbox/PS2 game. Gears borrowed from that game in a big way, and ever since Gears, cover has become huge. But the game that started it all? I dunno, you'd be hard pressed to find an actual answer, as so very many games have used cover. As far as what your friend said, which Thief was he talking about? If he's talking about Deadly Shadows, which is easily the best known of the Thief games, that came out sometime in 2004, so that's clearly not it, it's cover system was really very similar to the kind in Splinter Cell. And if he's talking the late 90's early 00's Thief games, I can't remember them clearly, but I don't remember there being any kind of extensive cover system used in those. And on the whole subject of cover systems, you've got to define what you're talking about. Does your cover system need to involve blind-firing, or anything like that? If so, I'm going to go ahead and say Kill.Switch was the first one to pull off a cover-system that was actually an important game mechanic, but in terms of general cover? I mean, there are NES games where you need to take cover from enemies. It can go so many ways, it would be better if you had a more specific definition of "cover system".