Yay, thanks for your answers (while I saw the answer to my question on the Ion Storm forums seconds before logging here). In yet, I have a set of questions   .

I recently purchased my copy of Deus Ex 2 (hey, they made a real good offer!) and I'm (for now) quite impressed for the way the game handles light & shadows (although Alex.D doesn't outmatch Garrett in such tactics).
Can we expect even better use for light & shadow in Thief III, or in other words: Can we manipulate shadows like we get to in DXIW by using some common sense (closing doors et cetera).
Dan (TTLG) said that he created a shadow by moving a crate and in fact hid himself into the shadow it casted. Is this possible in TDS? Or is it gameplay-wise so to speak (without 30+ minutes of hassling with crappy physics and a handful of luck). In Thief 1 and 2 we always had to live with stationary shadows. The only thing we could interact with were the light sources.

Where we can move on to my second question. Some time ago I heard that one could pull boxes in Thief III as allowed by miraculous Havok engine. I also heard that it was kinda "Tombraidery" and the crates didn't just go flying around the room like they usually do in Deus Ex 2 (in which I accidentally bumped into a radioactive container-barrel, and those things ARE big, and it went flying around the corner and rolled down the stairs like a wooden box).

Also, the city in DXIW (Seattle) I've gotten this far (in fact, it's the only place I've got to explore) was a little dull place. There were a couple of cops and one robot in the Upper Seattle and a couple of junkies in Lower Seattle. Add a couple of thugs and you've got yourself a Deus Ex city.
I really hope that The City in Thief proves itself worthy of exploring. Darn, I couldn't even convince someone to buy some weapons I had brought from the Heron's Loft appartements after, er, a slight misunderstanding with a local sorta-mafia boss.

The word "thug" reminds me of my last question.
I'm a bit bored in DX into the fact that while the game itself is quite free to explore, it runs out of thugs & people in some point. As an example, three baddies wanted to rob me by threatening me at the streets. I said no and they went hostile. I tossed a flashbang at them, batoned them and robbed them. After this incident I took one thug's unconscious body on my shoulders and threw him right in front of a pair of WTO officers. Neither of them reacted.

So, in a nutshell:

1) Can we manipulate shadows easily when we need to?

2) Are the physics tuned down since DX (this has been answered but..) and can we interact with bigger object "Tomb Raider style"

3) When travelling through The City streets, is there something really going on at the moment? Plus, are the streets really the only way to move in the City or are there alternatives (like roof-tops)

4) When visiting the City after a completed mission, have the corpses been carried away and knocked out persons awoken. Plus, do the guards treat corpses in free-play sections as they should.
I always hoped that AI had different ways to react with a corpse. Like, Guard of the City should treat corpses like good lawful people do: Shout in despair and search for the criminal. And then, random thugs wouldn't waste their time for searching a murderer

5) My own favourite; Can we break into Keeper Compounds if we wanted some extra-information & loot of course  :mrgreen:

Thanks in advance  

3. Arrows, do they stick into the scenery like wooden walls or even better, in opponents? I'm sad for those blue lines while I'm too shy to launch an adress for that on the Thief forums.  

 Yes, yes they do.  You can stick an arrow into a wooden support beam and then pull it back out of the beam and re-use it.  Sadly, once they are in a corpse, they are part and parcel to that corpse...you aren't getting them back.

You can tell that I'm one of an arrow-freak, but that's just me. Sadly (gah!) I'm not a native English-speaker, so I may have understood you wrong. But, do you mean that when Garrett kills someone with an arrow, the arrow in fact can be seen in a body like we can see them in wooden support beams (read: I may have misconstrued the word "parcel").
Yes, I'm perverted arrow fanatic and I played LoTR Rotk (Xbox) and enjoyed killing Orcs by arrows.

I noted this topic at the Eidos Thief forums, and decided to have a look at what's going on here.

Quite frankly, I'm here only to pass by and I'm mercilessly eating your database only for posting a question or two (or perhaps three).

1. I already know that Thief III (or DS) supports both 1st and 3rd views, and that they in fact can be switched by pressing a single button. I'm also aware that IS itself has advertised that they're both fully supported.
However, I've seen only 3rd view movies lately, and I'm beginning to waver. I know that you added 1st view into your "to-do" list, but I still ask you to do it again.

As an example, does the leaning work the same way in 1st view as it did in the first games or is it not supported at all?

2. The dagger, I've hated it since I heard that we can't use swords at all. In yet, I'd like to know if one still could put up a fight with an armed & alarmed guard with a sword by blocking him (as surreal as it may sound) and striking him "into the weak points" or is it just generic "click the button and hope" play.
From the movies I've get to fear that the dagger-fight is only clicking buttons instead of aiming the strikes as we kinda did in the first games.

3. Arrows, do they stick into the scenery like wooden walls or even better, in opponents? I'm sad for those blue lines while I'm too shy to launch an adress for that on the Thief forums.

4. When one approaches the target-residence (assuming that the player in fact gets to travell between missions), does the game handle the switch between the City and, say, the castle with a fancy loading screen representing a neverthless location from the castle or does Garrett have to find a way into the castle on his own and by his own means like finding a weak spot in the curtain wall or by unlocking the portcullis?

Thanks in advance and my congratulations for getting your hands on that game.