Well, any game 5 years old or more, is technically, old... So you technically ARE an old school gamer, still...

I wouldn't call that "old school gamer" vs. "mature gamer." I'd call that "console gamer" vs. "pc gamer" and now that you're a PC gamer you realize there is much more depth to be had to games than you initially were exposed to. Not all PC games are deep, obviously, and while most console games are shallow, my guess would be not all of them are.

Your tastes and desires have evolved, that is great. But it's also not a matter of 3D vs. non-3D, as you've discovered, there are plenty of isometric or 2D games that are deep and involving.

This isn't really what I was talking about.

The core gameplay mechanic for Thief and Dishonored is their stealth mechanic, which is better in the original Thief and dumbed down for Dishonored. I'm not talking about additive game mechanics such as the Blink in Dishonored. The developers of Disnohored have gone on record and said the game used to feature stealth mechanics similar to the original Thief, but removed them for being too difficult.

How? The major technical features present in Thief are all in: Light, sound, surfaces.

Source?

I once found [PROTOTYPE] immersive.
What I was immersed was in game gliding.
I used to run to top of tall building with a Missile launcher and then jump and glide.
My favorite part was launching missile in mid air while gliding.

Developer Christophe Carrier states: "we wanted it to work as in Thief and very realistically. With these two notions we got crazy and decided to eliminate the light parameters, because it was too difficult to have both."

C'mon, it's the first google link. I'm not saying Dishonored is bad, but the stealth mechanics are indeed dumbed down to make the game easier. It's just a singular example of the fact that just because a game is modern doesn't mean it's not mindless, nor the notion that just because it's "old" means that it is.

Actually, "Too difficult to have both" does not mean they did it to make the game simpler, kinda like the next sentence shows: "In Dishonored you don’t have the option of hiding in the shadows, and it can make stealth difficult".

First of all, final version of Dishonored does contain hiding in shadows, but only over distance - you can't kneel in front of a guard's eyes and depend on shadow to make you invisible. Dishonored focuses on line of sight significantly more than Thief, and that's how it should be - hiding from sight means just that, it does not mean exploiting overblown darkness mechanics to figuratively disappear.

The main problem with Thief is that it was a tech demo, by a large part. All of its mechanics were overblown way out of proportion - shadows make you invisible, some surfaces explode beneath your steps, light propagation doesn't function at all and light sources cast far too little light. Thief was revolutionary in its use of light and sound, but that's also the game's downfall - it focused way too much on showing that off, even in the sequel. Guards were mostly blind and the game was more of a puzzle to figure out how to exploit their completely un-intuitive behavior and AI to overcome them.

Dishonored does in no way utilize a simplified system - in fact, it's far more advanced if anything, it's just not nearly as obvious and it's far more logical and intuitive. And it gives you far more options in gameplay than Thief games ever did.

I'm just going to have to disagree then. I played Thief after Dishonored and just felt the stealth mechanics to be completely better. I feel that the sacrifice of the mechanics for immersion sake crippled the stealth system. While Dishonored is a good game for it's own reasons, I don't think it's a better stealth game.

This is all, of course, beside my initial point. A better example would how the AvP games of today are far more dumbed down than the older ones. I don't think there would be any arguing that. AvP(2010) is essentially a "press button to win" game while the 2001 AvP2 has a lot more mechanics gamemodes and depth.

ummm, no.

Well Thief has a very different feel to it. Both games were constructed around evoking a certain feeling in player. Thief (original naturally, the less is said about 2014 one the better) is a slow and systematic game - while you can fight, the game has clearly not been designed for that, you have to watch your step a lot more and ... Sort of behave like a Thief.

Dishonored is designed to empower player, to make him feel like he's in the skin of a silent assassin. That means a lot more room for improvisation and general gameplay can be a fair bit faster (it's not that faster if you do a ghost run, but I kinda digress). Differences in tone can do a lot for how player feels while playing the game - and if you prefer the tone of the original, it's quite natural you're going to prefer it mechanically too, as mechanics are there to reinforce that tone.

Oh god don't mention AvP. At least Alien: Isolation exists.

Hey now, I could have mentioned that other one. Also, Alien: Isolation is another good stealth game! :p

Is there a game out there more immersive than Super Metroid? I don't think this is a matter of 2D vs. 3D.

+1. Or Symphony of the Night.