Thief III Goes Gold!

[Skanky Burns]

Well, I'm back into it again, and I must say that the missions certainly are worth the effort in getting past the cityscape. The atmosphere of the first two games is back in full force. I also met my first undead and (after saving) let one of them out of jail to see what they were like. Fast buggers, made worse by the feeling that Garrett is like running through treacle whilst drunk rather than running through open space.

Aside from the cityscape and Garrett's controls, everything else is at par with the originals. From me, this is about the best praise I can give.

[Grumbold]

Nice reminder, I must replay this again soon. Its been long enough that I'll have to work out the patterns and treasure locations again. First time through I didn't worry too much about finding a bloodless solution so that will provide the added challenge.

[DrSpike]

I still haven't played this through. Too many games, not enough time.

[Skanky Burns]

I've tried blackjacking only, but somehow I still managed to have one death on my hands. I think the guy I blackjacked who was walking in a puddle of water drowned between the instant he touched the water and the second later when I picked him up. Alas. Also, throwing people into dark corners that happen to have a statue in it causes them to die. I loaded to avoid that death, poor Hammerite.

[DrSpike]

Why would you not want to kill the evil guards?

[Skanky Burns]

The guards aren't evil. Sure, they want to kill me (or make me deaded, as the Pagans say), but they are just chums who couldn't get another job. Besides, proper thieves don't leave a mess.

That said, strange underworld creatures that are not human don't have a chance. :kylle:

[Marid Audran]

I was a huge Thief fan for years. Since I discovered the series sometime around late 2000 or 2001 I was an addict and played it almost every day for about two years, including involvement in the TTLG forum community and playing/reviewing the myriad of fan missions created for it. A testiment to how addicting and timewasting the Looking Glass Experience was. The first two games are exquisite. Landmark gaming experiences. For my money, the sequel, The Metal Age, is my favorite, though both are excellent. Games like Hitman, Deus Ex, or other FPS with a "sneaking" element out there owe Thief a big inspirational debt. I played Thief III when it was released, completed it, and since then really haven't loaded it up once in over a year. This wasn't my experience with Thief I or II, I'll tell you that.

I found Thief III, or Thief: "Deadly Shadows," to be the easily the weakest of the bunch. The non-linearity aspect of mission selection is illusionary; two branches lead to the same path, in fact, I recall both branches need to be taken anyway. The interlude of the "City" and its various districts became very tedious after the first couple of times and I found myself running through the streets as quickly as possible just to get to the next mission--there simply wasn't enough appeal in spelunking around the flats and back alleys and little parks off the beaten path. They tended to respawn in exactly the same fashion mission in, mission out.

The addition of a running pool of funds and equipment neutered much of the difficulty of the missions, since your typically had no shortage of cash to buy vast amounts of whatever you needed to nullify challenges ahead. The load zones were a pain (cross platform woes for a previous computer-only great), as were the maps in general which covered much less space, square footage if you will, during missions compared to the previous games.

Connections, legacy if you will, to the previous games were tenuous and mentioned almost as an afterthought. Garrett, if anything, seemed less wise and experienced then even the beginning of The Dark Project. The Keepers were rendered banal through overexposure. The Pagans were extremely embarrassing, and seemed to borrow heavily from the Jar-Jar Binks school of speech. The Hammers, at least, seemed to fare well, meaning no worse or better than previous games. The Endgame Boss (the "Night Hag" or some such nonsense?) was dumb, and sitting through her cutscenes was tedium personified. Constantine was much scarier on a supernatural level. Karras was much more horrifying on a human one.

There were many other niggling things as well, like the omission of rope arrows and swimming, the axing of the much beloved and atmospheric briefing movies, the fact that the "loot glint" was far too obvious and without it finding treasure was much too laborious. They couldn't even get the simple blackjack manoeuvre right. I didn't even like the voice acting. Innovations like the "faction" brownie-points system were somewhat slipshod; just try doing an undead mission and not totally currying favor with the Hammers afterward.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy Thief: DS somewhat, frustrating as it was. It certainly looked pretty. Stunning, really. The light effects were particularly breathtaking. Most of the missions had their poignant moments. I recall the Widow Moria mission being one of my favorites, and the Shalebridge Cradle is arguably the single most haunting, frightening mission out there in the Thief canon; possibly any game.

Still. The negatives tended to weigh down whatever Thief: DS did right, which was mostly look pretty and stay reasonably true to the gameplay of the Thief series. However, the lack of the Looking Glass seal clearly showed on this one, as did the scarring that came with a cross-platform game which invariably dumbed down the PC product. I'm not particularly interested in Ion Storm continuing the franchise, and if they were to announce/develop a Thief IV I'd probably not play it, at least not until it was snugly in the bargain bin.

Newcomers to Thief would be well-advised to play the first two, and not just because I said so, but because it's a superior gameplay experience, to say nothing of a storytelling one. While several years old, the games are 3D graphic-card compatible, still look and play well, and can be bought very cheaply second-hand with online vendors like Amazon.com.