Sun Oct 26, 2008 2:34 am
Game Review: Thief Gold: The Dark Project
Retrospectively, we can see that "Thief: The Dark Project" was an incredibly important game. At the time, there were loads of first person shooters on the PC market. This fact alone caused reviewers across the web to stumble over terms like "First-person sneaker". Lo, verily the possibility of a game which takes place in first person where the goal isn't to wreak carnage and mayhem with a variety of sci-fi inspired weapons was an entirely foreign prospect. Nowadays, "Stealth-Action" is in every gamer's vocabulary, and we have Thief to thank. While other games were released in the same year (1998) which employed stealth mechanics, none of them relied on them as the core game mechanic as Thief did.
(The version I played was Thief Gold, an expanded version of the game, released a little later. It contained more missions which actually fulfilled the game's storyline, fleshing it out. The new missions were actually put in between existing missions, rather than a traditional expansion pack. It's more like a director's cut, and I recommend it.)
Rather than relying on precise aim, quick reflexes, circle strafing, and weapon choice, Thief relies on patience, ingenuity, timing and awareness. This isn't because Thief doesn't support a traditional FPS control scheme, but rather because those methods are completely ineffective. The game's main character, Garrett, is an incompetent fighter, quickly perishing in a few swings of an enemy's sword. Further, enemies that are ready to defend themselves are incredibly tough. For some gamers, this may come as a bit of a shock. You may start of feeling powerless and you may wonder what the point is. However, once you discover the stealth mechanics, your brain shifts to a different gear.
Once you take advantage of shadows and the element of surprise, you begin to realize a completely different sort of power Garrett has. By utilizing superior stealth, Garrett has the luxury of time to plot the elimination / avoidance of each and every threat he faces. You don't need ammo packs or health pickups when not a single enemy becomes aware of your presence through the course of a mission. Sound boring? Shut your idiot mouth. While a perfect mission may contain zero combat, that doesn't mean nothing happens. On the contrary, that's where your greatest sense of accomplishment comes from, as each enemy you subdue or bypass is a direct result of your strategic mind and expert timing.
In some ways, the laundry list of impressive features that supports Thief's incredible and unique gameplay is to blame for some of the key frustrations I experienced while playing.
With dynamic environmental shadows and lighting (a great visual achievement for 1998), the ability to douse flames can allow the player to create his own opportunities. This is great for allowing the player to be in control of their game experience. However, on many occasions, light will often not dissipate as expected, leaving Garrett stranded in the path of an incoming enemy patrol. Similarly, while an area may appear to be very dark, the game's "light gem" (visibility meter) will reveal that you are, in fact, quite highly visible.
The game also recognizes the floor's material, causing the player's footsteps to be louder or quieter as a result. The game also has special arrows which can create soft moss to tread upon, allowing quiet steps on any floor. However, this can also seem to be a stupid mechanic, as even while moving at your absolute slowest, there are two floor types where Garrett is always highly audible. This can be very frustrating when out of moss arrows, leaving you with a non-patrolling guard and a tile floor to cross. I find it hard to believe that the master thief can't cross a floor any quieter than I can (note, I am not a master thief).
Further, while many of the game's missions allow the player to evade, avoid and subdue foes, many of the game's later missions require you to become an assassin against otherworldly creatures. This is very frustrating when much of the game's joy comes from leaving every opponent breathing and unaware of your trespass. I find it hard to understand why the designers would deliberately discourage the player from playing in the way which the game plays most gracefully.
One area where I hesitate to criticize Thief is in the excellent body control that it allows the player. Crouching, leaning (left, right and forward), jumping and mantling (for climbing up onto places that are higher than you can jump) are extremely useful. Specifically, leaning and mantling are some of the most useful and fun-to-use basic mechanics. As of October 2008, there are still no 1st person games outside the Thief engine which support mantling (that I'm aware of). I love it, and I want to see more of it. However, even the body control suffers from occasional frustrating mishaps. Mantling is often unpredictable, regarding your ability to succeed or fail at pulling yourself fully onto a ledge. As for leaning and crouching, it appears that Garret is completely incapable of swinging a weapon while in these positions, going as far as to force you into standing position if you attempt to swing a weapon while crouched (especially tiresome when fighting spiders).
Despite these flaws with the game's basic systems, these very systems greatly contribute to the game's unique appeal. While I cannot dare claim perfection in the gameplay as a result of these issues, I certainly will suggests that the innovation provided in these features is worth it. You learn to work around them, and despite their buggy nature, you miss them when yo move to modern first person games which lack them entirely.
Thief also excels in story and audio. I mention them in the same stroke because they are so closely related. Every sound contributes to the fantastic immersion of the locations and characters which so wonderfully represent the game's complex and unique plot. Garrett's atypical reaction to somewhat typical fantasy events makes them completely fresh. In this case, perspective is everything, and Looking Glass (RIP) has done a marvelous job portraying that perspective flawlessly.
From footsteps to halted breaths, whispered monologues to agonized screams, the hum of active machinery to the frustrated ramblings of an incompetent guard, Thief's audio is spectacular. The only sound complaint I have is that each and every edible item in the game bears the "eating an apple " sound. While completely unimportant, it hilariously stands out.
The missions in Thief are generally wonderful. With layouts which encourage exploration rather than linear travel, every player can approach each situation in a unique way. How you approach a location is what will determine the challenges you face. With the wide variety of tools available to the player, how you then solve each challenge is placed once more in your hands. The result is that every time you make it through a tough spot, you know it's because you thought of a keen solution with your own brain, rather than fulfilling a designer's pre-determined to-do list.
Having the missions presented so openly does have one challenge, by today's standards. The game never, ever autosaves. Never. However, I can't possibly see how it would. It's up to the player to decide their progress, and while modern "checkpoint" systems work great, it really only works in a linear level design.
The game does very, very little hand-holding. It usually gives you enough to figure out what to do next, but even when the game gives you hints, the hints are instructional and vague, still leaving part of the mystery to you. This is very refreshing, coming out of newer games where the player is told to "burn the rope" almost every time.
Something else that's incredibly refreshing about Thief is how the game manages difficulty levels. Instead of giving you fewer items, less health, or making enemies stronger, the harder difficulty levels increase the number of objectives required to complete each mission. These include mission standards like getting more loot and making sure not to murder anyone. In other cases, this means finding secondary "big" loot items to steal, or sniffing out information about your target.
All the loot and info is available to each player regardless of difficulty level, the higher difficulties simply require them. The exception to this is the "get out" mission objective that often only appears on harder difficulties. If you're not taking out every enemy on your way to the top-secret treasure, you can bet that getting back out of their mansion will be exactly as difficult as it was breaking in.
In a way, selecting "Expert" difficulty only ensures that you will experience more of what the game has to offer, rather than skipping it. Even so, on the hardest difficulty there are still plenty of secrets that you may or may not find during the course of your plundering.
Certainly there's plenty of reviews for this game already available. Further, there are (not one, but) two sequels to this game! Why review this game that seems particularly irrelevant?
I assure you, it has nothing to do with the fact that I only just completed "Thief" this very evening. Which I did. It has much more to do with the fact that there's still a lot that modern game designers could learn from it. Games like "Thief" are considered classics despite their flaws. If you haven't played the game, I recommend you do so even if it appears quite dated by today's standards. If you've got an older PC or a shoddy laptop that can only play games from this era, you'd be hard-pressed to find another game with better production values than "Thief: The Dark Project".
It entertained me for well over 22 hours (the time that was recorded by the game), thanks to my completionist / perfectionist approach. That time didn't include the countless reloads and retries I took, which realistically probably tripled my game time. Often times, I'd start playing at 9pm only to finish the mission at 12am. Sure the "stats" screen listed at the end of the level said I only took 45 minutes to beat the level, but you'll rarely get things right on the first try. The game, in my experience, was exceptionally long for a mission-based linear single player game.
Gameplay: 8 / 10
When the game's at its best, it's one of the most immersive, thrilling and unique experiences. However, it's not always at its best with a few bugs surrounding its core features and level designs that don't always support them.
Fluff: 10 / 10
In the already rare steampunk / low-fantasy genre, Thief sets itself apart with an incredibly interesting storyline and very compelling characters. The treasures you seek are intriguing and even the hand-scrawled maps make you always feel a part of Thief's world. Thief delivers just enough content to make you familiar with its world, but keeps just enough of it behind the curtains, leaving you hungry for more.
Innovation: 10 / 10
Thief would have been fantastically innovative even if it merely took existing shooter mechanics and added a hiding-in-shadows system. Looking Glass was not content to stop there, but instead continued to innovate unrelentingly. With lockpicking, rope climbing, hiding bodies and cleaning up blood, extinguishing light sources and using holy weapons against the undead... Thief innovates at every turn. Rarely does a game invent a new genre so thoroughly as Thief has.
Production: 8 / 10
For its time, thief was top-of-the-line. The only things that hold it back are some very chunky animations (even through the use of motion-capture), blocky models, and repetitive textures. While the characters and environments are always interesting, you'll often find yourself looking at the same stone or wood tiled textures. Thief could've used a little more polish, also, to iron out some simple yet annoying bugs.
Longevity: 8 / 10
If you play through Thief on Expert difficulty the first time through, you've got little reason to go back and play it again. The game tells you your time completing the missions and the amount of treasure you missed, but for me, that's little incentive to try and beat my score. Regardless, the missions are slow paced and often take a long time to get through, and it's rarely boring. Thief is exclusively a single-player game and it lasted me a long, long time.
Overall: 8.8 / 10
Thief is an unforgettable experience that you'll love so much you'll forgive its flaws. While you won't want to play it every year, it's the kind of game that sticks with you, and every 5 or 6 years, you'll be glad you still have it in your collection.
(The version I played was Thief Gold, an expanded version of the game, released a little later. It contained more missions which actually fulfilled the game's storyline, fleshing it out. The new missions were actually put in between existing missions, rather than a traditional expansion pack. It's more like a director's cut, and I recommend it.)
Rather than relying on precise aim, quick reflexes, circle strafing, and weapon choice, Thief relies on patience, ingenuity, timing and awareness. This isn't because Thief doesn't support a traditional FPS control scheme, but rather because those methods are completely ineffective. The game's main character, Garrett, is an incompetent fighter, quickly perishing in a few swings of an enemy's sword. Further, enemies that are ready to defend themselves are incredibly tough. For some gamers, this may come as a bit of a shock. You may start of feeling powerless and you may wonder what the point is. However, once you discover the stealth mechanics, your brain shifts to a different gear.
Once you take advantage of shadows and the element of surprise, you begin to realize a completely different sort of power Garrett has. By utilizing superior stealth, Garrett has the luxury of time to plot the elimination / avoidance of each and every threat he faces. You don't need ammo packs or health pickups when not a single enemy becomes aware of your presence through the course of a mission. Sound boring? Shut your idiot mouth. While a perfect mission may contain zero combat, that doesn't mean nothing happens. On the contrary, that's where your greatest sense of accomplishment comes from, as each enemy you subdue or bypass is a direct result of your strategic mind and expert timing.
In some ways, the laundry list of impressive features that supports Thief's incredible and unique gameplay is to blame for some of the key frustrations I experienced while playing.
With dynamic environmental shadows and lighting (a great visual achievement for 1998), the ability to douse flames can allow the player to create his own opportunities. This is great for allowing the player to be in control of their game experience. However, on many occasions, light will often not dissipate as expected, leaving Garrett stranded in the path of an incoming enemy patrol. Similarly, while an area may appear to be very dark, the game's "light gem" (visibility meter) will reveal that you are, in fact, quite highly visible.
The game also recognizes the floor's material, causing the player's footsteps to be louder or quieter as a result. The game also has special arrows which can create soft moss to tread upon, allowing quiet steps on any floor. However, this can also seem to be a stupid mechanic, as even while moving at your absolute slowest, there are two floor types where Garrett is always highly audible. This can be very frustrating when out of moss arrows, leaving you with a non-patrolling guard and a tile floor to cross. I find it hard to believe that the master thief can't cross a floor any quieter than I can (note, I am not a master thief).
Further, while many of the game's missions allow the player to evade, avoid and subdue foes, many of the game's later missions require you to become an assassin against otherworldly creatures. This is very frustrating when much of the game's joy comes from leaving every opponent breathing and unaware of your trespass. I find it hard to understand why the designers would deliberately discourage the player from playing in the way which the game plays most gracefully.
One area where I hesitate to criticize Thief is in the excellent body control that it allows the player. Crouching, leaning (left, right and forward), jumping and mantling (for climbing up onto places that are higher than you can jump) are extremely useful. Specifically, leaning and mantling are some of the most useful and fun-to-use basic mechanics. As of October 2008, there are still no 1st person games outside the Thief engine which support mantling (that I'm aware of). I love it, and I want to see more of it. However, even the body control suffers from occasional frustrating mishaps. Mantling is often unpredictable, regarding your ability to succeed or fail at pulling yourself fully onto a ledge. As for leaning and crouching, it appears that Garret is completely incapable of swinging a weapon while in these positions, going as far as to force you into standing position if you attempt to swing a weapon while crouched (especially tiresome when fighting spiders).
Despite these flaws with the game's basic systems, these very systems greatly contribute to the game's unique appeal. While I cannot dare claim perfection in the gameplay as a result of these issues, I certainly will suggests that the innovation provided in these features is worth it. You learn to work around them, and despite their buggy nature, you miss them when yo move to modern first person games which lack them entirely.
Thief also excels in story and audio. I mention them in the same stroke because they are so closely related. Every sound contributes to the fantastic immersion of the locations and characters which so wonderfully represent the game's complex and unique plot. Garrett's atypical reaction to somewhat typical fantasy events makes them completely fresh. In this case, perspective is everything, and Looking Glass (RIP) has done a marvelous job portraying that perspective flawlessly.
From footsteps to halted breaths, whispered monologues to agonized screams, the hum of active machinery to the frustrated ramblings of an incompetent guard, Thief's audio is spectacular. The only sound complaint I have is that each and every edible item in the game bears the "eating an apple " sound. While completely unimportant, it hilariously stands out.
The missions in Thief are generally wonderful. With layouts which encourage exploration rather than linear travel, every player can approach each situation in a unique way. How you approach a location is what will determine the challenges you face. With the wide variety of tools available to the player, how you then solve each challenge is placed once more in your hands. The result is that every time you make it through a tough spot, you know it's because you thought of a keen solution with your own brain, rather than fulfilling a designer's pre-determined to-do list.
Having the missions presented so openly does have one challenge, by today's standards. The game never, ever autosaves. Never. However, I can't possibly see how it would. It's up to the player to decide their progress, and while modern "checkpoint" systems work great, it really only works in a linear level design.
The game does very, very little hand-holding. It usually gives you enough to figure out what to do next, but even when the game gives you hints, the hints are instructional and vague, still leaving part of the mystery to you. This is very refreshing, coming out of newer games where the player is told to "burn the rope" almost every time.
Something else that's incredibly refreshing about Thief is how the game manages difficulty levels. Instead of giving you fewer items, less health, or making enemies stronger, the harder difficulty levels increase the number of objectives required to complete each mission. These include mission standards like getting more loot and making sure not to murder anyone. In other cases, this means finding secondary "big" loot items to steal, or sniffing out information about your target.
All the loot and info is available to each player regardless of difficulty level, the higher difficulties simply require them. The exception to this is the "get out" mission objective that often only appears on harder difficulties. If you're not taking out every enemy on your way to the top-secret treasure, you can bet that getting back out of their mansion will be exactly as difficult as it was breaking in.
In a way, selecting "Expert" difficulty only ensures that you will experience more of what the game has to offer, rather than skipping it. Even so, on the hardest difficulty there are still plenty of secrets that you may or may not find during the course of your plundering.
Certainly there's plenty of reviews for this game already available. Further, there are (not one, but) two sequels to this game! Why review this game that seems particularly irrelevant?
I assure you, it has nothing to do with the fact that I only just completed "Thief" this very evening. Which I did. It has much more to do with the fact that there's still a lot that modern game designers could learn from it. Games like "Thief" are considered classics despite their flaws. If you haven't played the game, I recommend you do so even if it appears quite dated by today's standards. If you've got an older PC or a shoddy laptop that can only play games from this era, you'd be hard-pressed to find another game with better production values than "Thief: The Dark Project".
It entertained me for well over 22 hours (the time that was recorded by the game), thanks to my completionist / perfectionist approach. That time didn't include the countless reloads and retries I took, which realistically probably tripled my game time. Often times, I'd start playing at 9pm only to finish the mission at 12am. Sure the "stats" screen listed at the end of the level said I only took 45 minutes to beat the level, but you'll rarely get things right on the first try. The game, in my experience, was exceptionally long for a mission-based linear single player game.
Gameplay: 8 / 10
When the game's at its best, it's one of the most immersive, thrilling and unique experiences. However, it's not always at its best with a few bugs surrounding its core features and level designs that don't always support them.
Fluff: 10 / 10
In the already rare steampunk / low-fantasy genre, Thief sets itself apart with an incredibly interesting storyline and very compelling characters. The treasures you seek are intriguing and even the hand-scrawled maps make you always feel a part of Thief's world. Thief delivers just enough content to make you familiar with its world, but keeps just enough of it behind the curtains, leaving you hungry for more.
Innovation: 10 / 10
Thief would have been fantastically innovative even if it merely took existing shooter mechanics and added a hiding-in-shadows system. Looking Glass was not content to stop there, but instead continued to innovate unrelentingly. With lockpicking, rope climbing, hiding bodies and cleaning up blood, extinguishing light sources and using holy weapons against the undead... Thief innovates at every turn. Rarely does a game invent a new genre so thoroughly as Thief has.
Production: 8 / 10
For its time, thief was top-of-the-line. The only things that hold it back are some very chunky animations (even through the use of motion-capture), blocky models, and repetitive textures. While the characters and environments are always interesting, you'll often find yourself looking at the same stone or wood tiled textures. Thief could've used a little more polish, also, to iron out some simple yet annoying bugs.
Longevity: 8 / 10
If you play through Thief on Expert difficulty the first time through, you've got little reason to go back and play it again. The game tells you your time completing the missions and the amount of treasure you missed, but for me, that's little incentive to try and beat my score. Regardless, the missions are slow paced and often take a long time to get through, and it's rarely boring. Thief is exclusively a single-player game and it lasted me a long, long time.
Overall: 8.8 / 10
Thief is an unforgettable experience that you'll love so much you'll forgive its flaws. While you won't want to play it every year, it's the kind of game that sticks with you, and every 5 or 6 years, you'll be glad you still have it in your collection.
Art Director - Novo Interactive
