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Thief - I'd rather not tread where the dead sleep.
Pancake
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The Thief Series
Ye shall not rob from the house I have built, or commit any theft or
Unrighteousness, lest ye be struck down and driven into the earth forthwith
And the Land Of The Heathen consume you.
- The Book of the Stone
Thief: The Dark Project
Danced we in joys and triumphs. With us the Woodsie Lord danced the stringsie
Foolsie man rose the storms in shouty glee, the darkness in feary glooms, the
Fires in happy greed. Danced we away, and fed the sad stringsie manfool to their
Devourings for our thanks.
- Final Fragment Of The 'Notyets' Manuscript
Thief II: The Metal Age
He poured his children's eyes from glass and from steel wrought their hands
that none could escape his judgement.
- The New Scripture of the Master Builder
Thief: Deadly Shadows
Cry, brethren, for the Betrayer is come. Your hands will be crippled, and you will
perish as the wretched outcast in the Bleak Unwritten. And you will know the face
of the Destroyer.
- Recovered text from The Prophecitus, missing for 132 years
You are Garrett, former Keeper, master thief, and reluctant hero.
Your home is the City, a place where magic and technology meet and three factions constantly vie for dominance.
The shadows are your safe haven. You are neither agile nor a great fighter and to succeed, direct conflict must be avoided at all costs.
Released on November 30, 1998, Thief: The Dark Project pioneered the modern stealth genre. Stealth games came and went before it and even with it, but none were as deep and challenging as Thief. Featuring shadow-based stealth, intelligent use of sound, a variety of tools that could be used to change your environment to your favor, and enemies that would react as realistically as possible to these changes, nothing like Thief had come before it and it became the foundation that was built upon by later games like Splinter Cell.
Further than its gameplay, the series sports one of the creepiest and most palpable atmospheres in a game. The games are built around it, they feed on it and become greater than they were before. The atmosphere is one of the things that makes the games great and breeds the fanatacism held by its fans. Thief is uniquely Thief and from The Dark Project to Deadly Shadows, it is undeniably there, and it is gripping and engrossing and it's impactful as a blackjack to the back of the skull.
Each game features a long and winding storyline told from the very narrow perspective of Garrett himself, who cares for little but what is immediately important. Each is filled with twists and turns and while later games go into greater depth with each of the factions, they are initially described only through quotations at the beginning of mission briefings, small pieces of wisdom that reflect the beliefs of each.
The cutscenes also used a style which is rarely seen anywhere else in gaming. They were uniquely hand drawn for the most part, but also blended in filmed silhouettes of real people, those being used for distant shots or for characters who remain indistinct and away from close-up shots of their faces. They were all dark and stylish and maintain a feel all their own.
"Thief is the single most terrifying, immersive, and rewarding game I have played and the one single-player game I continue to replay. In addition to the overriding stealth gamestyle, it is loaded with unique elements that hold one in the world. I love the setting, a medieval tech fantasy world that owes less to D&D than to such literary lights as Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance and Michael Shea. It has a spare, but well-crafted storyline, eccentric NPCs, brilliant verse, and unparalleled sound design. Then there are the enormous, intricate levels: Sprawling towns (both populated and ruinous), haunted crypts, bizarre mansions, lost cities, and the finest subterranean sequences in any game the climactic level being a surreal descent that convinced me I had scrambled many miles towards the earth's core. There are countless books I wish I had written; Thief is one of the few games I wish I had worked on."
- Marc Laidlaw, writer/designer of Half-Life and Half-Life 2
Garrett, the master thief
"I've always equated "feelings" with "getting caught"...they both get in the way of my money. Unfortunately, not everyone is as committed to their work as I am."
Garrett has grown into a cynical but highly skilled and disciplined thief who wants nothing more from the world but to be left alone to thieve in relative peace. He's apathetic to anyone but himself and comes across as cold and ruthless despite his unwillingness to kill unless it's absolutely necessary.
He was recruited by the Keepers as an orphan living on streets but left the organization after becoming frustrated with their secrecy and the useless heirarchy and used the skills he had learned and honed while under the tutelage of the Keepers to "steal from the rich and give to himself," as he puts it. And while he wants nothing more than to be able to do just that, his prior connections and his profession keep dragging him back into events far larger than himself.
The most promising acolyte left us, not out of the lesser folly of sentiment, but the
greater folly of anger. His heart was clouded, and his balance was lost, but his
abilities were unmatched. Even then, we knew to watch him most carefully.
- Keeper Annals
The City
The City is a massive and cramped and crowded steampunk metropolis ruled by a corrupt nobility and an unnamed baron. Medieval buildings line the streets and encroach on Gothic churches and Victorian mansions sitting beside Art-deco towers. The dark streets of the City at night are lined with magically lit street lamps that illuminate rumbling steam-powered machinery.
It's an old city. Very old, in fact. The City has been built and rebuilt on top of the old so many times that no one is quite sure when the City first came into being, nor does anyone know what it was originally called. Now it's known only as the City and beneath the darkened streets filled with corrupt guards, undernourished commoners, and thieves stalking the Thieves' Highway are vast cities unto themselves lost to time.
The Factions
The Keepers
The ancient corruption was again contained. To do more would have upset the balance,
but we knew to remain ever vigilant lest it resurface. Neither the
Hammers nor the Pagans could be trusted not to meddle.
- Keeper Annals
The Keepers are a secretive group that stay in the shadows and normally merely observes. They are dedicated to maintaining the balance of the world and seek the realization of a series of prophecies that will determine the fate and continued existence of the world. Secrecy and subterfuge are their weapons and they remain out of sight to manipulate events.
The Order of the Hammer ("The Hammerites")
Before death came, the liars were made to feast upon the hands of the thieves,
And the thieves were made to ingest the tongues of their liar brothers, and we
Praised the Master Builder for his judgements.
-- The Hammer Book Of Tenets
The Hammers are a religious group based upon the medieval version of the Roman Catholic Church. They seek to remake the world in the image of the Master Builder who created and cultivated the earth with his hammer. They are the driving force of progress and technology in the City and represent the largest force of order and orthodoxy, fighting fervently against criminals and the chaos the Pagans represent.
The Pagans
Sings we a dances of wolfs, who smells fear and slays the coward.
Sings we a dances of mans, who smells gold and slays his brother.
- Pagan Saying
The Pagans are nature worshippers that normally live away from civilization in harmony with nature and its supernatural creatures. They reject technology and order and detest the City and its inhabitants. This often puts them in direct conflict with the Hammerites who stand as their opposites.
Breathing New Life Into Thief
Fan Missions
Since the release of Thief, it has bred a thriving community of amateur mappers and mission designers and they have made hundreds of them over the years.
Some are great, some are good, the majority are bad.
But regardless of how many are bad, many, many are at the very least decent and can be a fun diversion and extend the lifespans of Thief 1 & 2 many times over.
To play any of them, you'll need DarkLoader, a utility used by the Thief fan community for years, to load them up quickly and easily.
T2X: Shadows of the Metal Age
T2X is a completely fan-made unofficial expansion pack for Thief 2. It has a long full-length campaign complete with voice acting for every character, fully animated illustrated cutscenes, new weapons, new environments, and a new protagonist.
It isn't as good or as polished as the core game of Thief 2, but tons of effort were put into it and it took years to complete. Not often do undertakings like this succeed, but this one did and it's not half bad.
The Dark Mod
But most exciting is probably The Dark Mod, which is not yet released.
The Dark Mod is a Doom 3 mod that sets out to create a toolset that mappers and modders can use to make their own fan missions along with pre-made assets that mimic the look and feel of the classic Thief games. In addition, once their toolset is complete, they intend to complete their own full-length campaign using the resources they've spent years creating.
The mod has been in production for two years and has just recently released its first playable tech demo.
Ye shall not rob from the house I have built, or commit any theft or
Unrighteousness, lest ye be struck down and driven into the earth forthwith
And the Land Of The Heathen consume you.
- The Book of the Stone
Thief: The Dark Project
Danced we in joys and triumphs. With us the Woodsie Lord danced the stringsie
Foolsie man rose the storms in shouty glee, the darkness in feary glooms, the
Fires in happy greed. Danced we away, and fed the sad stringsie manfool to their
Devourings for our thanks.
- Final Fragment Of The 'Notyets' Manuscript
Thief II: The Metal Age
He poured his children's eyes from glass and from steel wrought their hands
that none could escape his judgement.
- The New Scripture of the Master Builder
Thief: Deadly Shadows
Cry, brethren, for the Betrayer is come. Your hands will be crippled, and you will
perish as the wretched outcast in the Bleak Unwritten. And you will know the face
of the Destroyer.
- Recovered text from The Prophecitus, missing for 132 years
You are Garrett, former Keeper, master thief, and reluctant hero.
Your home is the City, a place where magic and technology meet and three factions constantly vie for dominance.
The shadows are your safe haven. You are neither agile nor a great fighter and to succeed, direct conflict must be avoided at all costs.
Released on November 30, 1998, Thief: The Dark Project pioneered the modern stealth genre. Stealth games came and went before it and even with it, but none were as deep and challenging as Thief. Featuring shadow-based stealth, intelligent use of sound, a variety of tools that could be used to change your environment to your favor, and enemies that would react as realistically as possible to these changes, nothing like Thief had come before it and it became the foundation that was built upon by later games like Splinter Cell.
Further than its gameplay, the series sports one of the creepiest and most palpable atmospheres in a game. The games are built around it, they feed on it and become greater than they were before. The atmosphere is one of the things that makes the games great and breeds the fanatacism held by its fans. Thief is uniquely Thief and from The Dark Project to Deadly Shadows, it is undeniably there, and it is gripping and engrossing and it's impactful as a blackjack to the back of the skull.
Each game features a long and winding storyline told from the very narrow perspective of Garrett himself, who cares for little but what is immediately important. Each is filled with twists and turns and while later games go into greater depth with each of the factions, they are initially described only through quotations at the beginning of mission briefings, small pieces of wisdom that reflect the beliefs of each.
The cutscenes also used a style which is rarely seen anywhere else in gaming. They were uniquely hand drawn for the most part, but also blended in filmed silhouettes of real people, those being used for distant shots or for characters who remain indistinct and away from close-up shots of their faces. They were all dark and stylish and maintain a feel all their own.
"Thief is the single most terrifying, immersive, and rewarding game I have played and the one single-player game I continue to replay. In addition to the overriding stealth gamestyle, it is loaded with unique elements that hold one in the world. I love the setting, a medieval tech fantasy world that owes less to D&D than to such literary lights as Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance and Michael Shea. It has a spare, but well-crafted storyline, eccentric NPCs, brilliant verse, and unparalleled sound design. Then there are the enormous, intricate levels: Sprawling towns (both populated and ruinous), haunted crypts, bizarre mansions, lost cities, and the finest subterranean sequences in any game the climactic level being a surreal descent that convinced me I had scrambled many miles towards the earth's core. There are countless books I wish I had written; Thief is one of the few games I wish I had worked on."
- Marc Laidlaw, writer/designer of Half-Life and Half-Life 2
Garrett, the master thief
"I've always equated "feelings" with "getting caught"...they both get in the way of my money. Unfortunately, not everyone is as committed to their work as I am."
Garrett has grown into a cynical but highly skilled and disciplined thief who wants nothing more from the world but to be left alone to thieve in relative peace. He's apathetic to anyone but himself and comes across as cold and ruthless despite his unwillingness to kill unless it's absolutely necessary.
He was recruited by the Keepers as an orphan living on streets but left the organization after becoming frustrated with their secrecy and the useless heirarchy and used the skills he had learned and honed while under the tutelage of the Keepers to "steal from the rich and give to himself," as he puts it. And while he wants nothing more than to be able to do just that, his prior connections and his profession keep dragging him back into events far larger than himself.
The most promising acolyte left us, not out of the lesser folly of sentiment, but the
greater folly of anger. His heart was clouded, and his balance was lost, but his
abilities were unmatched. Even then, we knew to watch him most carefully.
- Keeper Annals
The City
The City is a massive and cramped and crowded steampunk metropolis ruled by a corrupt nobility and an unnamed baron. Medieval buildings line the streets and encroach on Gothic churches and Victorian mansions sitting beside Art-deco towers. The dark streets of the City at night are lined with magically lit street lamps that illuminate rumbling steam-powered machinery.
It's an old city. Very old, in fact. The City has been built and rebuilt on top of the old so many times that no one is quite sure when the City first came into being, nor does anyone know what it was originally called. Now it's known only as the City and beneath the darkened streets filled with corrupt guards, undernourished commoners, and thieves stalking the Thieves' Highway are vast cities unto themselves lost to time.
The Factions
The Keepers
The ancient corruption was again contained. To do more would have upset the balance,
but we knew to remain ever vigilant lest it resurface. Neither the
Hammers nor the Pagans could be trusted not to meddle.
- Keeper Annals
The Keepers are a secretive group that stay in the shadows and normally merely observes. They are dedicated to maintaining the balance of the world and seek the realization of a series of prophecies that will determine the fate and continued existence of the world. Secrecy and subterfuge are their weapons and they remain out of sight to manipulate events.
The Order of the Hammer ("The Hammerites")
Before death came, the liars were made to feast upon the hands of the thieves,
And the thieves were made to ingest the tongues of their liar brothers, and we
Praised the Master Builder for his judgements.
-- The Hammer Book Of Tenets
The Hammers are a religious group based upon the medieval version of the Roman Catholic Church. They seek to remake the world in the image of the Master Builder who created and cultivated the earth with his hammer. They are the driving force of progress and technology in the City and represent the largest force of order and orthodoxy, fighting fervently against criminals and the chaos the Pagans represent.
The Pagans
Sings we a dances of wolfs, who smells fear and slays the coward.
Sings we a dances of mans, who smells gold and slays his brother.
- Pagan Saying
The Pagans are nature worshippers that normally live away from civilization in harmony with nature and its supernatural creatures. They reject technology and order and detest the City and its inhabitants. This often puts them in direct conflict with the Hammerites who stand as their opposites.
Breathing New Life Into Thief
Fan Missions
Since the release of Thief, it has bred a thriving community of amateur mappers and mission designers and they have made hundreds of them over the years.
Some are great, some are good, the majority are bad.
But regardless of how many are bad, many, many are at the very least decent and can be a fun diversion and extend the lifespans of Thief 1 & 2 many times over.
To play any of them, you'll need DarkLoader, a utility used by the Thief fan community for years, to load them up quickly and easily.
T2X: Shadows of the Metal Age
T2X is a completely fan-made unofficial expansion pack for Thief 2. It has a long full-length campaign complete with voice acting for every character, fully animated illustrated cutscenes, new weapons, new environments, and a new protagonist.
It isn't as good or as polished as the core game of Thief 2, but tons of effort were put into it and it took years to complete. Not often do undertakings like this succeed, but this one did and it's not half bad.
The Dark Mod
But most exciting is probably The Dark Mod, which is not yet released.
The Dark Mod is a Doom 3 mod that sets out to create a toolset that mappers and modders can use to make their own fan missions along with pre-made assets that mimic the look and feel of the classic Thief games. In addition, once their toolset is complete, they intend to complete their own full-length campaign using the resources they've spent years creating.
The mod has been in production for two years and has just recently released its first playable tech demo.
Pancake on
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Posts
probably the thickest atmosphere in gaming
even despite the age of the original, it's still engrossing beyond measure
*assumes foetal position*
*joins* That level took me 3 hours the first time I went through it because of the atmosphere of the place.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
This makes me want to dig out my copy of thief 2 and reinstall. So congrats, mission accomplished :P
WITH US FOREVER
Should i play through 1 and 2 first if I really want to enjoy it? Or is Deadly Shadows enough to just jump in to?
Whoa that is interesting, nice find
I haven't played Theif for manyyy years and I highly doubt I'd be able to run it with Vista but if I ever get round to buying an old computer it is very high on the list of games to replay, and in the case of Theif: Deadly Shadows, play
I wasn't the biggest fan of T2, mostly because of the later added elements of robots sort of broke the illusion for me, but Theif Gold was simply amazing!
I'd recommend playing through all of them in order, but if you were to only play one, as much as most Thief fans hate Deadly Shadows, It's honestly my favorite and dumbed down or not, it feels the most modern of the series because it is.
As much as I love the first two games, their controls are kind of archaic not to mention the graphics. They weren't particularly pretty even when they came out.
Its enough I think, some small part of the story may be unexplained, but the game stands on its own story wise. Gameplay wise is different, deadly shadows is more accessible, or some may say "easy", and levels in the first two games were far bigger, longer, (darker!) and required all your attention, but also they were much more rewarding to win. Going from the first two to 3 maybe better than doing the opposite.
Personally I would have liked to play them in order only because of the ending of deadly shadows, the order I played was Thief 2, deadly shadows and now I'm trying to finish thief 1.
PS-
Looking Glass Noooo!
Tumblr
You can easily play Thief DS without playing the first two, if you play DS without having played the first two you'll miss alot of the references though.
I've only completed DS and I got all the way up to Return to the Cathedral on DP before having to return it. The Thief games have my absolute favorite atmosphere and setting, and I love the way the cutscenes are done. I really need to pick up DP and finish it out, I heard the second one was a bit more James Bondish than the first and third one though.
I also wish I could think of a good quote. Hm.
Um..
So this is the Lost City...well..it aint lost no more!
Thief: Gold, if you can get your hands on it.
Now weep uncontrollably because it's never going to happen.
Also, major love to Thief 3. I can't understand why people, especially fans, hate it. Yeah, there are some technical sacrifices, but it's more consistent in its quality than the others, both of which had some levels that were completely unbearable. The only thing I really don't like about it is the lack of traditional Thief cutscenes.
What was that you said about a modern continuation anyway, Pancake? I haven't heard anything about that, but I don't really frequent the Thief fanbase community. It's too bad Eidos is still the one holding the license. With recent events they're on the fast track to becoming the prime retarded publisher.
Edit: I absolutely wouldn't recommend anyone playing Thief 3 without having played the other two. The payoff is far too great for those who stick with the series. The whole story comes together incredibly well; it's one of the only game trilogies that really feels like a trilogy, even if the main plots aren't directly connected.
I know everyone (no one) was waiting with bated breath.
Very shortly after Thief 3 came out, word got out that Eidos and Ion were working on Thief 4, which was going to be modern and have absolutely nothing to do with the other games in the series. But Thief 3 didn't do too well and Ion went out of business.
Thief 4 was canceled while still in pre-production and all that's really known is that some of the concept work was done and that people in the company thought it looked promising. A Deus Ex 3 was rumored to have been in pre at the same time, but nothing but rumors ever came out about that.
T2X. It's... not that great.
For a fan project and a full-length game, it's fairly good, but it has a lot of problems in its level design (which also pops up a few times in the original games). The thing with Thief maps is that light values aren't actually based on actual lighting present on the map, it's set by the map maker. So it's very possible to have a pitch black room where you're completely visible if you set the light values improperly.
T2X has a lot of that kind of thing. Not to the same extreme, but it's still annoying enough.
I still love going back every few years and playing the games. So much so that I'm fairly sure I will inevitably end up with a tattoo design based on some part of the game. Not so much that I love the game that much (that would be a pretty foolish reason to get a tattoo), I just absolutely love the style and atmosphere that the series has put forth. It's certainly unique amongst its competitors, and unfortunately the genre has really died out in recent years as well.
I am buying this right now.
Yeah, your really not in the spirit of the world here.
Ironically, I got the second not long after, and I can't even get past the first stage.
Garrett's consistently awesome even in the third game, I think. I don't get why it's such a black sheep of the series.
"Garrett, what is it with you and that hood..."
It's pretty easy to sum up.
Smaller levels, loot glint, leaning is different, a dagger replaces the longsword, City hub missions, climbing gloves.
That's it. That's why everyone flips out and calls it shit. The big two everyone nit-picks at the most are bolded.
The third has a vast world between levels, so I think that'd make up for them being 'small'(and ones like the clock tower seemed pretty huge to me).
You might have a point if the "vast world" between missions wasn't also something they hated with a passion. It's up there in the list as City hub missions.
Thief fans hate change of any kind.
Thief 3 really didn't have that, as all the levels were broken up into different segments with multiple loading zones. It really killed the "Size" of the world, at least for me.
Also, the climbing gloves were horribly under used. I was as sad as anyone when they informed us the rope arrows were being taken out, but I thought that the climbing gloves would be a nice substitute. Unfortunately, you really only got to use them in a very limited amount of places.
That being said, I have tons of respect for the game, the way it tied everything up. The Cradle easily ranks as the scariest level ever for me. I think the only level that I was really really unhappy with was the one where your in the museum. That just seemed like such a lame last "real" level.
Don't get me wrong - the Dark engine had its fair share of infuriating problems, but the Flesh engine had its own completely new set, which is arguably worse.