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Dreaad

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Deep in your subconscious mind spreading lies.
Yeah as other's have said Dishonored is quite fun...
:bro:

...if you don't use the blink power.
:killit:
It completely ruined the game for me when I used it *shrugs*. Exploration is too easy because you don't have to look around for a path, you just blink. Combat became cake because you just blink behind/to the side of enemies. All the "advances" in technology for the enemy became meaningless as you just blink past them. Hell it even lets you escape any combat or stealth fuck-up. It's basically a big I win button. Maybe it's just me, the most fun I had from the game was I didn't use fade/magic powers at all, then it actually a challenge.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Part 9: http://sneakybastards.net/stealthreview/thief-design-analysis-part-9/

thief-design-analysis-part-9.png


The second to last chapter of the Thief reboot returns to locations and lore from the original trilogy.


Thief’s penultimate chapter takes you to a Hammerite Cathedral in the City’s Old Quarter; a remnant of the “old gods”. Orion and the Graven are gathering inside. It’s where you’ll find whatever answers he may have, and hopefully Erin.

If you crawl under the road leading to the Cathedral and descend the wooden ramps on the far side, you’ll reach a pit that extends up to the ground level several meters above. There’s no way into the cathedral grounds from here, though you can fall down this hole from above. Despite providing a sense of continuity by linking different areas of the level together, this is a layout decision that doesn’t make sense from a play perspective. If you explore this pit from the top, you’ll fall to the bottom and need to traverse the first courtyard again.

The outer courtyard of the cathedral features an encounter so crammed full of different elements that its challenge stems more from simply not offering any space to move than from the relationships between the individual pieces. A fire has been lit in the centre of the courtyard. It’s too large to be dowsed, so it pushes you out to the edges of the space in the name of concealment. Here, bottles, caged birds, and patches of broken glass limit your ability to move quickly. Sleeping and standing Graven are positioned around the fire, while others patrol the courtyard. A further complication is provided by the lightning flashes that illuminate the area at irregular intervals, revealing your position. This density of objects is not helped by a bug that causes parts of the space to be lit in a way that makes the light level on the floor appear to be an inaccurate representation of how illuminated you will be if you stand there.


The collapsed tower is an example of how to enable vertical traversal without resorting to third-person sequences with bespoke control schemes.

There are two ways into the Cathedral. The front doors have been sealed shut, though one of the panels above is missing, and if you can reach the scaffolding in front of the door you can climb through into the vestibule. From the first courtyard, you can use a crawl space to reach a second smaller courtyard, and from there gain entry to the half-collapsed bell tower.

Falling apart, with the roof entirely missing in places, the Cathedral is patrolled by multiple armed Graven. The majority of their unarmed brethren have used the elevator constructed in the centre of the structure to descend into the ancient ruins below. In order to follow them down, you will need to reach the supply elevator.

Laid out asymmetrically around the excavation in the centre, this area’s spatial design focuses along the north wall. Here, the rooms and walls remain relatively intact and Graven patrols are frequent. Across the pit to the south is the supply elevator, with two ways to reach it. Before reaching the Graven to the north, a series of ramps leads down to the lowest level. Here, you can find a switch to activate the elevator. This route requires you to confront fewer NPCs, but you will need to trigger the switch and wait for the elevator to arrive. Head instead through the patrolled spaces along the north wall, and you’ll reach an anchor point for a rope arrow that will take you up onto the maintenance platforms above the two elevator shafts. From here, you can climb down and into the cage of the supply elevator without having to call it back to the ground floor.


Overhead transport lines run throughout the underground sections of the level. Following them will take you where you need to go, though their materials and colouration make them easy to miss.

The path from the elevator shaft to the Graven congregation in the hidden city is split into three distinct sections, separated by soft transitions through cracks in the wall. Vertically oriented and built from wooden walkways around a central shaft of crumbling brick, the focus of the first section is environmental traversal, requiring you to climb and jump across ledges and breaks in the path. Three Graven patrol the top of the shaft. Depending on the route you take, bypassing them can be challenging or trivial. With so much of this section built from similar materials, it is difficult to visually determine the different routes through the space to the top of the shaft; the path you take and your position relative to the patrolling Graven when you reach the top can feel accidental.

Encounters with Freaks become more common as you move past the Graven, and the next section requires you to traverse a bridge while they stumble across it, making the direct route hazardous. There’s a way across to be found by dropping down onto the stone ledges that run along the sides of the chamber, and a convenient rope will allow you to climb back up on the far side. Through a large metal doorway, you will need to be careful of trapped floor panels as you begin to ascend once more. A ladder enables you to reach the final section before the hidden city proper. This space is more intact than those below and patrolled by a pair of Graven. Though restricted in size, there are enough side rooms that you can hide and wait for an opportunity to slip past and through a final metal door.

The hidden city has been constructed with an eye toward the same spatial design applied to the City sections above, but the restricted space and low object density mean it never coalesces into something that feels like a habitable space; it’s a street and the remnants of a building. Seen from the outside, the rotunda that serves as your destination is huge, the centerpiece of the hidden city. From within, it’s too cramped to fit even a small fraction of the Graven observed flocking towards it only minutes earlier.


Your first glimpse of the hidden city recalls the City above ground, though your exploration of it will reveal it to be little more than a superficial facade.

Conceptually, a stealth “boss fight” has potential, but the implementation of your final confrontation with the Thief-Taker General is frustrating and often comical. He stands in the middle of the room firing flaming bolts at your suspected position, while you attempt to unlock the door by operating two cranks on opposite sides of the room and then picking the lock.

As a journey through the layers of history that exists beneath the surface of the City, there is a sense of exploring the past in the aesthetic design of this chapter, but the limited space occupied by each discrete section, and the reliance on a limited set of materials with near identical colouration, undercuts this attempt at narrative through architecture.

Instead, Chapter 7 is a series of linked encounter spaces – not an exploration of a subterranean city. Coming after the open and undirected visit to Northcrest Manor, the artificial and inelegant way spaces are connected here stands out. Individually, some of the challenges encountered along the way are engaging, making good use of Garrett’s extended movement abilities and allowing for both intentional and improvisation play, but they lack coherence. An aggressively unidirectional sequence of discrete encounter spaces, this level also includes the use of the cliche “roof that collapses behind you” to ensure you always keep moving in the required direction and never consider exploring beyond the path laid out before you.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Sneaky Bastards analysis - endgame: http://sneakybastards.net/stealthreview/thief-design-analysis-part-10/

thief-design-analysis-part-10.png


Thief’s anti-climactic finale features easily-bypassed encounters within confusing and characterless spatial design.


With Garrett delayed by the Thief-Taker General, Orion was able to make his escape with Erin. Pursuing him leads you into a network of tunnels where Freaks shamble along their long slow patrol routes. Patience will enable you to avoid engaging them directly, and with careful timing you can escape through a door onto the docks without ever being detected. Visible through a hole in the rock wall ahead, the sea churns around the massive irregular form of the Dawn’s Light. Skeletal and half finished with huge wooden ribs visible against the storm clouds, the ship’s form makes little sense. It appears top heavy, like it has been built upside down.

Before you can board the Dawn’s Light, you first need to get through the heavily trafficked area between the starting section and the docks themselves. There is loot to discovered if you risk exposure, though you can avoid the Graven by using a rope arrow to climb directly to the upper level and move through the room there to reach a hole in the rocks that leads back outside.

There are two way of boarding the ship: climbing over the side onto the deck, or using a rope arrow to reach the stern. The latter route presents the greater challenge, as it requires passing a pair of Graven on the docks. However, approaching from this direction has the benefit of providing a view of the ship as you climb up that helps solidify it as a single large vessel, rather than the disparate collection of spaces it feels like from the inside.


Besides being made entirely of wood, there is little about the spatial design onboard the Dawn’s Light that marks it out as being a ship. You could be inside a warehouse.

The first encounter space within the Dawn’s Light appears initially challenging. However, if you have the wrench, you can use it to enter the vents, bypass the patrols, and reach the elevator to the next section while only having to worry about a single Graven guard.

Built on a symmetrical layout, the Stowage Deck of the Dawn’s Light more obviously feels like something onboard a ship, though its sense of place relies on you being able to relate your current position to the outside of the ship you saw briefly as you approached. Without that connection between exterior and interior, there’s little to differentiate it from the warehouses and back alleys of the City itself.

The final encounter plays out not against Orion, but Erin. Dragged into the altered reality of the Primal, the first part of your two-stage confrontation is the only example of an objective that explicitly requires you to avoid detection. Being spotted while attempting to approach Erin will cause her to lash out and disappear, coalescing again in another part of the level.

After bypassing the Freaks she leaves in her wake, you reach Erin again in the bow of the Dawn’s Light. Multiple forms of her floating around the space set off bursts of Primal light than will injure you if caught in them. Your final act in Thief is a game of red light/green light with a mystical entity, while you attempt to gather the separate pieces of the Primal stone for a purpose that is never made clear.

Structurally and aesthetically an addendum to the previous chapter, the Dawn’s Light features some challenging encounter spaces onboard the Dawn’s Light and the structures built into the rocks on the shoreline. Unfortunately, in every instance, the level design subverts this challenge. You have been trained over the course of the preceding hours to look for and exploit the opportunities provided by grates and rope arrow anchor points. Doing so here enables you to avoid large portions of every encounter. Behaviour you have been conditioned to use, to rely upon, now enables you to bypass the game’s climactic encounters without any clear indication that you will have no way back should you wish to explore.

A piecemeal and frequently confusing end to the game, Chapter 8 lacks the smart level design of Northcrest Manor, the scripted bombast of the Keep, or the out and out hostility of the Moira Asylum. It’s an emotionally and aesthetically flat conclusion, that includes too many shortcuts, both in its level design and narrative.
 

buzz

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Joined
Apr 1, 2012
Messages
4,234
What is it with nerds and analyzing the shit out of shitty things?
First you had that guy who made reviews of the Star Wars prequels longer than the movies (they were pretty funny though).
Then some long-ass analysis of the plot and characters in the Mass Effect game, also on video.
Spoony's reviews of Final Fantasy games.
And now this long-ass shit. Who the fuck cares, it's a shitty game end of story.

I really wonder if this sneakybastards website had a detailed 10 parts analysis of any previous Thief game or other good stealth games in general.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Joined
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Vostroya
What is it with nerds and analyzing the shit out of shitty things?
First you had that guy who made reviews of the Star Wars prequels longer than the movies (they were pretty funny though).
Then some long-ass analysis of the plot and characters in the Mass Effect game, also on video.
Spoony's reviews of Final Fantasy games.
And now this long-ass shit. Who the fuck cares, it's a shitty game end of story.

I really wonder if this sneakybastards website had a detailed 10 parts analysis of any previous Thief game or other good stealth games in general.
Heeey, leave Star Wars reviews alone, they were brilliant! ME3 plot analysys vids were p. decent, but reviewer showed himself to be a massive retard while arguing against turn based combat in RPG, so yeah, this one I give you. Spoony's reviews were p. shitty, agreed.

Well, I think it's natural (if nerdy) reaction to a franchise rape or decline, be it SW, ME, or that aborted mess Thi4f.
 

tuluse

Arcane
Joined
Jul 20, 2008
Messages
11,400
Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
What is it with nerds and analyzing the shit out of shitty things?
First you had that guy who made reviews of the Star Wars prequels longer than the movies (they were pretty funny though).
Then some long-ass analysis of the plot and characters in the Mass Effect game, also on video.
Spoony's reviews of Final Fantasy games.
And now this long-ass shit. Who the fuck cares, it's a shitty game end of story.

I really wonder if this sneakybastards website had a detailed 10 parts analysis of any previous Thief game or other good stealth games in general.
We learn more from mistakes than successes.
 

Sonus

Educated
Joined
Feb 25, 2014
Messages
84
Hard to believe at times that EM didn't create an expensive troll of a game.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
The final conclusion: http://sneakybastards.net/stealthreview/thief-design-analysis-conclusion/

thief-design-analysis-conclusion.png


Our deep dive analysis of the Thief reboot concludes with a holistic look at its stealth systems in the context of the game’s level design.


Levels in Eidos Montreal’s Thief reboot lack consistency. From the fundamental spatial design, to NPC and object placement, to contextualising aesthetics, there is no encompassing identity. Some levels feature forced progression through a strictly unidirectional space, others are open and self-directed. Sometimes you will be free to use any of the tools at your disposal, at others you are not even permitted to draw your bow.

Lacking a consistent implementation, the underlying systems of Thief are rendered unreadable and unpredictable. Intentionality and improvisation are undermined when the circumstances under which plans are made, and events reacted to, are liable to change without warning.

Connections between areas are not organic; their construction as a sequential series of stealth arenas linked by soft loading transitions is poorly concealed. This obvious, and seemingly arbitrary partitioning of space destroys any sense of coherency the spatial design might otherwise have created.

The frequency with which you are required to hammer at a button to force open a window, or hold up a fallen beam so you can duck under, soon renders such interactions rote. Sometimes these transitions will fade to black momentarily if they are not taking enough time to cover the streaming of the next area, or they will cut abruptly to a hard level transition signified by a load screen. Even when handled smoothly, these transition points serve to constrict the environment into a series of choke points between larger sections. The world of Thief is not a coherent whole, but a series of smaller encounter arenas with strict limits on how they can connect to each other.

The nature of these transitions leads to a disjointed progress through the world, where a hard transition through a load screen can either mask a distance of a few feet or the entire width of the City. The exterior of one space can lead to an interior inconsistent with the structure as seen from the outside. A vast cathedral that looms above you as you approach is much smaller and more restrictive within.

There are locations that are built as single explorable spaces. These make up the core of a number of the chapters, but they are surrounded by introductions and finales that restrict your available abilities to ensure a specific playstyle. Follow these NPCs along their predefined path, escape across this burning bridge – but only along the path provided.

While exploring the main section of these chapters, avoiding or actively confronting NPCs, the rhythm of play is dictated by your own actions. Things occur at your own pace because of decisions you make. But every time you reach the conclusion to a chapter, the pace is altered artificially. There’s nothing organic to the tension created; your actions within each discrete section of a level are irrelevant to the sections that follow. There’s little entanglement, and the only consequences are those predefined. If you knocked out all the guards in the gardens of Northcrest Manor, the only impact that has is on the statistics screen. You never have to go through that space again, so it doesn’t matter what you did as nobody inside the Manor will react to, or even acknowledge, your behaviour. Consequences are artificial and inelegant, defined purely as numerical scores rather than changes to the environment or the dynamic of a level.

Compare this to the infiltration of Dunwall Tower in Dishonored. Alerting the guards as you move through the grounds means that the Lord Regent will remain within his secure room on the roof, rather than returning to his bedroom, creating an additional challenge should you wish to reach him. Even this is a more “special case” example of entanglement than that offered by Thief: The Dark Project, where the design of spaces and your ability to explore then in a non-directed manner meant you could never divorce yourself from your previous actions. If you knocked out a guard in order to gain entry to a building, their body would remain where you hide it until you made your escape, to potentially be found by another guard, or simply to remain undiscovered, allowing you to leave the way you came in. The level design of The Dark Project paved the way for entanglement to flourish as an emergent property.

Within each chapter of the reboot, there is one objective which, over the course of the level, is broken down to a sequence of sub-objectives. With a rare few exceptions, these sub-objectives involve reaching a specific point in the level. Those that don’t will require you to grab an object or operate a switch. Objectives never rely on or exploit any of the underlying systems beyond basic movement and generic interaction.

You can steal the loot from the belts of NPCs, you can even take their necklaces without them noticing, you can disable traps and unlock doors, but only once within the story chapters are these abilities built into the objectives – and even then, it is optional. Beyond a handful of plot-specific items, you don’t need to steal anything to complete an objective. Of the few plot-relevant objects you do need to steal, several of the thefts occur inside the altered reality created by the Primal, a deus-ex-machina that is never sufficiently contextualised.


That NPCs are incapable of using transitions only serves to reinforce how artificially they break up the space.

One recurring pattern in Thief, likely caused by technical constraints, is that the size and complexity of a level is inversely proportional to the number of NPCs within it. This can be seen most noticeably in Chapters 5 and 6. Both of these chapters feature spatially large levels, with multiple routes and scope for exploration, but they also feature either no, or a limited number of, NPCs. This is a problem for a stealth game, as you can’t use your tools and creativity to avoid detection when there is nothing to detect you, no antagonistic force to provide resistance.

The ratio of space to number of NPCs is such that they are either densely clustered in a small area, or there are a limited number of them on long patrols or standing idly in isolated locations. In the latter instance, the speed of swoop makes it a straightforward matter to put some distance between you and them, allowing you to move around the levels with impunity. There are areas throughout Thief that feature smart design, with use of layout and lighting that has the potential to create interesting stealth encounters. Unfortunately, these are frequently undermined by this lack of NPCs. Some of the most memorable locations in terms of spatial design are those that are empty.

In the entire game, there are only three situations where actual physical keys are necessary to unlock doors despite there being hundreds of locks that can be picked. If you approach a door with a lock that can be picked, you have to participate in the lock picking minigame or find another way into that room. You will never be able to locate the key for that lock, as it doesn’t exist. Picking a lock in a room devoid of NPCs is a time sink; you can fail as much as you want, and eventually brute force your way through. Compare this to the sense of tension created when picking a complex lock next to a sleeping guard, or in a patch of light along another’s patrol route. The function of individual objects is most strongly defined when they are layered upon each other, which is done smartly in some levels, but not others.

Too often, variety is offered by restricting your tools and changing the rules governing their use, rather than through modification of the systemic elements of the game. Parts of Thief that are less restrictive encourage you to cultivate your own style and toolset, which you may then have to abandon for enforced escape sequences. It’s a similar problem to that created by the boss fights in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
There is no systemic identity to the levels. Consider Thief: The Metal Age; First City Bank and Trust was systemically about traps and random encounters. Sabotage at Soulforge was the ultimate hostile space, with metal surfaces everywhere and rooms teeming with Karras’ mechanical creations. This latter example, the conclusion of The Metal Age, generates its hostile atmosphere not simply from its size and the challenge presented by the patrolling robot inhabitants, but through the abundance of metal surfaces that are both noisy to walk across and entirely divorced from the design of the rest of the City, where metal and other hard noisy surfaces are a luxury. With hostility from both object interactions and thematic and narrative context, Sabotage at Soulforge is The Metal Age manifest: the death of the organic and the rise of the machine. Compare this to the un-boat of The Dawn’s Light, which is just a mess of thematic inconsistency and hostility created by bespoke rules.

At the high level, there is no arc to the level design. The plot presents dramatic twists and moments of tension that are not supported by the structure of the levels. Each chapter is isolated from those before or after, to such an extent that you could swap the order of the five chapters in the middle of the game and, beyond the cutscenes that occur outside your control, they would not feel out of place. You will still deal with the same limited set of NPC and object types in areas that have similar spatial layouts.

There is little sense of escalation in the design. One level will focus on a design conceit that another underplays or completely abandons. The House of Blossoms is the densest level with the most NPCs. The Baron’s Keep is the most obviously scripted and cinematic. Moria Asylum is the largest level in the game spatially, and Northcrest Manor is the strongest stealth space and one of the few levels that feels like a coherent location. Any one of those could serve as the climax of the game and it would not feel out of place. The systems, and the encounters in which you engage with them, don’t develop beyond the form in which they are first introduced.

The final three chapters feature the introduction of no new design elements. The tension of these final levels comes instead from forcing multiple objects into small spaces and limiting your movement options. These chapters are challenging because it’s harder to move around with so many NPCs in such a limited space. The utility of using thrown objects to distract guards, which until then has been a primary means of avoiding confrontation, is diminished when doing so alerts every NPC in the section.


Even the documents and other environmental narrative elements within each level do little to support the high level story, so focused are they on the specific events of each level.

In isolation, the core systems of Thief, the tools and movement options available and their relationship to visibility, are a mixed bag, but their interactions offer scope for engaging and challenging stealth encounters if layered together. Sometimes this occurs, but at others the disparate systems exist in isolation. A problem underlying the entire game is that there are rarely enough NPCs; those that are present are not in good locations to push against your actions. Instead, you have rooms that exist just for you to take everything from with no sense of risk or challenge. In some instances these rooms are ones that would logically exists in such a location, but too often they are simply used as dumping grounds for collectibles.

There are torches to dowse and candles to snuff out in areas where no NPCs patrol. There are locks to pick in entirely empty rooms where nobody could ever hear you fail. The former is a redundant action, the spatial design of most levels means you will never return to a location so the time you spend dowsing that torch is never going to aid you at some potentially later time. The lack of complete concealment in dark areas means any dowsed torches only provide a limited safe space anyway. Locks on doors and chests in unguarded rooms are simply time sinks, preventing you from stealing whatever loot might be on the other side of the lock. If the keys existed within the level, you could spend time exploring the space and building up a mental model to aid you later, and only then finding the key. Discovery, and the rewards that come with it, fit conceptually the notion of being a thief in a way that a lockpicking minigame can’t.

Action games can create entanglement through ammunition limitations and weapon selection. But in a stealth game it’s often possible to get through a space using only your movement abilities, so entanglement can’t be created through resources. Dishonored’s way to solve this, along with also being an action game, was to make mana a finite resource. There are only a set number of vials that exist, and each power uses a specific amount of mana, so using a power at one point might mean you are unable to use it later. Thief’s Focus mode operates differently; it needs to be activated and then continuously drains until either deactivated or it runs out. It is also not as directly useful, and can even be disabled completely.

Resource management isn’t a concern, as in a lot of areas you don’t even need to use any resources to get through. Bottles are potentially the most important resource for stealth play, given how useful distractions are, but the game removes bottles from your inventory without warning, only providing access to them to at specific points. There are certain levels you have to get through without a bottle, because that’s how the game has been designed.


Each level is just a case of reaching the next objective marker, of loading the next section. You could run flat out through the entire level in most instances and all that would change would be the end of level statistics breakdown.

When Thief steps back and lets you explore, steal, and manipulate the NPCs, it feels, if not just like The Dark Project, at least like it understands what made that game work.

There are moments where the elements of Thief coalesce; you’re edging carefully through a guarded room, relying on partial observations of patrol routes to slip past unnoticed. You swoop around a corner as a torch bearing guard turns back toward you. A swipe, and you grab the loot from the table beside you just as the guard rounds the corner. Before your position is illuminated by the flames from his torch you climb up, over the bookcase and drop down on the other side into darkness. A swoop to the door, you pick the lock quickly, knowing another guard is due to patrol past any moment, just in time you open the door and swoop through, closing it behind you so as not to raise any suspicions.

Within the heart of the House of Blossoms, or Northcrest Manor, there are moments like this where Thief provides a freeform space for exploration, tense encounters, and creative stealth play. If more of the game had been made up of level design like this, it would be an easier game to analyse. Unfortunately, such sections make up only a small part of the game’s eight main chapters; their scale, complexity, and general quality vary with little sense of escalation or pacing, and they are connected by sections where your available abilities are either partially or entirely restricted, to the point where sometimes you are literally just pressing forward.

With more moments like the House of Blossoms or Northcrest Manor, and less like the Keep or the Hidden City, Thief would be a much stronger game. Given that intentionality can and will lead to improvisation, it is when the game puts you in situations like those found in the House of Blossoms that it is able to offer the strongest stealth play.

With predictable frequency, Thief breaks its own rules in order to enforce the type of experience it thinks you should be having. The result is a design that lacks conviction, one desperate to provide memorable moments but so terrified that you might somehow mess them up that it rarely lets you do anything within them. Instead of varying pacing through changes in the challenges you face, and the means by which you can use your abilities to find creative solutions to problems, Thief strips those abilities away and for most of the “important” moments relegates you to moving forward while things happen to you.

There’s no intentionality when you’re not offered enough information to formulate a plan, and the rules keep changing on you. Thief has strong moments, but too often it wants to direct you toward what it wants you to do, what it thinks will be an engaging experience, rather than allowing you to explore and let such moment emerge organically from systemic interactions and smart level design. Many of Thief’s problems can be seen in the space of a single chapter. As well-designed as the opening exploration of Northcrest Manor is, your confrontation with the Baron is bookended with the same restrictions and enforced tension that makes the closing chapters feel so flat.

There’s a third of a great stealth game lurking within Thief, a third of an average cinematic action adventure, and a third that could be good but doesn’t commit to anything. Unfortunately, you can’t just play one part. Every chapter includes some portion of all three, with sections arranged in a structure that lacks consistency, or is sometimes just incoherent, and can’t wait to change the rules on you.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Blah. His voice really doesn't fit well with that sort of writing.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
His voice only makes it more apparent how utterly shit that writing is, and how the real Garrett would never talk like this.
 

skacky

3D Realms
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The City
I find this trailer rather funny because you can see a lot of things that ended up being very different in the final product (Stephen Russell ofc, but also the mechanical eye, bigger scar, etc).
 

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