Thief: Best and Worst Levels

[skacky]

Hey let's do Deadly Shadows too. Overall I think TDS is much more homogeneous in quality than Thief 2, with no real below average levels, but its best levels are not as good as the best levels from Thief 1 or 2.

1. Still Life With Blackjack — The closest there is in terms of level size and complexity to Thief 1 and 2 if you take it as one big level (possible with T3Gold). The mission is just a whole lot of fun with many guards and a truckload of loot to steal. The layout is very good (except maybe the very beginning with its only entrance) and the level actually pretty challenging. The tense music is also fantastic. I loved the return of The Eye and its funny quips.
2. Robbing the Cradle — Not as terrifying as Return to the Cathedral but extremely unnerving nonetheless. The Puppets are just really scary opponents and the atmosphere and exposition in this mission are absolutely perfect. No stupid, bollocks jump-scares like in Thi4f's pitiful attempt at remaking the level. The memory-travel thing is also pretty unique and works very well. The level structure is very similar to Return to the Cathedral overall, which makes sense since both levels were designed by the same person.
3. The House of the Widow Moira — Very good mansion sneaker with an excellent melancholic atmosphere that's perfectly conveyed thanks to the great sound design and music.
4. End of the Bloodline — Good mansion sneaker with a really cool old castle aesthetic. It's a solid introduction level, much better than Running Interference in my opinion. It's nothing really special but gets the job done and has a good layout.
5. Of Brethren... And Betrayers — Love the tension in this one. It's a good sneaker as well with good challenge, excellent sound design and atmosphere. It's just a shame it's so short.
6. St Edgar's Eve — A Hammerite level, oh joy! This one is pretty damn good too, but is too short as well. The factory bit in particular is criminally small.
7. Killing Time — Good concept but the level is too small and a bit of a chore to navigate in, due to Garrett's awful body awareness and tight spaces.
8. Into the Pagan Sanctuary — Very interesting and pretty but also pretty damn boring, with not much to do. The initial area is good and the castle ruins are charming, but that's about it.It's also probably the easiest mission in the game.
9. The Sunken Citadel — Meh. Far too small for a Lost City-type mission. This one is over much too soon, the layout is too simple and very one-dimensional. There is barely any vertical action involved, save for the crown room I guess.

 

[DemonKing]

Down in the Bonehoard is my favourite - simply on atmosphere alone. The SFX were incredible.

I keep meaning to replay Deadly Shadows but lack of time and tons of unfinished games means it sits perpetually on the backburner. I remember enjoying it although the limitations of consoles at the time meant the PC levels were split in two which was a bit jarring. Also never got Thief Gold so missed out on those bonus missions too (they really should have been patched in for those with the original game). It was probably $2 in the last Steam sale so I guess I have no excuses now.

 

[Carrion]

4. Sabotage at Soulforge — Love how incredibly tough and HUGE this mission is. I don't really understand people who call it tedious, to me it is an incredibly fun level with many challenges. Hearing Karras slowly lose his cool when you run through his death machine conveys a lot of tension.

It's huge in the worst possible way. Rooms feel empty and out of scale. Running through the place became a chore after a while (and backtracking is a huge deal in this mission). It's visually uninteresing and looks mostly the same from beginning to end. Lots of empty rectangular hallways connecting needlessly big and empty rooms (how was this supposed to be a cathedral?). Poor lighting with limited resources made for annoying trial and error gameplay; a lot of areas are just too well lit to make for stealthy gameplay and seem to favor confrontation (unlike undead missions in thief 1). Wonky lighting: lightgem can be completely lit in apparently dark areas. Also cameras that spawn in more bots and random metal floors everywhere. All of this coupled with the fact that most of the enemies in the mission are combat bots (and the number of enemies is definitely higher than average) made for some tedious gameplay that lead me to use of cheesy tactics like abusing the bots ai to blow themselves up again a corner or doorway. Not to mention, the mission is a huge fetchquest that would put brother murus to shame: Go here, get this thing, now find the other thing so you can go to this machine and put those things together to create another fucking thing that will let you build yet another thing. Rinse and repeat for 2 hours worth of pointless backtracking. It was hard but I didn't feel rewarded, so by the end I was running past everything just to get it over with.

It's also a pretty poor final mission for some of those reasons. Thief 2 is a lengthy game with several huge levels, most of which are tighter and more polished than Soulforge. The Maw of Chaos is probably the most straightforward level in the series, but it works really well from a pacing sense and brings the first game to a satisfying conclusion. Sabotage at Soulforge, on the other hand, kind of just makes you wish you were done with the game already. It's a bit like Return to the Cathedral, being exciting at the start (even though not nearly as atmospheric as RttC, which is god-tier in this regard) but becoming rather anti-climactic towards the end when you find yourself running through the same rooms over and over again feeling like an errand boy. It shows all of its cards right at the start and, for me at least, doesn't really manage to build up any real tension towards the end.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

*reads brick's post*

Talk about missing the point.

You prefer "Assassins" because you're forced to slowly and stealtily navigate through an empty cityscape, at ground level, to an unknown destination... to "Life of the Party" where you have free reign to explore a fleshed-out cityscape (compared to "Assassins" at least) at rooftop-level, while heading towards a pre-determined destination?

Dude, the cityscape is not the point of "Life of the Party", Angelwatch is. Your nitpicking of the cityscape because it isn't 100% logical and tries to have optional content sounds asinine, especially when the empty but labyrinthine cityscape of Assassions gets a pass. The paths traveled through both missions are a means to an end. Their purpose is to lead you to a specific location. This is Looking Glass experimenting and seeing what sticks and what doesn't. They tried one method, gauged the reception, tried a different one in the sequel. Given the opportunity they would probably have touched upon "Life of the Party" to address some of your complaints. Some, but not all.

(On that note, how many of the hundreds of Fan Missions made for Thief 1/2 feature tailing someone through a cityscape? And how many of them feature rooftop shenanigans for no other purpose than to meet the loot count?)

As for the alarm hidden in a closet - I fail to see the problem with that, unless the closet in question is located somewhere far away from any place of importance.

 

[Kirkpatrick]

I can see that, actual Cathedral part before taking the Eye was my favourite as well. Soulforge might be impressive at start as well.

 

[Multidirectional]

Least favourite missions have to be Escape and Strange Bedfellows.

Fully agree, especially regarding "Escape!". What an utter piece of shit of a mission. I find pretty much nothing enjoyable about it. I can't fathom how people end up choosing Thieves Guild as their least favorite when there's this fucking stinker in the game.

 

[Carrion]

It's a bit like Return to the Cathedral, being exciting at the start (even though not nearly as atmospheric as RttC

?

Return to the Cathedral is a really good level for a while. The build-up to it is great, as you've been there before and already have a sense on unease when you're entering it. You know that there's something wrong about Constantine and the job he hired you to do. It's only after getting the Eye that things start to fall apart when it becomes fetch quest after fetch quest.

As for Soulforge... yeah, maybe it's not all that exciting. It is the final mission, though, and after a couple of less interesting ones it starts out promising enough. It just doesn't manage to build up to any kind of a real climax unlike the best missions in the game.

Fully agree, especially regarding "Escape!". What an utter piece of shit of a mission. I find pretty much nothing enjoyable about it. I can't fathom how people end up choosing Thieves Guild as their least favorite when there's this fucking stinker in the game.

The difference is that Escape! has a very good reason for being in the game, whereas they already made the game once without Thieves Guild and it turned out fine. Escape! might be my least favorite TDP level, but Thieves Guild sucks more because it comes between Assassins and The Sword, ruins the near-perfect pacing of the early game and feels like unnecessary filler all the way through.

 

[Melan]

Best game still has the best threads. My picks are fairly conventional:

Thief 1 Best: The Sword: Because, as eye-opening as the rest of the game is, The Sword is something that pushes boundaries in level design even beyond the Thief norm. Thief's most recognised levels are Assassins and Return to the Cathedral, and with good reason: they are perfect takes on archetypal thievery. But The Sword stands above them all because it goes one step further.

Thief 1 Worst: The Lost City: I could have cheated by including the Gold levels, in which case the obvious candidate is the bland and empty Mage Towers, but I didn't. Thief has no genuinely bad missions, but if you have to pick one that does not belong, it is The Lost City. It is thematically separated from the City, and where The Sword offers a welcome strangeness and the Bonehoard is a cleverly constructed, iconic dungeon, The Lost City is mostly bland and can easily turn tedious. There are highlights like the tower with the talisman of fire, but this faux-Egyptian level is not very memorable.

Thief 2 Best: Uninvited Guest: Yes, the best Thief 2 mission is a pre-release demo. It has been discussed ad nauseam, perhaps so much that we are losing our perspective on it - when it came out, it was the real deal, pure Thief. The demo version wins out because it has more satisfying Mechanists, and a slightly gloomier, more authentic style.

Thief 2 Worst: Casing: It is a superfluous duplicate mission. Ambush/Trace the Courier are also guilty of this, but Casing combines this with forced stealth, lackluster structural/aesthetic design and its obvious unfinished state. Sadly, it wouldn't even stand out particularly well as a fan mission.

Altogether, Thief 2 offers more picks for "not quite that good" than Thief 1; I remain on the opinion that it shows its origins as a mission disk, and is burdened by questionable design decisions. Thief 1 is a masterpiece right out of the gate, and its oft-discussed "flaws" on release (the infamous "woo" levels) have been vindicated by time. It was one of the ultra-rare instances when the fans had to grow up a little to really appreciate what the game was bringing to the table. In listening too much to this strain of criticism, The Metal Age took two steps back and lost something in the process. Thief 2 grew into its own with fan missions; the first genuine masterpiece after Uninvited Guest/Life of the Party and First City Bank and Trust is Calendra's Legacy with its ambitions, complexity and dark style.

 

[JarlFrank]

It's a bit like Return to the Cathedral, being exciting at the start (even though not nearly as atmospheric as RttC

?

Return to the Cathedral is a really good level for a while. The build-up to it is great, as you've been there before and already have a sense on unease when you're entering it. You know that there's something wrong about Constantine and the job he hired you to do. It's only after getting the Eye that things start to fall apart when it becomes fetch quest after fetch quest.

I'd even go so far to argue that the same applies to Deadly Shadows' Cradle.

It's immensely atmospheric, yes. It's dangerous. It's creepy as fuck.

But at some point, you just get tired of the fetch quests.
Fetch the girl's dress and burn it -> good quest because it sends you into the dangerous, enemy-filled section of the building
Go find an item of an inmate and go to the past -> good because you don't have to fetch one specific thing, it's a little more open
Find the girl's diary in the past and burn it -> good because it confronts you with a new enemy type and you're pretty much forced to ghost, making it tense
Find detergent and clean her blood -> this is the point where it becomes too much; you are already familiar with the location, have been through pretty much the entire building, are familiar with both the puppets and the shadows, and at this point it just becomes annoying backtracking, it's pretty much the same problem as the quests of Brother Murus: after already doing 3 fetch quests in a row, you are given YET ANOTHER fetch quest that works in exactly the same way as the previous ones (find item and bring it to location), at a point of the level where you have thoroughly explored the environment and the feeling of terror and unease is slowly going away as your familiarity with the place grows.

Both RttC and The Cradle could be improved by reducing the amount of fetch quests just by one. There's a point where adding yet another fetch quest is only tedious backtracking that doesn't add anything of value.
Both missions are great up until that point; but when that point arrives, you just hope this is finally the last thing you have to fetch before you can get out of there.

 

[octavius]

The Lost City was a strange level for me. I didn't like it on my first playthrough, but loved it on the second.

 

[Carrion]

I'd even go so far to argue that the same applies to Deadly Shadows' Cradle.

To an extent, yes, although I do feel that Robbing the Cradle works slightly better because of its structure. For starters, it's basically an investigation quest, forcing you to delve deeper and deeper to find what you're looking for. The threat level actually rises throughout the mission, and you discover new pieces of the Cradle's story along the way, getting so deeply involved that you're eventually trapped within it. On the other hand, in Return to the Cathedral you get the item you were looking for almost at the start, after which it becomes just a question of leaving the place. After you manage to exit the cathedral proper, if feels like the worst is already behind you, so when the game time and time again grabs you by the shoulder only to say "wait, you must still do this thing before you can get away!", it starts to feel like busywork.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Recently replayed The Sword and gotta say, it is probably the best mission in Thief Gold. Dunno why I put Song of the Caverns ahead of it. What's so great about it IMHO is that it's a straightforward burglary that slowly becomes less and less straightforward as you go on. First floor is like "A little strange, but dude likes gardens. Can't fault him for that." I forgot just how unsettling it was, though, to step onto the second floor and not hear any guards. I think there's one on the entire floor. It's a great "Oh shit" moment because you know something's up. And you start seeing these traps everywhere. And a couple of things don't make sense, weird window angles and a room that just has fire in it and hallways that end in a pit, but you just brush it off and think "Oh well, they sacrificed logical design for the sake of making it fun and interesting" and don't think much of it. Then you get to the third floor. And the thing I really forgot about the third floor was the sound design. All the chirping and the giggling and the weird sounds.

Also it seems to me that the guards are a fair bit more aware starting with this mission. A single step on hard tile can set them off. Really adds to it, IMHO.

My only complaint is that the objective to find incriminating evidence on Constantine kind of disrupts the flow of the mission. I mean this may be my fault, because generally by the time I find the key in Constantine's room I've forgotten about the mysterious locked door in the greenhouse. But it always felt like it dragged down the level and detracted from the main objective. I mean it's a great idea for an objective. I guess I'd just rather if it were squirreled away somewhere in a secret room or compartment on the second floor rather than in the garden.

EDIT: Though it occurs to me that at the same time, the fact that Constantine would keep his important things in the garden is a neat bit of foreshadowing.

 

[Infinitron]

Can't believe nobody has mentioned the Little Big World yet.

 

[Kirkpatrick]

Can't believe nobody has mentioned the Little Big World yet.

After this...

Didn't expect this...

Yuge place, yuuuge.

 

[Melan]

My only complaint is that the objective to find incriminating evidence on Constantine kind of disrupts the flow of the mission. I mean this may be my fault, because generally by the time I find the key in Constantine's room I've forgotten about the mysterious locked door in the greenhouse. But it always felt like it dragged down the level and detracted from the main objective. I mean it's a great idea for an objective. I guess I'd just rather if it were squirreled away somewhere in a secret room or compartment on the second floor rather than in the garden.

You are correct, that's the only flaw to it. And of course, unless I am misremembering things, in the original version, that key wasn't even found in Constantine's room, but a random plant in one of the garden tunnels.

 

[skacky]

No, it was in Constantine's Room too but beside his bed on the floor, almost impossible to see. That key was moved to the small office next door in TG.

 

[Multidirectional]

The difference is that Escape! has a very good reason for being in the game, whereas they already made the game once without Thieves Guild and it turned out fine.

Sounds like a bunch of nonsense to me, but hey, I'm a simple guy - Escape is a lot more tedious to play, therefore it's a lot worse. Thieves Guild is somewhat annoying because of the sewers, but otherwise not so bad.

 

[MilesBeyond]

My only complaint is that the objective to find incriminating evidence on Constantine kind of disrupts the flow of the mission. I mean this may be my fault, because generally by the time I find the key in Constantine's room I've forgotten about the mysterious locked door in the greenhouse. But it always felt like it dragged down the level and detracted from the main objective. I mean it's a great idea for an objective. I guess I'd just rather if it were squirreled away somewhere in a secret room or compartment on the second floor rather than in the garden.

You are correct, that's the only flaw to it. And of course, unless I am misremembering things, in the original version, that key wasn't even found in Constantine's room, but a random plant in one of the garden tunnels.

I've only played Gold but apparently that key was only in TDP and didn't open anything. Googling it makes it seem like before Thief Gold came out, people were expecting that the mission would be changed to give that key a purpose. Instead, it was removed haha.

 

[tormund]

Thief 2 Worst: Casing: It is a superfluous duplicate mission. Ambush/Trace the Courier are also guilty of this, but Casing combines this with forced stealth, lackluster structural/aesthetic design and its obvious unfinished state. Sadly, it wouldn't even stand out particularly well as a fan mission.

I have to strongly disagree with this. I thought that mansion was excellently designed, and (for me) breaking into opulent mansion with some spicy drama/intrigue going on beneath the surface was kinda "default" Thief experience. Unexpected and well integrated supernatural/lite horror element was a cherry on top. And I didn't find it that annoying to play trough either, with its spacious rooms and hallways and network of secret passages. I suppose it suffered from a nasty case of video game logic though, when you think about it: don't be noticed and don't hurt anyone because that might frighten the Lord into canceling his party... nobody is going to care about everything not nailed to the ground mysteriously disappearing though.
I guess one way to do it more believably was to prohibit you from stealing anything, with goal being still being to map as much of a mansion, and maybe with the addition of bunch of stuff you could interact with in order to influence your next visit and make it easier. Sabotaging the security system, or have kitchen filled, for example, with stored drinks for the party that could've been drugged by the player, or maybe dropping some clue that could incriminate lead guard in some crime and then having less guards present during the next visit, finding a convenient hiding place where you could start the mission next time and so on... I'm just dropping the random crap here, but you get the idea. That you would have to be careful about your resources due to lack of loot would make the mission tenser and more demanding too.

 

[Butter]

Thief Gold Best: The Sword. Best combination of the supernatural elements + a heist. Very clever level design.

Thief Gold Worst: Return to the Cathedral. Whoever thought running errands for a ghost was a good idea should have been immediately sacked.

Thief 2 Best: First City Bank and Trust. This is simply the best official Thief mission. Very dense level with perfect execution of multiple paths with different challenges to overcome.

Thief 2 Worst: Sabotage at Soulforge. Shitty crafting that takes way too long, and an obnoxiously large number of robots.

Thief Deadly Shadows Best: Still Life with Blackjack. This is on par with the best TG/TMA missions, and notably isn't tiny like some of the other Deadly Shadows levels.

Thief Deadly Shadows Worst: Robbing the Cradle. Again with the fucking ghost errands. They didn't learn their lesson the first time and it ruins what was otherwise a cool spooky level.

 

[udm]

I think most of the levels in T1 and 2 were great, but I really hated Mage Towers as it highlighted the limitations of the engine when it came to mantling. In fact, some of the best level designs like The Sword were brought a notch down because the mantling was so iffy; it was clearly not meant to handle bumps and raises that were more than one foot high but lower than the player's height.

But if we're to just assess worst level design, I would still say Mage Towers from T1. There was way too much back-and-forth running. T2 would be Casing the Joint on Expert difficulty. The objectives weren't fun and not being able to knock out anyone just made it that much slower.

On my favourites, I liked almost everything from T1, but the best ones for me were The Sword, Return to the Cathedral, Thieves' Guild, Song of the Caverns, and Maw of Chaos. For T2, everything is tied for excellence except Casing the Joint because screw having to do that same house twice.