Thief 2 fan missions and campaigns

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So a new Thief 2 FM dropped in last night, and judging from the release notes I thought this was going to be one of the big releases of the year. Well... at least it's big. 200+ MB download on top of that. The authors claim that it's maxed out on memory and that they can't possibly add more content to the FM. After having played it for 2 hours, I can't help but ask why they didn't break the damn thing down into 2 missions and actually make something half-decent out of both parts.

"Cathredal of St. Vincent" finds Garrett locked up in a cell, framed for a murder and seeking justice. That means breaking out, finding your gear, finding out who framed you, learning about their big heist and then taking over the heist and stealing the goods. Sounds fun, yes? For those of you who remember Keeper of the Prophecies, one of the problems I pointed out with some of the levels was that they were bloated - overly large for no reason whatsoever. The same applies to St. Vincent. It's too big, and most of the content is air. But that's not all.

The game area is split down into the citadel and the Cathredal. The citadel is a group of houses that serve next to no purpose except to create a maze of alleyways. You only ever enter about 4 of the 20 or so houses, and one of them is about half the citadel! The Cathredal takes up about 50-60% of the game area, but due to the dullness and senselessness of the previous part, I frankly just stopped playing there and don't feel like going on. I doubt that the Cathredal plays any better than the citadel, though I would like to add that this FM has about 90% custom textures, which means you're supposed to disable all graphical enhancements to get the full experience. I couldn't figure out how to do this, which is why I'm not going to comment on the mission's appearance, short of saying that with the graphical enhancements enabled, the mission looks like it's still in beta testing.

The authors also said that it'll take 4 hours (!) to complete this thing. I now know why. You're constantly backtracking. You start out in the basement of the police station. Before you escape, you notice that the morgue remains locked, so you'll have to visit there again later. After finding the coroner dead in an alleyway, you gain access to the morgue, only to find that it also serves as a courthouse (!?) and you have to gather evidence to prove your innocence. That means backtracking about 5 more times back to the Morgue, and once again after you've descended down into the sewers, which are wide enough for doubledecker busses to drive through, BTW. Then you also have to find every single member of a Thieves' Guild, because they're ALL carrying keys (8 in total) for a vault inside the Cathredal. Hands up if this fact alone instantly discourages you from trying to play this.

To be honest, I can't think of a single reason to recommend this FM. The voice acting is good, but that doesn't justify the hefty download. Readables are terse and badly in need of revision by grammarians, the whole area is built like it's imported from a Gold Box game, it's almost totally grid-like. Exploration yields next to no reward. Overall it's just... dull.

Shame.

What do you think about Dark Mod?
looks very promising http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-gwMTwKoSA

2 new FMs have arrived in the past month, and they're well worth having a run through.

"Reunion with Basso" is a 3-mission FM where Garrett goes through a Hammerite spa, a set of ruins and a small town to meet Basso. What makes this one worthwhile is the humour, you will be seeing some pop culture references and funny situations. The first mission is a little off-putting at first with LOTS of marble floors everywhere, but there are several ways to circumvent that. There's also a very odd blackjack replacement there for those playing on Expert. The second mission takes Garrett through a set of ruins. This one is rather short and has some VERY tricky places to get through, but the highpoints of the FM are to be found in the third mission. Not only do we get a DarkEngine rendition of the film Murder at Midnight (complete with gruesome murders), but there's a wizard's house that puts the "eep" into "creepy". Recommended.

Speaking of creepy, the other FM released is "Cryptic Realms". It's a monochrome FM with only a handful of items retaining any colour. Garrett must descend into an old crypt to find some valuable and important items. This one is an absolute blast to play through. Turn off the lights before playing this one, you WILL be spooked by all the undead, sudden fright moments and creepy atmosphere. Highly recommended, and a contender for FM of the year.

Small update: Sensut was the first one to release a previous FM for the new 1.19 Thief 2 patch, reworking his "Cryptic Realms" FM to include colour.

To be honest, I prefer it in monochrome, it's much more atmospheric that way. Also, not everything in the FM got converted to colour.

The colour version is nice for those who want to enjoy the architecture, as the colour makes that become the emphasis of the mission rather than the ambiance.

Also, there's a Halloween contest just around the corner, so something nice should come out of that.

Mmmkay, just had a quick session of Cryptic Tales in color on "new dark" engine. It looks cool. Can somebody tell me how to open the damn crypt door at beginning cemetery? Is there some hidden switch for the door? Maybe I'm just experiencing temporary blindness. Is this some kind of sick joke Sensut? ( lockpick doesn't work )

EDIT: Solved. I won't spoil it for others here.

Look on the sides of the stairs that go up into the structure. Sensut did something similar on the last level of dracula, only much much worse (you could explore the masuleum, but there was nothing there. You could conceivably go up the the wall you needed the key for, but couldn't come back without killing everything inside if you didn't have the key - just ruined a amazing campaign)

Sensut is one of those otherwise good mappers that loves a key/switch-hunt and sometimes he doesn't limit it to secrets.

I haven't played the thing, mind you - i'm just going on what he did before. Other possibilities would be a switch nearby on a very awkward place, camouflaged the same color.

dannyfx1: There's another way through that door, but you have to be quick. As soon as the mission starts, run after the skeleton and jam the doorway with yourself. The door won't close, but it's still locked, so you need to be careful. You can then frob it so that it swings open again.

If you do this, you also get to see the skeleton "disappear" at the bottom of the stairs. ;-)

Indeed. That was my plan B. Once inside I must say it is one cool Roman/Byzantine style ( mainly architecture and Christian Orthodox church frescoes ) dungeon with different crypts tied together, sometimes in very unorthodox ways.
Enjoy spelunking.

EDIT: Shame that to conclude main quest you are forced to fight in melee. I was hoping to sabotage the organ and then had planed perfect escape route, when things get ugly. Alas forcefields prevent me from doing that and I kinda lost interest in completing the mission. Still it was worth playing and it gave me few hearth pounding moments. Crypt design is awesome and well done, combining diferent styles and thanks to color pallete and genuine architecture it makes you feel you are right there in a moldy grave. Undead barking, hissing everywhere. Thanks for much needed adrenaline dose Sensut. Keep 'em coming.

I am in the mood for something scary. Tell me about scary FMs. Ominous Bequest is good

I just had a playthrough of "Rose Cottage". With the 1.19 patch, all the framerate issues are gone, it plays like a dream. So that's a recommendation for "scary".

"Deceptive Perceptions" 1 & 2 are THE scariest missions around. The first one is brief, the other one is not. Features Keira Knightley as well.

"Eclipsed". Can't forget that one.

"The Inverted Manse". The guy who made that went on to make Shalebridge Cradle for Thief 3.

That's a start.

The six-part Shadow of Doubt campaign, particularly Tears of Blood and The Broadsword of Sheol, is Return to the Cathedral-level scary and some more. This comes from the relentlessly oppressive mood which builds up during play instead of specific Halloween-style scares. They may not be the easiest missions to get into (Thief 1, very dark environments, brutally difficult), and the mission after TBoS is just plain bad, but where they are good, they are good. Stick to the lowest difficulty, since the higher loot goals are absurd, and you are not missing out on anything else.

The Halloween contest has kicked off, and two contestants have surfaced to give us their version of "Boo!".

The first one is "The Tell-Tale Heart", a FM heavily inspired by Frankenstein and Edgar Allan Poe, to the point that you find snippets of Poe's work scattered about, one of the antagonists quoting him before dying (I think) and finding the old man in the starting house. But it also throws in torture porn in the form of a VERY graphic torture chamber, a recipe book for eating human body parts, time travel and more Undead than you can shake a priest at. So the shark isn't just jumped, it's shot, gutted and served on a platter with vegetables and some wine. Also, the floor isn't friendly to you, but at least the place is dark. I haven't done so much damage in Thief in years (35000+) but my enjoyment was curtailed by me grabbing an early release that was bugged to the point of me being unable to complete it. If you want violence in your Thief experience, give this a go, but ghosters are better off ghost-busting this FM instead.

The second one is "Evil Thievery", and I'll be surprised if this doesn't win the Halloween competition. Not since "Eclipsed" have I seen such an awesome build-up of suspense. It starts with you breaking into a small mansion to steal a Glazed MacGuffin. Everything here is by-the-books Thief gameplay; uncover the hints to find the vault, crack the code and nab the keys to open it. Glazed MacGuffin in hand, you turn around and... shit gets real. Next thing you know you wake up in a cell, and you're left wondering what just happened. Here the game takes a "less is more" approach that works brilliantly, and almost makes you forget that the FM is a gigantic key hunt. For the longest time you don't meet anybody, but with that said, make a special note of the Police Captain when you do find him. The architecture is all very Thief 1-like, and the sewers underneath are nice, as they look and feel like sewers. Pipes, tight spaces, walkways across water, etc. As you continue, the suspense just keeps piling on, up to the point that I was just flat-out expecting the place to explode with tons of enemies. Let's just say I hate it when I'm right. But while the first batch of enemies are used brilliantly (in fact, the FM climaxes in the section known in-game as "Yant's Lair" and the escape from said area) the rest of them are predictable, disappointing and frankly, drag this great FM down a lot. I didn't even bother finishing it, there was an enemy pretty much at every corner where previously there wasn't a soul around.

Still, both are worth playing. Tell-Tale Heart is a 1.19 FM but Evil Thievery is not.

Melan: I don't remember the Shadow of Doubt campaign, thanks for giving me something to look into.

Heads up - tafferpatcher was finally updated for the new patch, so you can now install it with a minimum of fuss.

I spoke too soon when I said that "Evil Thievery" was a dead ringer for the Halloween prize.

DrK (Of "A Night In Rocksbourg" fame) entered the Halloween competition with "Better Tomorrow".

Pants will be shat in while playing this. It's 100% monochrome, and not very big, but it managed to make me pause several times, hesitating to keep moving because... they might show up.

Enjoy... if you dare.

Dammit, he needs to be making the next part of his Rocksbourg series, not entering contests!

So I checked out Melan's recommendation and am playing the Shadow of Doubt campaign. It took me a while before I recognized something in there. I have played this before.

The first mission, "Walking the Edge" is an assassination job. Very unusal for Garrett, but there you go. I remember the basement at the embassy from a previous playthrough, but I swear that I played that part in a Thief 2 FM. I think I actually broke the mission on my playthrough by escaping the post-assassination circumstances I was put into. The mission was supposed to end, but never did, so I had to "force" the ending myself.

That took me to the second part, "Tears of Blood", or as some people know it, "Guilesatpeak". This one I remember vividly. You start in a prison cell with absolutely nothing, and must escape the Hammerite prison. As far as prison breakout missions go, this one is hard, but fun as well, but again, I swear that I played this in Thief 2, because I do not remember the starting jailcell being so dark. We're talking "Thief 1" level of darkness here, folks, the one that not even gamma correction can help you with. Now I only need to remember how to get out of the cell without getting killed by the sadistic gaoler...

EDIT: Now it's all coming back to me. After "Tears of Blood" there's a treasure hunt in a Lost City-esque environment, with some Undead thrown in for good measure. Some hair-raising moments of tension there, yes, and some well-hidden loot, but I don't remember anything about the other missions in this mission pack.

My recommendation? The author (Sperry) still seems to be around, and has been working on importing these missions into Thief 2. I would say it's best to wait until he's finished before giving the whole campaign a go, because "Walking the Edge" glitched out on me big time, not to mention that there's a ladder there that's more brightly lit than a neon sign. I also encountered a glitch in "Tears of Blood", which resulted in me being visible at ALL TIMES, regardless of how dark a shadow I was in. But if you prefer the Thief 1 experience, I strongly recommend "Tears of Blood" and recommend the subsequent Lost City-mission, whatever its name is.

I don't think these were ever released for Thief 2, although Tears of Blood had numerous releases (as a standalone, packaged with a different FM, etc.). Sperry has been working on updates, but I believe the work is progressing very-very slowly.

Remember "Shadow Politics", the Thief 1/Gold mission released earlier this year that challenges your rope-climbing skills to the extreme?

The author released another FM, "Between These Dark Walls". Only two words to describe how to play this FM, Look. Up.

The architecture is GORGEOUS, you'll never see so many arches in Thief. Ever. It's not as nail-bitingly hard on the loot objective as Shadow Politics, and while you will be using rope arrows (a lot), they're not as mischievous as they were in Shadow Politics.

Note that this is a NewDark FM, so you'll have to use TFix to patch your Thief 1/Gold game... but it's damn worth it.

So the Halloween contest has come and gone, and while 2 new entries did sneak in at the last second, they didn't really do much for me. One is basically a reskin of a Thief 2 original mission ("I Have a Bad Feeling About This") with added fog and Undead, and the other tries to be Amnesia using the Dark Engine ("Unknown Danger"). The latter one also requires custom scripts which I can't get to work at the moment.

But the good news is that a new Thief 2 FM landed quite unexpectedely. "Precious" is a small FM where you have to rescue a kidnapped daughter from an evil nobleman. When I say "small", I mean it, the whole game area is a cube the length of your average parking lot. But there's more than enough to do, the attention to detail is astonishing. The FM is set up as a Ghosting challenge (but it doesn't enforce it) and in that regard it delivers in spades. Highly recommended.

The last T2 FM of the year is an old mission that was suddenly dusted off and finished because of the NewDark patch. "Bones: Episode 1" (with Episode 2 possibly being made at some point) has Garrett visiting the Old Quarter after the Mechanists actually did something helpful and helped clear out most of the Undead there.

There are two downpoints with this mission. Firstly it doesn't "feel" like the Old Quarter at all, which was a disappointment for me. The second point is that this FM takes a while to get to the good part, which is the "city" part of the FM. What at first looks like a trek through the snow while passing one non-accessible building after another, suddenly turns into one of the tightest cityscapes I've seen in an FM. This part gives "Shadow Politics", "Between These Dark Walls" and other rope-a-rama missions a serious run for their money. There are lots of nice little touches, the readables are excellent, and there's even a tomb with some Undead thrown in for good measure. This FM reminds me a lot of the first mission in "Calendra's Legacy".

Recommended... but beware swimming in the water.

I checked it out based on your recommendations, and yes, it's the real deal. I don't know what the author was smoking when he started building it, because there was no way in hell it would ever work before NewDark was released, but now that polygons in view and stuff are no longer a major issue, it's an excellent exploration mission. The route-finding is probably not as exciting as in skacky's recent missions or Calendra's Cistern, where it is often very challenging to trace a way to a new location, but the sheer variety of places you can explore makes up for it. It did not feel very much like the Old Quarter, but those multi-level courtyards are to die for.