Thief Gold or Thief 2

[Wayward Son]

Which one is better? In a hypothetical situation where you only have enough for one of them at the moment.

 

[Repulsive]

Thief Gold in my opinion, although not by much, the super natural levels are some of my favourite in gaming.

 

[JarlFrank]

I used to be on the Thief 2 camp, but these days, I switched over.

Nowadays I prefer Thief Gold for the sheer variety in levels, and the individual levels are more memorable. Thief 2 has excellent levels such as First City Bank and Trust and Life of the Party, but many of the levels - while still excellent in design - are very same-y, and with the huge amount of mansion-based Fan Missions I played, the distinction has become a little muddy for me. A lot of Thief 2's missions feel similar and later FMs have done the "break into a mansion type building" kind of level even better than the OMs did.

Thief Gold however... it has unique and memorable levels such as The Bonehoard, The Sword, The Lost City, The Cathedral, Song of the Caverns... those are all pretty unique and interesting and show a huge variety. I've come to treasure that variety over the years and while I used to prefer Thief 2, nowadays I'm in the Thief Gold camp.

 

[Somberlain]

In a hypothetical situation where you only have enough for one of them at the moment.

Stop being a faggot and play them both.

 

[octavius]

Thief Gold for the resons JarlFrank mentioned.

 

[HansDampf]

Thief 2 because I hate zombies.

 

[garren]

I liked the pagan themes in thief 1 more than the mechanist focused thief 2. Just a personal preference. Thief 1 was a perfect balance of the mythical vs. technology, the whole mechanical aspect didn't grab me in as much in thief 2.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm with JarlFrank, though I'd like to add one thing to silence people like HansDampf here above:

The Thief series is a trilogy of games exploring three factions and how they affect The City: The Pagans, the Hammerites and the Keepers. Each faction has familiar themes and tropes for them, such as the Hammerites representing organized religion, fundamentalism, the application of the logical in the pursuit of knowledge at the cost of the emotional, and so on. The Pagans are not exactly a polar opposite to the Hammerites, but they're a good contrast: The supernatural, the unexplained, the emotional, the absence of logic, etc.

Now, each of the three games focuses upon one faction, leaving the other two lurking in the background. Thief (Gold) focused on the Pagans as they rose from the shadows and tried to claim the world for themselves, and only by the intervention of the Keepers and their agent "in the field" were their plans foiled. Thief 2 switches out the factions, but otherwise things are exactly the same, but the level design of the two games reflects this. Thief (Gold) has a varied mixture of levels (some might even say chaotic) with supernatural elements ranging from wild beasts to undead to sentient monsters to non-Euclidean architecture, but that's what the Pagans are all about. The Mechanists are the exact opposite, hence the supernatural elements get toned down and replaced with levels more appropriate to their themes. Next to no undead, wild beasts or sentient monsters, but we get steam-powered robots instead, a completely new kind of abnormal horror. Then Thief 3 comes along and tries to strike a balance between the two, while introducing new elements relevant to the third faction of the Keepers.

I have a really hard time believing that Looking Glass would have designed Thief 2 as they did just to cater to whiners that complained about zombies in the original. It must have been intentional.

But there's an interesting way to test that: Let's say Thief 2 had been released before Thief (Gold). Which game would have been received better? Would people have panned the sequel because it was "all over the place" instead of its "tight focus" in the prequel?

 

[Riskbreaker]

"the application of the logical in the pursuit of knowledge at the cost of the emotional"
That would be Mechanists. Hammerites represent traditionalism. Actually, I think that Thief is one of few games where fictional religion based on Christianity wasn't presented in a wholly negative light.
Mechanists represent, well, mechanistic worldview, reign of quantity, faceless industry over craftsmanship etc. Hell, you even had things like slaves devoid of individuality, and Karras's ultimate goal together with his ultimate denial of Builder's power over him.
Third game's theme would be subversion of the initiatic elite.
It's even clearer since all them are set in a time that is meant to be end of one age, one cosmic cycle.

 

[Multidirectional]

Thief Gold is more easily replayable, therefore it's better. JarlFrank explained it pretty well. Don't get all the bitching about zombies either, considering how easy they are to avoid most of the time. I'd say Burricks are much more annoying. But then in Thief II you have these fucking robots that really outstay their welcome.

 

[Arrowgrab]

In the OP's hypothetical "only enough money for one of them" scenario, there's also another major factor nobody has touched upon: there are more FMs for Thief 2.

 

[Siobhan]

Poll lacks DarkMod option for the hipsters among us.

Spoiler

and Dishonored

 

[skacky]

Thief Gold.

 

[JarlFrank]

In the OP's hypothetical "only enough money for one of them" scenario, there's also another major factor nobody has touched upon: there are more FMs for Thief 2.

If we consider FMs and not only the original campaigns then yes, sure, Thief 2 wins out.

BUUUUUT most of skacky's FMs are for Thief Gold so... hmm...

 

[Melcar]

I enjoy Thief Gold more.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Poll lacks DarkMod option for the hipsters among us.

DarkMod is alright but it fails incredibly hard in one key aspect of Thief: sound. It boggles my mind how in almost 20 years there has been so little progress in sound design and positional aspects in games. In fact, there's been a gross retrogression. Thief games are miles beyond anything when it comes to sound (technical sample quality notwithstanding), and it's really important to the ambiance and overall atmosphere.

Also, it's pretty sad that most people that discover the series nowadays don't go through the trouble of making positional audio work in the first two games under modern versions of Windows (vanilla OpenAL installation doesn't cut it).

Re: the poll, my favourite Thief game is Thief 1. Not Gold, just vanilla 1. I don't like the extra/remade levels in Gold.

I used to prefer Thief 2 but I think JarlFrank nailed it - I keep going back to the first game because the levels are more varied (even though the really good levels in T2 are probably better than most of T1).

 

[agentorange]

Thief: The Dark Project

The Gold missions suck and ruin the pacing of the game.

 

[Repulsive]

I liked the Gold missions, but seems I'm in the minority with that.

 

[Riskbreaker]

Depends on a mission. Opera house one is simply fantastic, one of my favourites from all three games. Mage Towers is kinda meh, while Thieves Guild is just rough, half-finished mess.
Changes to existing mission tho, there they alway made them inferior to their original incarnations.

 

[Multidirectional]

I've never played non Gold so I don't really give a fuck. Thieves Guild drags on a bit too long, but wouldn't say it's horrible. Mage Towers and Opera House are fine.

 

[Kahr]

Thief: Gold of course. Although it's sometimes a bit more annoying and rough than Metal Age it's more "classical". For me the missions stand more out from another.
Although i doesn't like the Undead; i'm really missing them in Thief 2. The original had a better balance between technology and nature.
In Metal Age it's too much tech for me.

The Gold missions suck and ruin the pacing of the game.

Song of Caverns is pretty entertaining. Just the Mage Towers and the Thief Guild "suck". But Assassins and the both Cathedral levels "suck" as well.

 

[Ivan]

Add The Dark Project to the poll

 

[Multidirectional]

By the way, latest version of HD mod works with both Gold and The Dark Project now. Pretty great looking mod, if you disable all the post processing effects in config tool.

 

[Wayward Son]

Add The Dark Project to the poll

It was part of the Gold option. It says Gold/The Dark Project.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Play both, don't be a fag.