AWKWARD ZOMBIE

With the release of Thief 4 just around the corner, I decided that I wanted to see more people talking about the game and the series as a whole.



The first two games were made by Looking Glass Studios in the 90s, which was also the studio that worked on System Shock and Ultima Underworld (the company sadly went out of business in 2000 due to a financial crisis related to their publisher, Eidos Interactive). Thief is considered one of the grandfathers of the stealth genre of gaming. Your protagonist is a cynical man named Garrett who calls himself a master thief. The series has three games currently: Dark Project/Gold (Gold is an extended version of Dark Project), Metal Age, and Deadly Shadows.

Thief was considered very innovative when it was released! The game mechanics made players pay attention to their surroundings. Garrett could hide in the shadows to stay unseen, and the AI was capable of hearing the noises you made and on higher difficulties they could even notice when something in their patrol route was different (such as a door left open or a torch extinguished). Players had to be mindful of how they moved, or else they could walk across a metal grate and alert every guard within a mile of their presence.

The game had held a small fanbase over the years due to a large number of ways the game can be played. One of the most popular set of self-imposed rules is called Ghosting, in which your goal is to finish all of your objectives without leaving any traces of your presence. An 'official' set of rules can be found here, at the Eidos forums (this forum is ancient, yo, but it's still alive). Another play style that is popular is called Ironman, where you have to get through the level without saving or dying. A lot of Ghost players rely on save scumming to finish levels, so Ironman provides a different type of challenge. Some people put the two play styles together and try to ghost while playing Ironman.



Anyway, enough exposition--this thread is for discussion about the games. Talk about levels, factions, characters, story, you name it!

I had a friend who was obsessed with this game, so I've been looking into trying it out sometime. The info you posted is about all I know about the game though, haha.

You can purchase all three existing games on Steam for a good price, but the first two (Gold and Metal Age) have issues running on newer computers. For example, when I tried to play Thief Gold on my laptop, the game skipped all of the cinematic mission briefings, which are important to the game's story. Steam has a history of not fixing compatibility issues with older games...*side-eyes Fallout*

There are patches for both games that can be installed with a little bit of digging. I think both game patches are lumped together in a download called 'Taffer Patcher' but I could be mistaken.

Another alternative is to buy the games through GreenMan Gaming, which apparently does attempt to fix issues with old games before releasing them. The only problem is that GMG doesn't have an easy way to buy games without a credit card and I have to buy Steam wallet cards to get any cheddar onto my Steam account.

I've bought GMG games with Paypal before, you don't need a credit card for that.

Paypal is still an online thing, though. I can't do anything online because I'm restricted from my bank account.

Do you mean your bank account is restricted? Ah sorry, I thought you were adult.

I am an adult, my parents are just control freaks.

I bought Thief Gold and Thief 2 on a Steam sale a little while back. I've played about an hour of Thief Gold (including the tutorial) and it was pretty good. I keep meaning to go back and play it before the new game comes out so I can be a last minute hipster.

If you're not playing with extra rules (like ghosting), then each game doesn't take too long to finish. The third game is a little bit larger because it incorporated a 'hub' area you could visit in between missions and a few sidequests to do with the factions in the city.

I don't think I'll do it with extra rules, they come in second playthroughs. Although I might try to avoid killing guards, kinda like how you get Silent Assassin in Hitman.

Killing human npcs is frowned upon by the game, too. Killing a guard is noisy and a good way to get caught. The blackjack is the best tool for getting past people (plus, on higher difficulties you fail a mission automatically if you kill someone).

Game devs released a no-commentary playthrough of the first(tutorial) level in the new game. You can watch it here.

It looks good enough--the lightning affects your visibility and the claw device is useful to reach higher areas. I felt like Garrett was a little too chatty, talking to himself for a lot of the mission, but he was chatty in the previous games too, so I don't think that will bother me too much.

I WAS disappointed that the guard in the jeweller's didn't notice the missing loot, but later I realized that whoever was playing the level was playing on a low difficulty setting because he killed someone and didn't fail the mission. Hopefully on higher difficulties the AI will be more alert to things like that, the way they were in previous games.

Also you can hide in closests. Hurray for closets!

The game recognizes three types of gameplay: opportunist, ghost, and predator. At the end of the level it tells you what kind of gameplay you favored.

Edit: Near the end of the level music starts up, which I also hope can be disabled like a lot of the other options in the game (such as focus).

The reviews are in and it's as I expected, an undercooked, disappointing mess. I actually watched a stream of the game a few days ago because it had been leaked and it really was like watching a trainwreck.

http://sneakybastards.net/stealthreview/thief-review/ (may be down due to overload, here's a pastebin: http://pastebin.com/h01PfrQf)

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014- ... ief-review

I'll be starting my Thief 1 playthrough soon, in mourning.

You'll probably finish it before I do, too.

every review has pretty much said the same thing, its just shit. im so disappointed