RETROSPECTIVE: 'Thief Gold' AND 'Thief 2: The Metal Age'

  

The Golden Age Of PC Gaming is thus named because it was a time when genres were both defined and created. First-person shooters had been around for a while, but it soon occurred that there could be more to these Doom-clones than just shooting armies of bad guys. For example: What if you take the two basic instincts of a gamer – killing and looting – but get rid of the killing part and make it all about the looting? 

  

Enter Thief (also known as Thief: The Dark Project or Thief Gold) through the back-entrance. It silently hit the gaming world on the back of the head in 1998. There was nothing like it: a first-person stealth-game where you moved through the shadows in an open-ended environment, deliberately avoiding all conflict, nicking all the silverware. Prior, games always taught you to stay away from the shadows. That’s where the enemies lurk. Here, it is you who are the stalker skulking through the night. There is a helpful indicator at the bottom of the screen that lets you know both how visible and how audible you are. It’s always tense when you have to run through a section where your indicator spells doom, but there’s a strange satisfaction when you get back into cover and the indicator goes dark again.

This being said, you can fight your way out if you get caught. It’s difficult, even on the easiest setting, but unlike the games that were inspired by Thief – if you’re caught then it’s not an immediate game over. You can draw your sword and duel your opponent whilst he mocks your fighting prowess, you can duck back in the shadows, or you can simply run away until your opponent gives up. 

"If you strike me down, I shall become a bigger taffer than you can possibly imagine!"

The game was also revolutionary with its protagonist: Garret. You play as the sort of person who enjoys skulking in the shadow listening in on people’s banal conversations. A misanthrope who refuses to pick a side. Good, evil – just let go of your wallet so he can pay the rent. He’s summed up by the opening line of Thief 2: “I’ve always equated feeling with getting caught: they both get in the way of my money.”

Infinite personality is brought into the world of Thief. Garret’s quips as he traverses the world are always priceless. The voice-acting is wonderfully cheesy, with each role making every random grunt feel like a character. From a deeply religious guard exclaiming: “What shadow crosses my sight! Ah! Tis’ gone now.” To a guard yelling “Catch, taffer!” before firing an arrow. Effort has been made to randomly give each NPC a different voice, to the point where it never seems like enemies have been copied and pasted throughout the level. The scripted conversations you can eavesdrop on are excellent also, and it’s always worth it to stop and listen to what NPC’s have to say before knocking them unconscious and hiding their body in the bathroom.

The game itself is set in a hybrid of Elizabethan London and Victorian London. Steampunk meets sorcery, and it seems the plot of every Thief game revolves around conflicts between magic and science. Your weapons consist of rope-arrows, water-arrows, fire-arrows, and the buggy flash bomb that temporarily blinds enemies. Terry Pratchett is a huge fan of this series, and it’s very easy to see why. 

The biggest problem with Thief is that the developers clearly didn’t think players would take to the stealth-mechanics. Indeed, the game was originally intended to be a sword fighting simulator (hence the surprisingly well-done sparring system) but at the last moment a decision was made to completely re-jig the gameplay so your objective is to not fight at all but to sneak in the shadows stealing everything not nailed down. 

But, sporadically, the game will turn round and say: “Yeah, we’re not sure if you’ll like this innovative gameplay that completely subverts the standard FPS mind-set. So…here are some zombies. And some dinosaurs. And some giant spiders. (Because all fantasy games must have giant spiders. Tis’ law.)”

These missions come very close to ruining the game for me. The first map you’re faced with is a large mansion and your objective is to break in and steal everything. It’s a great romp. The second map starts you in a haunted mine with unkillable zombies. The third map places you in a catacomb filled with nothing but zombies and those giant lizards from Half-Life. This is such a jarring shift in tone from fantasy-romp to supernatural-horror that playing through this game I often gave up during the third mission. Thankfully, the forth mission takes us back to a fantasy-romp.

Also, many players claim that the best way to play Thief is to only save in-between missions – meaning that if you get caught you’re forced to start the whole level again. For people who know each level inside-out, this tactic is fine. But for new or even veteran players, this is a terrible idea because the levels are absolutely enormous and the map you’re given is really, really not helpful. I’m not asking for an objective-marker, but a simple ‘you are here’ arrow would help so much. 

"Dur hur. Toilets."

It's impressive how each environment generally feels like somewhere people live. There are bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, diaries you can read, and of course plenty of valuable possessions you can steal. Often a room will serve no purpose other than to prove you’re sneaking round an actual location and not a video-game level. However, this makes exploration rather pointless – and thus the game becomes incredibly frustrating when you open the door to find it’s just another box-room. It’ll probably take you at least 30 mins to clear the earlier missions on your first attempt. Later missions can take hours. If you’re not saving after clearing just one floor then you’re not going to be happy when the AI glitches out and you’re spotted despite being in complete shadow and moving slower than snail that needs to quit smoking.

Finally, you can steal food, you can eat food…but food never restores health. I initially thought this was a glitch but nope. It’s not like Deus Ex when if you’re out of medkits you can raid a vending machine and keep drinking soda until your legs grow back. I’m surprised that with the impressive modding community behind this series, no-one has fixed this problem. 

Thief 2 is to Thief what Doom 2 was to Doom. It’s the same but better.

The graphics are only slightly improved, but the levels are now jaw-dropingly expansive. Perhaps the biggest standout is a level that consists of an entire town featuring rooftop pathways, street pathways, houses and shops to raid, and the whole mission culminates with a seven-storey mansion. All within the same map. If the 2014 Thief tried to recreate this level, consoles and PC’s alike would explode.

Best of all: the zombies and dinosaurs are gone. Well, the zombies are still there – but you have to dig very deep to find them and they’re easy to avoid. Sure, there are now giant robots but they too can be easily avoided. You’re clearly not supposed to actually fight them, though you can take them down if you really want to. 

It’s the romp Thief should have been. Garret is once again caught in a conflict – this time, it’s the mechanists who worship the false-prophet Karras, who has the weirdest voice I’ve ever heard a villain speak with. The second mission is probably one of the best, as you’re given this enormous environment containing several storage areas filled with goodies, and you’re main objective is to just steal everything. It perfectly summarises what, to me, this series is all about.

Perhaps the only problems with Thief 2 are that the map screens remain eternally unhelpful, what music exists is lost in the ambience, and Thief 2 still runs on the clunky DarkEngine. You’ll jump like you’re on the moon, you’ll get stuck to the scenery, enemies will get stuck to the scenery, and you’ll in general feel as though Garret has only recently learned how to walk. Compared to the Quake and Unreal engines, the DarkEngine simply doesn’t hold up as well as other 90’s FPS engines.

Despite growing slightly arthritic with age, if you must only play one Thief game, play Thief 2. If you’re slightly more patient, however, I would suggest starting with Thief and you can always just skip it if you’re put off by the jarring shifts in gameplay.

Possibly the best 'game over' screen ever...

(Maybe one day I’ll discuss Thief 3 and Thief 2014, but really these are the only Thief games the world needs to know about.)

Screenshots by me. 
Header can be found here.