Picture: Steam Store
INTRODUCTION
You are Garret, a young man from the street living in a medieval city. Since your early childhood you hat to beg or steal for food and basic necessities. Once upon a day You tried to steal from a Keeper, a secret organization that is watching over the city. Normally not visible to the eye of the normal citizen, the Keeper sees the potential in Garret and invites him into the Order. You undergo several years of training (the tutorial mission) but in the end Garret decides that keeper life is not for him. And thus, you leave the Order of the Keepers and start thieving your way through the city until you get involved in a dangerous play of a power-hungry god…
GAMEPLAY
Thief plays exactly like you would expect from a stealth game. Stealth is NOT optional here, if a Guard sees you, you are in for a fight. Even on easy difficulty more than one guard spells trouble if not doom for our sneaky friend Garret. You are not without tools to aid you though.
You have a Light Crystal that shows you how well hidden you are and if you keep the sound of your steps low, you can sneak past most dangers without a problem.
You’ve got an arsenal of Tools you can use, both to take out enemies or to conceal yourself.
Controls a very responsive and allow for quick and precise movement be it jumping across ledges pulling yourself up another one or just running / sneaking through hallways. You are also able to swim and dive through all of the given water bodies you will encounter. Every Item or function of the game can be mapped to a keyboard or mouse button if you want to but there is a shortcut for next/previous item and your first step should be linking it to the mouse wheel; makes the game so much more accessible.
Default controls may conflict with today’s standards but can be changed for any key you like so that’s not a big deal. The Game also supports quick saving, by pressing alt+s or alt+l (default controls).
Your Maps are often not very detailed but allow for making annotations wherever you want by just clicking on the area where you want the annotation to go in the map screen. Also, you’ve got a compass to help you getting a sense of direction
Before each mission you can buy several items to aid you from a shop, but you have to keep an eye on your money. The number of valuables you bring home from your mission directly decides how much more items you can take with you on your next mission, so make sure to be a good thief and take EVERYTHING. You don’t HAVE to buy anything from the shop but stocking up on Water Arrows is always a good idea.
WEAPONS AND ITEMS
The tools of your trade consist of a bunch of Items actually.
A Blackjack for knocking out people. If you can get behind someone and clubber their head, you can take them out for the rest of the mission without killing them, a versatile tool!
A Sword to deal more damage than with the Blackjack in case something goes wrong or you stumble upon some wild creatures.
Broadhead Arrows for picking off enemies from afar and from the dark.
Water Arrows to douse light sources – probably the most important item in the game.
Moss Arrows to apply a carpet of moss to surfaces like tiled or grated floors which will dampen the sound of your steps.
Gas Arrows to instantly knock someone unconscious
Noisemaker Arrows for luring people into their doom
Rope Arrows for vertical movement
Items / Consumables consist of Lightning Bombs (a medieval flashbang), health speed and breath potions, holy water, lockpicks and food.
Weapons and items can be used in multiple ways, for example you can always shoot an arrow against a stone surface to make noise if you don’t have a noise maker arrow, but you will lose the arrow.
ENEMIES / AI
There are several types of enemies in the game but the greatest difference between them is their humanity. Animals can be killed without risking the success of your mission but you can’t just knock them out.
Human or Humanoid enemies though are the ones you need to take special care with though.
Guards will listen very closely to every sound you make, and if it was loud enough they will stop with whatever they were doing to see if they can find the source of the sound. They will also notice if doors have been unlocked/left open or broken (wooden doors can be bashed) or if their comrades are missing or when torches are suddenly not lit anymore. If there is more than one guard in an area a searching guard will call out to the up until know clueless guard and alert them of what anomaly they’ve found.
You can alert a whole castle if you don’t hide a knocked out body well enough, but of course you can always find a nice dark corner and wait until things have settled down a bit.
Guards that have spotted you and did not manage to kill you will return to their duties but they will be more alert than if they hadn’t seen you, because now they now someone is around.
Guards also have a certain threshold until they stop patrolling or leaving their post. While a doused torch may just rise suspicion, a doused torch and an unlocked door right next to it will definitely make the guard check out the surroundings. If there is even more suspicious stuff happening while the guard is already alerted it will try and follow the trail of anomalies, which can also be abused to lure guards into a trap. Keep in mind, that an alerted guard will react to new sounds and visuals faster than a guard just patrolling minding their own business. You can knock out alerted guards but it gets difficult if they come close to you while searching for whatever made them jump.
The Overall intellect of guards may be not very high, but if they found you out once, they will work together to find you out. Let’s just say, guards maybe not the sharpest tool in the shed, but they definitely excel at guard duties!
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
GRAPHICS
The Base Graphics of the game are okay for its original release date but maybe a bit too rough for you. I will recommend the thief HD Mod at that point:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/thief-2-hd-texture-mod/forum/thread/thief-2-hd-mod-faq
This will bring the Graphics of thief up to date and does not break the stealthy atmosphere!
SOUND
The Sound engineers of Looking Glass Studios did a great job with bringing the world of Thief to life!
Guards have different voices (young, old, drunk) and other NPCs are voiced well enough to make their behavior believable and lets them fit in with all situations they may be involved in.
Sound plays an important role in sneaking as well: tiled floors, will make a heck of noise even worse if they are in long hallways, even when walking veeeeery slow on them, most guards will immediately hear you if they are in the surrounding area. Grated floor is maybe as bad, but you can sneak on it well enough if there is enough distance between guards and yourself. Other surfaces are grass, mud, dirt, rock, carpet and wood, all with their own sounds whether you are running, jumping or sneaking on them. Walking on Wooden floor is fairly low in volume but if you jump or fall onto it you will have a bad time.
Making Noise in Thief is like coming home at 3AM trying to not wake your parents up but you step on that one creaky floor board and because life is a b*tch it will be extra creaky that night!
CONCLUSION
Thief’s Medieval world and dark setting and great story, together with all the gadgets you can use give it that little extra something that makes it a real Gold Standard Title in the Stealth Genre. If you are new to stealth games, why not start with the one that pioneered the core mechanics and paved the way for all Stealth games to come? For just 1€ you can get around 30 hours of Missions and a great Story (which is followed up nicely throughout the whole series). A definitive must have in your collection!
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