<Username> on 12/10/2021 at 09:37

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I bought Deadly Shadows in 2005. My laptop at that time was so underpowered I had to play in 800x600 resolution with most of the visual effects turned off. I stopped after the first minutes in the Shalebridge Cradle because I did not want to experience this level like this. The game then sat on my shelf for 15 years. It took until August 2021 until I felt like finally completing the game.

Whereas I had played vanilla in 2005, I installed Sneaky Upgrade 1.1.10 for my second attempt. Thanks to everyone who worked on it! Major improvements I noticed were the merging of previously separate parts of missions, removal of the ugly blue foot and hand markers in some areas, and the addition of mission briefings.

Overall, I enjoyed Deadly Shadows. The game didn't turn out as well as the creators at Ion Storm or we as fans hoped it would, but despite its many shortcomings, I was constantly engaged and wanted to progress to the next area or plot point of the story. I'd give it a 7/10 or 8/10.

While playing, I wrote down short sentences with observations. I will post them here:


Things I liked in Deadly Shadows:* The ambient music is excellent and on par with the previous two games.
* Steven Russell as Garrett is great.
* Blue Heron Inn, Rutherford Castle and St. Edgar's Cathedral are all grey stone buildings. The Pagan Sanctuary is the first colorful level. I like its mix of green overgrowth, ruins and rotting machines.
* The sequence in which Garrett is hunted by Keeper Enforcers while you are in the unfamiliar territory of Old Quarter was exciting.
* The Abysmal Gale oozes with atmosphere. Pity it is only a small side-area and not a full-fledged mission.
* Overlook Mansion with the sad piano music in the background is also great.
* The Fort Ironwood catacombs are a fun, spooky area. Its ambient music and the new Haunts and Zombies are great.
* The well-spoken Keeper guards are an interesting enemy.
* There was an intense feeling of dread as I walked through the Hall of Statues in the Keeper Compound. I knew they would come to life eventually, but not when. This was a great sequence.
* The beginning of the Shalebridge Cradle is scary. When the former inmates appear, you know what the threat it and it becomes manageable. But the mission retains its creepy atmosphere. Not as mind-blowing as the hype led me to believe, but well done.
* Wieldstrom Museum is a great final mission. With its lavish interiors, it felt like a very good mission from The Metal Age.

Things I felt were better than in the previous two games:* The manual lockpicking here is much better than right-clicking and waiting like in the previous games. There were some tense moments when I was picking a lock while I heard footsteps approaching.
* Dynamic shadows are nice addition to the game.
* I liked stepping out into the City hub and getting to explore the City without having to avoid every AI. I wish I had been able to do that more often in previous games.
* Being able to see your hands and feet is neat.
* The light gem and compass combination is very useful. Not having to switch to the compass constantly was a surprisingly big quality of life improvement.
* Sometimes AI notice when other guards disappeared from their patrol. This is something I always missed in previous games.
* Elemental crystals emit a faint ambient sound. This makes finding them much easier.
* Loot items have names and are often a little more unique than a generic coin stack.
* Haunts and Undead have improved looks and sounds compared to their old counterparts. Undead movements don't look as cheesy as in the previous games anymore.

Things I feel are worse than in the previous two games:* The controls are stiff. Blackjacking is awkward. This is the game's main flaw.
* Crouchwalking is always silent, regardless of the surface. I don't like this. It was handled better in the previous games, where you still had to go slowly on certain surfaces even when crouchwalking.
* Combat is MUCH worse than in the Dark Engine games, and it wasn't very good in those games to begin with.
* The ingame engine cutscenes look horrible. They must have run out of time or budget to create real cutscenes. The cutscenes that are not created with the ingame engine look better but are also not always on the level of quality of the first two games.
* The way AI go down like a wet sack of rice and then twitch on the ground is inacceptable. (Though I had the impression this was less pronounced with the Sneaky Upgrade installed).
* The flash bombs are less usable than previously. You cannot use them to stun and then blackjack a crowd of enemies anymore.
* The newly added oil flask is not useful: I think I used it only once, to create a fire in the Shalebridge Cradle's morgue.
* The texture quality is lower than in modern fan missions for The Metal Age. Missions in the much older Dark Engine still can look better.
* The “atomic” blue object highlight does not look good, worse than the simple highlight of the previous games.
* Many AI all look badly modelled: bulging eyes, odd body shapes. The proportions of all women look especially weird: They are all rail thin. AI in the previous games had lower polygons counts but their proportions looked more realistic.
* The City feels very different in The Dark Project, The Metal Age and Deadly Shadows. I like the dark and grimy version of The Dark Project the best. My least favorite version is the Victorian look in The Metal Age. The somewhat generic look of Deadly Shadows sits somewhere in the middle for me.
* The new faction system is underdeveloped. After stealing The Builder's Chalice and The Jacknall's Paw, all I had to do to turn the now hostile factions into allies was to blow up some rust mites and to fire a couple of elemental arrows into the Pagan Cocoons in the Docks. Afterwards, both Hammerites and Pagans always fought on my side.
* I dislike the depiction of the Pagans in this game. They sound like dunces. I prefer the Pagans as a terrifying cult in league with a literal demon, as they are depicted in The Dark Project and in certain fan mission.
* The Keeper Compound is the first majorly disappointing area in Deadly Shadows: It looks small, too well lit, uninspired. It also feels like three rooms. Keeper areas looks a lot more mysterious and impressive in The Dark Project and in fan missions. Orland's room is even shocking: I expected to see a room like in the cutscene, with a balcony and a view towards the collapsed Clocktower. Instead, it is this small, ugly box of a room, decorated with two standard portraits of random people, standard furniture, no balcony, and this ugly grate in the corner. The whole room looks like it was slapped together at the last minute.
* Deadly Shadows somehow has the least compelling plot and the weakest antagonist in the series.
* The Keepers look like fools in the end. The mystery surrounding them is gone. This was disappointing.

Bugs:* I frequently encountered a bug that caused Garret to float with his arms outstretched. Loading a previous save always fixed it, but it was still annoying because it happened so often.
* Seated AI cannot be knocked out. Either you gas them or alert them to get them to stand up.
* The third person view in which Garrett's weirdly bent hand is hovering over a body as he is carrying it: That is very bad. I can't believe the game shipped like this.
* During the first few hours in the game, I had infrequent, but reoccurring crashes to the desktop. That didn't happen in the later parts of the game.
* There is a super weird glitch in both a cutscene and in the game: After the Hag murders some keepers, Orland's eyeballs are placed into his glasses, not into his skull.
* There was a Keeper guard with a lit torch who died when I blackjacked him because he kept falling onto his burning torch.
* Being chased by Keeper Enforcers from Old Quarter back to your apartment in South Quarter could have been great, but they kept being killed by City Watch and Hammerites without my involvement. This ruined the otherwise exciting sequence.
* The respawning in the City areas is out of control: Sometimes I would move a few steps away, turn around, and five AI I had blackjacked in the minutes before now had all respawned at the same location, coming towards me as a crowd. It felt very gamey and something that wasn't properly finetuned before release.
* The old gear in the Pagan Sanctuary mission is emblematic of the game: I reloaded several times to push it onto the enemies below, but it always tumbled down awkwardly, often not killing anyone.

Points in the game where I needed hints from a walkthrough to complete a mission on expert:* Into the Pagan Sanctuary: Could not find the special loot item "Precious Comb".
* Into the Pagan Sanctuary: Found only 88% of the 90% loot goal.
* The House of Widow Moira: Found only 86% of the 90% loot goal.
* Robbing the Cradle: Found only 64% of the loot. Had missed the 30% in the observatory in the present time.

Azaran on 12/10/2021 at 14:47

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Yep



The Enforcers? Their voices ruined it for me

Estel Randir on 13/10/2021 at 05:52

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"The way AI go down like a wet sack of rice and then twitch on the ground is inacceptable. (Though I had the impression this was less pronounced with the Sneaky Upgrade installed)." This is a very common issue with the corpse models even in many modern games. I hate it.

Without sneaky upgrade, I really do not think I would have had the stomach to replay the game again. It basically saved it for me.

I have played T3 many many times and have customized the UI so much to my preferences that it does not even look the same. But, overall the game is a very mixed bag of utter joy and utter blandness. The mechanics are basically shit compared to previous games. The npc models are creepy & twtichy. While the graphics are much more modern looking, they felt very bland in many areas. The climbing gloves were a huge disappointment. There were very few areas in which they actually added content to the game. There were what 2 places that could only be accessed with them? Actually, I feel they have no place at all in Thief. They just don't fit to me. They have the potential to be very overpowered. Might as well put in grappling hooks and let Garret be able to climb anything with ease.

On the good side: Instead of rehashing The Lost City, it introduced the Kurshok. One of my favorite additions to the lore. I loved that mission.

intruder on 13/10/2021 at 07:17

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Yet real settlements have been built over by different cultures in different times, so I think this is actually a pretty convincing idea of having two (or even more) "layers" of a lost city right underneath the City.


I would assume that it just looked silly in third-person perspective (and in first-person perspective as well, since you could see your hands and feet).
Getting those animations right maybe wasn't possible for the developers (or the engine, or both...).

Estel Randir on 13/10/2021 at 19:29

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Yes, I agree.

The Lost City & The Kurshok area have little to nothing in common other than they were underground areas of The City. The construction, etc is not similar, but rather unique, imo. The City is vast. It has been stated in game lore that no one even knows anymore what all is in it. Lost areas walled off and forgotten, flooded or collapsed cellars that were built over, etc. I never see people comment that it is weird when an above ground forgotten area of The City is re-opened for Garret to explore. For example, The Old Quarter (pretty sure that was the name) in T2 that was walled off due to being overrun with zombies. Walled off, forgotten, and people moved on building & ever building onward. But Garret gets dragged off to face the spitting zombies, etc.