Orfeus21 on 17/8/2018 at 01:15
Id like to know everything about how this epic game has changed the way we live and whether you can imagine living without it. I cant say I couldnt live without it but for me its the greatest game ever and the only one I still play since my teenhood. :joke:
Gingerbread Man on 17/8/2018 at 01:36
Despite the hilarious presentation, I will give you an honest answer.
Thief: The Dark Project was the third video game I owned through my own purchase. First was Riven for the Playstation, then I bought Half Life and Thief from a computer gaming store when they were new. THe guy behind the counter told me that I had just bought the two best games ever.
TDP inspired me to champion games with some sort of intelligence behind them, a quantity we have been attempting to define for nearly two decades here on TTLG. A game that would have had a silent protagonist in any other hands, a development team who were excited to interact with the fanbase, a fanbase that wasn't a bunch of entitled whiners. Lore, lots of lore. Fan missions. Mods, expansions...
TMA was a bit less of a masterpiece, and it was important to me to define where it went wrong. Poor voice-acting and writing, bad / repetitive level design, a glaring unwillingness to capitalise on the strengths in favour of exploring the unproven. Didn't matter in the end, both have weak and strong.
Deadly Shadows was the result of disease in the system, greed in the matrix, fear in the art. There is absolutely nothing to recommend it.
But the first two? Narrative, cutscenes, immersion, and the beginnings of emergent gameplay which would come to be the hallmark of every single game that I love twenty years later. Screw physics, ragdolls, moving grass, dynamic lights... if you can't make a compelling game with the insane limitations of pre-millennial technology then maybe you haven't got a strong concept, yeah?
Don't get me wrong. I still have nothing but disdain for people who want rune tattoos, use Speaksie Fuckerie, or who started and ended with Deadly Lols. But that's because I'm old and a snob, not because they're wrong. That's all on me.
downwinder on 17/8/2018 at 02:26
thief for me confirmed one thing about real life,sometimes the little things are what matter the most "dewdrop"
McTaffer on 17/8/2018 at 04:26
This thread is a slight variation of one not even a quarter of the way down the page, but whatever.
Thief was one of the first (if not the first) first person games I played as a kid, so it set the bar pretty high when it came to immersion and overall game quality. I'm a lot more critical about games because of it than I would probably otherwise be, and I'm much more inclined to spread the word and throw money at games that carry on the legacy well. They're few and far between these days, unfortunately, but such is the nature of the games industry.
Esme on 17/8/2018 at 11:05
I came to PC gaming late in life, mainly because I'm old, when I went to college the pinnacle of sophisticated computer entertainment was pong, personal computers were a very expensive rarity, so it wasn't until much later that I got into gaming
I started with text based games like Zork & got lost in mazes a lot, graduated to nethack & got eaten by grues a lot & slowly learned to deal with these things.
Then I found the first Wolfenstein demo, remember demo's, a whole level released as a teaser ? sigh
Anyway I discovered the delights of first person shooters
I worked my way through the FPS gamut, Doom, Quake, Hexen, Descent and slowly got bored of button mashing reaction fests, the deathmatch games could be fun but they could only be played at work where there was a network
Deus ex was the first intro to the idea of stealth & puzzle solving in a first person game, that turned me into a sneaky sod, deathmatches at work got a lot easier after that as I'd learned to lie in wait, be patient & make sure I knew where the cover & more importantly the exit was before I entered any area, it taught me observation
Then I found the Bafford demo for Thief and my whole view of games changed, this one was immersive, this wasn't a puppet I was driving around any more this was me, the first time I snuck along the alley to the well & I heard the guard before I saw him and froze, then he appeared & I plastered myself to the wall as he walked past me & didn't see me, I realised I'd slammed my chair into the wall & was leaning back so I wouldn't be seen, and I was holding my breath
No other game has made me react like that, no other game sucked me in, no other game made me believe even for a microsecond that I was there, that that was me
The guard turned on their patrol, spotted me & killed me but by then I was hooked
R Soul on 17/8/2018 at 19:54
Playing Thief led me to making my own missions. Making a backup was not a nice process because of the way its files/folders were mixed in with the files/folders used by the game, so I read up on batch files to make the process much smoother.
At around the same time I was studying engineering at university, and doing very badly at it. My experience with batch files made it clear to me that I liked doing things beyond what the windows GUI allowed, so I changed courses to software development, and did quite well.
It didn't lead to a job directly related to the subject, but being able to write proper programs has helped in both personal matters and in work where I've written programs to make some tasks easier/quicker, which has been very satisfying.
Shoshin on 17/8/2018 at 20:58
These days it mostly leads to me really really wanting Le Corbeau to port Thief to the Oculus Rift.
Playing Skyrim VR, or In Death, or even Elven Assassin, the bow and arrow just works so well with those controllers. Then, playing something like Arizona Sunshine, where the gun or flashlight held in your hand works just as well. Thief, with the bow & blackjack & (to a lesser extent, the sword) would map pretty damn well to those controllers. Reaching out, stealing stuff....
Anyway, changed my life? In some way, since 20 years later I still play it and I've introduced it to my kids. But really, not much. Good game. Art, even. Not super life-changing.
Orfeus21 on 17/8/2018 at 21:25
well i bet such a thread has already been done but it is the greatest game of our lives and being without it would leave a wide emptiness
Azaran on 17/8/2018 at 22:25
THIEF CHANGED MY PREFERRED GENRE FROM FPS TO STEALTH. :p
Quote Posted by Shoshin
These days it mostly leads to me really really wanting Le Corbeau to port Thief to the Oculus Rift.
I think that's already done. 3-4 years ago someone posted a video on here of Thief 2 on Oculus
mxleader on 18/8/2018 at 23:38
I was playing a lot flight sims and combat flight sims like Jane's USAF. I was also deep into Microsoft Train Sim because I'm boring like that. I was dating this woman when her brother got me into Half Life. I played Half Life with no cheats or hints and it took me 21 days to finish it. That game almost ended that relationship. That year at Christmas her brother bought me Thief TDP which ended the relationship a few months later with that woman. In fact T1 and T2 have caused many relationship problems for me and I'm okay with that. T2 fan missions also made it very difficult to finish my degree because playing missions was more interesting than studying. After making a couple of small FMs I have a much greater respect for those who design and build games and those who make epic fan missions. Playing Thief has not done anything for my professional life except maybe helping me with a lot of thought processes when solving problems.
