How long did it take you to discover that you could one-hit KO with the blackjack? - by Cigam
PinkDot on 8/2/2022 at 18:05
I have a black dog. His name is Jack. He's a greyhound and he's very fast. He can also knock people out. Or at least knock them down. In fact, he had knocked me down once or twice, before I learnt how to handle him properly...
:)
ZylonBane on 8/2/2022 at 21:25
Quote Posted by Cigam
...the blackjack's sneak attack one-hit KO mechanic,
It is deeply weird how you refer to the blackjack's primary mode of usage as if it's some special secret thing. And how you keep specifying a
one-hit KO. That's literally the only kind of KO in Thief. This isn't boxing. There are no attacks that whittle down an enemy's stamina until they're knocked out. All attacks that can perform a knockout, if successful, do so instantly. So all such attacks are just "KOs", full stop, no qualifiers.
downwinder on 8/2/2022 at 22:18
zylon forgot to mention
1. blackjack a unaware guard
2. flying blackjack an unaware guard
3. blackjack an aware guard once to piss them off
4. flying blackjack an aware guard once to piss them off
5. blackjack a aware guard till death
6. flying blackjack an aware guard till death
7. holding the blackjack in the hit position but never letting it go to hit,then changing to no weapon to put it away
this is list of uses with a.i. only ,not counting all the other uses blackjack has
Starker on 9/2/2022 at 01:05
I think there's a lot of assumptions going into the idea that people just starting Thief for the first time would just immediately know that you're supposed to sneak up on enemies and whack them with a club to put them out of commission non-lethally. Let's not forget that this game came out at a time where it was the only first person game doing this. Even Looking Glass's own games didn't have a mechanic like this and a previous one actually had a pipe to whack enemies over the head with. It was perfectly rational to think that the blackjack was for what it's used in real life -- to deliver blunt force trauma in a melee with a chance to stun or knock out people. Plus of course there are the DnD traditions of separating types of damage (slashing, bludgeoning, and piercing) being effective on different types of enemies, which neatly corresponds to Thief's sword, blackjack, and arrows.
Starker on 10/2/2022 at 20:14
Blackjacks have been used for over a century in police force, hardly known for stealthy approach, as well as gangsters, sailors, soldiers, miners, strike breakers, and everyone who brawled a lot. Hitting someone over the head to stealthily knock them out might be a movie trope, but that's not the blackjack's primary use. In fact, the earliest records we have of them are from fighting manuals.
I mean, you'd see pistol-whipping commonly used for much the same effect, but nobody would take from it that it's what they are meant for. Similarly, if you give someone a short club in a game, it's not unreasonable to assume you're meant to hit people with it the regular way. Especially at a time when stealth wasn't really a thing in games.
Aja on 10/2/2022 at 21:28
I think it's a fair question. The training mission doesn't tell you to blackjack people from behind, and I don't recall any in-game text telling you to, either. Garrett says something like, "Whoa, better sneak up on him," but he's not specific about how. One of the earliest enemy encounters in Bafford's manor has two guards walking away from you with no room to get around them, so I imagine a lot of people tried it there and learned then. I don't recall playing it at any length without knowing how the blackjack worked, so I must've figure it out quickly.
zajazd on 11/2/2022 at 09:53
I think it was the drunk guard by the shack but I might be wrong, in any case it was very early because I played the tutorial and I've never been a run and gunner.
Stefan_Key on 11/2/2022 at 10:10
I guess I got it just by mere common sense. If you want to whack people's head, do it from behind and 100% accuracy. No need for a tutorial.
The words "stealthy", "stealth", "silently", "hiding", "they can hear you" and so on kept repeating during the game.
At the same time, i was playing Half-Life and I knew that switching to Thief, i had to get another approach on expert mode.
Then switching to HL, I tried the stealth approach (it was quite limited though) and that was satisfactory too.
baeuchlein on 11/2/2022 at 16:41
In Garrett's voice files in Thief 1, there is GAR027.WAV, telling the player very clearly what to do with the blackjack: "If I can hit him with the blackjack without being spotted, he'll drop without a sound." I do not remember where in Thief 1 Garrett might say that, or whether he says it at all. But it was obviously that the game designers at least planned to tell the player what exactly this blackjack thing is for.
