SneakyGuy101 on 14/1/2017 at 20:43
Very confusing tbh. I was only 7 when I had first started playing Thief and at the time I probably only touched a computer a few times so I had no clue how to control anything but I slowly learned how everything worked and by the time 2008 came around I was regularly playing Thief and knew how to control everything and how pretty much everything worked. Mind you it was Thief 2 that I first played and I hadn't played Thief Gold for the first time until early 2010 and I truly fell in love with the series by then. When I played Thief Gold for the first time it felt like I started playing the game all over again and I had quite an amazing experience playing through Thief Gold and discovering everything about it.
By 2011 I started fiddling around with DromEd and that's when I knew I wanted to start making fan missions and so through 2012 to 2014 I became very involved with making levels in Thief. I eventually released my first FM "The Serpentine Amulet" in 2014 for Thief Gold for the 10 Rooms Contest :D
I haven't played Thief much recently but I go back and play it occasionally and I still continue to DromEd but definitely not on the same pace as I used to. Thief will remain my all time favorite series/game even if I don't play it as much anymore ;)
Corsair on 14/1/2017 at 21:36
1998 my twin and I were looking for new games to play. Our oldest brother had picked up Tomb Raider and it came with a Thief demo disc. We were curious and tried it out. We absolutely loved it. I still remember us continuously playing it over and over while the other watched.
There is still a hilarious incident I remember to this day. I was hiding in one of the pillared corridors from a searching guard and we suddenly heard "TAKE THAT!". My twin and I nearly shat ourselves thinking I'd been caught, but then heard a very familiar Thunk! sound as the guard's sword came into contact with a statue. We looked at each other and asked, did he seriously just attack a statue?! We howled for quite some time and always tried to replicate that incident, but never could.
I eventually got tired of playing the demo and convinced my bro to pick up the full game. We got to Cragscleft Prison and tried attacking a zombie with a sword and died. At this point we had never really played the game too stealthily, just hid in the shadows and chopped up guards as they came near. We had no idea how to handle the zombie. I tried skipping levels thinking I could get back to more Baffordy type missions, but kept finding more zombies so I quit playing and only stuck to the first mission.
My family ended up moving a few times after this and the game was lost. It was during high school and Thief Deadly Shadows came out that I remembered the series all over again. Fell in love with TDS because it was my first Thief experience in a long time. I finally was playing the game the proper way now too. I eventually picked up TG and TMA. Over a long holiday weekend I playing the 2 to completion. Those 2 games became my go to anytime I was bored.
Eventually in 2006 I moved for a new job and lost a lot of my social life. the internet was a common thing now so I looked up Thief-related stuff and came across this site. I started downloading and playing FMs like a mad man. Always waiting for the next day so I could max out my number of downloads again.
Now in present day, I have at minimum of 3 different versions of Thief installed for when I want a change in aesthetics and am always looking for new FMs to play or revisit old ones. I'd like to Dromed, but the learning curve and time for mission completion is a little steep for my taste.
I guess I went a little beyond "my first experience", but oh well.
zajazd on 15/1/2017 at 13:46
In 1998, my classmate was buying gaming magazines and giving me the CDs. I fell in love with Thief instantly as I started the Bafford's demo. Some time later my neighbor got the full game, it was pirated copy with Russian interface and dialogues (Russian pirates were going all out like that and recording their own audio in games). The prison part of Bonehoard is still the most dense atmosphere I have ever experienced in a game. Hillary for prison. Then I got T2 which was a major disappointment for me cos I felt it had no atmosphere and had bland level design. Then for years I was dreaming of playing Thief with original English audio until I finally got it from some stranger who had the internets. Then in mid 2000s I discovered FMs as T2X was released and I finally had access to the internet at home. Thief was my fav game for years until I finally got into Deus Ex in 2006 with 3rd or 4th time. God bless Donald J Trump.
TannisRoot on 15/1/2017 at 15:36
2000(?) - I had gotten FF7 for PC for a birthday present from my older sister and it came with an Eidos demo disc for Thief, Tomb Raider, Revenant, and Daikatana I think. It was likely my first experience playing a game in first person - so that was pretty mind blowing. I played the hell out of the demo exploring every nook and cranny. Baffords was the first level I remember playing that felt like a real location. I also enjoyed playing basketball in the secret area :p.
I don't remember having trouble with the controls. I didn't know how to creep or anything. That said I did enjoy collecting all the guards in Bafford's and depositing them in the wine cellar...
I wasn't able to buy the game at the time due to the ESRB restriction and my parents, but I remembered the demo enough that 3-4 years later I got Thief 2 in high school. I really enjoyed it and joined the forums shortly after back in 2004 under a different username. I was encouraged to return to Thief 1 so I played that on and off up through Song of the Caverns, but didn't enjoy the creature feature missions so much. The zombies scared the bejesus out of me back then. Late college I was feeling nostalgic and returned to Thief Gold to finally beat it. Now I prefer TDP to TMA.
One of my favorite Thief memories was playing through the FM Calendra's Cistern on the last day of school summer of 2004 with my sister. We didn't beat it and it was very hard, but it was so fun to explore. Later on I feigned illness to play Thief 2X the day of its release :p.
Unkillable Cat on 15/1/2017 at 19:10
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
It was awkward and basically over in 30 seconds.
Same here, plus it was dark and I couldn't see what I was doing.
Purgator on 16/1/2017 at 08:26
I was so excited, I shot all of my water arrows waaay too early.....
Sadovnik on 16/1/2017 at 18:18
My first Thief experience occurred when I was 8 years old (2002), I remember it just as it was yesterday - I had a very close friend in my school, a classmate, almost every day we went out of school in the same direction for about half a kilometer, I could even see his home from my own window. So he decided to invite me for the first time in his house, despite the fact that there were no parents to grant my going in. He switched on his big box-like computer and then I saw it... dark corridors, the moon hung low in the sky, the night's breath, scary guardsmen... I don't know why, but almost everything in that game (TMA) caused significant increase in my heartbeat and my breath was being held. I returned home and asked my parents to buy me a computer, I could talk about that game for hours. Then I dreamed about it. And then finally I acquired it. Uncomparable satisfaction ever!
Darkness_Falls on 16/1/2017 at 20:47
Sanctus Germanus, my experience sounds much like yours, if I remember correctly. And Thief 2 was my main entry into the franchise, too.
I remember getting frustrated by not being able to escape guards running after me, and so I would aimlessly run around all over exposing many parts of the level for the first time to me and alerting yet more guards. (I hadn't really mastered flash bombs or used them much.) After a while, if I alerted guards, I learned to just sit in a shadow or high place and shoot them all who came with broadheads and other arsenal, lol. I sometimes got bored with the size of levels and all the reading, too, and would sometimes skip levels via the cheat and/or quit.
So, yeah, it was an acquired taste. After quitting a particular gameplay session, I wouldn't play the game for months at a time. However, the game had its grip on me as, eventually, some deeply hidden longing to play it again would rise up within again and I'd find myself playing a bit more and more each time. This was a cyclical process until I finally got hooked/addicted at some point.
bassoferrol on 16/1/2017 at 22:22
None of your business.
Chade on 17/1/2017 at 01:15
The 1998 demo. I replayed Baffords SO many times: crawled over ever square inch of that map. Can barely remember those initial attempts now of course: I do remember shooting everything on sight my first couple of times through the demo. Stealthy shooting, mind you ... but still. I can't quite remember the timeline next, but I reckon I would have got the full game in April 1999, thanks to my brother. He was never as enamoured of the game as I was, but he had his birthday then and got to choose a game. It was a choice between Worms: Armageddon and Thief and I begged him to go with Thief. He did, basically out of sympathy for me, played it for a bit, and then lost interest while I continued to play Thief and sequels and FMs for years (I feel a bit bad about that in hindsight: being able to buy a new game was a big deal to us then).
I can't quite remember but I think I might still have been playing without mouselook for those first few attempts. I think it might have taken half-life to jolt me out of that habit. I might remember that wrong though.
Our PC could barely play Thief at the time it was released, it was below the minimum requirements. We used software rendering and the lowest possible resolution and got maybe 15 fps. I was very surprised when I found out later that apparitions were meant to be transparent. Years later I tried to use that same PC to play Thief again and found it completely unplayable, but in 1998/1999 I didn't care. It was enough just to be playing this kind of "smart action" game with a living world all around me.
