PyroRogue on 18/1/2017 at 00:58

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I first came across Thief when it came included with a gaming software package, when I purchased my first computer back in 2001. At first I dismissed it as 'just another fps' a game genre I never really got into,being more of an isometric rpg gamer at the time. Eventually, after playing all the other games, I gave it a try. I liked it, but got dragged into the world of MMORPG before getting to the 2nd mission. And ever since, every time i played a game that borrowed the stealth mechanic from Thief (Elder Scrolls/Fallout). I remembered my play with Thief and kept meaning to go back and play it again.

Now its 2017 and I have finally gone back to play it (with the HD Texture Mod), and I have to say; It is still a fantastic game! and holds up very well. The atmosphere, dark and brooding, The fickleness of the light gem, blackjacking guards. It has been a long time since I have felt the kind of nervous excitement that Thief evokes, though Dishonored came close. I cannot wait to finish Thief(Gold) and move on to the other games in the series. I only hope they kept the feel of the original.

nickie on 18/1/2017 at 18:45

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:D I see your mind is in the same sewer as mine. I tend to get as far as 'How was your first time' and then wander down long-forgotten paths.

baeuchlein on 23/1/2017 at 23:18

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After I began, my post became bigger than I thought it would be. Anyway, have a cup of your favourite nearby, put the phone out of business, and begin digesting all about a journey through darkness that began almost twenty years ago...



A THIEF'S HISTORY

Prologue: Hook, line and sinker, and a satiated fish

For me, there first was the "prologue", so to speak. I read some kind of "preview" of a game where one plays a thief in a medieval world, with castles and guards and so on, in a games magazine, around the end of 1998 or the beginning of 1999. Sounded mildly interesting, especially where the author described that the player would come out of some hiding place into a torchlit corridor where a guard was patrolling. Once that guard had moved to the other end of the corridor, the player could douse some torches and sneak past the guard, into the direction of loot.

Some months later, there was a short review of this game, called "Thief", in that magazine. Didn't sound too interesting, even a bit bizarre. A picture showing a strangely clad being, barely recognizable as a human, lying on the floor was the only screenshot from the game. Players would have recognized the unconscious as a Hammerite in Cragscleft, but potential buyers of that thief game could only guess at what that picture would mean for the game.

Some more months passed. The prologue ends here, and the main part begins...


Chapter one: The bait

We had meanwhile gained access to the internet, and now I could download playable game demos whenever I wanted. No more waiting for a games magazine's CD and hoping that one of the playable demos on it would be interesting as well as playable on my machine. So one day I came across a demo for a thing called "Dark Project" or something like that. The description sounded interesting, although I didn't make the connection to what I read in the games magazine months earlier. Anyway, on I went and down I loaded, so to speak.

Download was finished a while after that, and then I began to read the description of this "Bafford demo" and the game's controls. I had a lot of experience in "Doom" and a few other first person shooters, so moving around and whacking victims with the sword was not too difficult. After a while, I found two other demos of that game ("Assassins" and "Thieves' Guild"), which convinced me to buy the complete game (in the form of "Thief Gold", btw). The bait had fulfilled its purpose, and a new player was hooked.


Chapter two: The Doom Project

I played through the game and meanwhile upgraded my Pentium I machine with a new CPU (and going through a load of trouble with that), thus allowing it to play the game with performance better than a slideshow. Playing this like "Doom" in a medieval world, I usually hacked everyone in my way into little pieces with the sword (that strange Blackjack thing just did no real damage, you know - no idea what that was for), and the undertaker business went very well these days. After having chopped my way to Constantine's lair in the Maw and putting that fake eye in its place unseen (quite uncommon for Garrett the master chopper, but that Constantine bitch was just too strong for me, the Hammers said), the Trickster went down (for the time being), and finally, blood flow lessened on the streets of The City for a short while.

Then there came "The Metal Age", and the master chopper was on the loose again. The undertakers celebrated the second spring of their business. Guards began to regularly wet their trousers again. Only these robotic beasts were better to get rid of with water arrows instead of my usual chopping solution, but everyone else bit the dust the regular way. Overhead slash, retract and prepare next overhead slash, repeat. Oh yes, these skull-faced undead could be really bad, so I had to get up to them from behind, but then that strategy worked well, too. My ability to hide in shadows and other useful places had increased during the first game, and it was already very beneficial.

Meanwhile, I discovered that shooting arrows into unsuspecting humans worked even better than coming face-to-face towards them and start chopping, so I began to shoot broadheads from increasing distances. And the bodies of the victims looked less deranged afterwards. The undertakers appreciated that. So I shot and chopped through mankind merrily, watering an unsuspecting metal beast every now and then in between. Things could have continued like that for quite a while, had it not been for that occurrence in the Mechanist seminary that changed my ways.


Chapter three: So THAT's what that blackjack is for!

When I approached a place in the Mechanist seminary where I was to eavesdrop onto the Sheriff and that Mechanist guy called Karras, I came to a short intersection of two corridors near the place where my unsuspecting victims would meet. I had played that part before but became chopped meat myself, thus had to reload an earlier game, and I knew that there was a Mechanist in a room up some stairs. He would come down these stairs eventually, and if I was still eavesdropping then, he would find me and turn me into blood dropping dead Garrett quickly. So I readied the bow and waited for him, piercing him with a broadhead as soon as he descended the stairs.

But then, the dying man uttered his last words, something like "Oooh... it's getting... so... dark..." And that struck something in me. For the first time, it felt like I had actually killed a real being in that game. "Doom" never did that for me. And so I recognized what this Blackjack was for, began to use it instead of sword and bow, and Garrett the Chopper of The City, Master Assassin, Nightmare of Guards, Saviour of Undertaker's business, and Prominent User of Capital Letters, came to an end.

Instead, Garrett the Soft came into being. Old ladies brought their kittens along for the Master Ex-Chopper to caress them. Guards began to believe in life ensurance companies' promises once again. The undertakers were pissed, however. Oh well, you can't be everyone's friend.:p

I went through "The Metal Age" with more thievish sneaking and blackjack-whacking, and less manslaughter. Maybe I would even have kissed Karras for the sake of Peace and Harmony, had he only come out of his steel and glass cabin in Soulforge. On the other hand, he had to be punished for killing lovely green Vicky, last ruler of the great Trickster dynasty, anyway. So I let him have his last moments on earth along with his metal friends together. Ashes to Ashes, Rust to Rust.


Chapter four: Gimme more!

After my first run through the first two games, I played "The Metal Age" a second time right after completing it for the first, this time on Hard difficulty level. Then came "Thief Gold" on Hard as well. After that, I somehow came into contact with fan missions and TTLG as well. Several missions for "Thief" and then for "Thief II" went into my greedy download manager (we still had only low internet speeds and were charged for every little minute spent in the net). Later on, I replayed the first two games a third time. On Expert, of course. I had recognized that with every new difficulty level, both games gave me additional tasks. I especially noted this in the Bonehoard. So I once again had several weeks of fun for no additional money (unless you count the bill for electricity as well).

Years later, there also came "Thief III". I had replaced the Pentium I machine for a Pentium III and then an AMD Duron based machine in the years before that, and now checked out what I would need to play the new game on this machine. The playable demo came in handy once again. In the end, the graphics card had to be replaced, but nothing else.

I found "Thief III" not as great as the first two games, but nevertheless liked it. Quite a surprise, considering that I later discovered that the computer I used was just good enough to play "Thief III" with framerates I could endure (and probably no one else would). From the time when Pope John Paul II. was last celebrating the Easter days in 2005, shortly before his death, up to the days when the next pope was elected, I was busy with the third game of the series, kicking the bad guy of that game out of business like the antagonists of the other two games before.

I did not continue like before, which would probably have meant that I had played through "Thief III" once or twice again after the first time. Neither did I ever play one fan mission for this game, at least up to today. I plan to, but so far didn't take the time to reinstall the third game and prepare it for FMs. Later, perhaps. "The Dark Mod" began to attract my attention, and that was a good excuse to buy and play "Doom III", thus coming back to the old days of shooting everything on-screen which didn't die of old age spontaneously. "The Dark Mod" proved to be too demanding for my machine, though, so I returned to the first two Thief games, or rather their fan missions.

In 2013, I heard about that NewDark thing coming out of nowhere. Took me at least a year to overcome my initial scepticism, but nowadays I mainly play NewDark missions.


Epilogue: What the future may hold for me

I will most certainly continue playing FMs for NewDark for as long as they are created. I also plan to not only get "Thief III" out of hiding and check out its fan missions as well, but to give "The Dark Mod" another chance as well. The machine I have now is not great for TDM, but I hope that I can one day get it to run well enough when reading and applying tips from threads dealing with tweaks for TDM. That should give me still more years to play Thief-like games even if there should be fewer and fewer FMs for the first two games. And after that, I could still replay older FMs once again, as I did already from time to time.

So far, there's no end in sight for a thievish future. Check your purses, I might have visited you already. Oh, and are you really sure your vault is as secure as its vendor said it would be?:ebil: Better go down and have a look...