Keeper2138 on 10/6/2004 at 06:48

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There are spoilers here.



OK, here it is.. Yes, like every other chicken heart that played this level I played it in the dead of night. I could stand the whispers and the babies crying. I didn't even blink when the knocking in the attic started. However, while walking boldly around the cradle (Hello, My name is Garrett and I'm the damn MAN!), I never saw anybody in the cradle until I bent down and started picking a cell lock. My shadow was on the door due to the light being right behind me. All of a sudden another shadow appeared over top of mine and my health dropped by half!!! My "OH @#$%!!!!" woke up the whole house and I jumped clean out of my chair! It was almost as bad when I loaded my quickie from a few seconds earlier and actually saw the thing.. The cradle is insane!! (no pun intended ;) )

enchanter on 10/6/2004 at 16:53

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Yes, thanks all. I figured it out last night, before I got the answers from you. I realized I must have skipped over something in the outer cradle, and sure enough, I'm well on my way now. :sweat:

lumpenprol on 11/6/2004 at 04:25

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Null, just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of praise for the Cradle. The first half of the level, as others have said, is masterfully suspenseful. Finally someone gets it, that anticipation only heightens the payoff when it finally arrives. In my mind one of the best things about the Thief 1 levels was that they were large stretches where you really felt like you were venturing into the unknown. Going down into the Bonehoard or the Maw, you could actually feel yourself going deeper and deeper, with that feeling in the pit of your stomach like "Oh crap, how am I ever going to get out again?" Unfortunately, it seems that due to the severe limitations of the crappy Unreal engine, large levels aren't possible; you end up getting these "faberge egg" levels that are very detailed but aren't at all believable because they feel like miniatures. There's no suspense because you have to "cut to the chase"; there no room to explore because everything is cheek-to-jowl (the most ridiculous examples being the kurshok city and pagan undergound where adversarial groups are often right around the corner from one another.) Along with whoever crafted the overlook level, you brought a sense of exploration and mystery back to Thief, congrats.

As far as the second half of the level goes, it was a bit anticlimactic for me, though having read your comments I get the impression that all your design decisions were meticulously thought out. It just seems that instead of getting progressively more terrifying, building towards a excruciating climax, it instead gets progressively less frightening. [SPOILER]The pounding on the door is more terrifying than the twitchy patients, who in turn are much more terrifying than the silhoutted staff. Also, having to traverse the same area several times over, while not exactly annoying, did become tedious and drain most of the suspense. [/SPOILER]

If I could change a few things about the level, I'd [SPOILER]make the patients invulnerable. This was the same beef I had with the original RTC. As soon as I discovered (or read) that the haunts could be backstabbed, I was no longer afraid of them. As soon as I discovered that holy water killed the patients, I was no longer afraid of them.

Also, the crackling sound and flickering of the lights that precedes a patient, while undeniably cool visually, kills quite a bit of suspense, and for a flickering-sensitive person like myself, actually induced a headache after a while. As I played, I was constantly thinking to myself, how cool would it be if the patients were more like the little girl's shadow in the attic; difficult to hear and see. Then your senses would remain in a heightened sense of alert throughout the level, instead of getting somewhat deadened by the epilepsy-inducing flickering of walking christmas trees. [/SPOILER]

All in all though, I really liked the level, I agree that it is probably the best in the game (though I'm not sure about its replay value!) In addition to being suspenseful, it's also very depressing in a unique, queasy sort of way, that I've never seen in any other game.

For pure horror, I have to give a shout out for Clive Barker's Undying. Someone else here mentioned it as well. Though it didn't do well commercially, it's a superb game, one of the most well thought out, thematically-consistent games ever, and one of the best horror games, along with System Shock 2.

Ethne on 11/6/2004 at 05:12

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[SPOILER]null mentioned earlier in the thread that there was a way to go back into the past as yourself before being told to by Lauryl. (Kind of an easter egg.) Perhaps you found the way, because I know when you finally do lock yourself in the cage, Garrett lets out a aaaaaaarrrgg like he is in pain, and if I remember, there is some sort of screaming type noise.[/SPOILER]


I think that I may go back and see for myself... if I ever get up the courage to play the damned level again.

Melianor on 11/6/2004 at 11:06

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All praise NULL.

I found the first part of the lvl alot more frightening than the second part (apart from the time when those puppets attack you the first time).
This is the mark of a great story teller and lvl designer. Hungting for the item that's meant to shed some ligth on that place and having to go through darkness to do so, with all those eerie sounds and the occasional knocking was exhausting. I had to stop playing every 10min or so. Ending up wishing to simply quit the mission.

The scariest part though was that long [spoiler]sleeping hall with the chest at the end[/spoiler]. I was expecting the emergence of something alive or not so alive any moment. Having your back to the room while hearing your lockpicks tickle away on the chest was mesmerizing. How can you do that to us!!! Leave us standing bare with the back to the chest exposed in such an open room *shivers* :sweat:

Thanks for showing us again what fear really is.

Funny though that my fear faded once the cat ... aeh puppet was out of the sack. Not remembering the fact that they stand up again after a while gave me another heartattack though.

The way the lvl was build and what architectural elements where used reminds me alot of the typical haunted mansion with geometrics that both combine round and triangular elements, or elements that stretch high so as if to doom down from aobve you.

The first glimpses i got from the outside of the cradle made me shiver already. The suspense was entangling. The rooms of the inmates and their stories were tragic and maniac at the same time. Like people meeting the final one thing they cannot cope with, or in reflection the players who might not be able to cope with the cradle.

The story about the woman who carries around the urn with the ashes of her stillborn baby stung the most.

be you praised among the lvl artists of this century Null :thumb: