Pemptus on 27/5/2010 at 13:15

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Alright, finished it. Well, sort of, I played the 2nd version and was missing about 100 loot on expert in the 3rd mission. But anyway, some subjective rambling thoughts. I'm not looking to offend or coddle anyone, I'm just speaking my mind. I don't think there are any spoilers ahead, but feel free to skip this post if you're allergic to, uh, people writing about stuff they've played and you haven't, or something.

First mission:
Nice looking spaceship, reminiscent of System Shock 2, if a bit simple in terms of layout. The conversation at the start was a bit too long. The plot is definitely not the strong point of this mission series, and I don't particularly enjoy long, tedious, unskippable pieces of exposition. The story depicted in Garrett's log was bordering on really bad fan fiction, and I really hope the author realizes that. :)
I knew from the start that it wasn't going to be a standard sneaky-sneaky-shadow-hidey-blackjacky mission, as places to hide were very few and far between. Thief doesn't really work well as an action game, and I really don't like exploiting its engine or AI in order to succeed. Here, it seemed, it was inevitable, as a sword fight against more then one opponent usually ends up with a loss of hit points. So off I went, standing in vents, hacking away at the enemies with the tip of the sword while they stood looking like lobotomized idiots flailing their arms, unable to cause me harm because of engine limitations.
Overall, I enjoyed it, but felt the potential was a bit wasted. It was definitely the weakest of the three missions. The boss fight was quite fun though. :D

Second mission:
Ah, the ancient temple-thing puzzle one. I quite enjoy this type of missions. A couple of switches were somewhat annoying to find, though, and many of the enemies weren't really necessary. I know some people were very irritated about the diagonal jumping puzzles, but I've been playing Thief and other games enough to work these kind of tricks out for myself. It was good remembering the times when games weren't very forgiving and you HAD to learn some, sometimes undocumented, tricks to survive. Kind of like rocket jumping in Quake, only mandatory. Also, Thief does require dexterity from time to time, so if you can't pull some jumps off - sorry, butterfingers, move along. ;)
I can't say I enjoyed the backtracking at the end. It served absolutely no purpose and a teleport or a secret passageway leading to the start of the level would've been much better. I think the author was just looking for an excuse to use more Blade Runner music in the mission :) ( (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIBKbhrniUQ) - lovely, lovely track)

Third mission:
Oh good lord. The horrible fanfiction-written-by-a-15-year-old-female-twilight-fan style of writing reaches its peak. Aaaw, how cute, the hardass, cynical, tough as nails master thief we all adore has fallen in love. And he hasn't neglected to write it all down in his diary... in the style of a 15-year-old Twilight fangirl. I really, really hope the author doesn't plan to become a professional writer, and is well aware of the silliness.
The plot doesn't ruin the fun of playing this very well constructed city mission at all, though. I'm given a shopping list of stuff to do and steal and plenty of nooks and crannies to explore. Pure Thief, loving it. I especially enjoyed the not often seen multiple rope arrow jumps, good stuff.
The prevalent theme of out of character bouncy electronic music caused some hilarious controversy in this thread. I'm of the opinion that the author can put anything he wasts in his mission. Thief doesn't have to be restricted to one world, one story, or one mood. Modding and mapping is all about freedom. Turn a seemingly normal looking city mission into a rave party? Why the hell not. The author very clearly loves that kind of music, why not show it in his own mission? I must say, I'm not at all a fan of bouncy electronica (techno? trance? Not sure, sorry), but here, surprisingly, it wasn't all that jarring or extremely loud, as others claimed. Plus, if you hate it all that much, you can imagine yourself as a protector of justice ridding the city of horrible music by turning off the victrolas. :)

Summing up, it was a pretty solid collection of missions, especially 2 and 3. I'll have to play some of cardia1's previous missions. I've got to say I tended to avoid them because of Pedro's reputation as an action and killing-oriented mission builder. There's more to that, I see. Keep up the great job!

One more thing: you're not obliged to enjoy a product you get for free. You can speak your mind about what you don't like, of course, and you shouldn't let anyone stop you. But don't demand the author to "fix" or remove a thing you don't like. It's his mission and his vision, as erroneous as it might seem to you. Feel free to give it a skip, no great loss to the world.

BrokenArts on 27/5/2010 at 13:25

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You got it! Just send me a PM. :-)

JonesCrusher on 27/5/2010 at 15:03

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second button ison top of a water arch...

Sagittal on 27/5/2010 at 15:57

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Hope Vincent,

You will need more than 1 key to enter the Guild including I think (?) your blue key.

Sounds like you may have located the Guild already but to progress you will need to read the note/scroll from the Assassins Leader that you probably have in inventory - and follow some side tasks (ones that aren't shown in your main Objectives).

Tannar on 27/5/2010 at 19:07

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You will need to first get the key to Brother Agrelos' footlocker. You'll find one lock pick in there. Use it on the footlocker in Priestess Virginia's room and you'll get the other lock pick.