WhiteFantom on 21/4/2010 at 17:37

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I just finished this mission, and given the commentary and criticisms expressed by a number of people in this thread, I wanted to give my two cents worth while it's fresh.

I'm absolutely dumbstruck by how amazing this mission is. I spent nearly 7 hours on mission 2, and I don't think I've ever spent longer playing a single Thief mission before in over ten years of playing Thief--and for me, that's a great thing!

There's so much detail in these missions, so much care and attention to even the smallest things. For example, I loved the animations of the civilian AI as they went about their business--the gardener watering the trees in the courtyard, the kitchen maid washing dishes, the engineer and the chamberlain working on the fallen dumbwaiter--I could really believe these were people going about their daily lives, actually doing things. That's one thing Thief has always lacked: AI just tend to stand there, muttering to themselves, not really doing anything, or they just walk around aimlessly, not doing anything. The AI in mission 2 felt like they were real living people.

I also very much enjoyed the puzzles and the new ways that old Thief standards were re-imagined. Someone previously commented that they hated the lock on the front gate not picking like a normal lock, but I found that to be refreshing. Lock picking, though a staple in Thief missions, isn't really all that interesting by itself. Turning that on its head and making lock picking more like a puzzle created an interesting challenge, and reminded me of similar puzzles in adventure games (in fact, there's a very similar style lock picking puzzle in the recently released--and awesomely done--Dark Fall: Lost Souls, the third installment in the Dark Fall horror adventure game series).

I've also seen a number of people criticize this FM for being way too difficult, and even with most other FM's I usually end up here in the forums at some point looking for help because I'm stuck, so you'd think I'd have trouble with this one, too, then. Oddly, even though I played on Largo, I only had to do that twice with this FM, and both were very minor things (the first was when I needed help finding the first rope arrow in mission 2--and the solution to that was also very clever and unusual--and the second was when I was stuck and needed help with what to do next, which happened to be the part where the verse about the mouse came in). Maybe it's because I'm an adventure game junkie, so I'm used to the type of thinking that Zontik seemed to have in mind with these puzzles, but I found them to be challenging, enjoyable, but not so hard I couldn't figure them out in due time.

I did have to go back to an earlier save once and rearrange some bodies I'd hidden because I failed the "No bodies found" objective. I'm the kind of player that likes to knock out pretty much everyone I come across, so I had a *lot* of bodies to deal with, but my strategy was to find a handful of really really good hiding places and hide as many bodies in each spot as I could fit. I kept a list of all the places I'd hidden bodies so that if I failed that objective at any point, all I'd have to do is go back to an earlier save and revisit the spots on my list, starting with the ones I thought were more likely to be a problem, and move the bodies accordingly. Luckily, I only had to do this once, in spite of having knocked out a total of 37 people according to my ending stats. :-)

In all, I found this mission to be jaw-droppingly beautiful, excellently crafted, and thoroughly enjoyable. It also had a strong impact on me for another reason--like Zontik apparently is, I'm also a Ludwig "fan." I've had a soft spot for King Ludwig II and for Neuschwanstein for a long, long time. I own several biographies of Ludwig, I even named one of my cats Ludwig, and one of my "bucket list" goals is to see Neuschwanstein in person before I die. My love of Ludwig is also what lead me to study German in college for my foreign language requirement, and I used to say Neuschwanstein was my castle, no matter whose name was actually on the deed. ;-) At the beginning of mission 2, standing at the front gate looking up at the vastness of Neuschwanstein, I had tears in my eyes. I may never see her in person, but at least I can visit her in the Thief universe anytime I want. Thank you, Zontik!

--Jennifer

Sagittal on 21/4/2010 at 20:04

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Hi Hope Vincent,

There is no key to the Throne Hall - you should find the doors unlocked when you reach the right point in the mission.

WhiteFantom on 21/4/2010 at 21:38

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I had several issues with crashing throughout the mission, and I think I figured out what the problem was (for me, anyway), though I have no idea why.

For me, the game crashed to the desktop during almost every conversation. At first, I thought it must be an issue with the audio, and I even took the contents of the entire Snd folder and moved them so the mission would run without playing any of the voiceovers, but that didn't help.

After some further experimentation, I finally figured it out--it was the subtitles that play during the conversations that caused all my crashes. The text for these subtitles can be found in the Books folder, so every time I experienced a crash, I'd go to the Books folder, find the .str file for that conversation (while trying very hard not to accidentally read anything that might be a spoiler), I'd read the conversation so I'd know what was being said, and then I'd rename that particular file. Then, when I played the mission again, the conversation would run smoothly without the subtitles and without crashing.

I even had this issue during the part where I had to trapp the doctor. A timer is supposed to count down 60 seconds on the screen while you do what you have to do, but every time I ran through this, it crashed. The timer text is also in the Books folder, so I renamed it and that sequence played fine without crashes (I didn't get an on-screen timer, though, so I just had to hurry and hope my time wouldn't run out).

I don't know why these string files would cause crashes like that. They're precisely timed to match the timing of the conversations, and all I can guess is that something about the time triggering causes issues on some systems. Getting rid of those string files completely fixed the problem for me.

--Jennifer

nightshifter on 21/4/2010 at 21:55

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same here...after I had to start again ( because I failed that objective with no good save..) I made a lot of effort in hiding the bodies ..
I had a pile of them up the ladder in the room with the telescope
the ovens in the kitchen where allso great..:cheeky:
I allso had some piles on the rafters that you use to rope up to the ventilationshafts..

and to my suprise... at some point I got the objective failed again .. went back one save and I found that one of the guards was lying on the floor in the middle of the hallway ..:confused:
so I took him up again and I noticed that some of my "victims"from the bottom of the pile were gone ( servants?? ).. I suppose they are scripted to respawn at another place after one of the cutscenes. so my guess is that the "taking out the bodies" made my guard fall down
so I ended up "unpiling" them :cheeky:

Hairlesshebald on 21/4/2010 at 22:33

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Thanks Jennifer, but sadly that did not work for me...I even went to the point of using filemon from sysinternals (free..not a plug)..to see what the last file loaded was...no joy.

This PC does have an Nvidia in it, and I switched off all fogging, but no....does anyone have a method of skipping cutscenes? or maybe a save game of after the throne room scene I could have?

Bri