Shoshin on 3/9/2023 at 00:11

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The Good

The first thing that jumps out to me upon starting the game is the graphics. Deadly Shadows is a serious step up from Thief and Thief 2. This wasn't immediately apparent back in 2004 when it came out, as it had been 5 years since Thief 2, but this time around, playing them back to back, it was very clear. Deadly Shadows looks very good, and the realtime shadows really add to the atmosphere. Generally the textures are very nice, and the architecture in game is also quite good. In the previous games there were spaces that just didn't feel like real spaces that would have been actually built. I don't recall any place where I thought that about a building or level in Deadly Shadows. Again, Thief 3 Gold with all the improvements may play a big part in the visual fidelity aspect. But overall, this is a good looking game.

Overall, I liked the models of the AI as well. With the exception of the zombies. I did not like their models. The animations were good as well. I think initially I didn't like the models, but that may just have been me being reactionary and not liking change from the first two games. This time around, I thought everything looked pretty realistic. The bug where the knockout animation doesn't play before the ragdoll physics takes over is still annoying, but this time around the animations seemed to play more than they did when I first played. Don't know if that's a Thief 3 Gold feature, or just coincidence?

The sound. Can't talk about a Thief game without talking about the sound. I think overall they did an excellent job with sound, though nothing ground-breaking over the first two games. Moody and atmospheric is the requirement, and I think they hit it.

The missions. I enjoyed all of them, though I will say that none of them reached the heights of the best missions from the previous games (The Sword or Life of the Party for example). However, none of them hit the lows of some missions either (Trace the Courier or The Maw of Chaos), and none of them annoyed me as much as Return to Cathedral or Ambush. But it also feels like they didn't take many risks in the game. The one exception is Robbing the Cradle. That mission was so well done. And the fact that the first half literally has no enemies in it is a nice touch. There's a sense of creeping dread that grows the longer you explore without encountering anything. The Cradle is clearly the best mission in the game. I also really liked the Kurshok mission underground. The small missions (like the Abysmal Gale or Fort Ironwood) are nice touches. Not full missions, but small things that flesh out the world. And I like the idea of being able to explore the city. However, the city sections feel cramped. I'm sure this is because of the original Xbox limitations, and it's still nice to be able to walk around a bit of the city in between missions. The fences were almost a nice touch, but the characters are a little annoying. Still, selling the loot from each mission and then buying supplies adds a tiny bit to the realism.

The story. The first game was about opposing the Trickster/Pagans/nature/chaos, the second about opposing the Mechanists/Karras/technology/order, it's only natural that the third game should focus on opposing the Keepers/balance/arrogance. The Keepers have become fallen, even without Gamall running around. Relying on prophecy, imagining themselves in control of the city rather than just seeking to keep the balance. The Keepers need to be put in check. Add Gamall to that, and the story is surprisingly coherent. Garrett is trying to figure out what's going on, the missions seem to flow into each other, and there's nothing that seems jarring or out of place plot wise. I may be wrong about this, due to my massively low expectations going into the game. Maybe it just seemed to flow better cause I wasn't expecting much. And at the end was a nice full circle moment with Garrett becoming the one true Keeper and stopping the girl from stealing from him. Overall, I liked it.

The Bad
Cramped levels, especially around the City. I understand the compromises that had to be made, but still, I would have liked things to feel bigger and more open.

Third person view. Not a fan of that, or the "body awareness" that came with it. Again, a compromise, as I see what they were aiming for. It's a nice touch to be able to have your head turn independent of your body, but the weird lurch that happens when you start walking in the direction your head is pointing when your body is pointing in a different direction is not great. It would have been better for them to just instantly align the head and body when starting to move instead of animating it. I'm also assuming that the issues with leaning are because of the third person view. I don't like the way leaning works in Deadly Shadows.

The Keeper Assassins. Adding them to the lore just feels ... wrong. The Keepers influence from behind the scenes, not through assassination. I could have accepted them as a recent addition to the Keeper weaponry as a part of them becoming fallen, but the story seems to imply that they've had them for a long long time. Maybe I'm wrong about that as well, and the Assassins are new? Also their implementation sucks. It's one thing for them to be going after Garrett, but once an assassin is set off in game it tends to go on a murderous spree killing everything around. And them being invisible is kinda meh. I mean, I get that the Keepers are supposed to be hard to see, but I didn't think they had outright invisibility. Maybe they do, and Garrett does too? Not my favorite.

On that topic, the factions, when they fight, also have a tendency to just go full spree killing. Hammers kill Pagans, the City Watch gets involved, and suddenly every person in the area is dead, civilians included. This could have been implemented better. The faction system could have been done a little more richly as well. Shoot cornerstones, shoot rust beetles, you're good? A few more specific tasks for each faction would have been better I think. But I will say overall it's nice to be able to turn enemies into neutrals or friends. I like the idea, I just think it wasn't implemented very well.

The loot system. I ended up with far more loot than I could spend. I think I ended up with 10,000 extra left over?

Items. I found the oil useless, as I generally don't kill. And I missed holy water arrows and exploding zombies with them. This is a minor complaint though.

The Ugly

The realtime lighting causes hair to look weird. Like the head is in shadow, the hair is all lit up? Just looks off. And a little stupid.

No swimmable water. They had that in Tomb Raider from 1996 for crying out loud. This is a tech problem that could have been solved. Dying immediately after falling in deep water was not good. I didn't particularly miss levels where I had to swim, but I shouldn't die right away because I slipped into the sea off a dock.

No rope arrows. I get that there were physics issues, but I wish we had rope arrows rather than climbing gloves. The gloves worked well enough, but rope arrows would be better.

And I think that's it for my thoughts on this one! If anyone chimes in with other things, I'm sure I'll have other things to say, but for now, I'll just say Thief Deadly Shadows didn't suck like I thought it would, and was in fact a fun game that I enjoyed playing again. And the Garrett story line came to a nice conclusion, and would have allowed for more Thief games with a different protagonist, probably the girl from the end.

Shoshin on 16/9/2023 at 17:02

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Thanks Overlord

Shoshin on 19/9/2023 at 23:06

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Thanks ajay. It's hard not to look at T: DS without thinking about what it could have been. But, there is a good game lurking underneath the flaws, which I assume were largely due to the limitations of the original XBox.