Hit Deity on 14/2/2023 at 21:53
Definitely one of those missions that the first time is so incredibly well done.. then on subsequent plays, the "flaws" definitely grate a bit. Still, when I think of Thief Gold, I automatically think of it along with the Bonehoard, Bafford's, and the Maw levels..
Shoshin on 16/2/2023 at 00:19
I agree with you. When I think of Thief, it's Bafford's, Assassins, The Sword, Return to the Cathedral, and the eye cutscene. And I wasn't as annoyed with the flaws of RtC as I was afraid I would be this time.
Shoshin on 16/2/2023 at 00:47
So this level was weird for me, because of how I played it. My wife came down with Covid last weekend, so I've been working from home, taking care of her, taking care of the kids, taking them to school and picking them up, taking care of our many animals, and also trying to work from home. Scattered, I think you'd call it. Very very interrupt driven. So I played 10-15 minutes at a time over the course of the last 5 days or so, so I was never able to get a feel for the flow of the game. I ended up mostly taking out a few enemies and then saving and quitting. It was a difficult way to play. So this one will be short, as my thoughts are not super coherent about the level at all.
I like the way it starts, with the Keepers freeing you from the vampiric vines that The Trickster has put you in, I guess so they can feed? The door out is locked, so we descend a little ways into what I assume is tunnels and corridors that eventually meet up with the Maw, though not in this level. We meet some more new enemies: Bug beasts, Ape beasts (I always thought they were more rat than ape, and they are wearing what looks like the remnants of Constantine's guard uniform, so I assume once Constantine revealed himself as the Trickster the human guards were transformed), and Frogbeasts. My first playthrough I didn't realize the frogbeasts exploded on contact. They're a good target for broadhead arrows though, along with the many many big spiders.
I found the tunnel section very frustrating this time through for some reason. I think because I played it in such a disjointed way, I never was able to orient myself very well, leading to visiting several areas over and over again. But I like the sections with the big treehouses, and revisiting Constantine's mansion again, with the changes wrought by the Trickster's return was fun. Plants overrunning the place mostly, plus all the new enemies wandering the place.
It was also a nice touch to get all the loot back from RtC in this level, leading to an almost absurd loot total if you got everything from RtC and this level. I was a few hundred gold short of 100%.
Overall, though, this level is in my bottom 5 I think. Part of it is that there are areas where it is damn near impossible to sneak past, leading me to have to knock out or kill everything. I mean, I generally do that anyway, but in most levels it's not forced on you quite like this one is. For example, the tree house where the details of the ritual are recorded (for the objective of figuring out WTF the Trickster is up to) has two bug beasts, two frog beasts, is pretty well lit, and requires you to rope arrow up. I'm sure that there are players that have ghosted that section, but I can't imagine how hard it would be. Perhaps I just lack the patience for that.
First time through, I remember liking the level for the nature aspect and for fleshing out a bit of the Trickster's motivations. And within the game, though the Trickster is the enemy in this game, the forces of nature and chaos are not cartoonishly evil, and their motivations make sense. Even the Hammers, religious fanatics that they are, are understandable in what their goals are. The Keepers, with their themes of balance and moderation, no doubt are hated by both the Hammers and the Pagans, as all moderates are hated by the extremes on both sides. The conflicts in the game, simplified as they are, are not as simple as one side is wrong and bad, and the other side is right and good. The Trickster is the enemy because he takes it too far, and thus must be stopped.
So to stop him, I have to team up with the other side temporarily. Time to revisit the Hammer Temple.
Shoshin on 16/2/2023 at 21:35
So we go back to the Hammerite Temple, only to find it's been overrun by the Trickster's minions, many of which are still there waiting. There basically is no loot (there is 100 in loot to be found, but you can't spend it, so what's the point in finding it? I didn't find it, I don't think I ever have), though in the temple there are lots of arrows and a few other useful things to be found. We get another new enemy, a spider that can fling webs and also shoot a purple electrical thing at you. On the topic of learning new things, I learned that you can throw off the webs faster by right clicking the mouse. I never knew that before, I would just wait for time to pass, or more likely, reload.
Anyway, gathering up as much ammo as I could, I descend into the altar which has been opened to reveal a ladder down into some lower caverns that the Hammers clearly use for emergencies, such as tornadoes or an attack by beasts from the Trickster's realm. As soon as you damage a bug beast, you're obligated to kill them all. This round, two of them had been killed already, one maybe by the Hammers, the other, no idea. Occasionally the beasts will fight amongst themselves, but I usually only see that happen when one of the beasts is a Fire Elemental. Keep descending until you find the Hammers, and they ask you to get the chisel and their High Priest. The priest is unconscious in one of the lower rooms, and getting there involves navigating ape beasts, frog beasts and bug beasts. Once you return the priest and the chisel, mission over.
Not a lot to say about this one, not one of my favorite levels. There's a few nice touches, like the room full of water with a dry space in the middle. Not a lot of thieving, but we're in the end game now. The Hammers give you a booby trapped eye, and we're onto the last level. This feels like a level that could have been replaced with a cutscene where the Hammers just give you the fake Eye, so this feels a bit tacked on? I don't know, but it was not overly satisfying, and it's not a level I would replay just to get some quick thieving in. It feels ... inessential. It's part of the story, but not a necessary part maybe?
Time to steal from a god, and then wrap this thread up.
Shoshin on 17/2/2023 at 16:20
And so I have come to the last mission.
The level is simple enough, you just descend, avoiding/knocking out/killing enemies along the way. This time I left them alone, and just avoided them. Close down the portal where the bubbles containing the various beasts. Is it possible to fail here? Run out of elemental arrows for closing the gate? I think it must be, as there doesn't appear to be any way to get more arrows if you happen to use them all up before the portal is closed. Continue on, see the Trickster performing his ritual. Wait until his back is turned, sneak up & replace the Eye with the booby trapped Eye, and then he blows up. The end.
Look, this isn't a very interesting level, and is a bit anti-climactic. There's an element maybe of the game running out of steam near the end. The last two levels are not great, don't have much in the way of thieving, though there is plenty of places for stealth and sneaking. But the story is running towards the conclusion, and the final levels aren't the best ones. The game is over, and I'm left with both a feeling of accomplishment for seeing the story to its conclusion, but also a bit let down by the conclusion and still wanting more. Artemis gives me some hope for more: "Beware the dawn of the Metal Age", though Garrett wants no part of it.
Shoshin on 17/2/2023 at 17:05
Having half my family sick with Covid has both kept me very busy taking care of them and running all the errands (since they are isolating), but also has given me more free time at the end of each day, so I sped up quite a bit with playing each level. Seems like I was averaging 1 a week there for the first 11 missions, and then I did the last three in three days. The game tells me I spent 19 hours and 35 minutes on this play through, which feels about right, though there were some saving and reloading moments that I'm sure push the actual total to around 25 hours.
I had a great deal of fun playing this game again, and then trying to summarize both my thoughts from this time playing it, and trying to remember how it was the first time I played it. That part was harder than I thought, as my memories of the first time are very vague. There's a bittersweet feeling knowing that I won't play it again, but also I do still have The Metal Age and Deadly Shadows to play through again, so I'm looking forward to that.
One thing that surprised me was how many things I learned about for the first time on this play through, despite having played this game many times. Air mages immune to gas arrows, Fire mages immune to fire arrows, finally getting the clue for the Earth Talisman to line up with the fake talismans and getting the right one without having to watch to see which Talisman the patrolling mages stop in front of... I didn't think there was anything left for me to learn. Now I'm sure there are still aspects of the game that I haven't discovered because I play one particular way.
Overall the story and world for the game are both very compelling, and I like that Garrett is forced to clean up the mess that he inadvertently caused. Blinded by his greed, (100,000 is a lot of money), he never stops to ask any of the Keepers around him why the Eye is guarded by the Elemental Talismans, why the Keepers went to such lengths to hide the Talismans, even exposing themselves to the Hammers and the Hand Mages in order to contain the cataclysm. A few questions could have helped, though the Keeper prophesies apparently required events to play out as they did. That's the problem with prophesies, they're either accurate in which case they require events to unfold exactly as the prophecy predicted and can't be changed, or the future can be changed, in which case the prophecy is not accurate.
Thief Gold is my favorite game in the series, largely because I played it first, it was *such* a revelation in 1999, given the other games out at the time, and because the story itself flows better. Thief : The Metal Age is a very very close second though.
Mission rankings
Top missions:
Bafford's
Assassins
The Sword
The Haunted Cathedral
The Mage Towers
Undercover
Return to Cathedral
Middle of the road:
Break from Clagscreft
Down in the Bonehoard
The Lost City
Song of the Caverns
Not my favorites:
Thieves Guild
Escape!
Strange Bedfellows
Into the Maw of Chaos
I'm glad some folks have enjoyed reading my musings (or as I called them to a friend of mine, of the aforementioned "It's a long way down" story, "my ridiculous ramblings about a video game that has loomed far larger in my imagination than it should have"). I'll start Thief 2: The Metal Age sometime soon, and also start a new thread.
vfig on 17/2/2023 at 18:57
ive really enjoyed following along with your journey here and reading the thoughts youve written down. thanks for sharing them with us!
Hit Deity on 17/2/2023 at 19:43
Same for me. I recently played through the entire games again, so it was fresher in my mind than it could have been, but not as fresh as I would have liked.. Hmmm, sounds like a Bilbo farewell speech.
Anyways, I enjoyed it. I have played T2TMA much more than TDP/G, so I'm looking forward to it even more. Thanks for doing this!
downwinder on 18/2/2023 at 00:39
escape was my fav mission, :)
Shoshin on 18/2/2023 at 17:04
I had a hard time with Escape! probably due to how I played it this time. Parts were cool, parts were frustrating, and in the end it was just OK to me.