Starker on 5/8/2019 at 17:20

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Yes, the heavy influences of Art Deco and Futurism are unmistakable. Just look at Angelwatch and all the robots, etc. But it also had other styles and themes, most notably Victorian, what with all the brick buildings and the greenhouses and the decor, and the theme of industrialisation and modernisation was very prominent in T2. And Framed feels very modern noir. And there's the very Classical bank, though with some modern additions. There was a mix of styles, as any city with any amount of history should have.

Thief was never Gothic, though. The first game was a mix of Romanesque and half-timbered buildings with some industrial steel very liberally mixed in. Gothic is way more elaborate than that -- think Anor Londo for reference. The third game had a more generic high medieval style.

Starker on 5/8/2019 at 18:11

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Oh, if you mean Gothic as just a generic synonym for dark/grim, then sure. But as a literary style, no there wasn't really anything Gothic about Thief in that sense either. Gothic literature is more about dark brooding villains, virginal maidens in peril, and supernatural mysteries. Think Dracula, etc. Haunted castles, characters with dark pasts, madness, death, passionate love, and so on.

benny taffer on 6/8/2019 at 04:27

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I don't know if the word had been invented or not. Nobody called medieval medieval until later either.

downwinder on 6/8/2019 at 05:45

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two words "golden-child" is 100% pure Mechanists Decopunk

this is where purgator finds a pic of golden child and adds it to board

wycha on 8/8/2019 at 10:29

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The magic in both thief TDP and TMA is about mixing different art styles together as one. So telling TMA is "deco-punk" it is washing away the rest of influences in TMA. If Mechanists by itself are "deco-punk", then yeah we can say that. Remember that engine was limited, and by timeline also mechanists were just a baby cult, and as baby cult they died. Not enough time and resources to fully bloom at enlightened direction Karras had in mind.

Remember that:
TDS was made by different team, in different engine, with lack of time and as always - money.
The art direction there is very bland and vanilla, which can be explained by: it must be welcomed for new players, or just art director didn't had any idea with few style mixes that can works for setting and faction story is pointed.
There is also no details or art pieces from art history hanged here and there, which build the general idea about how The City looks like at the game. Wish to say, there's no other art pieces than portrait paintings in TDS but I don't remember TDS such well, so maybe I am wrong.


And by how people works, if something is recognizable as bad(Mechanists are bad, bad boys), people doesn't want to follow such stuff even if it's pretty, or innocent at some way. Hammerites for sure takes care of removing heretic symbols from the fresh build religious structures, the mechanic children salvaged etc. The revolutionary art style Mechanists bring to The City now is an ugly memory of the past.

I don't understand why develop headcanons for something that should, and will never came out as 4th thief. Better to expand world we already have. Personally I would prefer a new stealth game series, with new world, mechanics, possibilities, maybe with nod to other existing series, tho still fresh.