I want to enjoy thief, but I can't

[Kirkpatrick]

Play it in supreme ghost mode like that dude on youtube, you need to reload even if a guard just hears your footsteps, now that's hardcore.

Klatremus, right? Hats off to him, but while I really love ghosting, this might be a bit too much for me to enjoy.




But then again, I might've said the same thing for regular ghosting some 15 years ago...

 

[Roguey]

Maybe he was referring to stealth? Most items are geared toward taking down enemies, either lethally or not, and if you don't do that and instead choose to ghost then the overwhelming majority of them become boring to find because they'll be useless to you. A lot of the skills you can unlock have the same problem.

HR defines ghosting as "never being seen." You can get the ghost bonus by knocking out everyone silently.

 

[JarlFrank]

Maybe he was referring to stealth? Most items are geared toward taking down enemies, either lethally or not, and if you don't do that and instead choose to ghost then the overwhelming majority of them become boring to find because they'll be useless to you. A lot of the skills you can unlock have the same problem.

HR defines ghosting as "never being seen." You can get the ghost bonus by knocking out everyone silently.

Yeah modern game developers define ghosting wrong.

Dishonored does that too, and when I first played it and wanted to get the "ghost" achievements, I actually went through the first three levels without a single knockout before learning that the game accepts unseen KOs as ghosting lol wtf

 

[Icewater]

Maybe he was referring to stealth? Most items are geared toward taking down enemies, either lethally or not, and if you don't do that and instead choose to ghost then the overwhelming majority of them become boring to find because they'll be useless to you. A lot of the skills you can unlock have the same problem.

HR defines ghosting as "never being seen." You can get the ghost bonus by knocking out everyone silently.

Oh, right. I forgot that. Well, there's still not much reason to disable enemies if you don't have to, and you don't if you have cloak. The only situation you have to is saving Malak.

 

[fantadomat]

I am not much of a ghost player,i do like to live something to remembered by.

 

[McPlusle]

I like Thief but I want to love Thief. I played a bit of the first game a few years ago and was really into it except I thought the zombies and other stuff like that detracted from the tense stealth that I loved in the game's opening level. Does 2 expand on what the original did best or does it introduce more miscellany that I'm probably not gonna like?

 

[JarlFrank]

I like Thief but I want to love Thief. I played a bit of the first game a few years ago and was really into it except I thought the zombies and other stuff like that detracted from the tense stealth that I loved in the game's opening level. Does 2 expand on what the original did best or does it introduce more miscellany that I'm probably not gonna like?

2 has a bunch of robots later on, but overall it's more human-focused and you break into classic heist locations like a police station, a bank, and a church. You also run from guards who ambush you, break into the sheriff's own home, jump over rooftops on the way to a certain location, etc.

Thief 2 plays much more like a burglary simulator than Thief 1 does.

So play T2 first, then go back to Thief 1 and give it another chance. Most people will find a new appreciation for the variety of Thief 1 after finishing the second game.

 

[Robespierre]

It also might be a good idea playing Thief 1 vanilla (the non-gold version). My first contact with Thief was with the Gold version, and although I enjoyed it, the Thieves Guild mission almost put me off the game. And they somehow manage to make things worse with the Mage Towers. No, really, play the game vanilla or skip-cheat your way out of infernal lairs of Decline.

 

[SCO]

Opera house and Little Big World are in gold though.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

It also might be a good idea playing Thief 1 vanilla (the non-gold version). My first contact with Thief was with the Gold version, and although I enjoyed it, the Thieves Guild mission almost put me off the game. And they somehow manage to make things worse with the Mage Towers. No, really, play the game vanilla or skip-cheat your way out of infernal lairs of Decline.

Another reason is that the game might go on for a little too long if your first run is through Gold - 15 large maps can be a little too much for some. (Vanilla Thief has 12 large maps).

 

[Robespierre]

Indeed. The aforementioned maps clearly ruin the pace - and atmosphere - of the game.

Edit : Anyway I think we can all agree that, at the very least, especially for a first-timer, suffering through the Guild and the Towers diminish the overall impression one can have of this timeless masterpiece.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Edit : Anyway I think we can all agree that, at the very least, especially for a first-timer, suffering through the Guild and the Towers diminish the overall impression one can have of this timeless masterpiece.

I would say the opera house more than makes up for the guild and the mage towers. The mage towers aren't even bad anyway, just a bit gimmicky.

 

[Robespierre]

Dunno man, I just find that map plain boring and tedious. Even more so considering it follows two great levels imo. Dunno, just felt my experience was somehow interrupted.

 

[newtmonkey]

If anyone wants to take the advice in this thread and play Thief TDA (vs Thief Gold), there is a nice patch you can run on a steam/GOG install of Thief Gold to "downgrade" it.

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140679

 

[Roguey]

Edit : Anyway I think we can all agree that, at the very least, especially for a first-timer, suffering through the Guild and the Towers diminish the overall impression one can have of this timeless masterpiece.

I never noticed. The worst levels are from the original release.

 

[Robespierre]

Edit : Anyway I think we can all agree that, at the very least, especially for a first-timer, suffering through the Guild and the Towers diminish the overall impression one can have of this timeless masterpiece.

I never noticed. The worst levels are from the original release.

Have you no sha... Ah yes : No fun allowed is your motto. Shameless heretic.

 

[JarlFrank]

tbh Strange Bedfellows is pretty terrible.

 

[Multidirectional]

Escape is the one true shit mission, followed by Strange Bedfellows.

 

[Darth Roxor]

tbh Strange Bedfellows is pretty terrible.

I always forget about this mission. For a reason.

 

[Melan]

Strange Bedfellows and Escape are both good missions for an endgame. The shit has hit the fan, you are in a desperate situation, and you have to live by your wits to survive. Escape is a good test of skills - it is the hardest one in the game - and Strange Bedfellows is an excellent descent into a claustrophobic hell-world beneath the City surface.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Strange Bedfellows and Escape are both good missions for an endgame. The shit has hit the fan, you are in a desperate situation, and you have to live by your wits to survive. Escape is a good test of skills - it is the hardest one in the game - and Strange Bedfellows is an excellent descent into a claustrophobic hell-world beneath the City surface.

Which is why I would have merged the two missions into one if I had to call it. Create one mission where you start out running from the weirdies, then move through the chaos running through the city to get to the Hammerites... only to find they haven't been spared, so impromptu rescue mission is called for.

And purposefully make this mission pace faster than the previous ones.

 

[Roguey]

Strange Bedfellows and Escape are both good missions for an endgame. The shit has hit the fan, you are in a desperate situation, and you have to live by your wits to survive. Escape is a good test of skills - it is the hardest one in the game - and Strange Bedfellows is an excellent descent into a claustrophobic hell-world beneath the City surface.

Escape is terrible because the monkey guys have such sensitive ears that making the slightest bit of noise means you get swarmed by all of them and killed. I liked Strange Bedfellows better because that aspect was toned down significantly.

 

[Infinitron]

Which is why I would have merged the two missions into one if I had to call it. Create one mission where you start out running from the weirdies, then move through the chaos running through the city to get to the Hammerites... only to find they haven't been spared, so impromptu rescue mission is called for.

It's kind of weird how abbreviated things get after that. How did Garrett get inside the Maw anyway? Where was the City-side of the portal? Did the Hammerites know how to open it? And also had time to construct a god-killing replica Eye-bomb while they were at it? All of this, and the fact that they were entrusted with an elemental talisman in the past, indicates that the top Hammerite leadership must know "what's going on" in a cosmic sense. They're not just ignorant normie religious fanatics. But that aspect of them is never really explored further in the series (although that Inspector guy from T: DS is sort of in the same spirit I guess).



The game's outro is also suggestive of ideas that never came to fruition in the final storyline. That statue? Some guy randomly sleeping in the snow? What's going on here? It sure looks interesting.

 

[Nano]

I like playing through Escape as an action/combat level. It's more fun that way.

It's kind of weird how abbreviated things get after that. How did Garrett get inside the Maw anyway? Where was the City-side of the portal? Did the Hammerites know how to open it? And also had time to construct a god-killing replica Eye-bomb while they were at it? All of this, and the fact that they were entrusted with an elemental talisman in the past, indicates that the top Hammerite leadership must know "what's going on" in a cosmic sense. They're not just ignorant normie religious fanatics. But that aspect of them is never really explored further in the series (although that Inspector guy from T: DS is sort of in the same spirit I guess).

The game's outro is also suggestive of ideas that never came to fruition in the final storyline. That statue? Some guy randomly sleeping in the snow? What's going on here? It sure looks interesting.

Maybe this Thief 2 Gold mission would have shed some more light on these things.

The fourth T2G mission, which was to be set in necromancer controlled territory in the mountains, was to be an undead/horror mission featuring craggy cliffs dotted with haunted towers. This mission was sadly lost. There was also supposed to have been a Hammerite mission added to the mix, but from what we have here it looks like something changed along the way, some information is wrong, or whathaveyou. In general I wouldn't consider anything I've said here the official word on anything.

Edit: A little more on that Hammerite mission... The idea was that Garrett gets a Hammerite priest drunk in a bar and gets him to spill some info about Karras's past within the order, and he then has to go follow up on it by breaking into an old run down Hammerite church.

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=108070

Shame Looking Glass had to die before it released.

 

[udm]

I prefer Thief 2, if only because the limitations of the Dark Engine aren't as obvious. For one, the Thief games don't do movement over weird geometry very well, and for another, mantling kinda sucks when you're trying to scale moving, curved or weirdly edged brushes (and this is even more noticeable after playing The Dark Mod and going back to Thief 1/2).

That being said, I still prefer T1/2 to most of the new-age stealth games--even Dishonored, which I liked a lot. Thief 1 and 2's atmosphere, story and maps more than make up for their shortcomings. Strangely, the map that disappointed me most from T1/Gold was Return to the Cathedral

Spoiler

thanks to Brother Murus' endless errands. Otherwise the mission started off fantastically.