It is a neat mission, but looks and feels absolutely nothing like anything in the Old Quarter. (For an example of a proper Old Quarter mission, see Dark Messiah)
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Thief fan missions and campaigns
- Thread starter SCO
- Start date
Yeah, it's supposed to be a reconstructed Old Quarter so it looks much newer than the actual Old Quarter... but it goes so far that I haven't even recognized a single place from the original mission. When I was next to the old cathedral, I didn't even realize it because everything looks so different.
I played Dark Messiah back in 2014 and rated it 8/10. That one really captured the atmosphere of the haunted OQ, yeah. Might replay it one of these days!
I played Dark Messiah back in 2014 and rated it 8/10. That one really captured the atmosphere of the haunted OQ, yeah. Might replay it one of these days!
Dark Messiah is awesome as fuc* and its the main source of inspiration for the final chapter of Darkstone Gem as regards to ambience. I replayed the thing over 5 times and I don't usually replay FMs, except the ones I like a lot.
- Joined
- May 13, 2009
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- 28,587
This is the RPG Codex, you don't need to censor yourself here. You can fuck the fucking fuckers all night long and well into the day if you want to.
Or just use "taff" instead.
Just think of all those sweet brofists you'll get.
So I just watched GORT stream a little bit of The Rebellion of the Builder 2, and holy shit. You thought TROTB1 was insane? Haha. This is even more insane. I watched one mission set in lava caves, which looked solid but a bit too switch-hunty for my taste, and a mission set on a Mechanist airship.
If you ever wanted to see Garret fly a glider plane towards an airship while constantly being attacked by bomb-throwing jetfighters, this is the campaign for you.
Cause there's a mission where this happens.
The solid-but-switchhunty lava cave mission had a very cool new enemy type in it. Or rather hot than cool - it's a lava minotaur with a flaming sword. You can kill it with 3 water arrows, then it turns into a fire elemental which needs 1 more arrow to kill.
Yes, this is essentially just like TROTB only even more insane. And there's 12 missions of this - AND three hidden bonus levels in addition to that.
Really looking forward to this thing.
If you ever wanted to see Garret fly a glider plane towards an airship while constantly being attacked by bomb-throwing jetfighters, this is the campaign for you.
Cause there's a mission where this happens.
The solid-but-switchhunty lava cave mission had a very cool new enemy type in it. Or rather hot than cool - it's a lava minotaur with a flaming sword. You can kill it with 3 water arrows, then it turns into a fire elemental which needs 1 more arrow to kill.
Yes, this is essentially just like TROTB only even more insane. And there's 12 missions of this - AND three hidden bonus levels in addition to that.
Really looking forward to this thing.
Played through another FM, "Mystic Gems Part 1: Unlucky Soul", a small mansion FM that I had completed before but not rated yet since the last time I played it was in 2011. I've really been playing FMs for a long time now!
Anyway, I had positive memories of it and it was as good as I remembered. It's not a big FM by any stretch, took me only half an hour to get through it, but it's beautifully designed and even has some variety to it.
You're aiming to steal the Mystic's Soul from a guy's mansion - yep, the gemstone you retrieved from the Bonehoard in Thief 1. Re-stealing stuff you've stolen before is a recurring theme in FMs, apparently.
- The FM starts you out in a small area with a sewer access hatch. You have to go down into the sewers, reach the mansion from there, then go through the sewers to a warehouse where you have to crawl into a crate to make your getaway by impersonating cargo. In the warehouse, you can't knock anyone out or be detected.
- The sewer looks nice enough but there's not much to it from a gameplay perspective. Essentially just corridors leading to your target areas.
- The mansion is the high point of the mission. It is rather small but that's not a problem: the place looks gorgeous, there are multiple ways to get in, and the amount of guards is just right to make it challenging while also allowing for a not-too-tedious ghosting attempt. You can get in through two different areas of the basement or through a side entrance, and you get rope arrows too.
- The loot goal is a little steep on expert. Wouldn't have made it without finding one of the secrets. Protip: look up and use rope arrows. There's more than one trapdoor for accessing the attic.
- The warehouse you have to ghost through at the end also has multiple routes through it, and most of the guards have purses at their belts that you can snatch.
Overall, rated it 8/10. It's a small mission but what's there has been done well and it deserves a high rating. Good balance of guard numbers and patrol routes, a little variety in locations (mansion, warehouse, sewer), beautiful visual design. Definitely worth playing.
Screenshots:
Anyway, I had positive memories of it and it was as good as I remembered. It's not a big FM by any stretch, took me only half an hour to get through it, but it's beautifully designed and even has some variety to it.
You're aiming to steal the Mystic's Soul from a guy's mansion - yep, the gemstone you retrieved from the Bonehoard in Thief 1. Re-stealing stuff you've stolen before is a recurring theme in FMs, apparently.
- The FM starts you out in a small area with a sewer access hatch. You have to go down into the sewers, reach the mansion from there, then go through the sewers to a warehouse where you have to crawl into a crate to make your getaway by impersonating cargo. In the warehouse, you can't knock anyone out or be detected.
- The sewer looks nice enough but there's not much to it from a gameplay perspective. Essentially just corridors leading to your target areas.
- The mansion is the high point of the mission. It is rather small but that's not a problem: the place looks gorgeous, there are multiple ways to get in, and the amount of guards is just right to make it challenging while also allowing for a not-too-tedious ghosting attempt. You can get in through two different areas of the basement or through a side entrance, and you get rope arrows too.
- The loot goal is a little steep on expert. Wouldn't have made it without finding one of the secrets. Protip: look up and use rope arrows. There's more than one trapdoor for accessing the attic.
- The warehouse you have to ghost through at the end also has multiple routes through it, and most of the guards have purses at their belts that you can snatch.
Overall, rated it 8/10. It's a small mission but what's there has been done well and it deserves a high rating. Good balance of guard numbers and patrol routes, a little variety in locations (mansion, warehouse, sewer), beautiful visual design. Definitely worth playing.
Screenshots:
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- May 13, 2009
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IIRC Mystic Gems 2 takes place in a museum, and was at the time one of the most gorgeous looking FMs released.
Recommended.
Recommended.
Arrowgrab
Arbiter
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2016
- Messages
- 643
That was a really nice FM, and it ended on a "Here comes the sequel"-note. Was there ever a third part? Is it under cosntruction? Was it abandoned?
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- May 13, 2009
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Last time I heard it was still under construction. More of a "on hold" development than "abandoned".
Squadafroinx
Novice
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2017
- Messages
- 35
Question for RPG-experts; what great RPG module could be adapted into a Thief map ?
I'm gonna be on vacation soon and I kinda want to do a quick dungeon like how Purah adapted Tomb of Horror into T2
(Because I need something to do while I optimize both TBP maps and R0, they are so big they last 15min on my retarded toaster
)
I'm gonna be on vacation soon and I kinda want to do a quick dungeon like how Purah adapted Tomb of Horror into T2
(Because I need something to do while I optimize both TBP maps and R0, they are so big they last 15min on my retarded toaster
)
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They are typically very distinct experiences from Thief; a good RPG module often wouldn't make for a good Thief mission, and vice versa. My games and my level design influence each other, though, and I have had some thoughts about adapting some of my published modules into Thief missions. (Actually, Arrowgrab has been a player in my campaigns for ten years now.)
[edit]This map's pretty much Thief: The RPGing
[/edit]
If you must, I'd look into The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (although the Meso-American environment may be hard to recapture) for an interesting tomb mission, or something by Paul Jaquays (see The Dungeoneer's Compendium - F'Chelrak's Tomb, maybe?). Ravenloft could make for a workable castle mission, but it'd be a challenging work. You can grab a lot of these from here.
[edit]This map's pretty much Thief: The RPGing
If you must, I'd look into The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (although the Meso-American environment may be hard to recapture) for an interesting tomb mission, or something by Paul Jaquays (see The Dungeoneer's Compendium - F'Chelrak's Tomb, maybe?). Ravenloft could make for a workable castle mission, but it'd be a challenging work. You can grab a lot of these from here.
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http://ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=147663
I'm starting to think that downwinder and BruderMurus are the same person.
I'm starting to think that downwinder and BruderMurus are the same person.
Squadafroinx
Novice
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2017
- Messages
- 35
Melan Thanks m8! Yes I completly agree RPG and Thief are two different things but as I said, Purah managed to adapt Tomb of Horror in a pretty cool way; Ravenloft could do a very good map but unless it's built in a way it doesn't show too much the exterior, it's a very complicated task. A little tomb is perfect, I'll keep that in mind. As for the link, it's dead 
Max_b5 I gotta say this: I love this girl's temperament
Max_b5 I gotta say this: I love this girl's temperament
I don't know if this has been posted here before but it is just utterly awesome
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2012
- Messages
- 29,890
Everything is awesome with Lego. Seriously.
I'm not the betatester kind of guy, but holy shit am I looking forward to your FM. I've seen those screenshots you posted over on TTLG.
This looks like it's straight outta the Bonehoard. Gorgeous as fuck.
This looks like it's straight outta the Bonehoard. Gorgeous as fuck.
So I just played through the Lord Ashton campaign, which was Christine's first FM-making effort, and it shows. The first missions is this campaign are really nothing special and have way too many annoyances to them to make them worthwhile. But about halfway through the campaign, the missions become quite enjoyable - this campaign is truly amazing in the sense that it lets you see the progression of Christine's level design skills from crap to decent. Nothing of the quality seen in her later works (like the first mission of Pirates Ahoy) to be found in here yet, but the second half of the campaign was good fun.
I'll give a list of my impressions for each mission of the campaign here, and a massive dump of screenshots at the end.
Mission 1: A Visit to Lord Ashton's
This is a mansion mission that suffers from a complete lack of a sense of scale. It's huge, but not because there's a lot to see - it's just that everything is a little too large. You were sent by some lady to break into Lord Ashton's place and steal several things from him.
The mission has many, many problems but some aspects of what would later evolve into Christine's distinct style are already present here.
- The outside is too large. Walking around from one end of the mansion to the other takes a while. Interestingly, although her level design has increased tremendously during the course of this campaign, the last mission suffers even worse from that. But more about that when I get to the last mission.
- The guards patrolling outside carry shields which you can frob and take away from them. The funniest part about that is that the shields don't fall down when you drop them somewhere. They just float at the spot where you put them. You can jump into the air, drop the shield, and have a floating shield right there in the air for the rest of the mission. Heh.
- Once you get into the mansion, say hello to marble floors. You get long hallways of ONLY marble and nothing else, and yes, there's guards patrolling there. Luckily you get plenty of moss and water arrows, as well as flashbombs. This means that you can just say "fuck this shit" and run across the marble and if anyone notices you you flashbomb them. Fine with me. This is definitely NOT a ghostable mission (and campaign in general) as there are places where it's impossible to get past without knocking out some guards.
- The loot goal is quite high and requires you to find Lord Ashton's treasury. It's filled with so many loot items you will pick up between 1 and 2 thousand in a single room.
- The architecture is rather basic and visually, the mission looks a bit bland, but it's not entirely horrible. Overall, I'd say it looks like an average "early era" Thief FM. The worst problem is the scale, with places just being larger than they should be.
- I mentioned marble abuse and too large scale, but those aren't the worst aspects of this mission. The absolute worst are the mission goals. I used a walkthrough in the end, because the mission requires you to get several items, yet none of them have their location hinted at. And every single one of these items is hidden behind a secret switch. This means you have this huge mansion with too large hallways which are all marble, and in order to find all your objectives you have to run through all the rooms and search for secret switches. Worst game design ever. Honestly, I suggest playing this mission with a walkthrough from the start. Grab the walkthrough and search for mentions of the required objectives so you know where the secret switches are.
Overall I rated it 4/10. It's not good, but it's not entirely shit.
Mission 2: A Night's Stroll
In this mission, you get out of Ashton's manor by way of the graveyard. You go into a tunnel and emerge somewhere in the wilderness. You have to break into the hunting lodge of Lord Ashton, as well as the hunting lodge of a certain Lord Bufford who is probably just a misspelled Bafford as there's references to him being broke thanks to a thief. Yeah.
- It's a little better than the first mission as far as scale is concerned, although some places still seem a little bit too large.
- Again, the objectives are hidden behind secrets and you HAVE to find them. It's even more annoying here since the overall path of the mission is fairly linear and if you miss an objective, you need to backtrack all the way to where it is. It's super easy to miss these objectives, too. One objective requires you to get Lord Ashton's rosary beads from his hunting lodge in the wilderness. And where are they located? On top of the roof beams. You need to rope up there to get them, and there is NO indication that it's there. The roofbeams are very high up and there is very little space between them and the ceiling. And right there, Christine hid one of the required mission objectives. Yeah.
- Environmentally, this mission is actually quite diverse. You start out in the wilderness and go to the two hunting lodges, then you arrive in a small town where you can break into a few shops (and where you have to find another required item, with NO HINT AT ALL TO ITS LOCATION, the objective only says "get the serpentyle torc"; you need to climb into someone's backyard garden, frob a torch to open a secret door, climb down a ladder into a torturing chamber with two zombies inside, and frob a pair of manacles at the walls... which are the only frobbable pair among many. Yeah. That opens another secret where you finally find the item). After that, you get into a hotel which also serves as a brothel, and then back into another part of the small town
- At the end of the mission you're supposed to meet with the lady who gave you your objectives, at a bar. Before you are dozens of guards and the mission ends. You got betrayed! Hah!
- The hotel/brothel is actually a cool place although there's way too much marble inside there. You have to go down into a secret area (of course) to find a secret switch there (of course) to find a required objective item (of course), but the area is actually pretty fun to explore.
Overall I rated it 4/10. It's better than the first mission (and, mainly, different than the first mission) but the exceptionally retarded "ALL OBJECTIVES ARE HIDDEN SO WELL THEY'D BE SECRETS IN EVERY OTHER MISSION, LOL" prevents it from receiving a better score than that.
Mission 3: Escape!
You were captured by the guards. A pal smuggled a lockpick into your cell. Now you have to get out and get your confiscated loot back.
- The beginning of this mission is utterly bland. You start in straight, completely undecorated and boring prison hallways. Eh.
- It gets better once you find your blackjack and make your way up to the police station. At least, visually it gets better there.
- There's an armory in the police station. You will need all the moss arrows, gas arrows and flashbombs you can find in there. All of them. Why? Well...
- M A R B L E A B U S E
- MARBLE. ABUSE.
- EVERYTHING
- IS
- MARBLE
- I'm not exaggerating here. The entire floor above the dungeon is marble. Yes. All of it. The hallways, the bathrooms, the sleeping quarters, e v e r y t h i n g. Luckily you will end up with enough tools by the end of this level to not give a fuck. Just jump around everywhere, have a bunch of guards follow you, then flashbomb the fuck out of them.
- It gets better on the floor above that, because there's actually some carpet there. Also, the rooms up there are more nicely decorated. It seems by this point, Christine had gained enough experience to finally make some good-looking places.
- But, of course, this mission still suffers from the "important quest items are hidden behind secret switches" syndrome.
Overall, I rated it 4/10 again. I have never seen so much marble in my life. This mission gave me marble-related PTSD. That coupled with the utterly bland dungeon at the beginning and the extremely well-hidden objectives makes for a low rating again.
Mission 4: Revenge
Well, this is where it actually starts becoming good. This mission is a HUGE leap forward compared to the previous ones. After escaping from prison, you need to get revenge on Lady Iforgothername who betrayed you.
- The mission goals are less nasty this time. Christine has learned her lesson, apparently, and doesn't rely on hidden switches as much in this mission. But there is one mission goal that is completely uncharacteristic for Garrett: the way to get your revenge is by killing that lady. Garrett wouldn't do that. Garrett would rob her blind and leave a note on her bedside table that said "haha". But here you have to kill her.
- There's not much to the small town area you start it, but it looks nicer than the town in the second mission. It leads to a quite decent-looking hotel where you have to find a key that unlocks the lady's mansion doors (as someone carrying that key is currently in the hotel's gambling room... don't remember who it was but I think it was her husband or something). The mansion itself also looks quite decent. This is the mission where she has finally learned how to create visually pleasing areas, and also fill them with gameplay that isn't annoying as all hell.
- There is only one mission goal that requires you to find a secret switch. That is annoying, but the previous missions all required 2 or 3 hidden switches to be found, so that's a massive improvement. Inside the hotel, the first major area you enter, there's no hidden stuff at all. The keys you need are easy enough to find.
- The hotel is a really nice place to explore. You get a rope arrow and there are actually multiple ways to get inside: knock out the front door guard and go through the door, or rope up to one of the front balconies, or go to a different section of the small town and rope up to a balcony there. There's almost no marble in the hotel, and when you get to the mansion, only the ground floor is covered in marble, but even there you have a few carpets. It's as if Christine realized how horrible her previous design decisions had been, and with this mission she decided to fix them all.
Overall, I rated this mission 6/10. This one is actually worth playing, and this is the mission where I felt like suffering through the previous three was worth it. It's nothing exceptional, but it is genuinely enjoyable and worth playing. From now on, the campaign would only get better.
Mission 5: In Search of Leon
Your pal Leon, who smuggled the lockpick into your prison cell, has vanished. The lady who owns the hotel/brothel in mission 2 hired him to steal from a certain Lord Hrothgar, but he never returned. You're hired to steal the thing he was initially sent out to steal, and also to rescue your old pal since you owe him.
- This mission looks pretty good. This is where Christine has finally found her visual style that would become her trademark in all her later missions. The custom objects and textures, the architecture... this is all typical Chrstine-style stuff.
- The level design, too, is very typical of her: you break into a castle-like mansion with lots of rooms to go through, and while there are a few areas with marble, it's not used excessively and you're given enough tools to deal with it. Unlike missions 1 to 3, the marble here was totally fine and felt like a challenge to overcome rather than a case of "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??"
- This mission, too, hides some objectives with switches, but this time the switches aren't half as hard to find. There's a secret chamber filled with tons of loot that is opened via secret switch, but it's possible to reach your loot goal without finding the place so it's not necessary to find. The secret doors that you need to find are opened by switches that are obvious enough. Locations of keys are hinted at in readables so you won't hunt for them blindly.
- Overall, this is a very solid mansion mission that is fun to explore. It doesn't quite reach her later mansion missions like Coterie of Smokers, but it's a solid mission and it's not too large - it took me less than half an hour to complete this one.
I rated this one 6/10 too. Enjoyable little mansion mission that doesn't have any of the annoying elements of the earlier missions (off proportions, too many hidden switches, marble abuse). Worth playing.
Mission 6: The Secret of Sir Stefan
In this mission the hotel/brothel owner hired you to steal the Mystic's Soul and Mystic's Heart. The mission leads you to a charming little town section with a few buildings to break into, and at the end you go into a secret hideout of some criminal who takes protection money from all the shopowners.
- The mission really looks quite charming. Visually, this is quite nice to behold.
- The exploration isn't stellar but it's solid: you have city streets and several buildings to break into, mostly shops, including a place called "Christine's Kinderland" which has lots of toys in it.
- Again, some items require switches to be frobbed, but these aren't hidden all too well. In fact, they are in plain sight and you know roughly where they are, so no blind frobbing about in random rooms. Yay!
- It's quite a diverse mission, with city streets, shops, a small townhouse to break into, and the bandit's hideout at the end.
This mission I rated 7/10. It was very enjoyable and it's my favourite mission of the entire camapign. Good stuff. Small town missions are really the thing Christine does best.
Mission 7: A Winter's Night
After all the trouble you went through, you deserve a break. It's Christmas time right now and Garrett just wants to steal a bit of stuff and find a nice place to hide in over the holidays so he can take a break.
- This is a nice little winter mission, and when I say little, I mean little. There are snowy streets to explore and a couple of buildings to get into. How many are a couple, you ask? Maybe 5 or so.
- The houses look pretty good and so do the streets. Breaking into the places and snatching the loot is fun, but the only place that's actually challenging to go through is the jeweller's.
- The mission is very short. I beat it in 15 minutes, that's how short it is. Still, it's quite enjoyable and worth playing if you like small town missions.
Another 7/10. There's not much to it because it's so small, but it's an enjoyable mission and doesn't make any design mistakes.
Mission 8: The Wedding of Sir Andre
You're back in business and ready to steal more stuff from the Ashton family. Ashton's daughter is marrying Sir Andre, the son of Lord Hrothgar (whose castle you broke into in mission 5), and you're planning to crash the party.
- This mission is quite interesting because this campaign has essentially come full circle: just like the first mission, this one is a large mansion mission, but it's executed much more competently. Custom textures, a better sense of scale, less blatant marble abuse... solid mission overall and it's cool to directly compare it to the first mission of the campaign. Really shows how much Christine's level design has improved with each mission.
- Did I say less blatant marble abuse? Well... there's still tons of marble, at least on the ground floor. Almost the entire ground floor is marble, but guard patrols are sparse enough to allow you to run over the marble when nobody's in sight, and the first floor has no marble at all, so that balances it out.
- The major issue of this mission is size, but not the out-of-proportion-ness of the first mission. Here, the place is just way too big and confusing for its own good. Too many hallways, and your map is useless. It just shows a rough outline of the mansion, but doesn't actually point to any rooms. A good map would improve this mission tremendously.
- You have to find several things and this time, one objective is hidden somewhere too... but at least you can guess where thanks to readables and keys you find. Really, this mission is so similar to the first one in its entire structure (huge mansion with two floors, you have to find several different items), but it's all just done so much more competently.
Overall, I rated this 6.5/10 because it's a solid mission with some annoying features such as too many long hallways and lack of a good map which makes exploration confusing, which drags it down from a 7/10.
And here's a bunch of screenshots. They aren't sorted exactly, but roughly go from the earlier down to the later missions.
As you can see, the later missions look MUCH better than the earlier ones.
One thing I found quite weird is how Christine put in a picture of what are probably her own kids as a loot item. Heh. I wouldn't put pictures of my kids into a fan mission that I release online, but hey.
So, what's my final verdict?
If you can stomach the problems of the first three missions, this is actually a great campaign to go through. If you ever wanted to see a mission author's skill development, nothing's better than this. It starts out rather crappy, with amateurishly designed levels that suffer from annoying design decisions, and around the halfway point it has some genuinely enjoyable missions, and ends with a large mansion that has some annoying elements to it but is so similar to the first mission in its concept that you have something that's directly comparable to that one. You can see first hand how every element of Christine's level design has improved from mission 1 to mission 8.
I especially consider missions 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be worth playing. 8 is solid with some annoyances, and the first three are interesting only from a standpoint of "I wanna see what Christine's missions looked like when she started Dromeding". If you find them too annoying to get through, just use the level skip cheat till you reached mission 4. That one, and the ones that follow, are definitely worth it.
I'll give a list of my impressions for each mission of the campaign here, and a massive dump of screenshots at the end.
Mission 1: A Visit to Lord Ashton's
This is a mansion mission that suffers from a complete lack of a sense of scale. It's huge, but not because there's a lot to see - it's just that everything is a little too large. You were sent by some lady to break into Lord Ashton's place and steal several things from him.
The mission has many, many problems but some aspects of what would later evolve into Christine's distinct style are already present here.
- The outside is too large. Walking around from one end of the mansion to the other takes a while. Interestingly, although her level design has increased tremendously during the course of this campaign, the last mission suffers even worse from that. But more about that when I get to the last mission.
- The guards patrolling outside carry shields which you can frob and take away from them. The funniest part about that is that the shields don't fall down when you drop them somewhere. They just float at the spot where you put them. You can jump into the air, drop the shield, and have a floating shield right there in the air for the rest of the mission. Heh.
- Once you get into the mansion, say hello to marble floors. You get long hallways of ONLY marble and nothing else, and yes, there's guards patrolling there. Luckily you get plenty of moss and water arrows, as well as flashbombs. This means that you can just say "fuck this shit" and run across the marble and if anyone notices you you flashbomb them. Fine with me. This is definitely NOT a ghostable mission (and campaign in general) as there are places where it's impossible to get past without knocking out some guards.
- The loot goal is quite high and requires you to find Lord Ashton's treasury. It's filled with so many loot items you will pick up between 1 and 2 thousand in a single room.
- The architecture is rather basic and visually, the mission looks a bit bland, but it's not entirely horrible. Overall, I'd say it looks like an average "early era" Thief FM. The worst problem is the scale, with places just being larger than they should be.
- I mentioned marble abuse and too large scale, but those aren't the worst aspects of this mission. The absolute worst are the mission goals. I used a walkthrough in the end, because the mission requires you to get several items, yet none of them have their location hinted at. And every single one of these items is hidden behind a secret switch. This means you have this huge mansion with too large hallways which are all marble, and in order to find all your objectives you have to run through all the rooms and search for secret switches. Worst game design ever. Honestly, I suggest playing this mission with a walkthrough from the start. Grab the walkthrough and search for mentions of the required objectives so you know where the secret switches are.
Overall I rated it 4/10. It's not good, but it's not entirely shit.
Mission 2: A Night's Stroll
In this mission, you get out of Ashton's manor by way of the graveyard. You go into a tunnel and emerge somewhere in the wilderness. You have to break into the hunting lodge of Lord Ashton, as well as the hunting lodge of a certain Lord Bufford who is probably just a misspelled Bafford as there's references to him being broke thanks to a thief. Yeah.
- It's a little better than the first mission as far as scale is concerned, although some places still seem a little bit too large.
- Again, the objectives are hidden behind secrets and you HAVE to find them. It's even more annoying here since the overall path of the mission is fairly linear and if you miss an objective, you need to backtrack all the way to where it is. It's super easy to miss these objectives, too. One objective requires you to get Lord Ashton's rosary beads from his hunting lodge in the wilderness. And where are they located? On top of the roof beams. You need to rope up there to get them, and there is NO indication that it's there. The roofbeams are very high up and there is very little space between them and the ceiling. And right there, Christine hid one of the required mission objectives. Yeah.
- Environmentally, this mission is actually quite diverse. You start out in the wilderness and go to the two hunting lodges, then you arrive in a small town where you can break into a few shops (and where you have to find another required item, with NO HINT AT ALL TO ITS LOCATION, the objective only says "get the serpentyle torc"; you need to climb into someone's backyard garden, frob a torch to open a secret door, climb down a ladder into a torturing chamber with two zombies inside, and frob a pair of manacles at the walls... which are the only frobbable pair among many. Yeah. That opens another secret where you finally find the item). After that, you get into a hotel which also serves as a brothel, and then back into another part of the small town
- At the end of the mission you're supposed to meet with the lady who gave you your objectives, at a bar. Before you are dozens of guards and the mission ends. You got betrayed! Hah!
- The hotel/brothel is actually a cool place although there's way too much marble inside there. You have to go down into a secret area (of course) to find a secret switch there (of course) to find a required objective item (of course), but the area is actually pretty fun to explore.
Overall I rated it 4/10. It's better than the first mission (and, mainly, different than the first mission) but the exceptionally retarded "ALL OBJECTIVES ARE HIDDEN SO WELL THEY'D BE SECRETS IN EVERY OTHER MISSION, LOL" prevents it from receiving a better score than that.
Mission 3: Escape!
You were captured by the guards. A pal smuggled a lockpick into your cell. Now you have to get out and get your confiscated loot back.
- The beginning of this mission is utterly bland. You start in straight, completely undecorated and boring prison hallways. Eh.
- It gets better once you find your blackjack and make your way up to the police station. At least, visually it gets better there.
- There's an armory in the police station. You will need all the moss arrows, gas arrows and flashbombs you can find in there. All of them. Why? Well...
- M A R B L E A B U S E
- MARBLE. ABUSE.
- EVERYTHING
- IS
- MARBLE
- I'm not exaggerating here. The entire floor above the dungeon is marble. Yes. All of it. The hallways, the bathrooms, the sleeping quarters, e v e r y t h i n g. Luckily you will end up with enough tools by the end of this level to not give a fuck. Just jump around everywhere, have a bunch of guards follow you, then flashbomb the fuck out of them.
- It gets better on the floor above that, because there's actually some carpet there. Also, the rooms up there are more nicely decorated. It seems by this point, Christine had gained enough experience to finally make some good-looking places.
- But, of course, this mission still suffers from the "important quest items are hidden behind secret switches" syndrome.
Overall, I rated it 4/10 again. I have never seen so much marble in my life. This mission gave me marble-related PTSD. That coupled with the utterly bland dungeon at the beginning and the extremely well-hidden objectives makes for a low rating again.
Mission 4: Revenge
Well, this is where it actually starts becoming good. This mission is a HUGE leap forward compared to the previous ones. After escaping from prison, you need to get revenge on Lady Iforgothername who betrayed you.
- The mission goals are less nasty this time. Christine has learned her lesson, apparently, and doesn't rely on hidden switches as much in this mission. But there is one mission goal that is completely uncharacteristic for Garrett: the way to get your revenge is by killing that lady. Garrett wouldn't do that. Garrett would rob her blind and leave a note on her bedside table that said "haha". But here you have to kill her.
- There's not much to the small town area you start it, but it looks nicer than the town in the second mission. It leads to a quite decent-looking hotel where you have to find a key that unlocks the lady's mansion doors (as someone carrying that key is currently in the hotel's gambling room... don't remember who it was but I think it was her husband or something). The mansion itself also looks quite decent. This is the mission where she has finally learned how to create visually pleasing areas, and also fill them with gameplay that isn't annoying as all hell.
- There is only one mission goal that requires you to find a secret switch. That is annoying, but the previous missions all required 2 or 3 hidden switches to be found, so that's a massive improvement. Inside the hotel, the first major area you enter, there's no hidden stuff at all. The keys you need are easy enough to find.
- The hotel is a really nice place to explore. You get a rope arrow and there are actually multiple ways to get inside: knock out the front door guard and go through the door, or rope up to one of the front balconies, or go to a different section of the small town and rope up to a balcony there. There's almost no marble in the hotel, and when you get to the mansion, only the ground floor is covered in marble, but even there you have a few carpets. It's as if Christine realized how horrible her previous design decisions had been, and with this mission she decided to fix them all.
Overall, I rated this mission 6/10. This one is actually worth playing, and this is the mission where I felt like suffering through the previous three was worth it. It's nothing exceptional, but it is genuinely enjoyable and worth playing. From now on, the campaign would only get better.
Mission 5: In Search of Leon
Your pal Leon, who smuggled the lockpick into your prison cell, has vanished. The lady who owns the hotel/brothel in mission 2 hired him to steal from a certain Lord Hrothgar, but he never returned. You're hired to steal the thing he was initially sent out to steal, and also to rescue your old pal since you owe him.
- This mission looks pretty good. This is where Christine has finally found her visual style that would become her trademark in all her later missions. The custom objects and textures, the architecture... this is all typical Chrstine-style stuff.
- The level design, too, is very typical of her: you break into a castle-like mansion with lots of rooms to go through, and while there are a few areas with marble, it's not used excessively and you're given enough tools to deal with it. Unlike missions 1 to 3, the marble here was totally fine and felt like a challenge to overcome rather than a case of "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??"
- This mission, too, hides some objectives with switches, but this time the switches aren't half as hard to find. There's a secret chamber filled with tons of loot that is opened via secret switch, but it's possible to reach your loot goal without finding the place so it's not necessary to find. The secret doors that you need to find are opened by switches that are obvious enough. Locations of keys are hinted at in readables so you won't hunt for them blindly.
- Overall, this is a very solid mansion mission that is fun to explore. It doesn't quite reach her later mansion missions like Coterie of Smokers, but it's a solid mission and it's not too large - it took me less than half an hour to complete this one.
I rated this one 6/10 too. Enjoyable little mansion mission that doesn't have any of the annoying elements of the earlier missions (off proportions, too many hidden switches, marble abuse). Worth playing.
Mission 6: The Secret of Sir Stefan
In this mission the hotel/brothel owner hired you to steal the Mystic's Soul and Mystic's Heart. The mission leads you to a charming little town section with a few buildings to break into, and at the end you go into a secret hideout of some criminal who takes protection money from all the shopowners.
- The mission really looks quite charming. Visually, this is quite nice to behold.
- The exploration isn't stellar but it's solid: you have city streets and several buildings to break into, mostly shops, including a place called "Christine's Kinderland" which has lots of toys in it.
- Again, some items require switches to be frobbed, but these aren't hidden all too well. In fact, they are in plain sight and you know roughly where they are, so no blind frobbing about in random rooms. Yay!
- It's quite a diverse mission, with city streets, shops, a small townhouse to break into, and the bandit's hideout at the end.
This mission I rated 7/10. It was very enjoyable and it's my favourite mission of the entire camapign. Good stuff. Small town missions are really the thing Christine does best.
Mission 7: A Winter's Night
After all the trouble you went through, you deserve a break. It's Christmas time right now and Garrett just wants to steal a bit of stuff and find a nice place to hide in over the holidays so he can take a break.
- This is a nice little winter mission, and when I say little, I mean little. There are snowy streets to explore and a couple of buildings to get into. How many are a couple, you ask? Maybe 5 or so.
- The houses look pretty good and so do the streets. Breaking into the places and snatching the loot is fun, but the only place that's actually challenging to go through is the jeweller's.
- The mission is very short. I beat it in 15 minutes, that's how short it is. Still, it's quite enjoyable and worth playing if you like small town missions.
Another 7/10. There's not much to it because it's so small, but it's an enjoyable mission and doesn't make any design mistakes.
Mission 8: The Wedding of Sir Andre
You're back in business and ready to steal more stuff from the Ashton family. Ashton's daughter is marrying Sir Andre, the son of Lord Hrothgar (whose castle you broke into in mission 5), and you're planning to crash the party.
- This mission is quite interesting because this campaign has essentially come full circle: just like the first mission, this one is a large mansion mission, but it's executed much more competently. Custom textures, a better sense of scale, less blatant marble abuse... solid mission overall and it's cool to directly compare it to the first mission of the campaign. Really shows how much Christine's level design has improved with each mission.
- Did I say less blatant marble abuse? Well... there's still tons of marble, at least on the ground floor. Almost the entire ground floor is marble, but guard patrols are sparse enough to allow you to run over the marble when nobody's in sight, and the first floor has no marble at all, so that balances it out.
- The major issue of this mission is size, but not the out-of-proportion-ness of the first mission. Here, the place is just way too big and confusing for its own good. Too many hallways, and your map is useless. It just shows a rough outline of the mansion, but doesn't actually point to any rooms. A good map would improve this mission tremendously.
- You have to find several things and this time, one objective is hidden somewhere too... but at least you can guess where thanks to readables and keys you find. Really, this mission is so similar to the first one in its entire structure (huge mansion with two floors, you have to find several different items), but it's all just done so much more competently.
Overall, I rated this 6.5/10 because it's a solid mission with some annoying features such as too many long hallways and lack of a good map which makes exploration confusing, which drags it down from a 7/10.
And here's a bunch of screenshots. They aren't sorted exactly, but roughly go from the earlier down to the later missions.
As you can see, the later missions look MUCH better than the earlier ones.
One thing I found quite weird is how Christine put in a picture of what are probably her own kids as a loot item. Heh. I wouldn't put pictures of my kids into a fan mission that I release online, but hey.
So, what's my final verdict?
If you can stomach the problems of the first three missions, this is actually a great campaign to go through. If you ever wanted to see a mission author's skill development, nothing's better than this. It starts out rather crappy, with amateurishly designed levels that suffer from annoying design decisions, and around the halfway point it has some genuinely enjoyable missions, and ends with a large mansion that has some annoying elements to it but is so similar to the first mission in its concept that you have something that's directly comparable to that one. You can see first hand how every element of Christine's level design has improved from mission 1 to mission 8.
I especially consider missions 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be worth playing. 8 is solid with some annoyances, and the first three are interesting only from a standpoint of "I wanna see what Christine's missions looked like when she started Dromeding". If you find them too annoying to get through, just use the level skip cheat till you reached mission 4. That one, and the ones that follow, are definitely worth it.
Arrowgrab
Arbiter
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2016
- Messages
- 643
If you want a vision of the Mechanist future, imagine a boot stamping on an endless marble floor - forever.
Random_Taffer
Educated
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2015
- Messages
- 88
Wouldn't it be metal though?
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