Thief fan missions and campaigns

[Max_b5]

Tower of Jorge.

 

[Melan]

Shoes and Dresses.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

skacky missions.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Seems that a Thief Gold FM got past us and was released last night. "Project: Hammer" is a remastering of a T1 FM from 2009, and has Garrett break into a recently renovated mansion to learn about some mysterious Hammerite shenanigans. It clearly shows itself to be a Thief 1 mission, keeping both to its style and level design. The start is a little heavy on the guards, and at least one of them was able to see through closed doors, but once past that this becomes an enjoyable FM. The house is highly atmospheric, especially the kinda-obvious-but-yet-manages-to-surprise-basement section.

Audiolog syndrome is in place and I feel for any taffer that dares for the optional objectives, but there's always a reason to look in every nook and cranny, and if I'm not mistaken this FM has multiple endings... or at least multiple exit paths.

For comparison I briefly booted up the original FM and there are clear improvements visible right from the start, like the section above the generator room.

Well worth a couple of hours of your taffin' time.

 

[DrKubiac]

It reminded me the early fm scene, where you could find a small mission, a bit rough but with nice atmosphere, and spend about an hour on it top. Nothing big, nothing complex, just fun.

I think it's a bit too hard, almost unfair, the author wants us to ghost it but doesn't give us any shadow to work with, and you can switch off the lights later on but by that time I already gave up on the KO objective.

Still, the mission is a nice little gem.

 

[Yandros]

GORT has finally released his goliath sequel to Rebellion of the Builder: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148112
File size is about 1.35GB, biggest FM package ever and likely to stay that way for a long time (DCE will be well under 1GB). Given the difficulty of his missions in general, he was wise and waited for Ricebug to complete his walkthrough before releasing it.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

LET THE CHEESE BEGIN!

Downloading and will give first impressions soonish, for those with metered connections.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Had a quick glance... what the hell is this? First mission is NOT a good sign of things to come.

Large, empty areas.
Invisible walls all around, blocking passage into wide-open areas.
An obvious path being blocked by a message "You haven't done something else, do that first".
Linear paths.
LOTS of running back and forth though those linear paths.
Exploration not rewarded (at least not so far).

I took a break from it because I'm left with nothing but trying to fire Water and Fire arrows at things now.

This first level reeks of modern-day game (and level) design... something Thief should never be mixed up with.

I also came across a bug: Throwing "Empty Crystal #1" into the water basin makes it disappear for good. I'm guessing throwing "Empty Crystal #2" into the fire basin will make that disappear as well.

It's not all terrible, though. The voice acting is nice, even though Garrett sounds like Postal Dude for some reason. Some of the art used is really cool. Oh, and installation size is 2.1 Gb, so this will take up close to 3.5 gigs of space in total.

So... for those with metered downloads I would say "hold off for a bit on this one". Let's see how others react first.

 

[Melan]

It reminded me the early fm scene, where you could find a small mission, a bit rough but with nice atmosphere, and spend about an hour on it top. Nothing big, nothing complex, just fun.

I think it's a bit too hard, almost unfair, the author wants us to ghost it but doesn't give us any shadow to work with, and you can switch off the lights later on but by that time I already gave up on the KO objective.

Still, the mission is a nice little gem.

I liked ghosting the original version (although I think I might have knocked out one guy in the end). It is tense. There are only a few shadowy spots and the patrols are unforgiving and hard to avoid in the tight corridors. It's a proper challenge, and I really appreciated that.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE

Rebellion of the Builder 2 only gets worse as you progress further.

I was right about what I needed to do - fire Fire and Water arrows at the right spots. This opened up a new area, along with new objectives, of which one was to retrieve a gem for a Pagan girl.

Problem is, I found the guy holding the gem, but couldn't for the life of me get him to part with it once I had knocked him out. Guess that's another bug for the update patch.

To add insult to injury, I had to deal with new spawns of enemies in areas I had previously cleared. That's bad Thief game design. It's as if GORT is trying to make his FM suck as much as possible, compared to standard Thief FMs. The original RotB didn't see a reason to rely on modern-day game design - it took the game design of Thief and made it cheesy in many ways. RotB at least stays within the boundaries of Thief, only exaggarating the elements that would make it "cheesy".

I think it's just best to stop here. I cannot recommend this one. Keep in mind that this is a campaign with 11 missions in total, and 3 hidden missions on top of that (if you can find them). That's a LOT of new content, ruined by an abysmal first mission. This is like "King's Story" and "Keeper of the Prophecies" all over again - while there's some decent content in there, there is also enough crap shit going on that completely ruins the experience.

Rating: Approach with caution.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Gave it yet another go (I'm masochistic that way) and I've completed the first mission, but not without failing the (optional) loot objectives.

Some true GORT-cheeses appeared towards the end, like Dewdrop (touch her three times!) and guards with helmets that look exactly like guards without helmets.

I had a look at the TTLG thread, and came across a strange post there:

YOU ARE THE BEST!
I am deaf and i can't hear anything at all, i had to use the speaker to understand the event's sound (not voices) ... until i played this ...
you ROCK!
added a subtitles on every Voices event ...
Hope to see your Next Mission!
you're Honored in my heart! thank you for supporting deaf culture

... Thief is pretty much the LAST game I'd recommend to a deaf person. It is too dependant upon sound. But good to know of people that keep on truckin' nonetheless.

EDIT: Sheer stubbornness allowed me to complete Mission 1 with full marks on highest difficulty. Because I'm a nice taffer that wishes to spare the rest of you my pain, here's a walkthrough for the first mission.

Spoiler

(Note: I'm 99% certain you're not supposed to ghost RotB2, so I wouldn't bother.)

# You start in the desert, there's a trail of lights leading up to the left. Go towards it at ground level. Soon you'll see some palm trees on the right, head towards those. There you'll find a tent with a guy who gives you exposition. After he shuts up, go back to the trail of lights and follow that path.

# Eventually you'll reach a guard and a fork in the road with three paths: The left path leads to the sphinx, the middle path to the temple, and the right path to the exit portal. Start by taking the middle path, but watch out for the guard patrolling the path to the left. (The patrolling guard will respawn later on.)

# You'll walk through a long passage, there's a body here with a written note that does nothing except show you what you're supposed to be looking for. There are ledges with caves up along the walls, but they don't do anything. Finally there are cray-men here in the passage but they were all friendly to me, especially the one standing on a ledge by a light. That didn't stop me from clobbering the patrolling cray-men. (One of the cray-men will respawn at a later point.) Continue onwards until you reach the temple.

# There are only two things to do here now: To find the two crystals. The first one is in a pool of water down a sloping tunnel, but be careful of the two craymen and bugbeast guarding the pool. There's also a necklace (100) behind the bugbeast, so you may want to lure them out or something.

# The second crystal is behind the temple. Climb up and walk along the edge to the left-hand side of the temple. You'll find a sleeping guy with a campfire, knock him out, steal his flash mine and pick open the chest to get the second crystal.

# With both crystals in hand, run all the way back to the fork and now take the left-hand path. There's nothing of note outside the sphinx, so head inside. You'll come to some stairs that both lead to the same room, with guard(s) patrolling the room. The only shadows in the room are behind the pillars, such as the one right next to you. Use that as a staging point to take out the guard. (This patrolling guard also respawns later on.)

# There are two side-rooms from here, as well as a passage further into the sphinx. In the side passages are two Hammerites. To deal with the one on the left frob the lever on the corner of the wall to turn off the lights. To deal with the Hammerite by the generator, climb up on the generator to get behind him, though there's nothing there.

# Going down the main passage triggers a conversation, afterwards knock out the Hammerite and the guard he was talking to. (This guard also respawns later on.) To the sides are two doors with images on them, we're about to open these. Proceed forward and you'll find a coffin and two narrow passages.

# Examine the mural behind the coffin and you'll see two frobbable items on it, these are two of the six jewelled scarabs that pop up as an optional loot objective. The other four are in the temple, and we'll grab them later. At the end of each narrow passageway is a torch thingie, the two crystals go in these.

# Go back to those two doors. In each one is a elemental pool and some empty crystals. Pick up the crystals and throw them into the pool that you found them by. They'll turn into three Fire Arrows and three Water Arrows, respectively. You'll need these.

# That's it for the sphinx, now go back to the temple. While heading back to the temple, keep an eye in the walls to the left. At one point you'll see a rock high up that doesn't look like the others. Shoot this with a Fire Arrow to make a crystal (25) fall down. Grab this to unlock the level's only secret. Continue to the temple.

# Look outside the main entrance and you'll find those same images as you saw on the two doors in the sphinx. Shoot the images with their respective arrows (Fire Arrow for Ra, Water Arrow for the other one) and that opens the way inside.

# Outside the temple, up against one of the obelisks, rests Dewdrop. Frob her once and she tells you "Do not touch me!" Frob her two more times and she'll float away and transform into a gigantic Dewdrop of Death. With horns. Dewdrop of Death can see you even in the dark, and shoots very quick fireballs at you, so she'll kill you real quick. In the unlikely event that you kill her, three man-sized Dewdrops of Death will spawn in the path leading back to the fork, good luck killing those. (Just leave Dewdrop alone.)

# Anyway, head into the temple and you'll be told to run and hide because guards are coming. The dark corners closest to you will work, so run into those and duck. Wait until the guards leave. You're now free to explore the temple.

# In front of you is a coffin, examine the left-hand side of it to find a tiny hidden button which opens the coffin. Grab the hourglass inside. Once that's done, climb up on the now-open lid and grab the two scarabs on the sill of the mural above the coffin. The fifth scarab is in the far-left corner of the pool brim in the side-room to the left, and the final scarab is on the floor by the coffins in the basement. Watch out for the spider. Each of the scarabs is worth 200 loot, so finding all six of them completes the loot objective.

# Now head up and you'll see two pagans. Go over to them and the father will give you a quest: Find his daughter's missing gem. We'll come across it soon enough, so leave the temple and run all the way back to the fork.

# Now take the far-right path until you come to a hard right turn by a torch. Round the corner is another torch and a guard. The only way I found past him was to put out the torch and then sidle up to him from the side.

# Beyond there is a place with four large statues, a platform surrounded by four torches, at least one stationary guard and three Hammerites. The Hammerites are all focused on the platform, but the guard occasionally turns around. Another guard will probably have spawned here by now, this new guard has the little girl's gem, so you'll need to be careful here.

# I doused the torch closest to me by the platform, then carefull snuck up on the stationary guard. The gem you want is in his left hand, not on his belt. Once you've grabbed that you're free to deal with the guards and Hammerites as you see fit. Run back to the temple and stand in front of the Pagan, and he'll reward you with extra loot.

# Whenever you're ready to leave, use the hourglass on the square platform next to the round platform where all those large statues were. Once that's done, press the tiny button underneath the hourglass. This activates the portal and you can proceed to the next level.

Now let's hope that the rest of this FM is worth it...

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Mission 2 completed. Good points? No bad game design decisions. Bad points? It shares the unfortunate trait with Mission 1 (and Mission 3 from what I've seen of it) that it's needless filler.

These three Missions are just Garrett traveling through different terrain. First there's a desert, then caverns and lava, and then a spider den and forest. I'm still waiting for this FM to actually start.

Worse still, equipment does not carry over between missions, because *reasons*, and loot doesn't seem to matter at all.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Completed Mission 3 of "Rebellion of the Builder 2". It confirmed my worst fears: The first 3 missions are a Waste of Time. This is why one-man projects are doomed Not to Succeed. Any sane producer-esque person would have taken a look at this, told him to cut down the start and everybody would benefit. But no...

I've reached Mission 4 after watching one of the longest, yet most pointless, cinematics in Thief history. But it seems that here is where the FM really takes off. I'm now playing the warrior Saria, in a city, who seems to have different gameplay mechanics than Garrett. Could be interesting, but that'll have to wait.

The reason that'll have to wait is because Christine has released a new FM, "Raven Creek". This 295 Mb download looks to be a mansion mission, so I'll be putting RotB on hold while taking a look at that.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Finished 2 missions (out of 3) of "Raven Creek". This seems to be a sequel of sorts to Christine's prior missions, particularly "Pirates Ahoy!" as it references characters and events from that FM (among others). Garrett, now retired and living in a remote town, is recognized by a City guardsman, so he has to grab his gear and leave town before he's busted... but not without a night of burglary first.

The first and second missions share the same map, with the exception that the former is during the daytime and the latter at night. This gives people a unique opportunity to just walk around the place, explore and see the sights. It's also badly needed so that people can learn to find their way about. The whole mission is one large town with lots of similar-looking houses, no roadsigns and, worst of all, no in-game map. If the lack of a map sounds strange, then let me tell you now that there are far more stranger things about this FM than that.

As can be expected from a Christine FM, there's a great deal of attention paid to the details... up to a point. The cityscape is beautiful, very reminiscient of "The Seven Sisters" but in Hi-Def. There are fishes in the canal (as well as a tiny boat) crows flying overhead, a dog that barks at your presence, flowers and mushrooms here and there, rats scurrying in the streets, etc. And yet, playing through this cityscape makes me realize how empty it is of gameplay, and how seemingly one-dimensional it is. I kept seeing set pieces and surroundings that could have held a minor mystery, curiosity or just some attempt at humor, yet everything seems nailed in place, just there to see and not to touch. Except for the loot, the edibles and the toys. Seriously, I think there are more edible items in Mission 2 than there are loot items. I collected over 100 edibles in this mission, ranging from fruit to meat to pastry to and even some candy and chocolate! Meanwhile there are plenty of dolls and teddy bears to interact with, while other more common and mundane items are permanently fixed in place and unfrobbale. Meanwhile there's disappointly little of actual gear around. There's a sword, a blackjack, some broadheads, lots of water arrows, your lockpicks and then the occasional flash bomb. There's nothing else. I most lamented rope arrows because the cityscape just begs for some rooftop exploration... except I couldn't find any. All roofs are of the slippery type, and the only time I could even stand high up outside was on a tiny ledge at a guard tower... and even then the view was just the nearby roofs.

Going underground doesn't seem to improve things much, I found a passage connecting a couple of houses together via the sewers, but that was it. Note however that I only found two of the five secrets, and even though I scoured the place I ended up just barely meeting the loot requirement, yet I missed out on 1700 more loot! I get the feeling I missed out on an entire secret area.

Another oddity was the placement of guards. Outdoors they're fine, some standing still at key points while others patrol about, but indoors is a completely different story. I only came across two guards, one at the pub and another at the book store, of all places. A book store the size of a mansion, mind you. The Mayor's house is smaller than that! Meanwhile there's a jeweller, wine store, greengrocer, baker, toymaker, butcher and a milkman in town, yet none of them have any guards... or any kind of security, for that matter. As a result Mission 2 becomes mindnumbingly repetetive. Break into house (sometimes the front door isn't even locked), grab everything that isn't nailed down, exit house via front door, repeat. There is literally nothing else to do.

Finally there's the readables. For starters they're badly translated. What's supposed to be a negative statement becomes a double negative statement, and I have no idea what it means to "schlep the milk". The bad spelling may be intentional, but honestly I can't say. Finally Audiolog Syndrome is now a full-blown plague, courtesy of Christine. No sane person keeps a written record of their own affair, let alone in plain sight, in your own house, where the husband can see it!

You know what? I don't think this mission (unsure about the last mission, will check that sometime later) was made for "regular" Taffers like us. I think it was for "housewife burglars", ones that get their kicks out of breaking into people's houses, reading their diaries and eating all their food while ignoring all the valuables. It all feels like Gone Home 2: Gone to Someone Else's Home.

Hopefully Mission 3 will be better, as it has Hammerites in it and it's kinda hard to make them dull.

 

[marbleman]

This mission's interpretation of Garrett is not my cup of tea. I really, really cannot imagine Garrett retiring and becoming a writer who looks forward to eating ice-cream with his friends.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

This mission's interpretation of Garrett is not my cup of tea. I really, really cannot imagine Garrett retiring and becoming a writer who looks forward to eating ice-cream with his friends.

You mentioned Ice-cream... Is this a skacky mission?

 

[marbleman]

No, it's Raven Creek, a mission that Cat wrote about.

It's not that kind of ice-cream.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Mostly done with Mission 3 of "Raven Creek". Instead of being inside the town, now I'm in some kind of giant courtyard that surrounds it. The good news is that things pick up a bit, as there are snakes on the prowl, the Hammerites need to put down a few zombies, and a family of Burricks is on the loose. There's also a funny moment where I find about feeding some rabbits, only to open the nearby chest and find that it contains 114 carrots! This mission actually has more edibles in it than the last!

The bad news is that despite this mission being a straight continuation of the last one, gear and equipment does not transfer over, because *reasons*. I also seem to be stuck, as I can't find the key to the vase woman's house, and I'm not sure where my exit is. I also have a rope arrow, but absolutely nowhere to shoot it. Finally the game seems to be bugging out on me, as the loot objective is currently marked as 3000 gold, when I could swear that it was 4000 at the start of the mission, and I have more than 3000 loot without the objective ticking off.

The Hammerite temple looks really nice, but unfortunately this mission suffers from the same problems as the last one: It all looks more to be a showpiece for a fancy walk, rather than a night of thievery.

I don't think I'm talking with my arse when I rate this mission "meh" out of 10. It looks nice but it's dull as dishwater.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm going to revise my review of "Raven Creek" after having found one of the secrets in Mission 2. It's a tribute room to her past missions. You can find a pack of smokes (Lady Lotti), the Night Falcon and a few other items familiar to those that have played Christine FMs. That makes at least one thing worth seeing and doing in Mission 2, but it also underscores my point about it being too similar to Gone Home.

For those that want to see this tribute room, do this:

Spoiler

Look around in Garrett's house until you find a bowl of eggs. Frob the bowl and you'll get a ruby stone. Go upstairs to the bedroom and use the ruby stone on the frobbable bird statue.

As for my revised score: / 10. Those with deep roots in the Thief community must make the pilgrimage of playing this FM just to reach this room, but people just looking for some of that ol' taffing experience may be disappointed with "Raven Creek".

EDIT: Spent some more time playing Mission 4 of "Rebellion of the Builder 2". I think I've seen enough of this FM to make the call: This is a FM that spent too long in development. Not only is it built using modern-day game design (something that the Thief games don't need) but it's built using level design that the Thief games outgrew many years ago. Mission 4 ranges from being pathetically barren to looking like a half-finished FM, it's most certainly something that would have been top of the line in 2005. But since then we've had taffers like Melan, DrK, skacky and many others show us that the Dark Engine can do so much better.

And then we get to the "new gameplay features" of playing Saria the fighter. She behaves like Garrett except she runs considerably faster, can fall further without taking fall damage, but is much more easily seen in shadows. Furthermore, instead of going around stealing from people Saria does "quests" for townspeople in need. Yup, we've abandoned Thief outright and wandered into Generic First-Person RPG land here.

Which brings up the Big Question about this FM: What is it about this mod that required it to be built in the Dark Engine? If Rebellion of the Builder 2 had been built using the Unity Engine, Unreal Engine, GameBryo or even the good ol' Doom engine, would it have been for better or for worse? Because the Dark Engine is outdated, but it can still pull a few tricks almost any other game engine cannot. Therefore, if you're gonna use the Dark Engine, use those properties, I say. Sadly RotB2 uses so little of them that GORT might as well have used whatever engine got the job done.

We had this discussion last year with "Waterfront Racket", the FM Noir that Tannar and Yandros cooked together. An interesting mod, but it both strayed too far from being Thief and introduced needless game design elements, forcing me to ask why the Dark Engine was chosen for this project. RotB2 has the same problem, only on a massively larger scale. GORT has been working on this for years, and to me the end result is not just a massive disappointment, but one of the most disappointing Thief FMs ever made.

If I continue talking about this it'll end up being a long-winded rant about how "solo" developers should never go solo, but since that's a topic that touches on far more than just Thief, I think I'll save it for a seperate discussion.

 

[JarlFrank]

I guess people who do really unorthodox FMs with the DarkEngine consider it a challenge to use that particular engine to create those missions.

 

[Yandros]

As I said at the time, the reason I made Racket with Dark engine is because it's the only one I know.

 

[JarlFrank]

And honestly, there's nothing wrong with using it for such FMs.

 

[SMDM-GORT]

I'm kinda in the same boat with Yandros when it comes to game engines. I would like to check out others, but don't have the free time anymore (at least not as much a few years ago). As a Press Operator, my work hours are very inconsistent, and there's really no guarantee when the night is done. Hell, there was a time that TROTB 2 was about to be scrapped and forgotten.

 

[Melan]

As I said at the time, the reason I made Racket with Dark engine is because it's the only one I know.

It is not like there are a lot of game engines around which let you create self-contained missions with complex environmental interaction, readables, and AI that doesn't beeline towards you with a cleaver/shotgun. The fundamentals aren't there or the editor isn't there.

 

[Dev_Anj]

Cavalorn released a new mission, Vault Chronicles, yesterday. The story is about a post apocalyptic Thief universe, where everyone has been forced to take shelter in underground vaults. The whole level takes place in one such vault, where Garrett has taken residence. I found it a bit too simplistic, the architecture is a bit too plain and flat and the enemy placement is not much better. The post apocalytpic theme is built upon but is not taken anywhere interesting, and it just ends up feeling like the usual cave/mine complex with some living quarters, kind of like an over domesticated Craigscleft style level. The readables were passable, but again, nothing special.

I would give it a 6/10. Enjoyable, but nothing outstanding.