Thief fan missions and campaigns

[Max_b5]

My top 5 were:

Lost Among the Forsaken
Catacombs of Knoss
The Whistling of the Gears
Rose Garden
The Sound of a Burrick in a Room

My rating is based mostly on whether the mission nails the setting and atmosphere well, and LATF did. The rest were all top quality but I personally enjoy Old Quarter/Catacombs missions the most

 

[marbleman]

I liked Rose Garden the most, but I do agree with most of the criticizm here.

The other missions that I awarded near-perfect score are:
The Whistling of the Gears
Lost Among the Forsaken
Heart and Soul
The Sound of a Burrick in a Room

Currently thinking of writing detailed write-ups on each contest mission, but I need to replay some of them first.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Currently thinking of writing detailed write-ups on each contest mission, but I need to replay some of them first.

I have those ready, but I'm conflicted on whether I should make them public, considering they mostly mirror opinions that have already been posted.

But as is, my Top "five" based on points are:

Lost Among the Forsaken (30 pts)
The Sound of a Burrick in a Room (25 pts)
Downtowne Funk (25 pts)
Catacombs of Knoss (24 pts)
Darkness Walk With Us! (24 pts)
Heart and Soul (24 pts)
The Tomb of St. Tennor (24 pts)

The Tomb of St. Tennor has not been brought up here, so I'll give a short summary: It's a two-parter where Garrett breaks into an abandoned (but not unoccupied) monastery to reach the tomb of St. Tennor below. It's faithful to the T1 spirit, and the second part is where it truly shines, BUT... there is a hidden depth to this FM. Secrets in the first mission that don't really play out until the second one. Elaborate and long-winded secrets to find an Easter Egg. It's an FM that rewards exploring first and foremost. Even if you skip all that crap, it's highly enjoyable.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Currently thinking of writing detailed write-ups on each contest mission, but I need to replay some of them first.

I have those ready, but I'm conflicted on whether I should make them public, considering they mostly mirror opinions that have already been posted.

But as is, my Top "five" based on points are:

Lost Among the Forsaken (30 pts)
The Sound of a Burrick in a Room (25 pts)
Downtowne Funk (25 pts)
Catacombs of Knoss (24 pts)
Darkness Walk With Us! (24 pts)
Heart and Soul (24 pts)
The Tomb of St. Tennor (24 pts)

The Tomb of St. Tennor has not been brought up here, so I'll give a short summary: It's a two-parter where Garrett breaks into an abandoned (but not unoccupied) monastery to reach the tomb of St. Tennor below. It's faithful to the T1 spirit, and the second part is where it truly shines, BUT... there is a hidden depth to this FM. Secrets in the first mission that don't really play out until the second one. Elaborate and long-winded secrets to find an Easter Egg. It's an FM that rewards exploring first and foremost. Even if you skip all that crap, it's highly enjoyable.

We oughta be able to update the first post with this FM, I suppose?

 

[Mechs Delight]

Wow, no love for The Scarlet Cascabel? Well, okay, the town is rather pedestrian, but the hotel? Atmospheric, funny, and absorbing all at once!

The Sound of a Burrick in a Room is another favorite. A lot of neat places to explore and a nice sneak preview into some Black Parade lore.

Rose Garden was rather disappointing, though, I agree (with some of you). Several annoyances (jumps, guards that are almost impossible to get around).

I don't know though, I really don't get the fuss over Lost Among the Forsaken. Nice enough, but I've seen this theme many times before. And I REALLY disliked the "moaning, burning" zombie near the tower.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Wow, no love for The Scarlet Cascabel? Well, okay, the town is rather pedestrian, but the hotel? Atmospheric, funny, and absorbing all at once!

It's one of the two FMs I have yet to play through. And the town part of it is pants, but the hotel looks cool. It's one of those cases where it might have been a good idea to just skip the foreplay and just cut right to the main event.

 

[Max_b5]

I've seen this theme many times before.

Wait, what? Aside from Dark Messiah, can you tell me another GOOD Old Quarter FM? Genuinely curious here.

 

[Random_Taffer]

My top missions are the same as the lot of you. It's going to be really tough. I haven't played through all the missions yet, though.
Finished LAtF last night and was blown away by the atmosphere. I usually don't even like undead FMs that much, but this one was so good that I just couldn't help myself. It also helps that there's plenty of verticality to get around the poor rotting bastards. Most impressive for me in this mission besides the absolutely nuts visuals of the ruined areas was the top-notch sound design. I loved the fire shadow standing on the tower in that one area near the church and kept getting close to try and hear its voice. Sounded like maybe a heavily modified hammerite chant at times? I thought I could hear the Stephen Russell hammer voice in there, but maybe I'm wrong.

Whistling, LatF, and Burrick are my top 3 right now and it's going to be really hard deciding which one was my favorite of those.

Still need to get through a bunch of them, though.

 

[Baardhaas]

I've played through 'The Burning Bedlam'.

Was expecting a mission where Cragsleft Prison meets Shalebridge Cradle and for the first part, the mines, it actually held up quite nicely. In the second part, the Asylum, the mission starts to show its flaws. It has to much floorspace for its own good. Zombies work well in confined spaces but in large open areas become trivial to deal with. At times the Asylum feels to opulent for a high-security prison for the clinically insane, with an entrance fit for a palace. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if the Asylum was something designed much earlier and rehashed for this contest and the mines where added later when the author honed his skills.

The good:
-coherent story with a little twist at the end.
-Atmosphere is pretty good with a good horror feel to it in the beginning.
-The start is excellent.

The bad:
-To large (in terms of actual space) for its own good.
-not enough thought put in AI placement and routes.
-Keyhunt. Most missions boil down to that, but in the last part of this mission the author didn't even try to camouflage it.
-No loot objective, although there was plenty loot to gather. Not bad per se, but I could see no reason why it wasn't implemented.

Despite all the negatives, I had a lot of fun playing it and it is the first mission in the contest I've played with a genuine Thief 1 feel to it. That makes it worth a 8/10 in my book. Lots of room (literally) for improvement, but a solid effort nevertheless.

Making a Profit - this one gets my award for the mission I most wanted to like, but couldn't quite get on with. It's enormous, to the point that the scale feels off, and to compound that, it's full of gameplay that feels like a slog - many long lockpicks, an objective where you have to lug a body around, and you are sometimes left directionless, which is painful in a mission of this size. At it's core, there's an interesting, well-written (if predictable) story, with some good voice-acted cutscenes and fun progression of objectives, and it has some nifty puzzles. But it badly needs the fat trimming.

Fully agree on every point save for being left directionless. I found more than enough hints and never was wondering what I should be doing. There were actually four (!) different ways to solve the puzzle in the crypt one of them involved cleaning the blood smeared paper with a water arrow. Also it had a working ingame map, which I thought was pretty cool.

 

[Mechs Delight]

I've seen this theme many times before.

Wait, what? Aside from Dark Messiah, can you tell me another GOOD Old Quarter FM? Genuinely curious here.

Sorry, maybe I should try it one more time. I just maybe wasn't having a good day when I typed it.

 

[Mechs Delight]

I've seen this theme many times before.

Wait, what? Aside from Dark Messiah, can you tell me another GOOD Old Quarter FM? Genuinely curious here.

Sorry, maybe I should try it one more time. I just maybe wasn't having a good day when I typed it.

All right, I'm playing it now and am starting to see what people mean (Dark Messiah was a great mission, BTW, yes); there's some very neat used-looking textures there (might have been too much in a hurry - maybe I should start playing missions on Hard or Expert to encourage me to slow down, I've been playing on Normal most of the time, I'm autistic and I don't take well to sudden changes and subtleties some times).

 

[nicked]

Fully agree on every point save for being left directionless. I found more than enough hints and never was wondering what I should be doing. There were actually four (!) different ways to solve the puzzle in the crypt one of them involved cleaning the blood smeared paper with a water arrow. Also it had a working ingame map, which I thought was pretty cool.

I forgot it had a full automap! That definitely won it some more points for me.

In fact, so many of these missions have no map at all, which is annoying at best and unforgivable in some of the mazelike ones, that this was a very welcome surprise!

 

[Unkillable Cat]

And I'm done with the contest entries. The last two FMs were disappointing.

"The Scarlet Cascabel" is one of the FMs that somehow didn't get the memo: "Build a Fan Mission in the style of the original game." It's anything but that. Overreliance on visual effects like fog is the biggest culprit, but soon other things join in that seem to be put in there solely to annoy the player. Two long sequences where the player stands around and listens to a person deliver tons of exposition (and most of it pointless) while their face doesn't move. This is what intro movies are for! Deliberate deathtraps, like that boghole near the start and then later that innocuous piece of loot across the ravine where there seemingly is no way to get back afterwards. And the author states that "Mission 1 is just a small intro mission". It's bigger than some of the contest entries!

And being a two-parter FM, one would think that gathering all that gear in the first part (the village and surroundings) would be carried over to the second part (the hotel), right? Nope. You vill hav ze geer vee choos, und no mohr! In other words the first mission is a Total and Complete Waste of Time.

The hotel in the second mission at least looks ace, but in the first moment alone there are more stupid game design decisions. There's a low wall to the south of the starting position with visible terrain beyond it... blocked by an invisible wall, but there's no invisible wall blocking the player from falling down the ravine to the west. And then, as I was sneaking around unseen outside the hotel I trigger a conversation by the front door that, once ended, has the thin bloke going inside and the fat bloke going outside and literally into my arms. Despite me and the fat bloke being out of sight of everyone, and no one being close enough to normally hear the blackjack (or react to it) me knocking the fat bloke over the head sent at least three people inside on full alert and running for the alarm. When making a two-part FM it is common sense to have the same AI routines running in both missions... not blithering dolts in one and super-psychics in the other.

This is the only FM in the contest that I'm not giving up on as much as walking away in disgust. This is not an FM that I believe is like this due to time constraints (as the authors claim), this looks like intentful incompetence. The author(s) can clearly create neat-looking environments in DromED, but should be outright banned from anything related to the gameplay itself. This is a serious challenger to zontik's "King's Story" for 'Least Game Design Awareness' in a FM.

Finally there's "Ultimate Burglary" by Terra. This one aims high with Garrett not only being tasked with (re?)stealing four well-known loot items, but also score more loot than in any other contest entry. It's also interesting to see just how much gear it gives - having two dozen water, moss and broadhead arrows (and multiple gas arrows/mines) is a nice change of pace from having to take on the Trickster's armies with only a paper clip and some bubble gum, but the total absence of Rope Arrows (at least during the time I played it) felt a little jarring... especially since they're seemingly needed to reach and complete one of the main objectives. The biggest problem here is that this FM is clearly unfinished and currently in Placeholder Mode. It's like all the time went into designing the rather large level, but no time was put into fine-polish and detailing. Loot is left out in the open instead of being placed in (somewhat) hidden places, guard placements are seemingly random (I lost count of how many of them were staring into empty corners), there's a room inside a mansion occupied by a Fire Elemental and another occupied by a Burrick, with no explanation as to why. The map is all-revealing, almost 100% horizontal and everything is 90° corners.

There's great potential here for a fun and fitting (if somewhat over-the-top) tribute FM to Thief, it just isn't there yet.

 

[Baardhaas]

And I'm done with the contest entries.

That's some serious determination, on average you've played about 2 fan missions every day for the past 2 weeks.

 

[Mechs Delight]

I'm just stunned, Cat. You don't have ONE good thing to say about the hotel in "Scarlet Cascabel" other than the look? And you drag it down to the level of a horrid turd like "King's Story"? If I recall, there was no rule that said you couldn't use fog or other effects like that.

You slam this mission and praise uninspired missions like "The Tower in the Forest" and T2X's "Grand Hotel"? Wow, just wow.

 

[Mechs Delight]

My top missions are the same as the lot of you. It's going to be really tough. I haven't played through all the missions yet, though.
Finished LAtF last night and was blown away by the atmosphere. I usually don't even like undead FMs that much, but this one was so good that I just couldn't help myself. It also helps that there's plenty of verticality to get around the poor rotting bastards. Most impressive for me in this mission besides the absolutely nuts visuals of the ruined areas was the top-notch sound design. I loved the fire shadow standing on the tower in that one area near the church and kept getting close to try and hear its voice. Sounded like maybe a heavily modified hammerite chant at times? I thought I could hear the Stephen Russell hammer voice in there, but maybe I'm wrong.

Whistling, LatF, and Burrick are my top 3 right now and it's going to be really hard deciding which one was my favorite of those.

Still need to get through a bunch of them, though.

Yes, the three "Black Parade Lore" missions are quite impressive - Burrick might even be one of my choices for top mission in the contest.

 

[skacky]

I don't quite get it either, especially considering The Scarlet Cascabel M2 is on par with classics like Rowena's Curse. The gong thing is pretty bad, however, that I can agree with.

 

[Yandros]

On Scarlet Cascabel, the plan was for loot carryover and a loadout at the beginning of mission 2 to spend that loot, but they ran out of time. For the same reason, the gong thing had to be defunctioned so the alerted AI doesn't run for the gong because there were enough pathfinding issues that it failed a lot and no time left to address that, so instead of removing them they chose to keep them and have it the way it is.

This is not an FM that I believe is like this due to time constraints (as the authors claim)

I can attest to your being wrong here. They put in 50-60 hours a week for the last few months and were still fixing bugs and making compromises (see above, plus a half dozen other things) literally an hour before the deadline. I know because I was the technical consultant and was in there with them quite a bit the last couple of weeks helping them script stuff and fix bugs.

 

[Mechs Delight]

I don't quite get it either, especially considering The Scarlet Cascabel M2 is on par with classics like Rowena's Curse. The gong thing is pretty bad, however, that I can agree with.

Yes, the gongs seemed a little silly, but it's not a deal-breaker.

I've just been playing through "Ultimate Burglary," and while there are some good ideas here, too often it feels like just throwing things at a wall and seeing what will stick. Also, there are some annoying technical issues like guards seemingly magically able to see me when they probably shouldn't. And a fire elemental in a tiny room in the middle of a mansion? Oh, please.

Also played the non-contest mission ""The Upward Spiral" recently. Up until one leaves the tower for the "alternate cloud realm," this mission was very enjoyable. But once the player passes through the realm and back to the tower where a strange person sends messages, it just feels like a cheap dramatic cheat that knocks one right out of the mission.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Thank you for clearing that up, Yandros. It is only right then that I change my spit and vinegar-esque review of the Cascabel to say that it's very unfortunate for the authors that the FM is released in this state, as the 'one-two' combo of bad game design decisions mixing with bothersome bugs like the gong drag this FM down into the dumps, and leave a sour taste in my mouth, at least. On the upside the super-psychic problem only seems to apply to the servants in and around the entrance. The others all behave properly.

Mech's Delight: I would be a very sour puss if I had nothing good to say about it. It shares far too many traits with "King's Story", positive and negative. The hotel is wonderful from an architectural and level design perspective, and the story is laid out quite well. The scenes in Room 13 and the Winter Wing creeped me out (a rare feat) and the slow build-up of the atmosphere as the mystery starts to unfold is done quite well. It's just a damn shame that one must dredge through almost 2/3ds of this mission to get to the good stuff. The latter half of the second FM goes a long way towards redeeming it, but it almost drives me to anger to see so many bone-headed decisions lined up in a row, especially since most of them could have been easily circumvented.

 

[nicked]

OK I started playing the Sound of a Burrick in the Room.

I need to study this in Dromed. This is a masterclass of level design. Absolutely stunning. I've not finished it yet, or even finished playing all the others, but this goes straight to the top spot for me.

 

[Mechs Delight]

I understand, Cat, I was just trying to give my honest reaction.

I've been playing some more through "Ultimate Burglary," and between more absurd technical issues (Hammerite instantly turning around when I blackjack another silently nearby, hearing footsteps loudly and clearly on the floor above) and standard, tired Thief tropes, I'm struggling to find a reason to care.

 

[Astral Rag]

Something for you guys to rage at:

https://www.pcgamer.com/which-pc-classic-was-just-too-old-to-enjoy-when-you-finally-played-it/

 

[Jazz_]

So there's no Skacky entry in this 20th anniversary contest? sacrilegious!

''The Sound of a Burrick in a Room'' hasn't gripped me yet, the city architecture seems quite...squarish/unrefined. But I still have a lot to explore so I withhold judgement.

''Lost Among the Forsaken'' is cool atmosphere-wise so far, although it looks like a meandering affair where I will get stuck/frustrated a lot.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

What sort of mental deficiency prohibits one from understanding Thief's control scheme? It's pretty much your bog-standard FPS controls, the only "exotic" combination is alt+W to lean forward.

I use the key directly above my [Run Forward] key to [Lean Forward].

No, I don't use the regular WASD controls.

On a brighter note, is there a particular FM from the anniversary contest that I should play first? Got the itch to play Thief again.

So there's no Skacky entry in this 20th anniversary contest? sacrilegious!

''The Sound of a Burrick in a Room'' hasn't gripped me yet, the city architecture seems quite...squarish/unrefined. But I still have a lot to explore so I withhold judgement.

''Lost Among the Forsaken'' is cool atmosphere-wise so far, although it looks like a meandering affair where I will get stuck/frustrated a lot.

EDIT UPDATE: Skacky's entry, though under a pseudonym, is "The Sound of a Burrick in the Room". (I also strongly suspect DrK has an entry... and if I'm right on which submission is his there's been a 'Celestial Alignment'-level event.)

Skacky's team went further and submitted several entries, including "Lost Among the Forsaken" (my favorite) and "The Whistling of the Gears". I also suspect "The Catacombs of Knoss" being part of that. Besides Melan returns with "Rose Garden", so fans of skacky-esque missions are in hog heaven right now.

EDIT: That leaves a lot of other FMs to savor. We have several 'Dark Project appetizers' where you get a taste of the various locales that Thief originally brought us. Those interested can check out Haplo's "Darkness Walk With Us!", FrenchDecay, marbleman and JarlFrank's "In & Out" and "Tomb of St. Tennor" by vegetables (yes, Thief has vegan options ). All three of them have the primary focus on the Undead, though.

Yandros brings "Downtowne Funk" which feels so similar to an OM it's hard to notice a difference sometimes. (Yandros also gets the honorary title of 'Rat King' for being the only taffer in the contest to feature live rats in his entry. There's a dead rat in "The Whistling of the Gears", but otherwise all the contest entries are rat-free. There are plenty of other idiosyncrasies in the contest entries, like the Invasion of the Sand Bags, which are featured in almost every entry.) Those wanting more 'I wanna be just like T1'-entries can also check out "Shadow Play" by shlock.

stinkykitty and McTaffer offer up "Heart and Soul" which is a romp through a derelict castle occupied by some humans and lots of Undead.

A few FMs didn't get the memo and try to be too much like T2 FMs/OMs, or employ modern game design when they shouldn't. While not as enjoyable as the aforementioned they're still worth checking out, but they are "The Hunt Part 1: Search", "The Burning Bedlam", "The Scarlet Cascabel" and "Making a Profit".

GORT has an entry ("An Enigmatic Treasure with a Recondite Discovery") but it's both long-winded and full of cheese, but that's always been the case with him. If you enjoyed his other FMs give this one a shot.

But if you're just looking for a light snack, Jayrude's "The Order of the Dew" is one of the smallest entries in the contest, but offers surprising quality and value.