Thief fan missions and campaigns

[Mechs Delight]

I think The Builder's Paradise is brilliant, but I realize it won't be to everyone's taste (Mechanists, futuristic design, huge layout).

Feast of Pilgrims is quite enjoyable

Spoiler

although there a few technical problems, similar to the first mission of Godbreaker, and I just get the nagging feeling the Life of the Party base map is beginning to feel overused.

 

[Curratum]

Finished Fierce Competition. What a lovely, lovely FM! My favorite style of level.

 

[Mechs Delight]

My Favorite Year is a fun, breezy little retro urban exercise, and Troubling Transitions is an interesting look at the City just before the Mechanists rose to power (and a BIG improvement over psych0sis's Thief Gold contest submission).

 

[JarlFrank]

My Favorite Year is a fun, breezy little retro urban exercise, and Troubling Transitions is an interesting look at the City just before the Mechanists rose to power (and a BIG improvement over psych0sis's Thief Gold contest submission).

The leap up in quality from his first mission is YUGE

 

[nicked]

I'm giving up on Into the Odd for now. I'll come back to it, but right now it's just a slog. I keep seeing "stick with it, it gets good later", but when? The finicky jumping, platforming trial-and-error in the sewers? Wandering around some weird-looking catacombs filled with locked doors that don't open to either of the two keys I managed to find? I'm in the city streets again after drifting through a surreal mansion, but leaving it there as I'm just fatigued with it. How far into this thing do I get some lockpicks? It's all very pretty and atmospheric, though so surreal as to not really resemble anything approaching a real place, but I'm just lost and wandering aimlessly and not having much fun at all.

 

[Curratum]

Oooh, finished My Favorite Year as well, lovely just lovely! <3

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Gave "The Builder's Paradise" a play. This one is not a contender for the top spot.

It does a lot of things right, like architecture, level design, aesthetics and atmosphere (the exterior area in particular is awesome)... but then proceeds to squander most of that with a humongous map and an long list of objectives chores with overly vague descriptions. "Stop the Assembly Factory" is a good example. For the longest time there are no clues given about how to do this. Then by chance I find a book in the library that gives what I'm gonna call 'suggestions'. Two out of three sub-objectives must be completed: The first one seems to involve turning on all the lights in an attempt to overload the powergrid. Astute taffers can guess why that is a bad idea. Did I mention how big the place is as well? The second one (and most straightforward) is to clog up the ore extractor by placing a piece of tough metal into it. Finding the machine is the hardest part, but clever taffers should be able to find a suitable piece of metal with a little effort. The third and final sub-objective is the one that has me questioning the author's sanity: Turn off five water valves in the basement. I have come across frobbable, but non-descriptive valves in the basement while ascending through this place, and I have frobbed some of them. The thing is, I don't know which ones I've turned, or how many. This was way back at the start of the mission, and I have plenty other things to worry about now.

Like that bloody Kernel guy. Kernel is one of the truly devout Mechanists, and has willingly had himself transformed into some kind of cyber-zombie. He's unkillable and quite persistent. But then I figured: "He's only in that particular part of the complex, so I only need to worry about him while I'm there!" Nope. He's teleported about the place, based on your activities. There's a security room in the complex (read: dead-end trap) far away from Mr. Kernel, in which there's a book which will give you new objectives when read. Guess who's dropped in nearby on a beeline-course for the room the moment you read that book? This kind of 'scripting' is unrealistic and unfitting of Thief. The very worst part is that the same trick is pulled several other times as well, like when you get another MacGuffin from the other dead-end trap and baddies are dispatched to kill you.

Then there's the major objective of the FM: Dispose of the current Mechanist Management. This involves a lengthy series of vaguely-described tasks where you have to 'reboot' all those Mechanist critters running around, but it can't even be consistent with itself. The final tasks involve pulling two levers: The first one is stated to make all the critters neutral to humans. It didn't take me long to realize this information is false. The second lever sets the critters to kill all humans, including the Mechanist Management. This also involves most of the critters running around, so after this you only have to deal with MechBeasts.

And then of course there's the obligatory (but optional) collecta-thon: Find seven elemental items throughout the place. I don't know whether it was sheer stubbornness or my good taffin' skills, but I did find all of them. You'll want to keep track of various readables to discover clues about some of them.

In the event taffers do find their way through all of this, they are rewarded with what I think is one of the coolest 'farewell'-words of any critter in Thief. I'll leave it up to people to discover on their own.

Verdict: While not a finalist contender for the competition, it is still a worthy and challenging FM. I give it an 8, it mostly loses points for frustrating (and pointless!) gameplay elements.

 

[nicked]

OK I persevered and finally got through Into the Odd. It certainly is odd.

On the one hand, it's one of the most detailed, atmospheric, bizarre, surreal, oppressive, mad and sinister missions I've ever played. It's taken all the weird impossible architecture and bizarre secrets of missions like The Chalice of Souls and cranked everything up to 11. It's dreamlike in it's illogical layout and tortuous attention to the most bizarre of details.

On the other hand, it's confusing, frustrating, shows up the absolute worst of the dark engine's clunkiness, is staggeringly unfair in its level of difficulty and doesn't even try to approach the theme of the contest.

Taken purely as a video game level and judged on fun, it's a failure. Taken as an experience, as an exercise in creating the sort of nightmare atmosphere more normally associated with works of literature like Gormenghast or Viriconium, it's a breathtaking achievement.

I would have liked to see a version without any enemies, or certainly without human enemies at least - you'd have this quietly menacing, horrifying nightmare that challenges all definitions of "place" but without the most unfair stealth scenarios I've ever seen.

So I guess I'm echoing what others have said - stick with it, it is worth the slog. Just go in with your eyes open. Don't expect a fun Thief level, this is something else entirely.

 

[Mechs Delight]

I guess I meant the atmosphere of "The Builder's Paradise" is brilliant, as is much of the layout. I've yet to encounter the parts Cat says are "frustrating."

"Show Off" is a bit too crowded with enemies in the streets and the museum itself is nothing special.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

At first glance "Show Off" is quickly amounting to being a "Turn-Off". The streets are bare-bones, while the museum is 95% marble floors, security cameras and pain.

Imagine "First Bank and Trust" but without all the nice touches and more marble floor.

The idea is sound and the potential is great, but so far neither is living up to it.

 

[Curratum]

Didn't feel like searching for a new thread so I'd just ask here:

My Thief Gold FM list is pretty slim, can you people help me out with some truly monocled picks? I like architecture that is at least a little more detailed than the vanilla game and I have this:

Chalice of Souls
Within These Dark Walls
Down in the Old Vault
Endless Rain
Shadow Politics
Upward Spiral
The Unseen
Up in the Bonehoard.

Also, is there any way to make TG control like T2, with a normal walking speed and a sprint button?

In TG even with NuDark you get a "speed mod" key and it's a mess.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Here's my list:

A Noble Death
Augustine's Revenge
Autumn in Lampfire Hills
Between These Dark Walls
Calendra's Cistern
Chalice of Souls
Deadly Darkness
Dirty Money
Endless Rain
Geller's Pride
Gems of Provenance
Gold in Fort Knocks
Hammerhead
Lord Beilman's Estate
Lorgan's Web
Nigel's Hidden Treasure
Project Hammer
Prowler of the Dark
Returning a Favor
Lord Robert's Painting
Sepulchre of the Sinistral
Shadow Politics
Shunned
The Order of the Vine
The Secret Way
The Skull of Herzeloyde

Note that it doesn't have any FM from the Thief 1/Gold 20th Anniversary Competition, which has many FMs worth looking into. It also has a few FMs that I personally enjoyed, even though tastes may differ.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

"Time for Change" does not live up to its name. Steal a flute, a horn and snatch a papyrus as you run through what is more like a rectangular obstacle course than an environment. Modern-day level design at its finest, and I do believe there are only a handful of non-90° angles to be found here. It also has Too Many Guards (I counted 47.) The only thing that impressed me was the loot placement.

 

[nicked]

Ten Little Taffers was great fun! I would say that it helps to have knowledge of the source material, because it doesn't quite all come together. It's a great idea, and there are some excellent moments of humour in it (such as a switch in the chapel to flip-flip between Hammerite and Mechanist decor). However, there are also huge inconsistencies between the three points of view - it would have been better if each difficulty played out the same way and just solved more of the mystery. As it is, it feels like each of the three parts is an alternative version of events, rather than different POVs of the same events.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

"Show-Off" fortunately turned out to be better than its first glance. That museum looks dreadful to overcome, but careful timing can take care of the guards and the security system can be disabled.

That collecta-thon for the eight rings is some kind of trolling attempt, though. I did eventually find five, but couldn't bother finding the rest.

Rings I found

Bucket in janitor's closet, upstairs bathroom stall, center dais in two-floor display hall, behind one of the display pedestals in dinner plate presentation, inside ultra-secure tower display room.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I saved the 'best' for last - GORT's contribution of lengthy and presumptious nomenclature. My gut feeling upon reading that title:

Sadly my gut was right.

GORT's entry is the only multi-mission FM in the competition, which explains its size once installed (300+ Mb). It starts on dodgy footing. Garrett has moved to another city to sell some risky loot, but the FM goes to great lengths to explain why all the guards keep speaking of Sheriff Gorman Truart. I can understand that someone felt this needed to be adressed, but there are several ways to go about that and the chosen method just feels weird and forced. (Nevermind the fact that all these guards look like they've been soaked in urine.) This means Garrett is moving about in a mostly flat cityscape with some options for taffing, but I was surprised to see how open the place is to rooftop shenanigans - though having to travel great distances from the 'entry point' to whatever hidden loot or secret area seems kinda strange to me. But one must remember that this is a GORT mission, that means cheese in abundance and the guard placement alone lays it on thick, but it's nothing insurmountable.

In the beginning there's no specific objective save to score some money, but listening in on some interesting conversations (acted out by voice synthesizers) yields a greater plot where two gems must be used to unlock a hidden passage. Finding the first stone is easy, but the second one is needlessly more trickier, and this is the point that made me think that GORT is just showing off. Showing off only works as long as everything goes according to plan. You see, one of those conversations involves a person being sent to retrieve a stolen item, and you're told to follow said person to retrieve the item for yourself. Well, the original idea was for Person #1 to meet up with Person #2, then for Person #2 to go rob Person #3, and then give the item it back to Person #1... I guess. I guess here because for me it went like this: Person #1 starts walking, and I follow to the best of my abilities (while staying unseen and dodging guard patrols). Eventually Person #1 reaches Person #2, decides they don't want anything to do with them and immediately returns to base. Meanwhile Person #2 stands immobile like an idiot and never does or says anything. This breaks the mission's back squarely as Person #2 is seemingly the only valid way to get that plot-essential stolen item into Garrett's hands. (And yes, I'm playing the updated version.) Surely there must have been a better, more reliable way to go about this, instead of creating a frivolous section prone to failure like this?

Consequently I'm gonna have to return to an earlier save, but I just don't feel like doing that right now.

EDIT: I take the above back, I made one last attempt and got a result. Seems that GORT foresaw the possibility that something might go Wrong, so there's an 'alternate ending' of sorts where you're told to just leave because you screwed up. This sends the player straight to a 'cutscene-mission' and it ends rather unceremoniously.

It takes a certain level of genius to not only think of this, but actually put it into action. I'm gonna take a break from this for a while and try again with a fresh attitude.

 

[Psych0sis]

I've only played a few of the entries so far, simply due to being lazy and having a little bit of Thief burnout from working with the slightly annoying DromEd doohickey for the last year for my own submission, but so far I've had a pleasant experience!

Fierce Competition - Little light on the story and other such details, as it feels like it was thrown together very last minute. Gameplay and map layout is very well done though, and kept the experience enjoyable as everything flowed very well! Definitely an improvement from Order of the Dew from Jayrude, but I'm a tad annoyed he had a year to work on it (and he started the first day we could) and still only churned out a very small and simplistic mission. I talk to him on a daily basis and consider him a good friend so I'm being a bit hard on him here. I did very much enjoy this one though! (21/30)

Where the Unknown Lurks - The little details on this mission are fantastic! The tomb is very cool and eerie, though some of the rooms are probably WAY too big and empty down there. However, mission has a good amount of very creative stuff and he sure does know how to create fantastical things. I hope Skejven keeps working on more missions and puts more effort into them down the road, he has quite the mind for this shit. He really does need to work on the gameplay though, it is a bit lacking. This mission is very mundane and incredibly easy, and devolves into a small key hunt of sorts, at least regarding the main objectives. Story was also a bit dry and the premise felt very thrown together at the last minute, much like FC. And why is the optional hidden area like 4x bigger than the main area? I don't understand the logic here. Overall, still enjoyed it, probably wouldn't want to replay it, but would love to look at it some more in DromEd for inspiration in the future. (19/30)

Feast of Pilgrims - Extremely solid mission, the flow was amazing and the story was pretty unique and captivating. Bit of a meme overload, which is fine cause I too am a culprit of that in TT as well, but as Nicked says I could see it being a bit annoying for some people. I'll probably piss off Random "IronEagle" Taffer here but I'd have to say some of the brushwork in areas is very simple, though maybe that's just a compromise due to engine limits. Not a big issue to me, I value gameplay cause I'm actually playing a fucking GAME, and as a gaming experience it is damn fun. Great mission, I'm pretty sure it'll win the contest. (26/30)

Into the Odd - Honestly, this is the best mission of the contest HANDS DOWN. However, I don't think it will win this contest because it's a bit of a noob filter (as seen by some of the posts in this thread ) and will probably get the same mistreatment on the scoring as Rose Garden or Whistling of the Gears did back in the T1 contest. The gameplay can be a bit harsh, especially so at the start, but it does get better and is actually really damn fun later on. But most importantly, this is a damn phenomenal experience, and I hate using that "experience" word to describe fan missions, but it really fucking is. You need to PLAY this mission. Now. And don't get filtered, you hear? (27/30)

I'll probably get to the rest of them soon enough, but so far I don't think any other mission will be topping Into the Odd for me. Well, besides my own, obviously.

 

[index.php]

 

[Curratum]

I just thought I'd drop this here, my two favorite and somewhat rare pieces of Thief-related artwork.

The first one is relatively popular, the second I found only recently and I used some upscaling on it because the source file was half that resolution.

 

[Grim Monk]

I used some upscaling on it because the source file was half that resolution.

It took a bit of searching but I managed to uncovered a higher quality original.

Title: "I Saved The World"

Artist was a Deviantart member from Russia called "Ogilac":
https://www.deviantart.com/ogilac

For some reason their original art gallery seems to have been deleted.

Two more Thief drawings from the same guy.

Title: "Break from Cragscleft Prison"

(Not sure about the title.)

Russian fan site with a archive of the Images:
https://www.darkfate.org/view/details/files/images/fanworks/international/ogilac#pp[1]/2/

Edit: Curratum
I decided to also look up your first image and found it was made by a artist called "Dominus":
https://www.artstation.com/dominus
https://mobile.twitter.com/Dominuz

He has created a bunch of other Thief artwork including one for the Metal Age 20th Anniversary tribute 14 days age.

Just felt like dropping the info in case you did not know already...

 

[Mikeal]

So now this is you favourite Thief fan art topic? Fine by me.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

So now this is you favourite Thief fan art topic? Fine by me.

Is this... Garretta?

 

[Psych0sis]

Well fuck, I've been waiting with anticipation for a UC review of Troubling Transitions, as I feel him ripping into your shit is almost a sort of rite of passage for authors. But I guess it didn't leave any impression on him...

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Barring GORT's entry I have played all the submissions through and through, but I'm juggling several things at the moment and have put everything Thief-related on hold until later.

If it makes you feel better I found nothing wrong with your FM and enjoyed playing it.

EDIT: Typo.

 

[Psych0sis]

Hah, I was just messing around. I do enjoy reading your reviews most of the time, pretty interesting reads and agreeable opinions.

Spoiler

Though your write up on Cascabel V1 was pretty horrendous