Thief: The Dark Project turns 25

[Lyric Suite]

Thief 1 or 2 Jarlo what you say?

Both. The complaint about there being too many zombies in the first one is just your typical Codex autism. They are the exact same game in almost every metric that counts except the first one has a couple of horror levels that just so happen to be among the BEST horror levels ever put in a game (meanwhile second one has wombyn guards and too many robots, if you really gotta fish out flaws like that). Like, such difference.

 

[NecroLord]

Escape! is another nasty mission.
Those ape beasts are fast and deadly, but the bug beasts are worse...

 

[Multidirectional]

The thing is that up to that point, the mission design and atmosphere in this game was so immaculate. And then out of nowhere Casper the Retarded Ghost comes out and gives you the most generic and banal of fetch quests in the middle of what's supposed to be an atmospheric horror level. It just feels like the designers are taking the piss out of me.

I'd legitimately prefer playing Escape or even Strange Bedfellows, at least those quests don't feel like they're making an effort to waste my time.

If I replayed now I would switch difficulty for all 3 of these missions to Normal just to get it over with faster. Last run I only did it for Escape but enough is enough.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I recall being bothered by the no-kill requirements (on harder difficulties)

Those were already in Thief 1.

The complaint is silly since 9 out of 10 it's easier to just knock a guard cold than to actually kill them, either with tools or God forbit in an actual duel.

Game is best played at max difficutly. As far as i'm concerned should be the default and only difficutly setting.

 

[Beastro]

My only big complaint about Escape is that half of the screen isn't blacked out to highlight the fact that you just lost an eye.

Would've been neat to have struggled with that disability for one mission.

 

[Beastro]

Cragscleft Prison is one of the best levels ever in a game, can't believe how good it is. So many heartstopping moments during the vaunted no-saving, no-kills, no-blackjacking run.

into a prison ran by a group of technocratic cultists.

Hey, that's the Mechanists who are the technocratic cultists!

Hammerites are decent, if stuffy asshole not-Catholics.

There's a difference.

 

[NecroLord]

Cragscleft Prison is one of the best levels ever in a game, can't believe how good it is. So many heartstopping moments during the vaunted no-saving, no-kills, no-blackjacking run.

into a prison ran by a group of technocratic cultists.

Hey, that's the Mechanists who are the technocratic cultists!

Hammerites are decent, if stuffy asshole not-Catholics.

There's a difference.

Pagans and Mechanists both espouse philosophies of extremes.
Pagans - Letting nature run its course unrestrained.
The Trickster wanted to do just that, to turn the world into a chaotic mess.
Mechanists - Technological progress with no regard for the damage it causes. You can see the results in their massacre of pagans and turning people into lobotomized pseudocyborg abominations like the servitors in Warhammer...

 

[JarlFrank]

I recall being bothered by the no-kill requirements (on harder difficulties)

Those were already in Thief 1.

The complaint is silly since 9 out of 10 it's easier to just knock a guard cold than to actually kill them, either with tools or God forbit in an actual duel.

Game is best played at max difficutly. As far as i'm concerned should be the default and only difficutly setting.

Yes, playing on Expert and not killing anyone is the default mode of play among the Thief community.
Pretty much 99% of fan missions have the no kill objective on Expert.

 

[octavius]

My only big complaint about Escape is that half of the screen isn't blacked out to highlight the fact that you just lost an eye.

Would've been neat to have struggled with that disability for one mission.

Play with an eyepatch. It is the monocled thing to do.

 

[Beastro]

My only big complaint about Escape is that half of the screen isn't blacked out to highlight the fact that you just lost an eye.

Would've been neat to have struggled with that disability for one mission.

Play with an eyepatch. It is the monocled thing to do.

But that's the opposite of a monocle...

 

[__scribbles__]

Hey, that's the Mechanists who are the technocratic cultists!

Hammerites are decent, if stuffy asshole not-Catholics.

There's a difference.

Heh, you're right. Perhaps "zealots" or "fanatics" is more accurate than "cultists".

God, I really need to brush up on my Thief lore...

 

[mindx2]

My goodness, I LOVE THIS SERIES!! Some of the ALL TIME great computer games! So much joy for so many years! Looking Glass will always hold a special place in my heart.

Maybe it's time to sneak across the rooftops once more...

View attachment 44151

Brother, have you heard about FMs?

Black Parade just dropped and it's GOTY 2023

Of course I've know about the FMs my friend (even if I haven't played as many as I should have). I believe you are the one who turned me on to these many moons ago.

Speaking of FMs... Which ones would you say are your top 10 "Best Evah!" FMs?

 

[JarlFrank]

Speaking of FMs... Which ones would you say are your top 10 "Best Evah!" FMs?

The Widow's Ire/Gems of Provenance campaign
The Seven Sisters
Catacombs of Knoss
Ascend the Dim Valley
The Sound of a Burrick in a Room
Into the Odd
Endless Rain
Lost Among the Forsaken
Heist Society
Disorientation

That would be a rough top ten list, although it was a hard choice to make.
Feast of Pilgrims, Legacy of Knoss, Godbreaker, Augustine's Revenge are just of the same quality as these.

Also, The Black Parade, released just a few days ago, is shaping up to become my absolute favorite FM campaign.

 

[mindx2]

Speaking of FMs... Which ones would you say are your top 10 "Best Evah!" FMs?

The Widow's Ire/Gems of Provenance campaign
The Seven Sisters
Catacombs of Knoss
Ascend the Dim Valley
The Sound of a Burrick in a Room
Into the Odd
Endless Rain
Lost Among the Forsaken
Heist Society
Disorientation

That would be a rough top ten list, although it was a hard choice to make.
Feast of Pilgrims, Legacy of Knoss, Godbreaker, Augustine's Revenge are just of the same quality as these.

Also, The Black Parade, released just a few days ago, is shaping up to become my absolute favorite FM campaign.

Any of these rooftop type missions? Love these vertical missions breaking in through windows.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

The complaint is silly since 9 out of 10 it's easier to just knock a guard cold than to actually kill them, either with tools or God forbit in an actual duel.

There are times where a nicely placed broadhead is a real problem solver.

 

[JarlFrank]

Speaking of FMs... Which ones would you say are your top 10 "Best Evah!" FMs?

The Widow's Ire/Gems of Provenance campaign
The Seven Sisters
Catacombs of Knoss
Ascend the Dim Valley
The Sound of a Burrick in a Room
Into the Odd
Endless Rain
Lost Among the Forsaken
Heist Society
Disorientation

That would be a rough top ten list, although it was a hard choice to make.
Feast of Pilgrims, Legacy of Knoss, Godbreaker, Augustine's Revenge are just of the same quality as these.

Also, The Black Parade, released just a few days ago, is shaping up to become my absolute favorite FM campaign.

Any of these rooftop type missions? Love these vertical missions breaking in through windows.

Endless Rain, Disorientation, The Sound of a Burrick in a Room, mission 1 of Catacombs of Knoss (it's a 2 mission mini-campaign), are all open city missions with some rooftop action.
Godbreaker missions 1 and 4 (it's a 4 mission campaign, with mission 3 just being a cutscene) are also quite rooftoppy.

 

[rêve]

GOG offered the DRM-free edition of Thief Gold, so not gonna launch the initial release from 1998 any time soon.

And you're doing yourself a disservice right here. Thief Gold is shit. The Dark Project is the only good version of Thief 1. Not because of the new subpar missions but because it makes changes to the original missions, Bonehoard becoming much more brighter and less scary being the biggest victim. Too bad it is impossible to buy TDP anywhere now, so if you still have the original Thief release you should definitely play that.

 

[Cross]

Thief 2 went overboard in trying to correct the perceived "flaws" of the first game, so the levels don't feel quite as creative. It does compensate for that with a new roster of mechanical enemies (which is a nice contrast with Thief 1's pagan theme), so it balances out and ends up being a worthy counterpart to the first game rather than an inferior follow-up. I still prefer Thief 1 though.

 

[destinae vomitus]

Thief 2 went overboard in trying to correct the perceived "flaws" of the first game, so the levels don't feel quite as creative. It does compensate for that with a new roster of mechanical enemies (which is a nice contrast with Thief 1's pagan theme), so it balances out and ends up being a worthy counterpart to the first game rather than an inferior follow-up. I still prefer Thief 1 though.

Straight from the horse's mouth.

 

[Multidirectional]

Thief 2 is a good game but I'm much less inclined to replay it compared to first one. Dealing with robots and cameras and hearing retarded voice of Karras gets tedious after a while.

 

[Semiurge]

The most ridiculous thing about The Cradle is that the designers apparently couldn't decide between cliché A, the haunted orphanage, and cliché B, the haunted asylum, so they made the cradle both, simultaneously, although that makes the place and its story look even more illogical and out of place.

It would've been fine as simply an asylum. The objective where you need to locate one of the inmates' favorite playthings and restore it to its appropriate place was fun, but having the ghost tell you exactly what to do was indeed superfluous. They should've relied on environmental clues to tell you how to restore balance in this spiritually messed up place.

My only big complaint about Escape is that half of the screen isn't blacked out to highlight the fact that you just lost an eye.

Would've been neat to have struggled with that disability for one mission.

Losing an eye doesn't really affect your field of vision much because human eyes are so close together, it only makes it impossible to perceive depth which these games don't have anyway as they lack true stereoscopic dimensionality.

Cragscleft Prison is one of the best levels ever in a game, can't believe how good it is. So many heartstopping moments during the vaunted no-saving, no-kills, no-blackjacking run.

into a prison ran by a group of technocratic cultists.

Hey, that's the Mechanists who are the technocratic cultists!

Hammerites are decent, if stuffy asshole not-Catholics.

There's a difference.

Pagans and Mechanists both espouse philosophies of extremes.
Pagans - Letting nature run its course unrestrained.
The Trickster wanted to do just that, to turn the world into a chaotic mess.
Mechanists - Technological progress with no regard for the damage it causes. You can see the results in their massacre of pagans and turning people into lobotomized pseudocyborg abominations like the servitors in Warhammer...

The Keepers' task is to maintain balance between these extremes, which must be why their role as motivators was made bigger in the third game.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Time to ruin the game with another remaster!

It kinda already happened in 2014.

 

[NecroLord]

Time to ruin the game with another remaster!

It kinda already happened in 2014.

You can see your character's hands when sneaking!!
And you press x for silent takedown!!
Best game evar 11/10.

 

[Butter]

Thief 2 is a good game but I'm much less inclined to replay it compared to first one. Dealing with robots and cameras and hearing retarded voice of Karras gets tedious after a while.

Both games have a couple missions that I would skip over, and the Greatest Hits Thief compilation would be about equal parts from each (Cragscleft, Assassins, The Sword, Framed, First City Bank & Trust, Life of the Party, etc). The first game benefits from front-loading its best missions.

 

[NecroLord]

You guys forgot about Song of the Caverns.
Such an awesome mission.
I really like Raoul, the disgraced former Opera House singer (voiced by Garrett himself - Stephen Russell).