Hell, yeah! This game is dear to my heart, and I'm about to tell you why. The Thief games, arguably,
have changed my life, with the most obvious product of my lurking in the
shadows being this blog. As a matter of fact, the original Thief games were so
good that the newest part of the series, simply called Thief, comparatively,
was such a huge letdown that I felt the need to raise my voice on the internet,
resulting in this blog.
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| Garrett is not the best fighter, but if a guard finds him, it's sometimes the only option left. Awkward! |
The Thief games are a part of my gaming
experience and part of the reason why I feel confident in talking about
atmosphere, quality and what makes a game fun to play in the first place.
Recently, I restarted Thief: The Dark
Project (Gold Edition; Looking Glass Studios, 1999) to find out whether it
still holds up to today’s standards or if it’s just not as gripping and
interesting as it was when I was a teenager. And what can I say? It holds up,
easily. But what makes the game so compelling apart from ob(li)vious nostalgia?
A Unique Setting
Thief: The Dark Project introduces Garrett, the sarcastic
master thief who prefers minding his own business over anything else but somehow
gets involved with a conflict prophesied by his patrons, the Keepers, a silent
society remaining in the shadows of The City. The game combines fantasy with
horror and steampunk elements, set in a predominantly medieval world – you will
encounter sword wielding guards in mansions with fully operative alarm systems.
Originally, Thief: The Dark Project
was supposed to become a Cold War zombie-fighting game under a different name,
then it turned into Dark Camelot, a
fantasy game with a conspiracy story around King Arthur, a mad Merlin and a
suspicious Holy Grail, but as the developers weren’t able to come up with an
interesting combat system, The Dark
Project was born.
Now back to
the (final) story. Ever since a long, long time ago, there has been a conflict between
the Hammerites and the Pagans. The Hammerites
are a mixture between protestants and freemasons and worship the
Master Builder, a deity whom they believe to have gifted fire and craftsmanship
to man. In contrast, the Pagans worship nature and the Trickster, whose design
is inspired by the Greek God Pan. And, of course, there is the City Watch, the
police. Each part of the Thief series sees one faction rise to power, which
Garrett must prevent. In this first installment, Garrett deals with the Pagans’
ambitions to seize power not only over The
City, but over the entire world (oftentimes synonymous in the Thief games). Unfortunate Garrett,
driven by his greed and unaware of his actions’ consequences, causes most of
the trouble he later has to fix himself and pays dearly for it.
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| Angry Hammerites. Option 1: Run. Option 2: Die. |
The game
starts off with a tutorial and some cutscenes with standstill pictures, which
sounds worse than it is, because these cutscenes are beautifully drawn. They are narrated by protagonist Garrett himself in a Film Noir-inspired style. After some introductory outlines, the player is dropped into the level.
Sneaking and Listening
As the game
is a stealth game (in fact, one of the very first of its kind), the audio is a
much-needed medium for Garrett (the player) to know when to strike and when to
remain in the shadows (a light gem in the HUD (head-up display) helps the
player to see how well he is concealed by the shadows). The sound of a lock picked, a crate dropping, a guard coughing,
or just Garrett eating an apple – they all feel immediately real and are among
the most characteristic sounds in video game history.
The player gets to
listen to guards chatting about fat lords stuffing their bellies, spectacular
bear fights and other gossip. As soon as these dialogues are finished, the
guards return to their duty of patrolling the corridors of their lord’s
mansion, and Garrett, a weak combatant, can sneak up on them and hit them over
the head with his blackjack and steal valuables nearby. As he does so, he
should hide the body, because otherwise the comparatively smart AI (Artificial
Intelligence) of other guards will be alarmed as they find the body.
Furthermore, the player also has to avoid loud surfaces such as metallic surfaces and
marble floors, as a noisy Garrett will rouse suspicion and guards will search for him.
The player, however, has many devices to deal with any given situation, such as
moss arrows (create a soft surface to sneak on), water arrows (to extinguish
torches and create darkness), broadhead arrows (for a quick kill), flash bombs
(to blind the enemy or kill the undead), healing potions, etc.
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| This zombie used to be a priest. |
After a
quick break-in into the Manor of Lord
Bafford following the tutorial, Garrett decides to visit an old “friend”
who owes him money but unfortunately is imprisoned in a (un-) dead mine. The
choice of the developers here is interesting: After having a relatively easy
level with human-only enemies (apart from two very small spiders), they decide
to drop the player into a level featuring not only zombies (slow but hard to
kill) but also Hammerites, who are very strong and fast opponents. Upon
replaying I found the level quite hard for a beginner, because there also are
quite a lot of (loud) metallic surfaces. So not only has the player to adapt
to the zombie situation but also, when he meets the much faster Hammerites, the
ground situation.
Some people have stopped here, as either the zombies were deemed to creepy or the hammerites to difficult to beat. From an educational point of
view, the Cragscleft Prison certainly is not the ideal second-to-beginner’s
mission, nor is the Bonehoard, the level afterwards. However, it cannot be
stressed enough: This game is not about walking in and shooting everyone in
sight and being massively overpowered. It is about sneaking your way through,
and unfortunately, it just happens to be a 90’s game with some maze-like level
designs. It does not give you quest markers or detailed maps or lazy quick-time
events. This game is challenging, and it is okay to get lost once in a while –
you will find your way, eventually (and there is no shame in consulting playthroughs on Youtube).
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| The Bonehoard - Many an adventurer's grave. Source. |
Environmental Storytelling Done Right
Each level
tells its own stories. Take for example the
Bonehoard: Garrett is, once again, in dire need of money. Thus, he decides to
rob the tombs of the rich, but some other thieves have been there before. The
player might expect to find only little loot as he goes through the first few
tombs and suddenly finds himself in a tunnel network. Some tombs are isolated
and protected by traps; the player gets an idea of the abandoned nature of this
haunted place. In the course of his journey he learns from the fate of his less
fortunate friends through diary entries and the objects he finds on the ground: Blankets, a pickaxe, and the occasional corpse. Some parts of the level were
flooded, but the absurdly wide confines of the catacombs allow for multiple floors and dangerous heights as well. Every once in a while, the player is rewarded for his
troubles with precious gems located in the warmly lit rooms in the vicinity of
the level’s grand prize, the Horn of Quintus, which releases ghostly,
melancholic tunes.
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| This is how you tell a story through something as simple as a map. Source. |
After that,
it’s back to a not-so-nobleman’s mansion. In its missions, the game shows quite
a good variety, a healthy mixture of archaeology-like Tomb Raider levels with traps, monsters and undead and break-ins
into people’s castles which are, of course, not any short of terrible secrets
either. Each of the sprawling levels offers generous amounts of loot and readables revealing the background story piece by piece.
Another level that is worth mentioning is The Sword. No videogame in recent years has even come close to the amount of madness showcased in the compounds of Constantine’s private mansion, but the horror is much subtler than you might expect. In contrast to the marvellously creepy Haunted Cathedral, this place is less concerned with classical gothic horror, but instead relies on surreal effects and a perfect, unsettling soundtrack. It is one of the reasons why videogames should be considered a form of art.
Not without Flaws
The levels of Thief: The Dark Project already work quite well on their own, and the Gold-Edition levels may add more to explore, but they are exhaustive in their size. The Thieves’ Guild is easily the worst level and some players argue that the game would be better off without its seemingly unending sewer tunnels. The Mage Towers, while interesting, are also of excessive size. The Opera House, in my opinion, is by far the best of the 3 additions, but overall, the Gold Edition's worth lies predominantly in fixes and improvements for the base game.
Over the years, not only the controversial Gold Edition, but The Dark Project itself has received lots of criticism. Many people pointed out that the
developers should have made the game even “sneakier” and less like Tomb Raider, which I agree with to some extent. However,
I would not go as far as to banish the horror levels from the game as some have
suggested – as I explained, they have their very own right to exist and without its supernatural inhabitants, the Thief universe would be incomplete. However, a thing that I could perfectly live
without are Burricks. Burricks are man-sized lizards that in some cases cannot
be avoided (although, as I recently found out, can be blackjacked!). They have
way too many hitpoints and are silly and can be found in my least favorite
level, The Lost City, which is a lava-fuelled mess.
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| Good luck surviving this place. Source. |
A True Classic
Nevertheless,
Thief: The Dark Project (Gold
Edition) remains one of the best games of all time – for the following reasons:
The gameplay is versatile (you can ambush people with mines, kill them with
your sword, blackjack them and hide their bodies or ignore them altogether),
the story is gripping (and shall not be spoiled any further!), the setting is
sinister and mature, and the protagonist is most lovably sarcastic. Can you ask
for more? You certainly can! – And my review of Thief II: The Metal Age shall
follow soon. But for now, I will leave you with this treasure. Enjoy!
Further reading/watching:
Trailer.
Before the Dark Project, there was Dark Camelot.
Thief vs. AAA Gaming
