Thief II: The Metal Age – All should hear the words of Karras!

He who keeps his work in disorder

gives home to chaos.

Let him be struck
with stone and iron
to forge away
his flaws.

[Excerpt from Karras' Sermons]

Thief II: The Metal Age, released in 2000, is the successor of Looking Glass’ Thief: The Dark Project and after all these years still possibly the best stealth game of all time. It stays true to its remarkable predecessor and improved on just about everything.

 

It is night. You feel a chilly breeze, but it may become the wind of change. The formerly dark street glows in cold, metallic light. There are no trees, but cold, hard sculptures of masked angels and cogs mark the way of the Master Builder. Premodern urban sprawl encompasses all that used to be rural streets inhabited by wildlife. Metal beams and marble tiles have replaced the wooden structures and carved stone of old.

One year has passed since Garrett stole the Eye for Constantine, who turned out to be the incarnation of the Trickster, a deity of nature and chaos. Upon realizing his mistake, Garrett barely managed to escape with his skin, only to infiltrate the Trickster's lair for one last time more in order to banish him from the mortal realm with the help of a strategically deployed booby trap - sponsored by the tech-loving Order of the Hammer.

"If thou art my enemy, fear thou my power, for it is granted me by Karras
that I may smite all within the scope of mine eye."

The moral of the story is: Listen to the keepers (= the city's secret guardians). If they hide said indestructible Eye, described it as a “great, ancient evil”, you’d better leave it alone. 

 

However, the next threat is just around the corner: It's the dawn of the Metal Age. As the Trickster's magic fades away, the former Hammerite priest and self-proclaimed prophet Karras sets out to overthrow the world in the name of science, steampunk technology and religious extremism.

The developers at Looking Glass Studios knew exactly where they wanted to go with Thief II: More sneaking, less thrashing. So instead of shoving Burricks in your face, they opted for stealth and added a few nice gimmicks. Garrett, who lost his eye during the events of the first game, now has a mechanical substitute which he can throw around corners to catch a glimpse from a safe distance. This useful tool soon becomes a necessity as the newly industrialized world itself is under the scrutiny of eyes, both living and dead: Not only are there guards on patrol, but fully automated security cameras. If you stay in their field of vision for too long, they will glow with red light and alert guards to your presence.

If the security cam has spotted you (top center), the turret (left)
will fire bombs at you and the guards won't give a warming welcome either.

However, in many cases, these can be turned off by a switch which sometimes is, most conveniently, nearby the camera, but other times you will have to search a little or cannot switch them off at all. In later levels, there will even be turrets connected to the camera - no need for backup.

 

But these are not the biggest threats. One of the most interesting and controversial implementations are the robots. There are small worker bots which pose as much of a threat as an irritated servant, but there are also combat bots which will, upon being alerted, shoot a grenade at you with great precision and velocity. If you manage to sneak behind them, you can shoot water arrows into their boiler – 2 will disable them permanently. But facing them directly will be a challenge you’d rather avoid, trust me.

Nevertheless, I love them. You will hear them approach from afar as they stomp down an alleyway, playing recordings of Karras sermons, read by the man himself: The flesh is imperfect, it is unclean, it putrefies, but I am forged in The Builder's image: without... flesh. They are absolutely uncanny and terrifying. Awesome. 

Just a little worker bot, strolling through the First City Bank and Trust.

But of course, there are plenty of human guards around still. After all, Thief wouldn’t be Thief without them mumbling to themselves or gossiping around, and in this installment there are some hilarious scenes. In my favourite level, Blackmail, Garrett breaks into Sherriff Truart’s estate to confront him with an incriminating recording, but before events get serious, the player has a chance to listen to a guard named Benny complaining to the barista about some spilled mead. It turns out that Benny, the old drunkard, was the one who spilled it in the first place, which is made all the more hilarious thanks to Steven Russell’s brilliant voice acting skills (he voices Garrett and Karras, too!). Later, in Life of the Party, you may enjoy a quarrel between guards turning into a full-blown fight.

Speaking of which, Life of the Party definitely deserves mentioning as well. It is an absolutely huge level, but it is full of secrets, occurrences and strange things; even the keepers pay a visit – twice. What makes this level stand out is the setting, as the player has to travel across the rooftops of the city (instead of walking through the streets) to infiltrate Karras’ bureau in a gigantic tower. Levels like this are a huge improvement over the extra Gold levels of Thief I, which mostly felt empty and monotonous. On a less positive note, Thief II levels feature so much urban space that the few undead inhabitants often feel crammed in a tiny space, where they patrol endlessly around the same four corners (most notably in Eavesdropping). Undead have become more of a bonus and less of a feature.The truly horrible revelations are in-between rather than in obvious locations, which might be a bit of a disappointment for fans of levels like Return to the Haunted Cathedral.

A crazy leader...

There are many minor changes in gameplay, too. Thief II is, as mentioned, a lot more consequent when it comes to stealth, but that does not mean that the difficulty level is too high. The levels are easier to navigate now, because the developers have abandoned the rather monotonous, maze-like style of some earlier levels. Also, all food now restores a low amount of health, which is a nice gimmick and sometimes very helpful. Garrett finally got himself a flashlight (“flare”), which is needed especially in some versions of the game where you cannot adjust the brightness (fail!), and you can now freely bind the key for quicksave, which makes playing the game on a laptop a lot easier (win!). What is also helpful is that you now get clear notifications when you fulfill an objective, and there are slow-fall and invisibility potions and frog eggs to add some fresh mechanics. 

Sadly and undeservingly, Looking Glass went bankrupt before they could finish the gold edition, but maybe this was for the better considering how little effort seems to have been invested in the Levels of the previous gold edition. Whatever the outcome would have been, it is unlikely that the world will ever know what the Necromancer’s castle, the college and the slum level would have looked like except for some crude drafts. After my review of Thief: Deadly Shadows, I will make a wish-list on what a legitimate Thief 4 (and not a s*dding reboot!) could look like. 

...and his equally crazy followers.

But regardless of what the future has in store for the series, Thief II: The Metal Age easily snatches the crown of stealth games, puts it smilingly on its head and rests among my most beloved games of all time.