Thief
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Thief is a classic stealth dark low-fantasy game series where you play as Garrett, a thief, who gets entangled in supernatural goings-ons, including an Evil Nature God and his Beastman and Druid army, a Steampunk version of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and fanatics obsessed with warhammers.. It also has a fanmade tabletop setting for the original setting, from before the series was given a shitty reboot set in a Victorian Era instead of Art-Deco Steampunk Medieval.
Funnily enough, Garret acts like a Ranald cultist, complete with the no kill-no evidence rule.
Characters
- Garret Master thief, snarky guy who does thievery to pay his rent, overall a pretty relatable character since he was made during a time of badass hero’s. Has a no kill policy, but it’s less about honor and more about leaving no evidence.
- Thi4f Garret A kleptomaniac who does thievery because it’s the only thing he’s good at. (Heavily implied to be a reincarnation of Garret, as the original died hundreds of years ago)
- Karras Narcissistic leader of the mechanists with a nasally voice, so narcissistic that he has all his robots look like him and constantly spout how cool he is.
- The Master Builder Chill dude and god figure of the Hammers (A cult formed around building)
- The Trickster AKA the woodsie lord, god of the pagan peoples, causes zombie outbreaks and general disarray, he almost gets his plan to destroy the city to work but Garret used a Builder rigged bomb to kill him.
- Viktoria A wood nymph and reluctant ally of Garret (understandable because he kills her boss and she took his eye) who teams up with him to stop Karras secret master plan.
Games
Thief: The Dark Project
The original, packed with horror elements and some forced combat sections since the devs didn’t expect a stealth game to work (Thief is the grandpappy to all stealth games so they never really expected it’s success)
Originally a sword and sorcery RPG inspired by Doom and Quake called Dark Camelot it eventually grew into a stealth game when the devs realized that their engine handled stealth better than actual combat.
Thief 2: The Metal Age
Now knowing that stealth DOES work, the devs went on to make a more burglary based game, Garret is back but instead of beating monkeys to death with a blackjack hes now stealing from the rich to get by, problem is the cities gone on an industrial revolution, medieval CCTV which only appeared once in the first game is now extremely common, alongside robots with double donk launchers and an actual submarine level.
Thief: Deadly Shadows
To make the game run and appeal to console players, it was watered down quite a bit, generally a good game it’s just low standards, glitchy and floaty for a Thief game. Despite its flaws, it holds the distinction of having one of the most famous and memorable levels not just in the Thief franchise, but in the entirety of video game history, that being the horrifyingly spooky Shalebridge Cradle, for context on how fucking spooky this level is, Thief 3 was consistently on lists with other horror games as scariest games of all time, solely because of this level.
Thief
The reboot, while the story was quite butchered, it was kind of a good game, not as a Thief game as it neutered the mechanics but as a Dishonored inspired game in an interesting setting (that was more interesting in the last games) Interestingly, it was supposed to be called Thief: Dagger of ways, where it would have taken place during modern day with Garret using silenced machine guns, which goes against Garrets entire philosophy of killing no one to leave no evidence behind. Instead, it takes place in a timeskip ahead a few hundred years, in a Victorian style period instead of a Medieval period. Karras' Art Deco steampunk technology must not have been rediscovered entirely, yet, although the current Baron is trying to create his own Steampunk bordering on Dieselpunk dystopia.
Interestingly, the Hammers and Pagans are gone and this is a new reincarnated version of Garret, hence why he acts extremely different.
Gloomwood
Whilst not made by the same folks as the original Thief games or the reboot, Gloomwood is a game marketing itself as the spiritual successor to the original Thief games, having the balls to have their website be called "Thief-with-Guns". It is developed by New Blood Interactive, the creators of Dusk, a game which successfully tried to recapture the essence of Boomer Shooters like Doom and Quake. The early access demo has released, and whilst more violence-oriented than Thief was, it has the textures, gameplay, and physics down pat. Also features the voice actress of Viktoria from the original two Thief games (and SHODAN from System Shock!) as the main villainess' voice actor.
What Makes It So Good
Thief aged so well because it’s just darn fun, it’s great to jump from a balcony onto some moss that you shot from an arrow so you can beat 2 cops unconscious, combine this with the fun setting (Bear pits anyone?) made an enjoyable experience.
Another thing Thief was known for was how you are just a Thief, a master thief but not a swordsman, you keep a sword but you're rarely going to use it, enemies can fuck your shit up if you engage them in regular combat (unless you do the double charged attack followed up by 2 quick swings, but it will just end up alerting nearby enemies) the game encourages you to not even fight at all, usually ghosting and with a quick blackjack to the head of anyone who happens to be too close for comfort. All that being said, you still have viable lethal fighting options, exploding fire arrows, landmines, shooting moss to choke them (only in Deadly Shadows) and the exploding suicide frog, for a while this was the only game where you could summon a suicide frog to explode in front of some poor sod. Well, before the Witch Doctor from Diablo 3.
Last of the reasons why Thief is such a well beloved classic is the sound, the sound design while a little old sounding is still really effective and can rival most modern games, combine this with enemies voice lines it lets you accurately pinpoint the locations of enemies.