Thief: The Dark Project (1998)

Thief the dark project is a 1998 stealth game.Looking Glass Studios, the producer of the game, and Eidos Interactive, the distributor of the game, have done a great job.The story of the game is as follows.The prologue of the game describes the protagonist Garrett, his youth as a homeless orphan on the streets of the city. He is caught trying to pickpocket a suspicious man who reveals himself to be a goalkeeper.Impressed by Garrett's ability to see him, he offers him a chance to join his order.Garrett agrees,but later leaves the order to pursue a life of theft.Years later, Garrett is working as a thief and is under pressure to join a criminal gang.As punishment for not paying a protection fee, he is targeted for assassination by crime lord Ramirez.Garrett escapes the assassins and robs Ramirez's mansion in retaliation.Following this, He was approached by a woman named Viktoria, a representative of an unnamed client who had been affected by Garrett's theft from Ramirez. He is contracted to steal a sword from Konstantin, an eccentric nobleman who recently arrived in the city.[After Garrett completes the mission, Viktoria takes him to Konstantin,explaining that she hired Garrett to steal his own sword as a test. Constantine offers her a fortune to steal the eye—a jewel kept in a sealed and deserted Hammerite cathedral. To get to the cathedral, Garrett goes through the Old Quarter, a haunted, abandoned area of the city.After an opening in the cathedral, the eye tells Garrett about a nearby keeper's bunker where he can learn how to open the cathedral.there, Garrett discovers that the cathedral has been sealed to prevent the destruction of the city by tricksters. The four learns that you need to remove the seal talisman:Both are hidden in the ancient ruins beneath the city, and the two inside a Hammerite temple (Thief gold amulet is received from the caverns below has a bunch of mages and the other after he was found in an opera house, and the other two as in the original game and the Hammerite temple in the Lost City).Garrett recovers the talismans and returns to the cathedral.After opening the cathedral,he learns that its inhabitants were killed and made immortal by the eye.He returns the eye to Konstantin, who in turn reveals himself as a cheater.Victoria, he says the eye requires a flesh eye to function; he ties Garrett up with vines and removes his right eye.Trickster places him on the stone, and the two disappear through a portal.Garrett, left for dead, was found by two keepers and released.While escaping the Trickster mansion, he learns that Trickster is planning to use the eye to return the world to a savage state. After Garrett escapes the mansion,he seeks help from the hammer order.however, he finds that the Trickster has attacked the Hammerite temple.in a bunker under the temple, he finds hammerite survivors who provide him with a copy of the Booby-trapped eye.Garrett lands in Trickster's domain and finds Trickster performing a ritual with an Eye to completing his plan. Garrett secretly replaces the eye with his copy, which kills the Trickster.later, Garrett received a mechanical replacement for his missing eye. On the streets of the city, a watchman approaches Garrett and claims that he will soon need the help of Watchmen.Garrett rejects her,and as he walks away, the keeper warns of the encroaching "metal age".The gameplay is as follows.in this game consisting of 12 chapters, you are trying to complete tasks.The music of the game is beautiful.The graphics of the game are not bad.My rating for the game: 10/10 (y) Good games to everyone 🙂

Intro

Thief was one of the earliest first-person stealth games. You sneak around maze-like maps trying to find the objective with little to go on. Enemies can be fought but it is better to knock them out from behind. You also have a variety of arrows that can quench torches, create noise, subdue noise, etc.

This game came out two weeks after Half-Life, and 1-2 years after games like Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood, Strife and Unreal.

The Good

Thief really just has one thing going for it: The stealth aspect. Brightness and sound are both used to measure how well you're hidden, and you can use arrows to help you get past guards. This system holds up reasonably well, although sometimes an enemy can't even detect you while you're pummelling them. Still, the atmosphere is great. You really feel like a thief.

I also thought it was clever that you have to "bless" your water arrows to kill zombies. Although i'm not sure why the blessing only lasts 30 seconds.

This game also ran in Windows 10 without any problems. TFix improves the game a bit and Enhancement Pack 2 makes everything but the enemies look passable (for a 90s game).

The Bad

The biggest problem is finding your way around the map. There is no interactive map. At best you get a vague drawing. This would be bad by itself, but it's even worse in a stealth game filled with guards who can easily kill you. During the second level (prison) you are told to find the evidence locker, but i don't think they even hint at where it's at because every map is a maze.

Keys are poorly implemented as well. You have to cycle through the clunky items menu, select the key and then use it on the door or the keyhole. The game gives you no indication what key to use or if you can even open the door. At some point i wanted to get into the guard station but it turns out you can only open it with a key from the inside. Huh?

There are a bunch of smaller flaws as well. There is little enemy variation. It's hard to tell which way guards are facing because their character models are bad. Melee combat sucks. You can only get ammo between missions. If you don't find valuable objects you won't be able to buy as much which can make the game too hard over time. Cameras are too hard to see.

Conclusion

Thief is an interesting because of its place in the history of game development. It obviously inspired games like Deus Ex. But it has aged poorly and is probably too hard to stomach for a 2020 audience.

I just finished Thief Gold for the first time. It was both fun and kind of a slog. I think that if I had more patience, more emotional investment in respecting the AI or the boundaries of the game that it would have been consistently thrilling, and tense. But because the levels are often so huge, winding, because the game likes to slide in with a tricky and unexpected prerequisite to completing certain objectives along the mission path, I often bunny-hopped around the stupidest enemies in the most free zones. When i did respect the game, hiding and sneaking felt as good as the greatest stealth thrills I've experienced in any game. This definitely holds up, and it is so contemporary in a lot of ways, but it's very long and very slow. I can still recommend it based on just that, however.

I have always heard fans of this series say that it is one of the most engaging and impressive games ever made, and even though I didn't have the patience to always hang with Thief like I should have, I can admire some of its brilliance. As if Looking Glass' precedence weren't enough to confirm this thing as brilliant on first glance... If only it were 1998 and I was a teenager with no other games to play... Maybe I'd have taken my time.

Excited to play Thief 2. I hear that some changes have made that game more difficult to disrespect like I did the first game, and I will have new tools and new challenges to consider in levels that are a little better designed. I'm not sure when I will get to it, though. Playing this sparked an interest in playing Dishonored 2 and Arx Fatalis.