Thief (2014)

Buen juego, no de mis favoritos. Habían unas cuantas cinemáticas que no tenían sentido alguno o cuando volvía al gameplay había sucedido algo que la cinemática no había mostrado entonces eso me confundía.

El juego en general está bien, no es que lo odie o lo ame, está en el medio tirando a más o menos. Los escenarios están bien hechos y me gusta que hayan objetos con los que interactuar para salir de una situación difícil o para distraer a los guardias. A pesar de ser un juego de mundo "semiabierto" los escenarios te generan libertad para moverte, salvo cuando estamos en alguna que otra misión en específico.

El final dejó muuucho que desear. Sinceramente cuando aparecieron los créditos dije "¿ya está?". No se sintió como el final que merecía, en plan, Erin cae al vacío, nos levantamos y ya está, se siente como si a Garrett le chupara un huevo y la mitad del otro haciendo una pose épica mirando a la ciudad destruida.

Luego de terminarlo no hay mucho para hacer más que repetir misiones, completarlas al 100% y explorar la ciudad.

★★★☆☆ 3/5

This title is a bold attempt to revive the beloved stealth franchise for a modern audience. The MC is called Garrett, a master thief navigating a dark, industrial city rife with corruption, social inequality, and mysterious supernatural forces. The game leans heavily into stealth mechanics, encouraging careful planning, patience, and creative use of gadgets like water arrows, rope arrows, and the trusty blackjack to incapacitate foes without raising alarms. Shadows and light play a critical role, making the environment itself a key part of gameplay strategy.

Visually, Thief delivers a moody, immersive world. The city is filled with narrow alleys, towering rooftops, and richly detailed interiors, all bathed in an atmospheric mix of torchlight and fog. Sound design further enhances the tension, with creaking floors, distant guards, and ambient noises creating a constant sense of unease. However, while the setting is impressive, the story falls short compared to earlier entries. Garrett’s motivations are often underdeveloped, and the narrative, though engaging at times, struggles to maintain momentum across missions.

As for the gameplay, the focus on stealth is both a strength and a weakness. Many missions reward careful, methodical play, but some sections feel repetitive, and enemy AI can be inconsistent, sometimes clever and unpredictable, other times easily exploitable. Combat is intentionally weak to reinforce stealth, but this can frustrate people who prefer a more balanced approach.

This game succeeds in creating a tense, atmospheric stealth experience, but it cannot honor the spirit of the original series. It shines in its environmental design and stealth mechanics, but a thin story and occasional gameplay inconsistencies prevent it from fully reaching its potential. This is not a very good stealth game, and a very very bad Thief title, I'm saying this as a fan of stealth games in general, and not as a Thief fan, because despite all the criticism, I've never played a Thief game before.

This was my first Thief game, and I knew this was not a good one, though I decided to play it to see for myself. And all people say is true, this is a very bad stealth title, as already said, and it made me want to play the other Thief games, though not because this one is good, but because I keep hearing good things about them so I got very curious. I recommend this one is skipped and that people interested in the series buy and play the re-releases for the modern platforms, and stay away from this one.

Thief somehow went under my radar all these years even though I love stealth games! Enjoying it so far, but the audio is all over the place. Probably the first AAA game where I've really noticed how messed up the audio is. In one scene, a friend falls from a significant height after you try and catch her, but there's no frantic yelling or any kind of audio from the player as he watches her fall. I think she gives a slight "ah" which made me laugh more than anything. I snuck along a rooftop later on and suddenly heard "those damn rats" right in my ear as if a guard was breathing down my neck. At other times the sound is fantastic, especially the ambience with water hitting roof tiles and then running down gutters and dripping onto paved slabs.

The visuals and atmosphere are really nice especially considering the age of the game. I like the dark and grungy environments which are beautifully illuminated by lightning, moonlight, and candle flame. Being able to open almost any cabinet and storage container to look for items to steal is neat too and satisfies the inner simulation game lover within me! Combat feels very dull though and with the parkour elements being so controlled I'm not sure how much enjoyment I'm going to get out of it compared to a game like Dishonoured.

I enjoyed this game, but there's a lot of things missing.

Good things:

• Thief mechanics. I really enjoyed how drawers are open, how the jewellery is picked up and how the thief moves for being a first-person game. Visually I found it engaging.
• Atmosphere is good. The darkness of the scenarios, the torches lights, the permanent night. The ladders, secret compartments that can be opened later on in the game when you acquire certain skills, etc.

Bad things:

• The story is a textbook "WTF is happening here". I've finished the game and still don't know what was going on. And I don't consider myself a prickly person regarding character development, etc. but here you won't find anything.
• The fight mechanics. I honestly don't know why you can even fight. It's not the purpose of the game, the purpose is stealth. And somehow you can fight guards with a... baton?
• AI: You can literally run away when caught.

IMHO if you buy this game in offer/second hand for a couple of euros might be ok for the experience. Full price is out of the question.

Well I gave it my best shot. Despite hearing bad things about this game, I am a huge fan of the Looking Glass originals and I really wanted to love this. Even if the game mechanics were bad I was still excited to immerse myself back in the world of the original Thief games. I am so deeply disappointed. After playing for around 6 frustrating hours I have finally rage-quit and I can't do it any more. I got it for a bargain on a steam sale, around $2 but I feel like even that is asking way too much for this abomination.

There are so many things wrong with this game I don't even know where to begin. The entire game and every part of it is broken but I'll try to address some of the more irritating/awful elements.

Firstly, the game is literally broken and filled with bugs, mostly related to the sound engine. Disappointing for a AAA game. Often I'll be standing directly in front of a talking NPC and I can't hear their voice. Some sounds are missing. Sometimes I'll hear something extremely loud, like a deafening snoring sound of a guard who's asleep 300 meters away. Other times the sound engine just breaks and the game goes silent.

One of the best things about the original Thief was the sound engine. Sound was a central part of the experience: you listen carefully for guards, your own footsteps, doors, etc. and you act accordingly. This game, even though it was made 15 years after, has a worse sound engine, it's just broken and the actual sounds and the 3D effect don't really work; sound isn't an element of the gameplay at all. Furthermore the player is given all these ridiculous super powers. He can see through walls, see in the dark; every lever, button, loot, etc. is highlighted in blue (with x-ray vision) by pressing a key.

The game mechanics are also broken, although this is a design feature. The original Thief games were brilliant because it was so open. Not open world, but each level/mission was a gigantic open area, literally huge. You could explore the entire region, scouring it for loot, alternate passages, secret rooms, etc. In this game you spend a third of your time in loading screens. The entire game is pretty much a linear hallway of small poorly-designed levels, connected by long loading screens.

Another third of the game is QTEs. I kept thinking: am I playing a Thief game or is this Cookie Clicker? Any time you want to do something, even simple things like pulling a lever or opening a window you have to go through these repetitive offensive QTE events. Sickening.

In the original Thief you could shoot a rope arrow into most surfaces and scale up on to roofs, ledges, over walls or scale any object in the level. In this game that feature has been almost entirely removed: Garret CAN'T EVEN JUMP! And the levels are filled with invisible walls at every turn. There will be a ledge only a meter away, a waist-high fence, or a crate or a nearby rooftop; no you can't access these areas, invisible walls. He's an expert Thief but he can't jump over a couple small crates?

The control of Garret is also extremely slow and frustrating. Every time you want him to do something (like pick a lock, pick up some loot, open a door) there's a huge delay and the (for example) opening a door animation is really slow and drawn-out. You're supposed to be a lithe Thief, fast and agile; instead I feel like I'm controlling a tank or perhaps grandma with the wheelie walker. Everything is slow and he can't even jump over a low railing. Absolutely infuriating.

All of this I could forgive, I could ignore it if the game had a good story, setting or atmosphere. But they didn't even get that right. The original games had such a strange mysterious setting, like a parallel universe steampunk Medieval/Victorian England. There were strange cults, seedy characters and then the supernatural element: ghosts, zombies and burricks. For this game the feeling just isn't there. It's like they've copy-pasted Assassin's Creed, there's no individuality or style. The whole game just feels like a bad "Medieval Britain" Unity asset. The narrative is boring, predictable and uninteresting with the most offensive and contrived romance sub-plot I've ever witnessed. Garret, instead of looking like a cool mysterious figure looks like a goofy 40 year old weeaboo in cosplay. He's no longer cool or mysterious; his dialogue and voice acting paints him as this stereotypical "stoic tough-guy." Of course they removed all the interesting parts of the universe: the steampunk, paranormal, skeletons, ghosts, magic, the cults, the Hammerites, the Keepers, etc. That's all gone, there's no atmosphere, or mystery, it's just ugly and uninteresting, a cookie cutter medieval world filled with all the tropes you might expect. I don't know how they made such a mess of this, were they even trying? Are the developers trolling me?

There was a great opportunity here to reboot this series but they dun goofed. Big time. It actually makes me sad; they should have packaged this title under a different brand because it's an insult to the original series. I'm deleting it off my hard drive; I would give it zero stars if that option existed.