I bet you wanted to be a superhero when you were a kid, huh? Every boy wants to be Superman or Batman, every girl wants to be Wonderwoman or one of the X-Men, if she happens to be into comics and games rather than dolls. The idea of being Batman struck my fancy, but that all changed back when I saw a movie called Entrapment. Ever since then, my one secret wish was to be a professional thief. Living in the shadows, taking things to sell on the black market or as part of a contract. I still wish that to this day.
That’s why when games like Thief come along, I get excited. The odds of my getting to be a professional in real life are extremely slim. So I have to make up for it by playing games. I played the original Thief some time ago and loved it, so I had high hopes that this game would live up to its namesake.
Thief is a first-person game, where you play a sticky-fingered bandit named Garrett who lives to steal. And he’ll steal pretty much anything. You spend the first couple minutes of the game jacking combs and scissors from a sleeping man’s room. The focus of this game is to be as quiet and unnoticed as possible while taking anything and everything you can. And it would seem that Garrett also has a knack for parkour, as he jumps and slides feet forward over obstacles as he runs. It seems a little out of place for the time period, but this is fantasy after all.
The city that you call home is overcome with a disease known as “The Gloom”, and in its old school European-style setting, it’s obviously a play on the times when the Black Death ran rampant in the streets of Europe. Except that everyone in this game has an American accent, so any hint of historical accuracy feels wasted here.
When it comes to narrative, this game has a Lovecraft feel to it. It’s a dark and dreary world that is ruined if anyone dares speak. The majority of monologue is dry and flat, and mostly wasted since the character development and plot are almost nonexistent. When Garrett speaks it’s like listening to the wise older man in a B movie with terrible writing. There is an option to turn off Garrett’s speech, and I highly recommend doing this if you want a better experience. Otherwise the guy babbles on nonstop, and none of it is worth hearing.
You expect the game’s storyline to ramp up as you go along, but alas, that never happens. You start the game off buy stealing stuff, and that’s all the game is about. There is fun to be had in swiping things off people’s belts and out of their houses whilst they slumber, but it’s very repetitive in Thief. It lives up to the title, and nothing more.
The graphics are another matter. You notice quickly that the fog of the city is incredibly realistic. The lighting system in the game plays a direct part in gameplay. Getting caught in the light is a big no-no for Garrett, and he does a fantastic job of finding ways to avoid light from torches and lamps. Thief feels like a historical/fantasy retelling of Metal Gear, except that you do nothing good for the world and only want to steal stuff. But I’m okay with that.
When it comes to gameplay, Eidos took liberties with the controls like most game makers do. Rather than being able to jump in place, you can only jump while running. The world is set up to comply with Garrett’s style of moving from place to place, which usually consists of short running bursts, then jumping over stuff and climbing up onto ledges. Watch any advanced parkour video online and you’ll see what I mean.
Like I said before, the point of the game is to steal stuff. Garrett doesn’t like to kill anyone if he can avoid it, so the majority of arrows that you come across for your bow are made to douse torches (like the water arrows), or to get to higher places (like a rope arrow). I think they could have done a much better job of naming these things.
You have to be very aware of your surroundings in this game, making sure you close doors and drawers, that you’re very quiet when around animals, and that you find a way to get to the next area without being seen. Torches have to be extinguished, candles should be doused, and bodies should be hidden if you end up having to kill someone. And it’s going to happen. The world is crawling with an obscene amount of law enforcement. There are very few places in the streets where a guard isn’t standing around doing nothing. And honestly, the process of getting past them is the only thinking you’ll have to do in Thief.
As you progress through the game, the things you steal will earn you gold, and thus enable you to buy upgrades for Garrett. You can upgrade almost every facet of his skills, including his Focus skill, which reminds me of Corvo’s ability to see through walls to spot enemies in Dishonored. There are a few other comparisons I could make between the two games, but I’ll stop at that one. Focus also helps Garrett to pick locks and solve other small puzzles. Though they’re not really that hard to begin with.
Thief is a game of stealth and thievery, and not much else. At all. The backstory is bland, the monologue is dry, and there really is no challenge once you figure out how to avoid being seen. It’s fun while it lasts, if playing sneaking around is your thing, but I can’t see myself playing this game again. There is simply nothing to bring me back.