Thief

Thief is single biggest disappointment I've ever had from a video game, and yes that includes poor launch of Diablo 3, my most anticipated game, that was infested with poor loot, bad design choices and real money auction house. The difference is, Diablo 3 showed promise and had nothing that couldn't be fixed with couple of updates or an expansion. Unfortunately, this train wreck is beyond repair. As a person who have played and enjoyed games made by Looking Glass Studios and their successor Ion Storm, such as Thief trilogy, System Shock, Ultima Underworld and many others, I was really looking forward to this new entry for the greatest Stealth franchise of all time. So, this review is coming from someone who've played the entire Thief trilogy over and over again. So, I am not a completely new comer to the franchise and well aware of everything related to the Thief franchise.

Story (No Spoilers for new Thief. Minor Spoilers for old Ones)

Thief 2014 starts several years after the events of Deadly Shadows, the last game that came out before this one. At the end of Deadly Shadows (aka Thief 3), Garrett stops a girl from pick pocketing him, just like how he was stopped by a Keeper, when he was a kid. The only difference now was that, Garrett himself had become a Keeper at the end of game. It was a perfect end to the trilogy.

The problem with Thief 2014 is that it doesn't even know what it wants to be. If it is reboot then why it takes place after the events of Deadly Shadows instead of telling a whole new story, and if it is a sequel then why it never mentions events that happened during original Thief trilogy, and why it changes even backstory of Garrett and completely removes factions that were part of Thief's lore?

Anyways,,, the girl that Garrett stops at the end of Deadly Shadows is now an apprentice of Garrett, who acts like a whiny kid during early moments of the game and does everything completely different than what she is told. Both Garrett and this girl named Erin come across a cult performing a ritual by placing this blue rock thingy in the middle of circle and Erin falls on top of it that sets the game's story in motion.

Before falling Garrett grabs her hand and she asks him to give her the claw she built to climb walls. With his other hand Garrett tries to grab her claw but she falls from the ceiling before he could do that. Now the thing is, why she wants the claw, instead of giving her second hand to Garrett, so he can pull her up. There is not even a wall around her, where she was planning to use the claw to save her. The point is that, this scene perfectly sums up the writing quality of the entire game. It's dumb, cliched and stupid. Everything feels forced with no natural connection.

The game also sees the return of Baso from first games, and he was never an important character in Thief games. He was just a buddy of Garrett who appears for few minutes in original games. His getup and character was also completely different than what is shown in the new game. Again, as I mentioned above that the game doesn't even know, whether it's a sequel or a reboot. If they decided to include Baso in the game then they should've stuck with the original source material or don't use him at all.

But the much bigger problem is the Garrett himself. Once a charismatic Thief from the original trilogy. Garrett was never a guy who wanted to get involved in complicated situations. His character was a lot more practical than most other games out there and extremely well written. For example he freed Baso from the prison in Thief: The Dark Project, not because he was good at it or because he was a hero but because he liked Baso's sister and wanted to free his friend and impress his sister in the process.

He fought the Mechanists in second game, not because he was a hero and the world was revolving around him but because he was one of the victims of Sheriff Truart, who was in bed with the Mechanists. Garrett had to fight against them because he wanted to survive. He had to shake hands with his enemies because without their help, he was done. The point is, his character was a lot more realistic and he wasn't a super hero, which created a special bond between the player and the character. He was a lot more relatable.

While the old Garrett was sarcastic, experienced and mature character, who just wanted to do his last big job and retire for good, the new Garrett gets himself in trouble because he thinks he is good at doing his job and ends up where he shouldn't have. Writing in early Thief games was so smart that just in few sentences, Garrett explained his entire character to the player, even though mostly he remained silent. But in this game, just like most other mainstream AAA games the writing and gameplay is targeted for dumb audiences and despite fully performance captured cutscenes, the game fails to give us a single likable character, and unfortunately that also includes Garrett himself.

Now what about the bad guy??? The main antagonist with childish name "Thadeus Harlan- The Thief Taker General" is one of the most cliched and poorly written villains I've ever seen. I mean we've seen this generic evil man with big moustache in hundreds of movies and games already. We don't need another one of these villains who desperately tries to be Bill- The Butcher from Gangs of New York movie.

This villain's character, and the way he screams "I'll find you Garrett" or "I'll get you next time Garrett" every time when Garrett is hiding in shadows or escapes respectively, clearly shows how terrible the writing in this game is and how ahead of its time Thief trilogy really was. In Thief: The Dark Project, the main villain was the nature. In Thief 2: The Metal Age, the main villain was the science. In Thief: Deadly Shadows, the main villain was the miss use of Knowledge. These games had great stories and philosophical writing that made the threat feel so real. These game didn't rip off villain from other entertainment products.

Another thing that made Thief so great was its lore. You had Hammerites, Pagans, Keepers and the Mechanists. These factions and followers of different believe systems were all against one another. The way Thief games were written made you believe that you are part of this world and made everything feel real. It never felt that the game or the story is revolving around the main character only. Nothing felt fake or something that was made just to throw at the player. The entire world felt alive, that moved along with the main character. Things that weren't even related to you directly, happened during the story and sometimes (not all the time) they affected Garrett indirectly as well.

Now these things can range from fight between two religious fanatics to dawn of a new era. These things, the factions, the world and conversation between different people (in the form of letters or direct contact) made Thief's world extremely real and immersed players like never before. Unfortunately, all of these qualities are gone in new Thief, that doesn't even have these factions, their background stories or a rich lore, despite it being a game that takes place after Deadly Shadows. Thief 2014 is just another cliched, dumb and poorly written video game that takes itself too seriously despite being dumb as hell. Ending is also pretty poor and makes it a bad standalone story.

Design

Thief 2014 is a First Person Sneaker but it's worse compared to the previous games in the franchise. The reason why it's inferior to previous games in the franchise is because of its dumbed down gameplay, that I will discuss later, and lack of immersion. The reason why Thief was praised along with other games from Looking Glass Studios was due to it being immersive and believable.

The game never bombarded the player with unnecessary UI, mission prompts, key layouts, radar map or tutorials. Here in this game every time you get close to an object, it says "Press E to do cool stuff". We don't need these prompts because they break the immersion and make everything look fake. Another thing that makes the game world look fake are the disco soundtracks in the background that you normally hear during fight scenes in Action movies or games.

The funny thing is that, original sound designer of first two Thief games, Erin Brosius in behind the scenes video of Thief 2 said that they don't want to change the nature of sound in Thief 2 because they want the game to be immersive and they "don't want to play disco soundtracks in the background", but Thief 2014 goes in opposite direction and does exactly what original team decided not to do.

These soundtracks make the world feel fake and gamey, instead of making it real. Instead of composing these soundtracks, they should've improved ambient sounds and overall sound quality, which brings me to my next point. Sound in this game is glitchy as hell. Sometimes when you are looking through a hole to hear conversation between others, you can't even listen properly and sometimes you hear people talking from other side of the wall perfectly as if they were standing right next to you.

Some sound effects in the game are completely missing. For example, I never heard the sound effect of dropping a body that I picked up few moments ago. Sound effects were highlight of first three games. While MGS had radar map that showed location of enemies, Hitman showed a detailed map with your targets, Thief used sound technology to tell players where your enemies are.

You had to sit right next to the door to hear what people are saying on other side or to hear footsteps carefully around you. This not only made the game's sound technology to standout from rest of the crowd but also made the game world feel more real because player was totally into it. Another milestone achieved by Thief's sound engine were different sounds created by different surfaces.

Walking on carpet produced next to no sound and encouraged players to move quickly, walking on concrete produced a bit more sound that forced you to move slowly instead of running, on other hand marble floor produced a lot of sound and discouraged players from walking on it and forced them to use a different path or use Moss Arrows to create a surface, so player can walk on it without worrying about the sound. So, it's a shame that something that was highlight of the franchise is either completely removed from new Thief or not properly implemented.

Another thing that Thief 2014 did poorly was the implementation of Radar Map. In original Thief games, the Map was actual object that existed in that world. During the opening mission briefing, Garrett explains how he acquired that map. Sometimes it is extremely well detailed map that is given by Garrett's contact inside the building that he is about to rob, sometimes he finds it inside some old trunk, sometimes the map that he gets is incomplete, sometimes he finds himself in an unknown location with no map at all and so on.

The maps also didn't show you the location of your objective, which forced players to explore the environments, find secrets, pick up gold and complete their missions by using their head. And the environments that you explored were also pretty big with a lot of rooms and secrets. Thief 2014, once again screws things up by telling you exactly where you have to go. All you need to do is to sleep walk till you reach your objective. Not to mention, the levels themselves are poorly designed and linear as hell. Now, I know that different UI features can be turned off from the game's menu but that is just an after thought.

The game was built from ground up to use these features and turning these features off will not bring back actual object that map was in original games. It will also not make levels bigger and non linear. It will also not solve other issues with the game. These UI options are just an after thought gimmicks that are made available to make everyone happy but in the end, it fails poorly.

And for the love of God, stop using detective vision because it makes no sense at all. Detective vision discourages players from taking their time, paying attention, observing the situation and different objects. It just gives you a cheap solution that takes away the challenge from the game. Another poor modern design choice that is in Thief 2014 are the scripted events. The game takes control away from you over and over again.

The game is full of nonsensical and forced set pieces where you are either not in control of Garrett or move him for 1 second in a straight line to trigger another set piece. These dumb set pieces break the immersion over and over again, and make the game look something that was targeted for 12 year old kids. It seems like as if the developers included these things on purpose to prevent kids from sleeping while playing the video game because God forbid if you have to play the video game instead of watching it from time to time. Playing the game is so outdated after all (Sarcasm).

Another design flaw in Thief is cinematic approach to this type of game. Now I don't mind cutscenes before and after missions, just like original games, but I don't like the idea of the game taking control away from me during the gameplay itself. So, apart from set pieces, the game also takes control away from you every time when you blackjack an enemy. Let us hit the enemy just like old games. There is no reason for the game to cut to third person, so they can show us some cool killing/disarming animation. The game also switches to third person when you climb walls. In both of these cases, the game takes you out of experience and never takes full advantage of first person perspective.

AI in the game is also pretty dumb. It's pretty glitchy and sometimes pretty bad. It's possible that the guards will totally ignore you even if you are sitting in front of them in the light and it's also possible for them to charge at you even if you are sitting in a dark corner several meters away. Thief 2014 also features a hub area but it feels pretty dead. Opening sequences show us a city full of busy life and a lot of guards patrolling the area but that's exactly what's wrong with so many modern AAA games. It's just window dressing and all of those animations are just scripted events that happen exactly the same way every time you pass that area. So, you are looking at fake scenery instead of actual technology that is making those guards patrol the area like they do in opening scenes. So, when you play the game further, bad AI engine is exposed and you realize that the opening sequences were nothing more than window dressing and actual AI is pretty bad.

Thief this time also includes final boss battle. Yes, you read that right. Final battle plays like mediocre battles from Deus Ex: Human Revolution and it is yet another bad design choice from the developers. Boss battle in a stealth game is not a good idea, especially in a franchise where you could complete the entire game without disturbing a single object. It seems like Square Enix called Eidos Montreal and asked them to make worst game possible by taking everything wrong in modern game design and putting them in Thief 2014.

One last thing that I want to mention is the placement of different objects. In Thief trilogy you never experience an object that is out of place. For example, when you look at your map, you always try to check bedrooms, offices and other similar rooms carefully and mostly ignore kitchens, servant rooms etc because you know that the franchise aims for realism and most of the gold will be hidden in rooms mentioned earlier. Yes it is possible that someone is stealing gold from the nobles and hiding it in a trunk inside a servant room, and it's possible that you'll come across a diary where a servant has written about his guilt because he stole something from the nobles. Now suddenly it makes sense why the gold was hidden in servant's room. Do you understand where I'm going with this? Thief 2014 just like other games hides different objects beneath stairs or some out of place location. It feels gamey and never feels real.

Gameplay

Thief is game where you stay away from the light and hide in darkness. Your goal is to steal from others, which rewards you credits, used for purchasing different items from the city. A lot of old gadgets are back but some didn't make it. Unfortunately some of those items that did come back are also dumbed down.

Rope arrow is good example of it. Instead of allowing you to attach the rope arrow to any wooden surface and allowing it to be used in creative ways, the game restricts players from using it properly. You can only fire rope arrow where the game tells you to, and it acts more like stairs, used to climb, to enter the next area, instead of using it as a tool to access hidden locations or finding short cuts.

Thief 2014 also gives Garrett a new gameplay feature called "Swoop". It is a dash that allows you to move quickly for a short distance. Now it may look cool and all but it takes away the tension of being exposed in the light. You can easily avoid enemies and the light by using Swoop ability instead of using a different path or other tools creatively (Moss arrow from original games to avoid marble or flash bomb to blind enemies for few seconds, using invisibility potion to disappear for few seconds etc).

The another poor addition to the Thief franchise is detective vision that serves everything on a platter and doesn't encourage players to pay attention. The poor additions like Swoop and Detective Vision take away the tension and drama, the pillars of any stealth game (if not every game).

One of the features that the game lacks is proper use of sound, that I've covered in detailed in design section above. Another important feature that the game lacks is the jump ability. Yup,,, you can't jump in this stealth game. There are artificial boundaries everywhere and there is no way to avoid them. Every other Thief game allowed players to jump and climb any reachable object that they wanted to and find their own way to the objective.

Players could combine different tools and abilities like rope arrow, jump, slow fall potion and so on in creative ways to complete tasks the way they wanted but here you can only climb where devs allow you to climb and sometimes you have to find another way because the path is blocked by a small chair that Garrett "The Master Thief" can't climb. Hell, you can't even pick up objects and place them somewhere else to clear your path. This feature was available in Thief: The Dark Project, nearly FREAKING 18 YEARS AGO (at the time of writing).

Thief 2014 also features traps that are triggered when you step on them. So, you can be killed by an arrow because you placed your feet on a switch hidden within the floor for example. Unfortunately, this feature is also implemented poorly because there is no jump ability. Without jump ability, you can't jump over and avoid these traps, instead you have to find a box somewhere and cut the wires to disarm the trap.

Thief features a bow with different kind arrows, Lock picks are also back to unlock different objects, Blackjack to disarm enemies, Claw for climbing different obstacles and so on. Playing with these tools can be fun but as soon as you experience some fun, the game bombards you with number of other bad design choices that take you out of the experience.

Presentation

Graphically, Thief looks great and even though art style is different from previous games in the franchise, it still looks great. The problem here is the character model of Garrett. He looks awkward and way different than how he looked before.

The game is not perfectly polished and there are a lot of presentation problems in the game. These problems are sound glitches, graphical bugs and poorly coded AI. Another problem that Thief 2014 have is the voice of Garrett. The franchise no longer uses voice of Stephen Russell, the original voice of Garrett. Instead a new guy was brought on board that brings me to my next point.

Square Enix said that they didn't want Stephen Russell in the game because he was too old now and their target was to not only record the voice for Garrett but also record animations at the same time through full performance capture. And it's funny because not only the voice acting of new actor is pretty bad but facial expressions of Garrett are also pretty stiff. So, in the end full performance capture wasn't utilized properly because facial expressions are pretty bad and voice acting is mostly average too.

Soundtracks in the game are pretty distracting and doesn't match the look and feel of the game. It would've been better to focus more on ambient sounds and audio technology because those could've made the game more immersive and feature rich. So, at the end of the day, Thief looks great but also lacks polish, different features and contains average voice acting.

Verdict

Thief is not a good game and a slap in the face of Thief franchise and its audience. Even if you judge it from the perspective of someone who've never played the originals, it's still a mediocre game at best, and should be avoided. Do yourself a favor and pick up original Thief trilogy (Thief: Gold, Thief 2: The Metal Age and Thief: Deadly Shadows) and stay away from this train wreck, that takes everything wrong with modern games and puts them into one game.

Pros:

• Sometimes when works well, it makes you feel like a Thief
• Encourages its (flawed) Stealth gameplay
• Good graphics

Cons:

• Poor AI
• Half baked Sound Technology
• Poor writing and dumb plot
• Uninteresting characters and lack of good lore
• No immersion
• Hand holding and over use of UI
• Linear levels
• Scripted events and Detective vision
• Overall glitchy and Unpolished product
• Poorly placed items that make everything look fake
• Stiff facial animations
• Mediocre voice acting and lack of Garrett's original Voice Actor, Stephen Russell
• Poor ending

Score

4/10