Thief: Best and Worst Levels

[MilesBeyond]

Man I just cannot get enough of Thief right now so post your favourite and least favourite levels from the different games. Feel free to consider TDP and Thief Gold separately if you need. Also include fan missions because no matter how popular it is there's gonna be someone who hasn't played it yet.

Thief:

Best level: Song of the Caverns. This is a tough one. I feel like Thief 1 is the most consistent of the games (aside from T4 which is consistently awful), and I'm also very partial to Down in the Bonehoard, Assassins, and Escape. But looting the opera house has got to be my favourite part of this game by a hair.

Worst level: Cragscleft Prison. Was Thieves' Guild, but on my recent playthrough I found this level to be the least enjoyable. I loved the factory, but the prison part is tedious and repetitive, and the mines aren't terribly interesting. It also does the weird distinction where part of it is an undead level and part of it is a stealth level. Thieves' Guild is still close, though.

EDIT: Honourable mention goes to Return to the Cathedral. It's a weird level because I never like it while I'm actually playing it, but afterwards it always leaves me thinking "Holy crap that was amazing." I don't find it fun, but I do find it rewarding.

Thief 2:

Best level: First City Bank and Trust. This is a really tough one, as this game has so many great levels - and I'll confess that it's totally possible I only prefer this mission to Life of the Party because I was sick and arguing with my GF when I played the latter. But man, this level is so intense. A whole bunch of possible infiltration points, a million ways to get around the bank, randomized locations of robots and cameras to give replayability, just great stuff. IMHO the toughest level in TMA, but also the most rewarding.

Worst level: Kidnap. Again, really tough, because TMA also had quite a few weak ones. Definitely less consistent than TDP. But I ended up going with this one, which can be summed up with two words: Massive and empty. The level is long, boring, and pretty much skippable.

 

[Ivan]

one of my favorites is the one where you have to tail a guard (Thief 2, I believe)

 

[Carrion]

[Cragscleft Prison] also does the weird distinction where part of it is an undead level and part of it is a stealth level.

That's one of the reasons it's such a cool level. I think The Dark Project has got to have the best first five levels in any game ever, each having a completely different feel yet being great in its own way.

Thieves Guild is the worst mission in the series, Deadly Shadows included. It plays like a below-average fan mission, being long and repetitive and utterly dull, and they never should've included it in Thief Gold. Out of the original missions Escape! always feels like a chore, although it's rather short and deserves some credit because of how fucked-up it is (and because the cutscene right before it is so fucking cool).

From TMA it's harder to choose favorites, as everything from Framed to Life of the Party is so good. I guess the bank is the most memorable for me because the game keeps consistently raising the stakes up until that point, with the bank being a mid-game climax of sorts. On the other hand the last four levels are all quite weak, and fatigue always starts to kick in before you even reach Soulforge.

 

[octavius]

Most of Thief Gold's levels are masterpieces, with The Sword being the ultimate one, a few are are merely good, and Mage Towers is rather average.
Thief 2 is more varied in quality, The Bank (for unlinearity) and Life of the Party (for creativeness) being the masterpieces.
Thief Gold has many good user made levels, but only one masterpiece IMO (at least as of 2008 when I had played through "all" of them): Calendra's Cistern.

 

[tindrli]

for some reason "Lord Bafford's Manor" is the best for me..

 

[HoboForEternity]

The sword is a masterpiece. They should 3d-print the level and put them in a museum

 

[Kirkpatrick]

Something like this probably for me...

Brilliant:
Lord Bafford's Manor
Break from Cragscleft Prison
Down in the Bonehoard
The Sword
Return to the Cathedral

Excellent:
Assassins
The Haunted Cathedral
Song of the Caverns
The Lost City

Good:
The Mage Towers
Undercover
Escape!
Strange Bedfellows
Into the Maw of Chaos
Thieves' Guild

Brilliant:
Shipping... and Receiving
First City Bank and Trust
Life of the Party

Excellent:
Framed
Eavesdropping
Masks
Precious Cargo

Good:
Running Interference
Ambush
Blackmail
Trail of Blood
Kidnap
Casing the Joint
Sabotage at Soulforge
Trace the Courier

Meh:
Trace the Courier

And just being reminded of them, makes me wanna replay the games again. And even Trace the Courier wasn't that bad, had fun looking for pickpockets and loot. Upgraded.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Thief Gold has many good user made levels, but only one masterpiece IMO (at least as of 2008 when I had played through "all" of them): Calendra's Cistern.

Despite Calendra's Cistern getting a (mostly technical) "remastered" release in 2015, some strong contenders have been released for Thief Gold from after you left off.

You have a treat coming your way if you take another look. The show starts around 2012 and lasts until 2015.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Meh:
Trace the Courier

i actually like trace the courier. it was kinda a change of pace and really fresh

 

[Kirkpatrick]

Probably very silly question, but I forgot how to select to play the actual game, and not installed FM? Via FMSel 1.1.2?

EDIT: Thief 2 works by double clicking on Thief2.exe, and then FMsel starts, and I just press Skip FM button. Normal game starts. But not so with Thief Gold, game starts immediately, without FMsel, and it has a FM 'loaded' already.

FMSel works now for both, but seems I can't get rid of The Chalice of Souls FM. Appears to be 'perma-installed' so to say. Uninstalled it from FMSel, still loads when game starts, even removed the zip file, still the same. Guess clean re-install is next.

EDIT2: Yay, GarrettLoader helped. 'Installed' game there, and it works now. Probably the Chalice FM was installed via GL too, but I messed using FMSel later on?

 

[JarlFrank]

Thief Gold:

My favourite Thief Gold mission is a tie between the widely loved The Sword and The Bonehoard, which is one of the best 3D dungeon crawls ever designed.

The Sword is just amazing because it starts out mostly normal and slightly eccentric, but gets more and more fucked up the further you go inside. Strangely decorated rooms, traps everywhere, a huge indoor garden, and all around it are guards who walk around the place like there's nothing special about it (I really wonder how many of them quit their job after seeing some of the weirder rooms of the place they were hired to guard). And there's that maddeningly mysterious door down at the bottom of a staircase that is locked and you can't open it... until a much later mission. It's an amazing mission, especially on your first playthrough when you don't yet know what to expect.

The Bonehoard is a true masterpiece, too. Personally, I don't like the burrick caves at the beginning but they do add something to the level. You start out in a pretty cool but still mostlyy normal crypt, then come to a blocked passage, go through the burrick caves... and enter a truly monumental structure with lots of verticality and cool shit to discover. The golden bones, the fire arrow puzzle, the dead thief with his note you can find, there are so many details in there that make it a sheer joy to explore. And then you get to the horn of Quintus and OH GOD THAT MUSIC. The atmosphere is so excellent, it's amazing. Honestly one of my favourite dungeons ever, most RPGs don't manage to do them that well.

Least favourite missions have to be Escape and Strange Bedfellows.

I do get why the last missions are a little different and shit escalates at that point of the story, but still... for me, the levels start becoming less good with Escape. Escape is pretty messy, with rooms that look quite samey and way too many enemies. It does have a great moment at the end, though, when you finally go through that door that leads back into Constantine's mansion and you finally realize that this was the locked door in The Sword. Worth it for that moment. Other than that? The Sword did weird better, and The Maw did the pure Trickster-chaos better. It's just a mediocre mission in a great game, so eh.

Strange Bedfellows is probably my least favourite. You revisit the Hammerite church you've already been to in the interesting Undercover, but this time it's invaded by those Trickster creatures. Then you go down into a visually uninteresting cave system to find the surviving Hammerites and fight the Trickster together. It's... eh. I don't like that mission much. The cave system is visually uninteresting, the church itself has little to see compared to your first visit there, and if you knock out one of the bugbeasts you have to knock out ALL of them for some stupid reason (while you don't have to do anything if you leave them alone in the first place). Definitely my least favourite mission.

Now, a few comments on the commonly least and most liked missions: Thieves Guild and Return to the Cathedral.
I actually don't hate Thieves Guild as much as most others do. It's an okay mission. It's not great, and it gets tedious after a while, but it's not horrible. It's definitely below average, and when I read that it was designed by the same woman who designed The Sword I was kinda surprised because those two missions are so different in quality. But then, maybe that's how the mission is supposed to be. It's no surpise that a sewer section used by the thieves has a confusing layout - makes them harder to find for the guards, no? It's logical that they'd choose that place as their hideout. It's an okay mission that suffers from too much backtracking but doesn't deserve as much hate as it gets.

But Return to the Cathedral, a big fan favourite, is also a mission that suffers from excessive backtracking and having to do too many fetch quests. Yes, the mission is atmospheric, it is creepy if you aren't overy familiar with the engine and Hammer Haunts yet, it has good architecture... but it gets tedious about halfway through, when you have already explored most of the place, killed most of the haunts, and then... Brother Murus gives you yet another fetch quest. When you've basically explored the entire place already and are familiar with your surroundings, and either killed or learned the patrol routes of the haunts, so the terror of navigating an unfamiliar place filled with dangerous enemies is gone. The level would be vastly improved by cutting down on the fetch quests a little, but the way it is, for me the mission is only excellent at the beginning but becomes a tedious affair of backtracking during the later half.

Thief 2:

My favourites are First City Bank and Trust and Life of the Party.

The thing with Thief 2 is, I used to prefer it to Thief Gold, but nowadays it's the other way around. That's mostly because of the many fan missions I played, and a lot of these take the basic concepts of Thief 2's original missions and make them even better. There are so many excellent mansion and city missions that Thief 2's original missions pale in comparison. On the other hand, Thief Gold has so many unique and interesting missions that for most of them, you can't find a direct copy of them among the fan missions. There are countless mansion FMs, but only very very few that try to do something similar to The Sword. You can probably count the amount of missions that try to be large dungeon crawls like The Bonehoard on one hand. Thief Gold wins out in variety and uniqueness.

But Thief 2 also has some excellent missions and is, overall, more consistent in quality. There is less variety, but the missions are also less of a hit-or-miss affair than they are in Thief Gold (some people love the undead missions, some hate them; some love the later levels like Escape and Strange Bedfellows, some people [like myself] hate them). It also makes them stand out less, overall.

Still, my favourite missions of Thief 2 are FCBaT and LotP. The bank is a great mission because that's exactly what being a master thief is all about: breaking into a tightly secured bank vault. And the place is really done well. It's large, it has a lot of guards combined with mechanist security bots and mechanical eyes, and there are many different paths through the building. And as far as banks are concerned, there hasn't been a fan mission yet that beats this one in quality. This is one of the high points of the game because seriously, who doesn't wanna rob a bank?

Then, there's Life of the Party. This is the prototype of the popular "rooftop mission" that so many FM authors like to create, as well as the "city-to-location" mission. You start on a tower and have to jump and climb over the rooftops to reach the Mechanists' Angelwatch tower, which isn't small either, so you basically get a two-in-one mission. A large city section to traverse, with nice little details hidden off the main path, followed by a solid tower where you will encounter a nasty little surprise at the end of it. And then you have to get back to the start. It's just an excellently designed level, and it's no surprise that this one has been selected for the demo version of Thief 2, because this is, essentially, the quintessential Thief experience. A large level, cool stuff to discover, multiple paths, varied locales... Life of the Party has it all. It even has a necromancer's tower where you can accidentally summon zombies. And it has one of the funniest guard conversations in the entire series. Life of the Party set down a gold standard of level design, and this is the mission that directly inspired some of the absolutely best fan missions ever made. Skacky's excellent rooftop missions owe much to Life of the Party, for example. It's just fucking great.

As for least favourite missions... well, I gotta pick Sabotage at Soulforge for that one. It is large, it is atmospheric, Karras' taunts are really cool, but I dislike it for the same reason I dislike the later half of Return to the Cathedral: fetch quests. Sabotage at Soulforge devolves into one huge fetch quest with lots of backtracking, and that's just not my favourite type of gameplay in a Thief mission. Add to that the fact that there isn't any loot to get and it gets even worse (something I also dislike about the Maw of Chaos; I think the final missions of both games would have benefitted from having some loot placed throughout). My least favourite mission of Thief 2, even though I really like Karras.

And some comments on the commonly most disliked missions: Kidnap and Casing the Joint/Masks.

Kidnap is an okay mission. Yes, it's large, it's slightly confusing, but it's cool to return to the Lost City and see it changed by the Mechanist expedition, going through familiar places that now have Mechanist camps in them. Finding Cavador can be a chore but there are enough clues around to help you find him. Overall, I enjoyed the mission, even though tracking that guy down can be really annoying. Apart from the main mission goal, it doesn't have any real flaws though.

Casing the Joint and Masks are often panned for being unnecessary. They should be combined into one mission because there's no point to going through the same place twice. Yeah, okay, maybe... but I still like them. The mansion is designed well enough that even after playing countless excellent mansion FMs, I still enjoy going through them. There are lots and lots of secret passages to find, and the forced ghosting of Casing the Joint makes it a tense affair to go through. The ghosts in the library are also a cool touch. And when you return to the place in Masks, you get a whole new floor to explore, and you already know the mansion's layout and the position of the secret passages, so getting around is easy. I really don't mind going through this place twice, and I don't get the hate on it.

Fan Missions:

There are really too many here to get into detail, so I'll make this shorter than my writeups of the original missions.
I love pretty much all of skacky's and Melan's stuff, because those two guys really know how to craft a great city mission with verticality and lots of places to find and explore. Really, just fire up a mission like Melan's Disorientation or skacky's Endless Rain and go on an exploration spree. You will spend hours in these missions and enjoy every minute of it. And be sure to bring rope arrows cause you'll need them. Remember how I called Life of the Party the quintessential Thief experience? This is it, just refined and perfected. Skacky's Endless Rain might be my favourite mission ever, it's just such a sheer joy to explore.

Lady Rowena's missions. They're all excellent. Rowena's Curse is a litte rough around the edges but it's still a great mansion-with-dark-secret mission. The Tower is one of the best vertical missions ever made. Seriously, it's just so fucking vertical. If you like climbing, play it. Play it right now.
Then there's The Seven Sisters. This is one of the best campaigns ever made for Thief, really. The three missions just work so well together, and wouldn't be half as good if they were standalone. This is how you do a campaign. It's just pure excellence in every aspect, and it has so much variety, too! The first two missions are the best, as they're set in the same city district on two different nights, and each night has some differences. On the first night you only have one of your lockpics, which means that some doors will stay locked; on the second night, you receive your second lockpick and can finally enter places you already found in the last mission. The missions are mostly city exploration, but you also enter a small crypt at some point and break into a Mechanist church. The Seven Sisters has a little bit of everything, and you'll never get bored.

Most of Sensut's stuff, but especially his Bathory campaign and the two Being Thief missions. While his previous missions suffered from having some obscurely hidden switches (the original Dracula campaign - it's a little better in Dracula reloaded, luckily), his level design is excellent and has a unique style to it. The Bathory campaign is especially interesting because it is set far away from the Thief world, and placed in the Carpathians instead. You play as Gellert, a thief in the 19th century, and break into a city in the Carpathians to enter Lady Bathory's place. Once there, a ghost appears and tells you about her story... and the next two missions are told from the perspective of Elizabeth Bathory herself, as she tries to fight against a political plot against her. As if that isn't enough variety, you get to play as her maidservant in the two missions after that, only to play as Lady Bathory herself in an exciting final mission, and Gellert again in the epilogue. Three different player characters, sneaking through and robbing from real-life castles, and a pretty cool historically inspired story - Bathory is a great campaign and well worth playing.

Gems of Provenance campaign. This is one of the best FM campaigns out there because it is just so unapologetically Thief 1, it's amazing. The first and second missions in the campaign are my favourites for their surreality and sheer creativity, but the third and fourth are also really really amazing in their design and variety. The first mission has you go through a mining complex, then enter a huge garden that reminds of Constantine's indoor garden in The Sword, then you go down into abandoned mines haunted by zombies, which lead you to an ancient tomb that feels like it could be taken straight from the Bonehoard. The second mission has you go into a mansion that is set underground for some reason, which leads into a strange castle-like complex with a daylight sky and seriously, that part just feels incredibly surreal. The third and fourth mission were less impressive to me cause they felt less surreal, but they're still excellent and incredibly varied: the third mission has you break into the public water works of the city, which is currently housing an exhibition because they found a Lost City section beneath the sewers, and you have to rob the museum and also dive down into the sewers and go into that Lost City section to steal something there. The fourth mission has you break into a mercenary/bandit heaquarters which is a former Keeper castle and at the end of the mission you go into the old Keeper vault in there, where the floors are catapults and you are hunted by a living statue.
If this campaign doesn't sound awesome, I don't know what does. It takes Thief 1's weirdness and cranks it up to 11 and the result is one of the most breathtaking FM campaigns ever. Highly recommended.

There are many other excellent FMs and I already spent way too much time on this post so let me just name-drop them:
Sepulche of the Sinistral. This is basically Bonehoard squared.
Morbid Curiosity. New author Pukey Brunster has delivered an excellent debut mission here, and the gallery is one of the most creative places ever done in Thief FMs.
Ominous Bequest and Broken Triad. Those are considered by many to be the best FMs ever made, and rightfully so. Do yourself a favor and play them.
Anything by Christine. While some of her missions are merely mediocre, most are solid and well worth playing; Christine has a very unique style to her missions that somehow makes them feel incredibly cozy. Her best is the first mission from Pirates Ahoy.
Wicked Relics by KFort. A mansion mission with quite a lot of weird humor in it. Very recommended. If you like humor you should play all of KFort's mission. She's a master at funny and weird stuff.
Augustine's Revenge. If there is any FM out there that feels the most like it could have been an original Thief 1 mission, it's this. Seriously. The atmosphere is amazing. I'd go so far to say that it's even more The Dark Project than The Dark Project itself.
The Sceptre of Dor Am'al. If you like variety, this mission is perfect. Sadly, it's the only mission this author ever published, but holy shit is it atmospheric and varied. You start on a beach, go through caves, a bandit lair, a small town, an abandoned and haunted fortress, and a Hammerite church. It's so fucking varied, it's amazing. And it even has a slightly surreal feel about it.

Now, about my least favourite FMs... well, I'll just have to mention one mission there because I really tried to like it and I saw the potential in it: Off to Milhorn Manor. It has traces of good level design in it, but it's just all pulled down by really, really horrible design decisions. You go from a small city section to a huge mansion, and when I say huge I mean huge. The scale is totally off on that one. Luckily, the mansion itself isn't all that bad when it comes to scale... but the way there? Oh boy. Streets are way too long, and the most horrible part is the sewer which you will have to enter at some point later in the mission. One long fucking water-filled corridor that takes way too long to get through, because you're slower in water than on land. That alone made the mission frustrating to play. But then you also got a basement comprised of almost identical-looking corridors that have nothing to visually set them apart from each other, so finding specific rooms is horribly difficult. The mission thankfully comes with a map but when you are in a featureless hallway surrounded by other featureless hallways... yeah, good luck finding your position on the map. And then, there is one of the most ridiculously hidden objects ever (and of course, it is an object you NEED). There is a house at the start of the level with a locked grate on its chimney. You can't lockpick it, so you probably need a key, but when you enter the mansion you quickly forget about the place. Well, you do need to backtrack all the way there... when you find a mining drill in the basement of the mansion, you can use that to open the grate.
Yes.
A mining drill, that you would imagine is used to break apart rocks (and there even is a small Lost City section in the mission), is the one and only thing that can open a metal grate on a chimney way back at the starting point of the mission.
There is some solid design in the mansion itself, but really - the mission is just ruined by a huge amount of bad design decisions and beginner's mistakes. To me, this is the perfect lesson in what not to do, because those bad design decisions ruin what is essentially a solid mission.

 

[Kirkpatrick]

Didn't know Kidnap had a bad rep. So big, so many places to visit, so hard (for a ghosting adventure at least). And it was great to see The Lost City again.

My dabbling with it...

 

[Infinitron]

I've always thought Assassins was kinda overrated. After the unique opening, Ramirez's compound isn't actually very interesting, with a predictable "corridors surrounding a square courtyard" layout. I guess they did have to spend a lot of effort designing that crazy network of streets.

Strangely decorated rooms, traps everywhere, a huge indoor garden, and all around it are guards who walk around the place like there's nothing special about it (I really wonder how many of them quit their job after seeing some of the weirder rooms of the place they were hired to guard).

Compare outfits: http://thief.wikia.com/wiki/Constantine_Sword_Guard
http://thief.wikia.com/wiki/Ape_Beast

 

[Nuclear Explosion]

Good:
Lord Bafford's Manor
Break from Cragscleft Prison
Down in the Bonehoard
Assassins
The Sword

Bad:
Thieves' Guild
The Haunted Cathedral
The Mage Towers
The Lost City
Return to the Cathedral
Escape!
Into the Maw of Chaos

It has been a long time since I last played Undercover or Strange Bedfellows, so I can't remember much about either one. Also, I have only played a little bit of Song of the Caverns which is why it is not on the list. From memory, Thief 2 has much more consistent level design, but I would have to replay it to tell for sure, so I'm not going to rate its levels.

 

[Kahr]

Thief Gold:

Best Level:
Escape (Liked the atmosphere)

Better Levels:
Cragscleft Prison
Sword
Song of the Caverns

Good Levels:
Manor
Bonehoard
Haunted Cathedral
Mage Towers
Lost City

Meh Levels:
Thieves Guild
Undercover
Strange Bedfellows
Maw of Chaos

Worst Level:
Assassins (can't remember at all about this one, must have been boring)

Eternal Love/Hate-relationship:
Return to the Cathedral

Thief 2:

Best Level:
Life of the Party (it has really everything, you can imagine)

Better Levels:
Eavesdropping
Bank
Trail of Blood
Soulforge

Good Levels:
Running Interference
Shipping and Receiving
Framed
Blackmail
Precious Cargo
Masks

Meh Levels:
Kidnap
Casing the Joint

Worst Levels:
Ambush
Trace the Courier (the city levels seem so generic and empty, Courier is also buggy as hell)

 

[JarlFrank]

I think it is one of the most underrated thief 1 missions, particularly when compared to life of the party which is usually regarded as the best mission in the series, and which is basically a remake of assassins with none of the atmosphere (and all of thief 2 blandness) and the gimmick that instead of taking the streets you get to travel through a painfully linear set of rooftops.

LotP's rooftops have way more content in them than Assassins' city. Especially on the way back to your home you realize that, because then you can freely explore the city portion and there's literally nothing there.

 

[MilesBeyond]

[Cragscleft Prison] also does the weird distinction where part of it is an undead level and part of it is a stealth level.

That's one of the reasons it's such a cool level. I think The Dark Project has got to have the best first five levels in any game ever, each having a completely different feel yet being great in its own way.

Thieves Guild is the worst mission in the series, Deadly Shadows included. It plays like a below-average fan mission, being long and repetitive and utterly dull, and they never should've included it in Thief Gold. Out of the original missions Escape! always feels like a chore, although it's rather short and deserves some credit because of how fucked-up it is (and because the cutscene right before it is so fucking cool).

From TMA it's harder to choose favorites, as everything from Framed to Life of the Party is so good. I guess the bank is the most memorable for me because the game keeps consistently raising the stakes up until that point, with the bank being a mid-game climax of sorts. On the other hand the last four levels are all quite weak, and fatigue always starts to kick in before you even reach Soulforge.

Yeah, and you know, it was pretty hard for me to put Cragsclerft as my least favourite. There's so much good to say about it. The concept (of breaking someone out of prison) is quintessential stealth goodness. The level itself provides a great introduction to Thief's world: It can be easy for the first time player to think "Oh well this is more of a low fantasy setting so it's probably not actually haunted" and then, oh shit! It really is haunted! And then this is immediately contrasted with the steampunk factory and the Hammerites. It also serves as an excellent introduction to the value of Moss arrows. And, like you said, that mini-arc at the start of TDP is just a great idea.

All of these things I love about Cragscleft, and yet... on repeat playthroughs, I just don't find it all that fun. With the mines maybe it's because I know the brilliance of Down in the Bonehoard is up next and they only feel boring in comparison, but the actual prison part is just plain tedious. On my recent playthrough, even more tedious than Thieves' Guild.

Conceptually, I have so much good to say about Cragscleft, and it's not just one of the best Thief missions, but one of the best missions ever. But at the end of the day, I just don't enjoy playing it anymore for some reason.

I'm also in a bit of disagreement with the consensus as I personally loved Escape. Wasn't the best stealth experience but the whole level was just one "Oh shit oh shit OH SHIT!" moment after the other. That's lessened on subsequent playthroughs, of course, but it's still fun. The bugmen are perfect enemies - they're creepy not in a scary way, but in a vaguely unsettling way, just like Constantine's mansion. I was gutted that they didn't reappear in T2, even though it made sense. I also prefer it to Maw of Chaos just because with Escape! it's always like "Oh shit, these guys again. Right, how do I deal with this?" whereas by the time I get to Maw I've grown more used to them. Again, totally subjective, and I think objectively Maw of Chaos is the better Trickster level.


Winterlight because I don't have time to get into your post but I basically agree with everything you say about Cragscleft, and I'm definitely not someone who thinks T2 benefited from being more steampunk-y and less weird (well, I'm torn. I don't like that TMA is more steampunk-y from a gameplay perspective. I absolutely love it from a story perspective. I don't think I've ever played another game where the entire world down to the last detail is altered as a result of your actions in the preceding game. That moment in Shipping and Receiving when you hear people complaining about how trees won't grow anymore... brilliant stuff. Actually come to think of it the middle trilogy of Ultima was great at that sort of thing too). I just don't enjoy playing it. I wish I did.


I do feel remiss, though, that I didn't mention The Sword. Really an amazing level and I have no idea how I left it out. Frankly I think it'd be my favourite, ahead of Song of the Caverns. Brain fart, I guess.


EDIT: I gotta wax on more about TMA changing the game world. It's like the anti-Oblivion. Instead of having everything stay the same but people run up to you and say "It's you! The hero of the world! Oh thank you!" it's the opposite. No one really gives a shit or even knows outside of the Hammerites (always liked, BTW, that Karras was the dude who gave Garrett his new eye), and I guess the Keepers in the sense that they can be said to give a shit about anything (I guess that's unfair - they care, they just don't act, but whatever). Instead the changes are subtle, but everywhere. If you hadn't played TDP you probably wouldn't even realize it because they aren't all in your face about "Behold, Garrett! Since you slew the Trickster, balance has been disrupted, nature is faltering, and machines are prevailing!" But in overheard conversations and intercepted correspondence you discover that The Metal Age is more than a metaphor.

 

[JarlFrank]

The genius of Thief is that it does exposition completely right by not dumping it on you at all. Instead, you discover all the little details by exploration: environmental details, conversations, readables. You actually have to piece all that information together. It makes the games even better on replays, when you understand all the foreshadowing of previous missions. Viktoria is mentioned in readables before you ever meet her (it's been a while since I played Thief Gold, but I believe she was mentioned in a readable in Bafford's Manor, and in a readable in Thieves Guild), for example. And holy shit, the intro texts before the mission briefings... they're so fucking good, telling you so much about the factions involved.

Thief is one of the best games ever when it comes to storytelling. This is how a game should do storytelling.

 

[JarlFrank]

Not that I give a quarter of fuck to "The Industry™ " or what it thinks or does these days but I still believe it's not enough that they now consider Thief to be a great stealth game from the late 90s... and just that. While praising shit like The Last of Us that tries so hard to belong in another form of media and has absolutely nothing of value to teach in game design, sound design, world building, storytelling, environmental narrative... People are stopping at the tip of the iceberg of what Thief was and still is. They can't see these two games were much more than simply "oh, similar to Splinter Cell but in a weirder setting", and proceed to treat them fairly normally. Thief raised the bar so high, most people can't even see it anymore.

Yeah, it's horribly disappointing that games that are 90% cutscenes are praised for "good storytelling" while all they do is emulating movies, while games like Thief and Deus Ex, games that actually use the tools of the medium, are never even mentioned when it comes to storytelling - only when it comes to level design. Yes, the level design in both games is utterly excellent, but that's the thing: the level design supports the storytelling.

In Thief, every single level tells a story. Cragscleft tells a story. Bonehoard tells a story. The Lost City tells a story. Life of the Party tells a story. Not only with the conversations and readables, but also with the architecture and layout. Little hints in the level design point to Hammerite, Pagan, Mechanist affiliations.

This has even become common in fan mission, so integral a part of the Thief universe is environmental storytelling like that. When someone is a secret Pagan-worshipper, you will notice it in subtle details like the interior decoration.

It's the subtlety of it all that makes it so effective. The game doesn't outright tell you all the details, instead it puts hints everywhere and the player is left to piece it together by himself.
That's how you do storytelling in a game. Games are interactive, and so should be the storytelling.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Thief deserves a really well edited, well narrated, moderately long video series showing in-depth all these little details that makes it better than anything else in what it does. Something like mr. Plinkett Star Wars stuff but without the annoying voice. I thought about doing this by myself many times, I even started to write some small scripts for each level, but then I remembered I have shit skills in video editing and the end result wouldn't make it justice.

The annoying voice and the damned stupid skits. I swear, skits are the absolute worst part of Youtube. I don't want this Star Wars video to be interrupted by banal "lel le edgy serial killer ecksdee" shit. They were pretty few and far between in the Plinkett videos and mostly at the end so you can just skip to the next video, but still annoying as hell.

And I totally agree. Videos going through the Thief series and showing all the little storytelling things in the details (like how Ramirez tries to kill Garrett not just for general freelancing, but specifically because Lord Bafford was in Ramirez's stable. And references to Viktoria pop up all over the place before you meet her, though sometimes with a c instead of a k. Gives you a sense that she was casing the underworld looking for the best person for the job).

I mean, Lord Bafford's Manor has a letter from someone writing in Pagan dialect about how someone is unable to make their payments because the Hammers have been cracking down on things recently, and also mentions Viktoria, saying that he couldn't find out anything about her and that she's impossible to find. In the first level, you get this introduction to some of the major conflicts and characters. Great stuff.

 

[skacky]

Thief Gold ratings:

1. Song of the Caverns — I consider that one to be the best level in the entire series. Starts off as a cave exploring endeavor but soon transforms into infiltrating a huge opera house chock full of guards and valuables to pilfer. While not the prettiest level by any stretch (some parts look downright ugly), it is the one I have the most fun with. The sound design is impeccable, the exposition pretty much perfect and the layout itself is excellent. This and First City Bank & Trust are my favorite manor-type original missions by far.
2. Break From Cragscleft Prison — Winterlight articulates my thoughts better than I do. It is the level that truly hooked me. It is a terrifying experience with an absolutely crushing ambiance, and the difficulty is very steep compared to the previous level.
3. The Sword — Masterful level design, with some of the most memorable moments in the series (the famous twisted corridor is imprinted in every taffer's mind, and that giggling in the upper levels drives everyone mad). Maps like the Clockwork Mansion in Dishonored 2 owe a lot to this level.
4. The Haunted Cathedral — The open-ended, interconnected layout makes this one an absolute joy to explore. You have a city block all for yourself with only a few Undead and other critters to take care of. The mission has a really powerful aura of mystery surrounding it and when you finally see the Cathedral and its ominous presence you know something really nasty happened here.
5. Assassins — Despite being very easy, it is still one of my favorite levels. The twisted, dark streets of The City are just so incredibly immersive and real, and tailing the two shady assassins who think they killed you so you can rob their master is a truly awesome premise. This mission really shows that Garrett is definitely not one to be trifled with. The guy can get anywhere, and by swiping Ramirez' purse he's telling him he could have killed him with nobody ever catching sight of him.
6. Return to the Cathedral — The scariest mission in the series. The fetch quests can be a little irksome after a while, but the atmosphere is so incredible and the level so challenging I overlook this.
7. Down In the Bonehoard — One of the best dungeon crawling experiences I've ever had, which really showed me that Thief: The Dark Project was much more than 'merely' a great stealth game. The Horn of Quintus soothing the Burricks and lulling them to sleep was also a very nice touch. The original texturing in TDP is much better than TG's.
8. Lord Bafford's Manor — A very easy and basic level but the atmosphere of anguish is unmatched. This level freaking terrified me when I first played it; the sound cues, the ambiance, the surprisingly clever AI, etc. Such a great introduction to the game, perhaps one of the best first levels in any game I've played.
9. The Lost City — Really fun tomb-raiding level with a super confusing layout at first, though now I know it by heart and never get lost anymore. I really love the map, that looks like a giant middle finger at first but is actually rather easy to read after you're familiar with the locales. TDP's version is much more interesting than TG's though.
10. Escape! — Not the most interesting level by any stretch, but I really like how brutal it is. This one will really test your skills and patience, and makes a lot of sense story-wise and for Garrett's character development.
11. Into the Maw of Chaos — Incredibly fun and trippy, but also incredibly linear and easy.
12. Thieves' Guild — I love how challenging it is. It's not that difficult to navigate in though, if you carefully listen to people and read notes. The map is also surprisingly detailed. That said it's not very memorable and doesn't look particularly good. It clearly doesn't deserve all the hate it gets though.
13. Undercover — Not a huge fan of Undercover. I love the Hammerites but the level is too small, too easy and social stealth doesn't work all that well in Thief.
14. The Mage Towers — Downright ugly and gets old pretty fast. Some bits are cool, like the central keep, and I love the mages. The audio in this level is also top notch.
15. Strange Bedfellows — Pretty dull and far too easy. Me not liking Undercover much is also a con for this level.

Thief 2 ratings:
1. Life of the Party — Everything in this level is perfect. The most interesting, freeform layout out of any mission in the entire series. Life of the Party is a herculean endeavor and mercilessly stomps the crushing majority of levels that came after it with its sheer size, incredible scope and downright brilliant execution. It is so good in fact that all the following levels, with some being very very good, still pale in comparison. The demo version is slightly better than the final version though.
2. First City Bank & Trust — Huge, full of guards, lots of security devices (semi-randomized on Expert), lots of loot, very interconnected layout with lots of entrances. This and Life of the Party is what being a master thief is all about.
3. Masks — The vastly superior hot sister to Casing the Joint. Rather challenging and just a joy to sneak through. The audio, much like Casing, lulls you and the rain outside makes the place feel very warm in comparison. This one is so much better than Casing the Joint you just wonder why they included it in the first place (yes, I know why).
4. Sabotage at Soulforge — Love how incredibly tough and HUGE this mission is. I don't really understand people who call it tedious, to me it is an incredibly fun level with many challenges. Hearing Karras slowly lose his cool when you run through his death machine conveys a lot of tension.
5. Trail of Blood — The closest there is to TDP/Gold in Thief 2. It's a very fun level, though very linear in the end. Pretty melancholic too.
6. Blackmail — This level excels at tension. The red corridor before you learn Truart's been murdered is extremely memorable. The mansion is a bit too small though.
7. Running Interference — A good introductory level, though much inferior to Lord Bafford's Manor. I really like the feeling of dread and uneasiness that oozes from it, though, as the manor appears to be a holiday estate and is completely empty save for a servant and the guards who are here only to keep Jenivere from getting away. It's a very romantic story (not in the sense of a love story).
8. Shipping... And Receiving — A bit dull after a while, the layout is great but the level itself doesn't interest me very much. The swelling horn is a great musical piece though and gets stuck in your head.
9. Framed — Love the audio design in that one as well, but it ultimately lacks spice.
10. Eavesdropping — Really good concept and nice real introduction to the Mechanists, but the level is too small and far too easy!
11. Precious Cargo — Not a huge fan of this level. It's average, nothing special. The bit with Lotus is touching and the Cetus Amicus is interesting, but eh.
12. Ambush! — Iikka Keranen designed this level but even with his magic it's pretty dull compared to the awesome dark and twisty cityscape in Assassins. Everything is kind of samey and not very interesting-looking. The level is also incredibly basic and becomes dull after a while.
13. Casing the Joint — The boring sister to Masks. The level is empty as fuck with nothing to steal except coins. Great audio though, but Masks is just so much better in every aspect. Incredibly unnecessary level.
14. Trace the Courier — Really boring, kind of lazy and so short you completely forget about this one after you've played it.
15. Kidnap — Just awful. This one is easily my least favorite level in the entire series (not counting Thi4f). It's just not fun. Seeing the Lost City again is great but what's the point if you turn it into a really boring trudge through areas that worked incredibly well with exploration in mind but become incredibly frustrating when populated with bots and Mechanists everywhere?

 

[JarlFrank]

Thief 2 ratings:
1. Life of the Party — Everything in this level is perfect. The most interesting, freeform layout out of any mission in the entire series. Life of the Party is a herculean endeavor and mercilessly stomps the crushing majority of levels that came after it with its sheer size, incredible scope and downright brilliant execution. It is so good in fact that all the following levels, with some being very very good, still pale in comparison. The demo version is slightly better than the final version though.

The key to understanding skacky FMs.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Since I never played TDP (only TG) I'm curious about a couple of things.

7. Down In the Bonehoard — One of the best dungeon crawling experiences I've ever had, which really showed me that Thief: The Dark Project was much more than 'merely' a great stealth game. The Horn of Quintus soothing the Burricks and lulling them to sleep was also a very nice touch. The original texturing in TDP is much better than TG's.

Could you point to examples where the texturing is different, so that I can have a look for myself?

9. The Lost City — Really fun tomb-raiding level with a super confusing layout at first, though now I know it by heart and never get lost anymore. I really love the map, that looks like a giant middle finger at first but is actually rather easy to read after you're familiar with the locales. TDP's version is much more interesting than TG's though.

Exactly how so?

 

[skacky]

Unkillable Cat I don't have any screenshots of The Bonehoard, but basically the Halls of Echoing Repose use much darker tones that's what in TG. Texturing is also more homogeneous. The Burrick tunnels' layout is slightly different as well. The Lost City houses both the Talismans of Water and Fire. The Talisman of Water is found in Va-Taraq's tomb and there are no mages at all in the mission, the area is populated with Craymen and some more appear when you take the Talisman of Water.

EDIT: wew, I have last year's Current Year parrots.

 

[Infinitron]

IIRC one of the changes made to Strange Bedfellows between TDP and TG was the removal of a boat that was supposed to carry you and the Hammerite High Priest down a river, because it was fucked up and he kept drowning in your arms. Too bad they couldn't fix it because it was a cool concept.