Thief : I approve of this good shit.

[Excommunicator]

You also cannot forget the motion capture animation. When combined with the strange blocky models it creates a very uneasy contrast of disturbing surrealism; they move like people but they look like aliens wtf

The key to Thief is minimalism though. Don't add more of everything (more encounters, more creatures, more violence etc etc) just because you can instead use the bare minimum of everything to establish a greater sense of appreciation and wonder when each element is encountered. Moderation and subtlety are much more powerful than exaggeration.

 

[Cassidy]

I was throwing hammers at those fags

Note how slowly moving undead created a real sense of danger whereas huge amounts of fast running zombies from L4D created only a sense that you are blasting the shit out of dumb meat.

If L4D had the same weaponry as Thief and featured real stealth mechanics it would be one of a kind and I'd consider it scary. In that Fan mission pack T2x: Shadows of the Metal Age, once I discovered that all zombies could be beheaded and had their arms chopped off(It's just a flesh wound!), they suddenly became far less scary. The fact most of the scary foes are actually very difficult to deal with through brute force was more important than any other element to make the undead scary in Thief games, in my opinion. "Horror" must be fused into the game. Cheap scares that lead to no in-game death or seriously tough situations never really were the scariest experiences to me.

As for play style, I play Thief somewhere in-between ghost and blackjacking unless the mission objectives demand the former. It depends on how much backtracking and linearity a mission has, as for those ridden with both the Blackjack tends to be more fun. The original T1 and T2 levels are mostly good for it, with a few exceptions. I'm not really into forcing arbitrary restrictions unsupported by the game itself*, although I don't tend to knock-out near every guard in most missions either.

*See the two Thief II missions where you are supposed to not let anyone see you. They are filled with multiple pathways and means of bypassing patrols because they were purportedly designed for it.

 

[JarlFrank]

I'm a notorious blackjacker, usually knocking out almost every guard I come across (except those with the helmets, of course). I do like the forced ghost missions if they're well designed, though, and I always try to avoid killing even when it's not a mission objective, and I generally avoid being discovered because not being discovered is kinda the point of the game.

 

[Multidirectional]

Man am I newfaggotized lately. I think I'd loose patience on Expert difficulty, Hard is plenty for me. It will probably take pretty long for me to finish. Good. I have this thing with old games I missed in the old days (well I didn't have a PC until 2003 anyway), I'm very slow at finishing them. Only when replaying I get the feeling I'm finally playing them properly.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Man am I newfaggotized lately. I think I'd loose patience on Expert difficulty

For those who objected to my tip about not starting playing the game on Expert difficluty, here's an example of why I chose to say so: People today are going to have to be introduced to the wonders of Thief gradually. Throwing them into the deep end of the pool right off the bat is not a good idea, even though most of the fun in Thief is there.

 

[Lyric Suite]

People today are going to have to be introduced to the wonders of Thief gradually.

Except this is the fucking Codex. We don't scale to your level, faggots. Anybody playing at anything but expert is a failure and should be permabanned for great justice.

 

[commie]

People today are going to have to be introduced to the wonders of Thief gradually.

Except this is the fucking Codex. We don't scale to your level, faggots. Anybody playing at anything but expert is a failure and should be permabanned for great justice.

Normally I'd agree with Unkillable Cat but since Thief is such a unique, probably never to be replicated, experience then I can't see how swashbuckling through it on 'normal' can do anything but lessen any subsequent playthrough on even a harder difficulty. It's THIEF FFS! This isn't your COD style popamole where playing on easy just means you get through the tedium quicker! Some Thief levels are as long as entire FPS games these days. Clearly this is not a game for just blasting through.

 

[Multidirectional]

Jeez some of you are way too uptight about these things. If someone doesn't play on hardest it doesn't automatically mean he isn't making an effort to ghost as much as possible through the thing. It's only about keeping the options open should one find himself too frustrated at some parts.

Except this is the fucking Codex. We don't scale to your level, faggots.

No, this is the fucking RPG Codex. It doesn't mean every member should be amazingly skilled at every single video game genre. So shut the fuck up. I'd understand your pretentious elitism if someone came around and whined how a game is too old to play, but bitching about someone not playing it on hardest difficulty is just too much.
Maybe you should also bash LGS for dumbing down the game and including other difficulties besides "Expert"? Fucking sellout pandering to lowest common denominator faggots.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It doesn't mean every member should be amazingly skilled at every single video game genre.

Yes it does.

So shut the fuck up. I'd understand your pretentious elitism if someone came around and whined how a game is too old to play, but bitching about someone not playing it on hardest difficulty is just too much.

There is no reason not to play a game at its hardest difficulty setting, ever, unless the game is so shitty you just want to wade through it quickly (which begs the question, why bother play it in the first place?). The problem with this game is that playing it on expert really does make the game more entertaining. Like Commmie said, playing it at a lower difficulty setting just dilutes the experience and even if you play it on expert later on your first memory of the game will still not be the same. Besides, playing it on expert is not THAT difficoult, and you can still knock guards unconscious, which in most cases is actually easier then fighting them (particularly once you get gas arrows). The real reason to chose expert is for the added objectives which increase the need for exploration, and allows you to milk more entertainment out of a level.

 

[Multidirectional]

What if I get entertained by finding things in games I missed when playing the first time? This is still RPG Codex right? You still understand enjoying replayability?
Anyhow, just stop telling me how to enjoy my games, I'll manage that on my own. I never wanted to explore every single bit of the game on my first play. If I end up loving it I come back and do just that. And if not, I don't give a shit anyway.

 

[SCO]

People complain about boredom with the rigorous loot objectives in expert after KO-in the entire map. The solution is obvious though: ghost and pay attention.

 

[chzr]

Thank you. I have never played the Thief series, but am going to rectify that now.

 

[Melcar]

I remember the first time I came across zombies. I was sneaking around all like when suddenly I see this humanoid figure slightly hunched by a door way. I say "oh, a guard" and proceed to blackjack his ass. It was incredibly scary when that fucker turned around and started moaning at me.

 

[Antagonist]

About the difficulty:

There's only the expert difficulty level. Period. It's a world of difference if you shouldn't and if you can't kill any guards. Plus, the added objectives will force you to explore almost all of the map to fulfill the requirements. It really enforces the mindset to play like a thief (i.e. being constantly alert of dangers and opportunities for more loot). The maps are designed with the expert level objectives in mind, they are not tacked on just to up the difficulty. Hell, I'm going all oldfag here but if we could play it on expert level back in the days then any new Codex member with any kind of self-respect should do be able to do so as well. In fact, I've never played any of the Thief games on anything other than expert level yet.

And it's not *that* hard. Like Demon's Souls it just punishes the impatient.

 

[Turisas]

I remember the first time I came across zombies. I was sneaking around all like when suddenly I see this humanoid figure slightly hunched by a door way. I say "oh, a guard" and proceed to blackjack his ass. It was incredibly scary when that fucker turned around and started moaning at me.

Did you play TMA first then? Isn't the first zombie you come across in TDP at the beginning of that hammerite jail level, lying on the ground in the mineshaft?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Did you play TMA first then? Isn't the first zombie you come across in TDP at the beginning of that hammerite jail level, lying on the ground in the mineshaft?

I'm pretty sure The Metal Age has a grand total of two zombies, and they are in the Necromancer's Tower along the Thieves' Highway

 

[Turisas]

Sounds like someone didn't find the dancing zombies easter egg. :D

 

[Thor Kaufman]

Aight, got me some Thief:TDP Gold goodness.
Are there any patches or mods I should apply before playing?

 

[JarlFrank]

Nope, Thief 1 and 2 are perfectly playable without mods. And Thief Gold doesn't need any patches.

 

[MetalCraze]

Unless you want to play it in widescreen with 32 bit rendering.

 

[Gragt]

There's only the expert difficulty level.

When I started Thief for the first time, I did it on normal. I found it weird that i could just steal the scepter and the mission would end without needing me to exit the manor. I played a few levels that way and then decided to start the first level on expert, to check the difference. After that I didn't consider playing a Thief game in anything other than expert, even for the first time.

 

[Multidirectional]

Well you need to exit levels on Hard too.

 

[Tolknaz]

Nope, Thief 1 and 2 are perfectly playable without mods. And Thief Gold doesn't need any patches.

Depends on your hardware really. If you have a new os and new nvidia graphics card, the colours are screwed, so ddfix at least is quite mandatory. Also, if you have a widescreen lcd monitor you should use widescreen mod, so you can play it using your native resolution. Some way to set cpu affinity to only one core should also be used if you have a multicore system. Oh. And fog doesn't work on certain newer graphics cards without ddfix.

 

[Antagonist]

Is Thief:Gold actually worth hunting down? I've only played the original version but I wouldn't mind giving it another go after all the years though I've read that the difficulty of the added levels is pretty uneven compared to the other ones.

 

[MetalCraze]

Thief Gold has a few levels reworked and extended (more alternative routes) and 3 more levels added. I didn't find them more difficult or easy. It's exactly the same team doing them after all.