Are Thief 3's Shalebridge Cradle and VTMB's Ocean House levels overrated?

[Zombra]

Please explain to me how a cliched 19th century style haunted mental asylum/orphan cradle fits into Thief's excellent worldbuilding. It feels jarring and out of place. Might have been a good mission in a different game, but it just doesn't fit into Thief.

Just because you love horror doesn't mean the mission fits into Thief canon.

Again, "being Thief canon" is not what people praise about the mission, so it's invalid to say it's overrated. You're talking about "being what JarlFrank likes" ... but no one is debating you on that. There are even a few reviews out there where you're not even mentioned!

People: The ice cream at that steakhouse is the best ice cream in town.
JarlFrank: That ice cream is overrated. It doesn't taste like steak, which is what I like.
People: Seriously, it's very good ice cream.
JarlFrank: No it isn't. It is a "bad steakhouse menu item". No one should enjoy it and you should stop saying it's good.
People: ...

But. I'll indulge you and try to answer your question. I think the Cradle does fit in nicely with the story of the whole game, which fits the larger world. It's really simple if you look at it from the point of view of the writers. They started with the idea of Gamall and Lauren and their terrifying origins, and worked backward to build a story around that. Yes, Garrett doesn't know about any of it at first, he's just breaking into shit stealing artifacts for no reason in "good Thief game" style. Why? Because Gamall is gathering resources to max out her glyph power. She couldn't get away with it as a freaky hag, so she had to steal a cute body people would trust first, therefore all the Cradle history. If you get rid of the Cradle, you throw away the story's fundament.

I mean I guess you can say "There shouldn't be a timeless witch who kills children to steal their bodies in the first place", but ... why not? It fits thematically as much as anything else. Personally I thought it was stupid in the very first game when I stopped stealing shit from mansions and started fighting zombies and monsters ... "This isn't the Thief I've come to know and love in the first couple missions!" ... but I gave it a chance and it was OK to have some new stuff. Was Thief supposed to simply stop adding new ideas once it hit three factions, some ghosts, and a telepathic robot demon eye?

 

[ciox]

Return to the Cathedral blows it out of the water easily. Replay that, then play the Inverted Manse T2 FM.

 

[JarlFrank]

Was Thief supposed to simply stop adding new ideas once it hit three factions, some ghosts, and a telepathic robot demon eye?

Of course not, but Thief's setting is way too imaginative for the most generic, cliched, overused "19th century mental asylum with doctors who perform cruel experiments like lobotomies and electroshock therapy on inmates" type of thing ever. It just didn't fit. On the one hand you have Thief's intricate medieval-steampunk mix setting, in Thief 2 you even had the Mechanists who would conceivably be a good candidate for performing twisted experiments on prisoners. But no. The Cradle just takes the overused horror cliche of a mental asylum run by sadistic doctors. It's jarring, and feels like it doesn't fit - like it was taken from a different sort of game and transplanted into Thief.

Maybe it's a good horror mission, sure, okay. I don't care about horror and am not going to debate it on those grounds. Maybe it is, that's fine by me.

But if you're not into horror, it's just a mediocre mission. There are plenty of better ones in the game, not to mention in the series as a whole. Even Escape!, my least favorite mission of Thief 1, is a mission whose placing in the story and whose pacing I can understand. It has its place, and if you try to go at it stealthily with no kills you have a great challenge.

The Cradle, on the other hand, doesn't really fit. Story-wise, maybe. Setting-wise, not at all. Gameplay-wise, eh it's okay, but I've played much better. And that's precisely why it's overrated.

Everyone claims Thief 3 is worth playing just for the Cradle, even though as a game it's less good overall than its predecessors. People claim it's the best level in the game.
Okay, maybe if you like horror.
If you like Thief gameplay - stealthy infiltration of both human manors and supernatural places - it's merely mediocre and not the best mission in the game by a long shot. If you tell someone who loved the first two Thief games that the Cradle is something special and great and amazing, he's probably gonna be disappointed.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Shalebridge Cradle is the best level I EVER played in a Thief game or otherwise. And I've been playing games since Pong came out.

I was seriously creeped the fuck out by Shalebridge Cradle.

FIGHT ME, JarlFrank !

Spoiler

And not a fake Cleve fight!

Zep--

 

[Zombra]

And that's precisely why it's overrated.

Just not gonna unclench your jaw, are you?

Listen. If the Cradle is rated as a good horror level. If it is rated as a level that is worth playing the whole game to get to by people who like that sort of thing. If you concede that these ratings are true enough for many people, then how is it overrated?

It's not rated as "the Thiefiest Thief level". It's not rated as "best gameplay". It's not even rated as "JarlFrank's very favorite". It's rated, quite correctly, as great horror.

Eat your steak. I'm sorry the staff brought you ice cream you didn't like, but don't dismiss those who rate it very highly. They're not wrong.

 

[Lurker47]

his is an uncommon opinion, but VTM:B never managed to scare me.

Wait, the game is scary?

I got scared by the Ankhegs in Baldur's Gate.... Now I know which CRPG I have to put off the most...

 

[JarlFrank]

Shalebridge Cradle is the best level I EVER played in a Thief game or otherwise. And I've been playing games since Pong came out.

I was seriously creeped the fuck out by Shalebridge Cradle.

Being creeped out by a level doesn't make it good.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Being creeped out by a level doesn't make it good.

LOLWUT?

I think you need to stop writing books and start playing games for the enjoyment they bring instead of over analyzing everything.

Zep--

 

[JarlFrank]

I do not derive enjoyment from being creeped out.

 

[Zombra]

Wait, fucking Zep is on my side?

I take back everything I said above.

 

[Zep Zepo]

I do not derive enjoyment from being creeped out.

Keyword: I

You're just being contrary to be contrary now.

Zep--

 

[JarlFrank]

I like to hate on horror missions because as a youngster I couldn't play them because they scared me too much, and I was pretty sad that some non-horror games contained horror missions, therefore preventing me from playing them even though I would have enjoyed the rest of the game

Nowadays I'm no longer such a pussy but horror missions just get a resounding "meh" from me because beyond making you scared, they don't have very engaging gameplay.

 

[Zep Zepo]

they don't have very engaging gameplay.

But they do, they engage your emotions if you're not dead inside.

Zep--

 

[Tehdagah]

Thief series is overrated

 

[Wesp5]

What do you think?

That avatar looks like just another thief character to me. Then why did you write "The last of its kind." ?

 

[Wesp5]

Because that's exactly what I don't understand about it. For me, Ocean House was a bunch of horror clichees. Like EVERYTHING that happened I expected, because it was like walking through a theme park horror house. The elevator, the kitchen with flying utensils, the corridor. EVERYTHING I've experienced before in one form or another.

That's why I wasn't scared one bit and again, can't even finish plenty of games alone.

I wasn't scared either, but you can still easily get killed and the goal is the same: show that there is more to the WoD than vampires. And I love theme park horror houses !

 

[Zombra]

JarlFrank

Weirdly, I was a huge wimp as a kid but horror is my favorite gaming genre now. (Shalebridge Cradle may have been a big stepping stone, come to think of it.) I like to think I can appreciate strong gameplay on its own (I can't stop playing fucking Road Redemption for example) but nowadays I am more about the "experience". Above all, good horror is extraordinarily dynamic as a genre. Whether it's the lengthening silence that gets me to relax before I finally trigger a brilliantly timed jump scare, or (even better) a slowly dawning comprehension of what the monsters really represent ... nothing beats horror for cadence, pacing, engagement, revelation.

This last is the main reason the Cradle is such a landmark for me. That first section, with all the empty space, no enemies, nothing, yet in an excruciatingly oppressive environment. It's a masterful building of tension unlike any in the series. To be honest, I agree that having a huge insane asylum with electric chairs etc. feels a little weird for the setting (an orphanage turned "mechanist Guantanamo" would have been amazing), but setting perfection was not what I cared about when I played through it for the first time.

Back to horror games in general ... naturally, I expect some gameplay. Fear doesn't work if you can't get caught, and it's hard to care about a story you're simply told instead of being part of. Spooky "walking sims" aren't enough. I love barely surviving, wasting ammo (if I'm armed at all), making a noise and having to run away in a panic, taking a wrong turn and improvising a hiding place ... all this kind of stuff is gold when the balance is right. Violence, stealth, and chasing aren't the only kind of good horror either. Equally good is solving puzzles, listening to ghosts, figuring out what it all means and what I have to do to put things to rest/finally escape ... or whether that's even possible.

I also love how, more than any other genre, horror hides the rules from you and invites you to just try. I don't want to see hit point bars or ammo counters any more. I want my character to lurch around injured looking when they're injured, and the gun to just go click when I haven't reloaded it recently.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

That's why horror should stick to its own genre rather than horror missions being put into other games.

I can sympathize with your viewpoint on the Shalebridge Cradle due to my own longstanding view that the Dead Money DLC of Fallout: New Vegas was intrinsically flawed for attempting to turn a hybrid RPG/FPS into a survival-horror game. Nonethleless, I think you're mistaken because the distinction between the Shalebridge Cradle's gameplay and typical Thief gameplay is far smaller, as is the difference in atmosphere/aesthetics. From as early as the Cragscleft Prison level (which already contains zombies in just the second mission after the tutorial!), there is a strong horror influence present in many of the missions of the original two Thief games (in fact, a large majority of missions in the first game), and the usual stealth gameplay doesn't change much when presented with the Cradle's abominations versus zombies and so forth. The Shalebridge Cradle does contain an introductory area without any actual danger, but afterward is a version of the usual Thief levels where the horror aspect is amplified but without a fundamental deviation from the first-person stealth genre format.

 

[DalekFlay]

I'm not really into horror, so they're far from my favorite levels. They have nice creepy atmosphere but so does stuff like the Hammer's jail, and it also has actual stealth gameplay, cool fantasy imagery and other such things. They're not bad levels at all, but they're not the highlights of the games for me.

 

[Beastro]

Of course not, but Thief's setting is way too imaginative for the most generic, cliched, overused "19th century mental asylum with doctors who perform cruel experiments like lobotomies and electroshock therapy on inmates" type of thing ever. It just didn't fit. On the one hand you have Thief's intricate medieval-steampunk mix setting, in Thief 2 you even had the Mechanists who would conceivably be a good candidate for performing twisted experiments on prisoners. But no. The Cradle just takes the overused horror cliche of a mental asylum run by sadistic doctors. It's jarring, and feels like it doesn't fit - like it was taken from a different sort of game and transplanted into Thief.

I think Jarlfrank's being rather obstinate here, but I have it admit this thought did occur to me first playing Shalebridge.

At the very least I found it weird it wasn't worked into the Seal Section of town.

As for Ocean House, I found it came too early, and so was clearly not to be worried about, especially with the warnings and lack of damage you take. But that's a thing I find with myself, outside of simple jump scares removing combat and/or health removes any danger for me, and I find often the scariest parts of games is when I try to stand and fight and realize I've fucked up being unable to kill and killable threat. Unkillable things or the removal of combat just results in me focusing on escaping and hiding and I don't consider the threat something to be worried about because there's nothing I can do about it.

 

[Wunderbar]

That's why horror should stick to its own genre rather than horror missions being put into other games.

nah. Horror sections in otherwise non-horror games are almost always great.

 

[Prime Junta]

Well this escalated quickly. Split thread, no less.

All I meant with my throwaway comment was that Ocean House didn't seriously scare me whereas Shalebridge Cradle did, and I had just played Deadly Shadows before Bloodlines.

With that out of the way, carry on with your autism, gentlemen.

 

[Urthor]

Who ever rated the Ocean house that high?

The real highlight of Masquerade is just the cool level design on the beach and in Hollywood. That's mostly it.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

There is a Thief 3?

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Thief 3 was worse than previous installments, but Cradle was ok level. I don't like horror games, but sometimes horror sections in games is ok or even good (depends on game).
VtMB Ocean Hotel is ok too.
These levels definitely isn't best shit ever as some overexcited & easily scared people would say, but they also isn't worst shit ever as some local codexian naggers claim right now in this thread.