Thief 2 fan missions and campaigns

Having given up in annoyance about 20 minutes into mission 1, I would brofist your post if I could.

 

Unkillable Cat: I agree with your assessment of these two missions. Hell, as a betatester, I pointed out some of these issues in the first mission to him, particularly the high loot count, switches and quest stuff that's too well hidden, and erroneous readables. He responded by saying, "I'll add 200 loot, but it's easy to find all the loot, just look hard! Oh, I got someone to proofread the readables(they didn't do much apparently, looking at the end product)." Honestly, I pretty much gave up testing the second mission after realizing that it was one obscure puzzle after another and getting stuck at the decorative objects room. I'm playing through it only to have a good look at all the areas, as the Castlevania like aesthetics are pretty nice, inspite of the rest of the mission.

In related news, Yandros' second act of his campaign, Death's Cold Embrace, has entered beta testing: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80532&page=3&p=2289547&viewfull=1#post2289547 . You can thank me later for the free advertising, Yandros. The screenshots are a bit too bright, but it does look interesting enough as an area.

Oh, and how much of the other missions were built by other people? You say this one is the only mission with all four contributors making the level.

 

I just updated the screenshots by going back to the original captures and using much less gamma adjustment. Obviously my monitor settings are darker than most other people's because they look a bit dark to me now, just like most other author's screenshots. But since everyone is saying that, clearly they needed adjustment.

Most of the other missions were built originally by Polygon, followed by a lot of retexturing and heavy tweaking by me. Moghedian also did some significant work on the city map, and the map for mission 9 is completely original to me and Random_taffer since it was the last one added to the plan.

 

Just found this, pretty good analysis what makes Thief so good and why modern games fail to reach it:

Thought I'd post it here.

 

A House of Locked Secrets is the real deal. Damn that was awesome. Most of the ambient sounds and tracks were chilling.

 

Finally dug up my T2X review.

I hadn't played T2X in many years, but I remembered bits and pieces of it. The fact that it is memorable shows some of the quality present. T2X is the largest and by far the most ambitious FM ever made for any of the Thief games. It's a 13-mission FM where Garrett doesn't even get a look in, but instead we're put in the shoes of Zaya, a merchant from the southern lands whose arrival to the City is anything but cheerful. Barely escaping with her life and being taken in by a mysterious benefactor, she becomes a thief and sets out for revenge.

But just because it's big and long doesn't make it the best of the best. It's good, but it has a few problems and also suffers from having aged badly. It was hot stuff in 2005, but 10 years later it feels a little long in the tooth at times. The writing is actually the high point for me. Not the conversation text, but the sheer amount of filler text and descriptions that can be found dotted around. Someone took their time with that, and it fleshes out this new perspective of The City quite well.

The voice acting...while the lines are written very well and I know that the voice actors aren't professionals, there's something about listening to a guard who's standing around all bored, then searching for me and then pursuing me, and yet all his lines are spoken in a dull monotone. No authority in the guard's tone, no frustration can be sensed in his voice when he can't find me, it's just bland. There are also some...silly design ideas. Zaya starts with a hairpin lockpick and only later on does she upgrade it to a real set of lockpicks. This is the game's way of introducing new gameplay elements in a sensible order. The problem is this: To even get T2X running nowadays requires decent knowledge of Thief and its mechanics, therefore the lockpicks are part of the standard gear. (The compass is numero uno, followed by the lockpicks.) But for some bizarre reason, T2X puts the player through a tutorial-esque process by giving him a baby lockpick that can't even be selected by a hotkey, and then later upgrading to real Thief lockpicks. To me this doesn't just feel like a lost opportunity, but a completely wasted one. Instead of adding something new, T2X makes a pre-existing game element more complex and bothersome.

Another similarly wasted opportunity is the Elemental Catalyst. This is a crystal that the player gets early on that toggles an "Alt-Fire" mode on the elemental arrows. Water arrows become Ice arrows that temporarily stun critters, Fire arrows become Flare arrows that instead of making a big boom creates an Area of Effect attack that blinds people and harms Undead, Moss arrows become Spore arrows that when fired upon a critter makes it attack the nearest critter, and finally Gas arrows become Combustion arrows that make a BIG explosion if they're fired at a source of fire. While these new additions sound cool and all, they either become niche weapons or stupidly powerful (Ice arrows freeze a critter in place without even triggering alert statuses). Either way, they don't do anything for the gameplay of the mod except give a "Ooh, neat!" response. There's never a time when circumstances specifically dictate their need.

There are also a few items introduced that sound neat, and by far the most original of those is the Locust Hive. Throw one of these at a body (unconscious or otherwise) and the locusts devour it in a matter of seconds, leaving only behind various body parts like severed arms or multiple skulls (?!?). But these new items are like the alt-fire elemental arrows, they're either niche items or stupidly powerful (EMP grenades instantly take out cameras and mechbeasts) and don't really add anything to the game - though at least the Locust Hives are fun to play with (see below).

And while one would expect such a large team of clever people to come up with some good enemies - prepare to be disappointed. There's a different type of zombie that not only vomits at you if it gets too close, but can be dismembered or even decapitated without it dying. Some guards carry flintlock pistols that fire off a small rocket, judging by the ensuing explosion. Only the Soul Elementals (floating masks) offer something new and challenging, but don't overlook the "regular critters" - the T2X team was very clever with them in a couple of ways. You can encounter "fat cats" - nobles who are literally too large to be carried off anywhere. Once they drop, they're there to stay. Another diabolical trick the team uses is in guard patrol routes. At first you see a guard patrolling and think "That's easy to predict, I'll just stand there and be ready for him." - except the next time round the guard suddenly stops, turns away, does on-the-spot spins, or in some nasty cases comes walking right towards you. This is not random behavior - it's just a very clever and subtle usage of extended patrol routes.

But the biggest problem with T2X is to me is the difficulty level - or lack of it, to be more precise. I know that I'm a seasoned taffer and can run rings around Haunts and all that, but here's a HUGE indicator of T2X's difficulty - you're ALWAYS allowed to kill. Even on Expert difficulty. This marks a dramatic shift from the basic Thief gameplay and makes Zaya more of an assassin than a thief. There's no bonus to be gained from being sneaky, and no real penalty for killing everyone. I went through the motions of knocking out people and dragging their bodies to dark corners, but soon enough I just gave up on that - there's no incentive to being sneaky. Besides, T2X's new toys render most of the sneaky taffing stuff obsolete, as Ice arrows and EMP grenades will sort out pretty much anything you'll encounter. One more thing, and this is a big one - the AI is bugged. On more than one occasion the AI could spot hidden bodies in dark corners, THROUGH WALLS, FROM THE FLOOR ABOVE, AT A GREAT DISTANCE. I am not joking here, I reloaded several times to check this.

The maps are also a hit and miss affair. Some are so bad as to be meaningless, others are up there with the best that the community has made. Most notably the two Undead missions tower above the rest, though some of the later missions are also quite enjoyable on their own. But overall, the T2X mod is a monumental achievement, a milestone in the history of the Thief games, and most definetely worth a playthrough...but it's not the best the Thief FMs have to offer.

How to turn a whorehouse into a slaughterhouse (open) How to turn a whorehouse into a slaughterhouse (close)

(With apologies to Doug the Eagle)

Remember those Locust Hives I told you about? Here's a chance to put them to some interesting use. Here's how:

# In mission 10, buy every Locust Hive offered in the purchase screen, even at the cost of other, more sensible equipment choices.

# Before entering the brothel itself, scour the outside area to find more Locust Hives. Check everywhere, rope up to ceilings and mantle on top of sharp, pointy things. You should end up with about 9 of them.

# Find the stables in the back with the burrick. This is Binky, and he's going to be your unwilling partner-in-crime. Say hello to him before you knock him out with the blackjack. A dead Binky is useless as a scapegoat.

# Round the corner is a door, and inside is a guy sleeping by a table. Knock him out as well, as he's watching all the cameras in the brothel (the "tubes" that are dotted around). We don't want any witnesses to this heinous act.

# Use the rear entrance right by the stables to get into the brothel.

# Start picking off guards, whores and johns wherever you find them, and drag their bodies back to Binky's pen. Make sure you get the apebeast upstairs (because yuck).

# Here's where things get gruesome: Use the Locust Hives to dispose of the bodies while they're lying in Binky's pen. One Hive will eat 2-3 bodies, depending on circumstances. Madame Volari herself will have to be dealt with where she lands, so toss a couple of bodies with her to make the most of the Locust Hive. The locusts won't eat the corpse on the upper floor, so leave that somewhere else, like on the front desk as a demo model for new johns. For some reason the locusts won't touch Binky, so don't worry about him.

# With 9 Locust Hives you should get through more than 20 bodies, which leaves quite a mess in Binky's pen. If you wish, use a couple of water arrows to clean up the blood.

# You should now have a mostly empty brothel and a LARGE stack of skulls and hands in Binky's pen.

# Whenever the authorities (conveniently located INSIDE the brothel) decide to show up, they'll find the place deserted and start snooping around. Eventually they'll find Binky in his pen, and see what appears to be a gruesome feeding binge of epic proportions that claimed the lives of (almost) everyone in the brothel.

# Poor Binky's life can now be measured in nanoseconds as the City Watch dispenses great justice, while you walk away without a care in the world.

 

T2X was quite enjoyable, I should replay it as I've only played it once, and that was back in 2010 - it was the first Thief FM I've ever played, before I knew there is such a thing as FMs.

The missions I enjoyed most were:
the museum mission
the hammerite mission
the first undead mission
the brothel mission
the hotel mission

The others were merely average or meh, but overall it was a great campaign. I should play it again now that I can compare it to other FMs.

 

The museum and hotel missions are very nice, but the Hammerite mission bored me to tears.

 

Well, it was before I found any other fan missions, and I think it was before I played Thief Gold - I had only played The Metal Age before.

 

I don't know, I actually liked that zombies had an extra attack. I can run past zombies too easily, hell, I managed to do it when I played the game first. Anything to make them more challenging without becoming infuriating is good to me. I also like dismembering their bodies as a way to limit their attacks if I hit carefully, but making them completely harmless without using any holy water or fire arrows was a bad idea. The pistol guards were odd as they didn't pull out any weapon after shooting their one bullet. That would have made them more dangerous than being essentially glorified civilians with a one shot attack.

I agree with the rest, particularly with the ice arrows and EMP grenades letting you take out anything without problems, except zombies. (Did ice arrows work on zombies and the undead? I never tried them too much after realizing how overpowered it was.) I think a big problem with all the new items and alternate arrows is, much like Dishonored's powers and items, they often don't directly facilitate stealth. Instead they have a bunch of effects that usually aim at thinning out enemies, like making them fight each other or creating big explosions.

 

I haven't played T2X for years either, but the 2nd to last mission, The Cure, stands out in my mind as being the best of the levels. Undead and an abandoned hospital - sold.

 

The Hotel is my favorite. So many things to do in that one, but I do agree with Unkillable Cat with regards to the overall low difficulty.

 

Great video nazi.

 

A new Thief 2 campaign, called "Of Thieves and Rubies" has been released: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145495http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145495 . I've finshed two missions and am on the third mission, but so far it seems like a pretty solid campaign. The first mission has you steal a ruby from a nobleman's house, but you can actually explore several locations in the city before doing that. The mission looks good, like a classic city mission would. The house is very tightly patrolled and has quite a bit of marble, but it's manageable with some resources. The second one has you meet a jeweller initially, which turns into a search for his whereabouts pretty soon. Once again, you can break into several places before entering the jeweller's shop, and there are some neat little details, like the half coin stacks on the shelves of slot machines in the casino. This looks as good as the first mission. I would say the campaign is worth playing so far.

 

I've just finished the first mission, and I am impressed as well. Instead of presenting a large cityscape, we get smaller areas with lots of little details.

I am also VERY impressed with the "show, don't tell" aspect of storytelling. In the first mission is a tavern where someone spilled his drink, threw up and seemingly bashed someone's skull in with a bottle in the next room. And the readables are flawless - they're not endless exposition, but fragments of messages that get the point across without telling too much.

Only flaw I've noticed (except for a misplaced drainage pipe) is in the briefing videos in-between missions. The narration is done via subtitles, but it looks to me like there are lines missing. Is this due to that "stretching videos" thing with NewDark?

 

And finished. "Of Thieves and Rubies" isn't the fanciest or the largest series of Thief missions around, but they still deliver. I was most impressed with the third mission and its criss-cross interior, with the basement getting special praise.

It's a great starting point for beginners, as the missions never get complicated or tough, despite still offering challenges.

If anything, this FM only needs a tiny amount of polish (all the item names were in German for me) and it's good to go.

 

I rather enjoyed the third mission as well. The first two were decent but small city missions, which were well-executed but lacked much in the way of vertical play (plenty of wood textures up there, no rope arrows). The maps and briefings were also well done and in the LGS style. A few niggly things that buggered me were the doors (all opening out into hallways, which makes for troublesome navigation and peeking down the corridor) and some lack of polish, but overall it was well done, standard thiefy fare. It also looks pretty damn good with the EP2 enabled, since it uses lots of original textures and objects. I'll be playing the final mission tomorrow.

Oh, and I fixed the German strings problem and linked to a replacement file early in that thread, you might want to grab it and replace it in the ZIP if you plan to keep it around for future replays.

 

I'm going to help writing a story for a fan mission: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145501&p=2290275&viewfull=1#post2290275 . Wish me luck! Feel free to rip into my writing if you don't like it.

 

I think ZylonBane already stole your thunder - the butler did it, right?

 

So I played Of Thieves and Rubies. That was a good mission pack. Very short missions, but well-designed and varied. The author knows what he's doing. Here's hoping he does more of it.

 

A little off-topic, but remember the T2 FM "King's Story"?

Remember the castle featured in it, Zontik's DromED rendition of Neuschwanstein Castle?

Well, a painting of the castle was sold at an auction recently for €100.000.



Nice, ain't it?

Just don't tell anyone who painted it.

 

This video is really good. Too bad it didn't get more views.

 

Man. I played Hidden Agenda again so I could finish up my review of it and I'm in a mood for more Thief so I'm going to try out that Of Thieves and Rubies campaign and see how it turns out

I can't help but agree that Thief 2X's difficult is a let down, if simply because there's no chance you are going to play it without beating the game first and yet it's much easier than most of the original missions and has many tutorialising aspects, like the lockpick thing you mention.

 

Hi there! CroGamer here. Been lurking on this thread for a while and finally decided to log in. Recently, I decided to play (or at least try playing) every Thief 2 mission I could find. I'm going through this list http://thiefmissions.com/search.cgi?search=+game=t2&sort=release#m chronologically and finished aprox 20-25 missions, so I thought I could post some of my opinions here.

"Ranstall Keep" is a great mission. You play as a lady thief trying to escape a ghost town where everyone has gone missing except you. It's pretty spooky, especially because you don't have a blackjack at the start. Recommended.

"The Docks" sets you in a small town near the sea, and asks you to steal an amulet from a sea captain. It's really small and easy, but enjoyable. Recommended.

"Benny's Dead" is set in a small town, and your mission is to find out who killed Benny (a police officer, not our favorite guard). This is one of the first Thief 2 missions relaying on story. It's a pretty good story, and the gameplay is good. But to achive the ending you have to do something really idiotic with no clues that tell you what to do. And the ending is really bugged. But still recommended.

"Equilibrium" is one of those missions that everybody loves and I think it was just 'meh'. It sets you in a keeper facility and there are five special keepers hunting you. They're supposted to be hard to kill but I killed them all easily without them even noticing me. And the final puzzle is just a chore.

 

Hello, new taffers are always welcome here.

"Ranstall Keep" will probably need a little tinkering to work properly nowadays. It's a monochrome mission, but thanks to various enhancement packs some colour has leaked into the FM. Also, NewMantle from the NewDark patches seems to break the FM in a few places.

The ending of "Benny's Dead" stopped me from completing it, so I have a hard time recommending it even though everything else works and plays nicely.

I think that "The Docks" is a T2 remaster of a T1 mission, but otherwise it comes recommended from me.

"Equilibrium" is a must-play, if only for the different gameplay challenge it provides.