Thief 2 fan missions and campaigns

2 years ago darthslair made the aforementioned FM. Now he releases a updated (and bloated, it's 0.5 gigs) version with 2 extra missions added.

I don't feel like having a go at it, how about you people?

 

I'm now finishing some FM campaingns I left in the middle. I'm playing the last mission of "The Black Frog". After that I intend to finally finish my playthrough of KOTP. Maybe later...

 

After briefly watching Being Thief (by FenPhoenix) and playing it I found that there is sequel. Some similar elements, but need play more to tell.
Lot of searching, secrets...that's what I like in the FM yet found more common in TheDarkMod.
Some cheesy elements like BCoK Blessed Children of Kairas, that are big mechanical spiders, plus contest to find secret stashes in the city, made it overall pretty entertaining.

Wow, compared to some TDM missions where they weight few megabytes....

EDIT can't find how to enable "new mantle" in patch 1.21.

 

How is The Black Frog? It is one of the larger campaigns I haven't played yet.

 

I can't actually remember clearly the first three missions plot details, since I played them last year, though it revolves around garrett being hired to rob a portrait, that is related to a paganistic cult. The FM has a supernatural focus. It's a spinoff of l'arsene missions.

The first one is located in a small section of the city, where a celebration is happening and you can move freely and being seen without too much consequence, since everyone is partying on the streets, there's some secrets and loot, and some restricted areas. The 2nd one is a mansion level, and the objective is getting aforementioned the portrait. The 3rd one is a return to the 1st level, now infested with some big and fast smoke monsters roaming around. They wrecked that part of the town an that is related to the whole portrait and the guy who hired you. Now, This week I finally got back and played the 4th mission. It's in a secret island where emilie victor (from l'arsene series) is hiding with the black frog glyph inside a locked castle, with devices around the island that keeps it locked down, and you have to search and find the mechanisms that deactivate the tower prtecting the castle entrance. The last level is emilie victors and the cult's house, which garrett must escape and rob the glyph.

The 4th level has some tricky puzzles with subtle hints, but nothing too difficult. Even the secrets are not that difficult to find. There's very little loot in this 4th level, and lots of food. Overall the whole campaing has a good level design, and levels are very much like standard good FMs. There are some details I find cool, like basil, emilie's bodyguard, and others I don't really like, which are the smoke dogs, though they're not that difficult to deal with. Some very tricky puzzles that requires attention to visual cues and no written hints can get you stuck, and the same may happen when trying to find a small lever on dark places, and they're plot required (I feel some of these levers were better hidden than the secrt ones in level 4).

On sensut's huge mission, I was playing both "being thief" missions previously, and I really liked being thief 2: At first It reminded me of those mammoth KOTP levels, but this one is actually well done, it's big but its parts dont feel unecessary and everything fits nicelly. It's huge but you naturally get the layout on your head and you dont feel lost as it primarily appears to be.

 

It's also a bonus when a huge mission is huge because of having many rooms and streets, rather than having GIGANTIC rooms and streets that are completely out of proportion and traversing one room takes 20 seconds when running because it is so huge. I love it when missions are huge because they have a lot of content. I hate it when an author just has no sense of poportion and every bedroom has the size of the mines of moria but then there's only one table placed there.

Really, I think bad proportions is THE thing that puts me off from an FM the most. I can tolerate bad design, enjoy mediocre design, but I always get that "uuuugh" feeling when I see overly large and empty rooms.

 

Though the second part of being thief 2 is a little underwhelming. But it's just an epilogue...

 

Of course, save for Little Big World?

 

In cam_ext.cfg file, it should be like this:

; -------------
; game specific
; -------------

; enable new mantling code
new_mantle

If that line is like that, it's enabled.

 

Well yeah, I finnaly found that. Managed to launch it, required some google-fu cause no manuals like "Prepare your Thief1/2/3 to FMs". I know it's in the CFG file in game directory but still... didn't know that long delay make me forgot such basic things.
Quite funny that Exile mission, you can walk around city but when you get erection put out blackjack it's game over. Similir reqirements of loot (13k) yet no hidden stashes contest like in Being Thief 1. Whatever.

 

That's a wholly different thing

 

Well, I had a go at it anyway. *sigh*

Mission 1 is a rehash of "Return to the Cathredal" which has been updated to NewDark to accomodate the fact that the mission has the Cathredal area TWICE. The story is still piss and the anti-climactic ending is still there, except now there's...

Mission 2, which is a rehash of "Return to the Cathredal" (which has been hit by meteors) and a part of "The Haunted Cathredal" which was the Old Quarter OM from Thief. The story gets hilarious here on, it starts with a cutscene of a moon-sized meteor hitting the planet, yet life somehow survives, especially within The City. Then there comes a scene where Garrett, now dead, meets The Builder himself, resplendant in full glory upon his throne, instructing Garrett that he must right his wrongs and save the Hammerites. That scene makes The Emperor of Mankind seem like a bureaucratic busybody by comparison. Except for the meteors crashing in through the window at the start of the mission and the various monsters used, there is absolutely nothing worth talking about in this mission, except maybe the gimmick with the seven guardians. There are 7 guardians at 7 locations guarding 7 scrolls that must be stolen. Each location is marked with a small pentagram, and at timed intervals the scroll + guardian appear for a few minutes. Except this event only activates once you read a plot-vital scroll that you have in your inventory, if you don't read it right away you have all the time in the world. So I went ahead, seemingly clueless as to what would happen, and cleared everything out. By the time the sequence with the guardians started, I could run to each location in record time, sit and wait my ass off for the guardian to appear, then nab the scroll the second it appeared, which instakilled the guardian. For a game mechanic, this was poorly thought through.

Mission 3 is a rehash of The Maw of Chaos, the final level of Thief. Most critters have been switched out for Undead, the water section removed and some paint job added here and there, but otherwise it's just the same. There's even a Trickster-esque figure at the end who does NOTHING except send Hammerites falling to their doom. The end sequence is The Builder going on about how the Thief can go and do good in the world after he's had his hand cut off. The End.

The TTLG community seems to hold this darthslair guy in the highest esteem, and I know for a fact that he's dealing with vision problems, but that doesn't mean that he can just re-hash OMs, cook together some Second Coming plot and call it a day. He claimed himself that he was going to retire, I think he should, because he is clearly done when it comes to making Thief FMs.

There's nothing wrong with using OMs as long as people are doing something original, but a resettled Cathredal has been done to death already, while maps like the Thieves's Guild and Song of the Caverns get no love whatsoever. (Imagine Thieves's Guild being made pitch dark and full of zombies, with Garrett starting at the end and having to work his way to the surface. It could work if done right.)

 

Ouch. Surely, a lot of work and care went into this mission pack, but really? An end of the world plot? Meeting the Builder in da face?* Gimmicky boss monsters? Using repurposed original missions (which, unless done very carefully, inevitably produces cringeworthy results)? Even with the creative liberties fan missions give you, that's asking for trouble.
______________
* It never occurred to me while playing Thief that The Builder might really be some guy sitting on a golden throne decorated with hammers and gears and stuff. He always seemed to be a dimly remembered founding figure venerated as a demigod. Come on, that's one of the neat things about the Thief mythology! You don't fuck with that stuff!

 

Sounds like a boring set of missions. Makes me wonder why he even spent the effort on making them if they're that uninspired.

 

Klatremus has an impressive three hour and a half long supreme ghost run of my mission. Uses the HD pack that I dislike but still. It's impressive to see him do stuff I didn't think of.

 

This may come way too late, but the word "klatremus" means "climbing mouse" in Danish. So for him to dissect a vertically endowed mission like yours can only be considered a honour of the highest order.

 

What's with this necro age mod?

 

I'm a little bored so I'm gonna kill this evening by doing something odd: I'm gonna replay the King's Story FM by Zontik.

It's probably one of the most ambitious FMs ever made, and yet riddled with many terrible design decisions. I'm gonna take notes on those design decisions and show people how NOT to do things. One of the most memorable ones is the "You're leaving the combat zone!" objective which fails the mission if you step in the wrong place. No, I'm not shitting you, this is present in King's Story.

More later.

EDIT:

# Intro video is surpisingly good and faithful to Thief.

# Difficulty levels are irrelevant for the first mission, there is no loot and only one secret.

# One objective is not to let the castle guards raise the alarm, which makes sense. Another objective is the aforementioned "you're leaving the combat zone!" objective. This is very much in part like the "don't go down to ground level" objective from "The Life of the Party" OM in Thief 2. There are a LOT of slopes and deep chasms around, and for those I expect this to be perfectly natural. Except sometimes there are areas which don't seem to be "out of the combat zone", like a bunch of dead trees at the bottom of a cave you're supposed to go down anyway. Hop down to the trees and it's Game Over.

# The author uses the same texture for EVERYTHING. Walls, floors, cave ceilings, rocks, etc. EVERYTHING LOOKS THE SAME. Which makes navigating and getting around kinda difficult.

# The FM comes with a map, but there's NOTHING on the map which says where we are on it.

# The starting area is a ledge by a rocky outcropping that stretches above you, a tree is visible on the top. There is NOTHING that tells us how we got here, we were just dumped in the wilderness on the chance that no one would ask questions such as these.

# I have a look at that tree, and found a ill-traversible path up there. My reward? 7 Moss Arrows. Getting down... seems impossible without taking damage. Whatever.

# My starting equipment is the blackjack, compass, lockpicks and ONE broadhead arrow.

# At one point while trying to traverse the landscape a "ghost" appears on a cliffside. However he is easily missed because in order to trigger him you have to be looking in another direction.

# I follow the path beyond the ghost and I can choose two directions; forward up a slope or to the right into a cavern. I go up the slope and see some scenery below, however every attempt I make to go down the slope is met with the "combat zone" objective failed. Clearly I'm not supposed to go this way.

# After a while in the cavern I seem to reach its end where it opens up into a large chamber. In the center is a rock from which springs water and some bottles. I can't do anything with them, so why bother having them there?

# I also start hearing sounds like I'm being hunted by a wolf-like creature, yet no such creature is around. Weird.

# I find a chest which contains a single Rope Arrow, but otherwise I'm at a dead end.

# Some backtracking later and I spot dead tree hanging over a ledge at a funny angle. I try to embed the rope arrow in the tree, several reloads later tells me that it will only fasten in the trunk itself, not the branches.

# Several attempts later I manage to jump up on the ledge and progress. I have never gotten this far in the mission, so whatever awaits me here is new to me.

# I found a small lake with a wolfman standing by its shore. Before trying to confront the wolfman I explore and find a cave with nothing in it but a skin bed and some bones. I hear that "wolfman" sound again, but nothing appears.

# By this time the music starts getting strange. It gets tense and suspenseful, and yet there's nothing here. Nothing happens.

# I go back the wolfman and suddenly I'm CamVatored while the wolfman runs up a steep slope, enters a cavern then makes a sharp turn right while I continue... I fall down a waterfall and arrive safely at the bottom. That's where the game gives me back the controls. So yeah, I got whisked away by a wolfman who dragged me along like a balloon before dumping me down a waterfall. This mission sure makes little sense so far.

# The good news is, that this waterfall is one of a handful of landmarks on the map, so now I know where I am and where I should be headed!

# A short look around gives me two choices: Follow the water or climb up the rocks on my right. Following the water takes me to a little shed that contains a bottle just like the ones I saw earlier (and couldn't do anything with). Clearly someone lives here but that bottle is the only item I can interact with. There's a book on the table, "The Beast Within" by Jane Jensen. (Nice reference.)

# I climb up until I reach a tree and a chasm. Along the way EVERY LEDGE I have to climb on is designed in such a way as to hinder my progress, upward-facing angles that make it very hard to mantle on to or land on properly.

# Once I reach the place with the tree and chasm I seem to be stuck. I can't make the jump across because the tree is blocking my way. Shooting a rope arrow into the tree doesn't seem to do anything. So I saved and paused the game there.

EDIT 2:

# I taff around and realize that I missed a sword in the shed. Using that I chop down the tree and use it as a bridge to cross. A short climb later I emerge with the castle right in front of me! Cool! Mission almost complete. Err... no. I'm at the mouth of a small cave overlooking the castle, and I need to get down there first. There's a guard looking my way, and he almost spots me at one point but does nothing.

# It's here that I notice that the texture used on every surface has changed. At least I think it has changed. It's more yellow now than gray.

# Then I reach the bottom and there's a canyon where a guard is lighting torches along the wall. I knock him out and proceed slowly the castle in a clockwise motion until I'm at the far end of the castle. In front of me is what appears to be a gate, it's thoroughly locked and nothing immediately visible that I can interact with. I do notice, however, what appears to be a small path leading further clockside along the castle. I follow that.

# After walking along some of the narrowest ledges in Thief history, I reach the part of the castle closest to the cavern mouth I emerged from earlier. Here I find a back door, and the guard outside was so gracious enough to "lend" me the key. Except... there's no lock. In fact, the door doesn't look to be frobbable at all. So I'm no better off.

# After a few minutes of examination, I notice that a tiny circle of the door lock is frobbable. I use the key and a beeping sound starts and a light above the door flashes red, but the door doesn't open. A few seconds later the alarm goes off and the mission fails. Nothing I do seems to be able to stop this.

# I backtrack back to the front gate. After taffing around there I find a window that's too small for me to get through, but I see a lever inside that I can't reach. I spend a few minutes figuring out that I have to stand on the outer wall, quite a distance from the window, and shoot an arrow inside to hit the lever. This raises the front gate. Except...

# Beyond it is ANOTHER gate, and two cameras positioned so that it's impossible to not get spotted by them. And there's a lock that must be picked. Yeah, this is not happening. Clearly I'm missing something, so I give up and consult a walkthrough.

# Turns out that I am supposed to disable the cameras by going in through the back door. How do I open the back door? By first using the key on the itsy bitsy teeny weeny lock on the front door, then turn around and pick the OTHER itsy bitsy teeny weeny lock on the rail.

#

# I try this, and find out that there's NO room for error, you HAVE to pick the lock PERFECTLY or the alarm goes off. Or, as I found out after a reload, pick the second lock first, then use the key on the front door.

# Inside I find a way to disable the cameras on the front gate, and a note mentioning the second lock and the new time the guards have to open both locks.

# ...

# This....is...beyond retarded. Having the only note that gives you ANY clues about what you're supposed to do with a door, be located BEYOND the door that you're trying to open!?!

# Anyway, I tiptoe along the narrowest ledges in the universe back to the front gate, and try to pick the lock there. I quickly realize that something ain't right here. The lock ain't picking, it just keeps going back to the starting position.

# So I experiment. Turns out that the author did manage a slight bit of brilliance here. BOTH picks work in the lock at the same time, but if you choose the wrong pick the lock resets, or at least slips back. So the trick here is to find out in which order you're supposed to use the picks. On one hand this brings a new dimension to the lock-picking minigame. On the other hand he picked the WORST imaginable lock to do that with. Because assuming that people didn't get through the back door (and considering how much of a clusterfuck that is, I'm guessing not many) their only option is to try to game the cameras to get a handful of seconds where they can fiddle with the lock. I'm guessing that opening the lock flawlessly is a 45-60 second job, imaging having only a few seconds at a time before having to dodge away from the cameras?!?

# Anyway, picking this lock finishes the mission.

 

Oh wow, King's Story. That mission is going to become even more silly later on. I remember how some TTLGers praised it for being "challenging", while others didn't care much for it due to the difficulty level of stupid hard. I never understood people who tought pixelhunting for keys and switches was challenging... yeah, there will be a lot of keyhunting in the second part. Have fun.

 

well, I reloaded a save of "oracle of the prophets", which is the 4th level in the Keeper of the Prophecies. The one in the "planetoid", which I hated back when I played the 1st time and made me abandon the campaingn. When I reloaded a quicksave, I had no idea where I was, what I should do, and so I restarted the level after the "camvator", and I'm facing it as any big thief level. And to b honest, I'm actually enjoying it at this time.

Finally, now I have hopes of finishing this campaign. let's see what is in store for the next missions...

 

The pain! All of Zontik's missions are like that. They are obviously carefully planned and he spends immense effort on them, but they are about as enjoyable as getting your teeth pulled. I remember The Golden Book of the Keepers being devilishly frustrating - and that was after I restarted with a printed walkthrough. With King's Story, he rebuilt Neuschwanstein Castle... in order to create a mission that's unplayable except for the hardest of the hardcore. Well done, I suppose. I have been playing these games far too long, but I'm not touching this mission with a ten foot pole.

 

I like King's Story a lot but it's definitely not for everyone, that's for sure.

 

Update:

# Mission 2 is a lot better than Mission 1. I've spent an hour making my way through the castle, knocking out those whom I can and avoiding those that I can't. So far so good, though I get the nagging suspicion that several areas that are now "quiet" will suddenly see activity later on. The front gate, for example.

# I may have to spend untold amount of time hiding bodies. I know of a few good places, but it's going to be a PAIN.

# The castle is BEAUTIFUL. In terms of appearance this is one of the best missions ever released.

# Sadly Mission 2 has de-evolved into a keyhunt, just like you guys foretold. The furthest I've got is the library, I need a key for the stables, the stairwell, the chef's room and the room with the stuck elevator. On that note, I need something to "unjam" the elevator. Hmm... I may have an idea on that.

# The musical notes worry me, as they seem to point to a piano-based puzzle. Urghh...

EDIT 2: I'm looking through a walkthrough to try to make progress, and I spot the following "gems" of game design:

# To get a particular key I need to dive into a water tank, but since it's a heated watertank I need to turn off the heat first. No problem, but the problem for me was figuring out HOW to get into the water tanks. Turns out that there were two metal circles in the floor on the top floor of the tower that are the "doors" to the water tower interior. If my experience is correct, they ONLY become frobbable after I turn off the heat, so it's very easy to dismiss them.

# What's more, there already exists a "water hatch" graphic in Thief 2 assets (if not OM, then fan-made) yet Zontik saw no reason to use that, clearing telling people "this is a door, and there is water beyond it". So time is wasted trying to figure this crap out.

# But the real moment is this: In the bride's room there is a set of white shoes. Frob them once and Garrett says "I don't see a reason". Sounds pretty straightforward, no? Except, if you frob them AGAIN, Garrett says "I'm not sure..." then takes them anyway. And if you use them, you're now wearing shoes that muffle ALL WALKING SOUNDS. So they're a rather useful piece of equipment to have, yet the game does it damndest to make you think that they're irrelevant.

This makes me believe that Zontik is a retarded sadist that wasted 4 years of his life to watch people fall prey to his stupid logic. I hope I'm wrong, but right now the evidence is pretty sizable.

 

Never tried any of zontik's missions. Eventually, i'll try. In fact, I'm trying to figure a better way of selecting next FMs. My problem is my OCD completionist side. I still have that illusion that I'll finish all FMs. And some masochistic feeling compels me to play even the wordt ones...

Finished that KOTP mission and now... oh, fuck... I'm back into that Death Star of a church. Again... Actually, I liked the 2001/star trek/Dr. Who style of the ending cutscene of that mission. It felt like garrett was floating through the next generation opening. Overal, this canvators in KOTP reminds me a lot of star trek the movie, with those slooooow sequences.

 

I've given up for now. I revisited Mission 1 briefly because the author said at one point:

I went and looked. Except for a wolf's face high up on a cavern wall in one place, there are NO visible tracks anywhere. Also, in that cave by the lake that is far off and has nothing of relevance, I hear the wolf's voice - so either Zontik is smoking something or he's dead wrong.

My troubles in Mission 2 are now concerning the dumbwaiter. I found the tool needed to unjam the thing, and I have the key needed to reach it. Then I had to spend a minute and a half finding a way to get INTO the dumbwaiter (running jump FTW) and I stopped and wondered if making every little thing in the mission a challenge is a sensible thing to do. Then I press "Up" on the dumbwaiter.

It goes up a little bit, then it stops and a soundbyte loops that indicates that it's going to break and fall soon. I look around, the only thing I can do is fire a rope arrow at the wooden support beams just above my head. I do so and jump on the arrow. Nothing happens. I jump OFF the rope arrow and then suddenly I'm high enough that the "break elevator" trigger activates and it falls to the bottom of the chute. Cue Michael Bay-esque explosion coming up the chute, as if the dumbwaiter had been made of C4 and napalm. Since I'm stranded on a rope arrow I die a miserable and fiery death. I am clueless as to what I'm supposed to do here.

I'm also reading other player's comments about the mission. For the purposes of this mission I had my gamma correction jacked up somewhat (not that it's helping), but another user is reporting that he can't see the lever through the window that opens the front gate. Other users tested this and reached the same conclusion, on "normal" gamma levels the lever is hidden in the dark. What's worse. Zontik actually admitted that he intends for players to shoot blindly through that window.

I'm not really sure if I should continue. I've seen enough to know that my original verdict of this FM from four years ago - "the Daikatana of Thief FMs" - is still true, only now it's starting to threaten Calendra's Legacy as the worst FM ever made.