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There was no indication that I would need this item, but then when you need it it's too late to go back and fetch it if you missed it. Not good game design.
Ugh. Sounds like true gamer's Hell. I remember playing one Thief 2 fan mission, the amusingly premised & punned Mech Angelo, where I climbed up onto and dropped down into a cathedral or something and discovered that I had no way to get back to the previous area to acquire a needed key. Since it's usually a single author making these things for free, I always tend to cut them some slack since they can't be prescient of every strange or dumb unforeseen path a player takes. But yeah, good game design tends to preclude this sort of thing
The problem with L'Arsene and Emilie Victor is that they're trying to be too ambitious, in a way. Lots of scripted scenes, lots of cool set pieces, but it's incredibly easy to break them. I tend to go around blackjacking everyone, and when I got stuck and read the walkthrough I also read that apparently there is one guy you shouldn't knock out because he's needed to do a scripted thing later...
... okay. There is no indication of this at all. You can break your game by playing it normally, without realizing you've broken it. Wew lad.
Gaetane's later missions are much better and she learned from her earlier mistakes, but the first two are just too rough to be good. They were impressive for their time regarding the scripting and storytelling, but I found the level architecture to be a little dull (too many rectangular rooms without trims etc) and the missions way too easily breakable if you don't do things the way the author intended. They were insanely popular missions back in the day cause they did things other missions didn't do and showed that you could do some really complex stuff with Dromed, but their actual gameplay is more annoying than fun.
I'm surprised there weren't more FMs for Thief Gold since the cave level design in the opening sections of The Death of Garrett is pretty amazing, I thought, with hideous poison-death-by-multi-colored-spider-great-and-small nearly every step of the way. I did encounter a weird bug though. The ribcage of a skeleton I came across started slowly floating up up n away when I tried to frob it. I'm guessing it may be physics-related and caused by trying to play at 100 FPS with a game that practically no one could play at 60 FPS back in 1998 without constant micro-stutter because of Dark Engine's sophisticated and complex design that taxed hardware on systems of the day
The problem with L'Arsene and Emilie Victor is that they're trying to be too ambitious, in a way. Lots of scripted scenes, lots of cool set pieces, but it's incredibly easy to break them.
I'm playing through them right now, currently on The Korrigans. I found a spectacular way to break Emilie Victor, and I'm quite surprised no one seems to have thought of this in the 15 years since its release.
But yeah, they're pretty bad. Fortunately Korrigans is an improvement in almost every way... almost.
The problem with L'Arsene and Emilie Victor is that they're trying to be too ambitious, in a way. Lots of scripted scenes, lots of cool set pieces, but it's incredibly easy to break them.
I'm playing through them right now, currently on The Korrigans. I found a spectacular way to break Emilie Victor, and I'm quite surprised no one seems to have thought of this in the 15 years since its release.
This is not how the FM was intended to be played, but since Garrett is supposed to be suffering from a hangover I don't think he cares. The FM starts with three objectives: Get gear, get loot, get out. So... what happens if you finish all of these and no new objectives appear?
# Play the FM as normal to begin with. A blonde servant girl has a key on her belt which you must grab to unlock the gate on the upper level of the mansion. Head there.
# On the upper level keep your eyes out for a guard with a key on his belt. Grab that key, as it unlocks the armory. Now head for the armory.
# The best way to get there is to use the trap door in the kitchen and follow that path. You'll end up in the room next to the armory. Go in there and grab everything (especially the blackjack and sword) to tick off one objective.
# Now make your way through the mission as normal, blackjacking anyone that even looks at you funny. Your goal now is to reach the loot objective. On Expert this is 2200 gold, and it is possible. I had to find one secret (look for a dodgy banner) to pull it off though.
# On the upper floor is a room where Dewdrop is lying on a couch. On the windowsill above is a crumpled note and a key. You must grab the key, but DO NOT touch the note as that adds new objectives.
# Using this new key on a door on the lower level, you'll need to slash a banner to find a lever that opens a secret passage. This passage is blocked by a Mechanist banner, which you must also slash to progress. Be careful not to hit the secret door with your sword when slashing the banner, as that makes a loud CLANG noise which will play hell with Garrett's headache and alert the two guards by the front door.
# This new passage leads to the Lady's quarters. You'll know you're in the right place when you find her corpse in a closet.
# In the Lady's bedroom is a painting that can be frobbed. Behind it are some envelopes. DO NOT touch them, as they add a new objective.
# If you've scoured the place properly, you should now have met the loot requirement. Now make your way to the front gate. You can either go all the way back to the armory and head outside there and follow the path to the front gate, or go back to where you slashed the banner to reveal the lever and climb the ladder next to it to reach the top of a tower. Jump out of the tower to land just next to the exit.
# Stagger out of the mansion without a care in the world who this 'Emilie Victor' is.
Does someone remember a FM where you start at night in like a small internal garden (surrounded by walls on 3 sides with a building on 1 side but the door was just for show, so you needed to climb out of the garden I believe, there were also a couple of trees) and you were without weapons If I remember correctly, looked nice but I don't seem to find it anymore in my list of FMs so I might have deleted it by mistake.
Does someone remember a FM where you start at night in like a small internal garden (surrounded by walls on 3 sides with a building on 1 side but the door was just for show, so you needed to climb out of the garden I believe, there were also a couple of trees) and you were without weapons If I remember correctly, looked nice but I don't seem to find it anymore in my list of FMs so I might have deleted it by mistake.
I came across one that starts like that recently, "A Lovely Night".
EDIT: Here's my review of the L'Arsene series of FM's:
"L'Arsene" is not just an FM, but a series of FMs telling the same story. It's also the start of Gaetane's career in taffery, which would continue to rise and improve through the years until her magnum opus of "The Black Frog" in 2012. But here we are, at the beginning with the eponymous FM... and hoo-boy it's a bad one.
This is a cityscape mission with a little bit of everything in it... and yet everything feels like it was just thrown together with little or no attention to detail. It doesn't feel like a city but more like a serpentine set piece. The city is split up into four sections, and gameplay is on rails as you go through each one, and more often than not you have to scour every corner of each section to find the key to advance. There are two annoying scripted scenes (meaning you have no choice but to go through them exactly as the author intended) but by far the worst thing about L'Arsene are the readables. There's lots of exposition to get out there, and it's all done via notes left behind by L'Arsene, and they're all written Audiologs. That's not to say that the writing is terrible... it's mostly the manner in how it's conveyed to the player. Put it all together and all that expositon paints a nice background story, but that can't save "L'Arsene".
In my opinion this mission is so bad that I can't recommend it to anyone, and yet many taffers will see a reason to play it because it's the beginning of a string of FMs that share the same story and characters. To be honest there's nothing of value that happens in L'Arsene that affects the other FMs, but for sake of completeness I'll add a short story summary below so you can skip it:
Garrett leaves The City to get a break, and arrives in this unnamed town to rest for the night. He wakes up to find himself burgled by a thief calling himself L'Arsene, who claims to own this town and is so arrogant that he leaves a trail of letters behind where he mocks and taunts Garrett incessantly. Garrett sets out to even the score, and after escaping a couple of ambushes he manages to get the drop on L'Arsene as he's trying to rob the richest nobleman in town, DeLoret. Garrett, believing in poetic justice, drags L'Arsene's unconscious body to an empty jail cell at the police station and leaves him there to rot.
Also, a note signed by someone named Emily Victor can be found, where she gives info to someone on how to bring down DeLoret.
But "L'Arsene" is only the first FM, and we quickly see how Gaetane learns and improves with her next release, "Emilie Victor". Following the events of the last FM, Garrett is now living large in this new town, but one day wakes up alone, hung over and in an unfamiliar place with nothing but his lockpicks. After taking stock of the situation Garrett is tasked with helping out an strange, orphaned girl out for revenge.
Emilie Victor is a huge step up from L'Arsene. The mansion feels like a mansion and nothing is off or wrong about it. Unfortunately that's the only field where real progress has been made at this point. Gameplay still comes down to the overall area being split into little chunks, obvious key hunts are obvious, forced events are ham-fistedly bad and the readables are actually worse than in "L'Arsene". But instead of being a terrible FM Emilie Victor comes off as just having aged badly. There's one very strong reason to play this FM, and that's the charm Gaetane adds. In "L'Arsene" there's a retarded cripple special person who shuffles about like a zombie and holds a harp. Backstory is provided for this poor soul, but he's otherwise insignificant except for being a sympathetic character. Creating such characters becomes a trademark of sorts for Gaetane, and this starts to show in "Emilie Victor". The drunkard with the improvised hat was a riot back in 2003, and Dewdrop plays several different roles throughout. Even the main antagonist has a skull merrily bouncing along behind him, for no other reason than to evoke a response from the player.
So those of you having a go at "Emilie Victor", keep its age in mind. It was a trendsetter in many ways and had to go through at least one revision back in the day.
For those not interested in playing Emilie Victor and wish to skip further ahead, the plot advances as follows:
Garrett finds himself in DeLoret's mansion, and quickly learns that the nobleman is as evil as all the rumors suggest. Besides stealing, swindling and murdering to gain his vast fortune, his most notable crime was to banish a servant girl from his manor while keeping her daughter for himself. That daughter is Emilie Victor, and she's a reality-bender. DeLoret sought to use her for his own ends, but she ran and hid in her own pocket universe. For some reason she can't act against DeLoret directly, so she asks Garrett to help her get the better of him, which culminates in Emilie's freedom from DeLoret, and Garrett in possession of the literal key to DeLoret's fortune.
Also, a certain arrogant thief that crossed Garrett can be seen in DeLoret's personal dungeon, giving us the impression that we haven't seen the last of him...
Next up we have "The Korrigans" (also known as "The Goblins") where Garrett, now in possession of the key to a nobleman's ill-gotten fortune, plans to pick him clean before skipping town. But something goes very very wrong as the town has been invaded by ugly little critters called Korrigans that are terrorizing everyone. With the police on his back and an old acquaintance looking to settle a score, this is going to be one wild night out on the town.
Once again we see vast jumps in improvement. We're back to a cityscape, and while the map is divided, it's only along an East/West axis and feels natural. The cityscape also feels like one, with multiple pathways, rooftop shenanigans and some loot in various nooks and crannies. Even the sewer system allows for easy travel through the city. Taffers looking for an easy challenge may be in for a shock, though. Not only are the police out and about looking for Garrett, but nefarious evil-doers have hired snipers to kill him, and these eagle-eyed bastards won't hesitate to fire if they as much as suspect they've spotted him. Worst of all are the Korrigans themselves, who're quick on the draw and run faster still, and are REALLY sensitive to whatever's going on around them. That entire section goes on for too long, but fortunately there's plenty of gear to be found to even the odds. The readables, however, continue to nosedive in quality. I found two readables of the "Aaargh he's killing me!"-variety. Gaetane is, however, learning to use scenery to tell a story. The aftermath of a battle in the sewers has bodies left in some interesting places, while a poor guardsman must contend with being the Universe's Whipping Boy by running around dressed like a pineapple!
Overall "The Korrigans" is the first Gaetane FM that I recommend playing, and those that do so will inevitably want to go play the sequel... "The Den", the final chapter in the L'Arsene vs Garrett rivalry.
At the start of the fourth FM Garrett finds himself in a jail cell, being gloated over by L'Arsene who delivers a typical Evil Villain speech. Much to my surprise he talks this time round (a welcome relief from his walls of exposition texts) as he explains how he will kill Garrett. Due to early-age mechanics and my quick hands, L'Arsene actually spent half of his speech addressing an empty cell, as I broke out and snuck away into an adjacent cell with him none the wiser.
"The Den"'s setting is a three-story mansion out in the country where L'Arsene and his goons have taken up residence. Soon enough we realize that there's more to the mansion than thieving squatters and ominous-looking statues, and soon Garrett is on a treasure hunt for a big prize that L'Arsene seems to have already claimed.
To be honest, it's kinda hard to swallow that the same person made "The Den" and "L'Arsene", as the growth and progression made in architecture, level design and overall appearance is simply amazing. The prison looks like a grimy pit in the ground, the mansion like a massive fixer-upper project and the ruined part of it comes straight of the Old Quarter... and there are plenty of nooks and crannies to find and explore. Strangely enough there's very little of the so-called Gaetane 'charm' present in this FM, with the laboratory being the only exception. Instead Gaetane shows that she has a knack for the creepy and spooky. This is also not an FM to be taken lightly. The Builder showered this house with marble, and the AI with heightened senses - more than once I was spotted through doors and tapestry even though I was standing perfectly still in absolute darkness. One consistent point of bother throughout is the writing, and while the story and characters aren't bothersome, the non-stop Audiolog Syndrome makes me want to climb a clocktower with the world's biggest sniper rifle.
Overall, I'd rate "The Den" just slightly lower than "The Korrigans", but still well worth playing. Both of these FMs have their quirks and nuisances, but most of them can be put down to their old age. So if you have a stronger stomach than I do for shlock-level writing, make sure to give those two a try.
While applying the finishing touches on my FM archive and testing out how these DML-fixes are working out, I gave Sperry's old "'Shadows of Doubt"-campaign a go... and realized that I had never truly played it to the fullest, but some older, truncated version with only some of the maps. Time to fix that I thought as I loaded it up.
The first mission is "Walking the Line", where Garrett is asked to infiltrate an embassy kill a man. Right. Very Garrett-like. As this mission can be troublesome, I've provided a neat little walkthrough below.
Press CTRL, SHIFT, ALT and End at the same time to skip the mission. It's crap and you won't miss a thing as the next one strips you of all your gear.
The second mission is "Tears of Blood" or as it was formerly known, "Escape from Guilesatpeak". This is easily the highpoint of the entire campaign for me. Garrett has been locked away in a Hammerite prison and must escape (unnoticed on Expert). The tight level design, brilliant attention to detail and the liberal use of "dark-as-crap"-darkness make this one tense and atmospheric in a way very few FMs can match. It even allows you to make a straight beeline to the exit, I managed to finish this one in 10 minutes without ever getting any objectives about a book or a loot requirement.
This is then followed by "All Astir" which takes place on a boat. This one is short and not really that good, but it doesn't overstay its welcome either.
Then there's "The Broadsword of Sheol", what others claim is the highpoint of the campaign. I strongly disagree. Garrett must descend into an underground tomb to recover the eponymous broadsword. What that means is solving a series of illogical Tomb Raider-esque puzzles with Tomb Raider-esque platforming segments. Stealth doesn't reward you, there's no room for exploration and there's barely any loot around. At least the main tomb section is nice and vertical to look at.
To be honest I didn't play further than this. There are two more missions to the campaign (one involving killing a traitor, and then a tomb brawl involving some undead which I had played years ago) but I think I have a good enough idea of this to say that while "Shadows of Doubt" is still playable today, it does suffer from its old age and a few questionable design decisions. I can recommend the second and last mission, but the others either feel like plain filler or a failed attempt at something bigger.
But what I wanted to talk about here are the DML-fixes that have been made for various Thief FMs, including this campaign. According to the instructions the fixes are to be installed seperately into the mission folder in the Thief installation folder after the FM has been installed, and should not be placed beforehand in the FM zip-file so that they will be installed alongside the FM. Seeing as I did the latter with Shadows of Doubt and that it worked without any problems, I question the recommended installation instructions. Am I missing something here?
Melan is a good and talented fan mission author who completely understands what makes the Thief games classic but I almost can't forgive him for that hideous red-herring of a puzzle in Disorientation with the gauge switches. I fully expected that solving it would loudly open an ornate 5-part door powered by steampunk in full EAX surround sound support somewhere (like the vaults from Fallout 3 and beyond) that would lead down into the Keepers' lower library where I would discover the secrets of the Thief-verse but what did we get as a reward? Perpetual motion of four rotary switches on a panel! Still a good FM though, even if I did have to abandon the mission because I selected Expert and ended up with 2495 loot out of the 2500 loot requirement. The Gods of Thief do not like me.
Melan is a good and talented fan mission author who completely understands what makes the Thief games classic but I almost can't forgive him for that hideous red-herring of a puzzle in Disorientation with the gauge switches. I fully expected that solving it would loudly open an ornate 5-part door powered by steampunk in full EAX surround sound support somewhere (like the vaults from Fallout 3 and beyond) that would lead down into the Keepers' lower library where I would discover the secrets of the Thief-verse but what did we get as a reward? Perpetual motion of four rotary switches on a panel!
As the screenshot in my last post shows, I had a look at "Invitation to Castle Morgoth", a T1/G FM that emphasizes that wonderful "dark-as-crap" darkness that I feel is underused. This is an unusual one in the sense that it's not real Thief gameplay, but more like hints and aspects of it. It's a giant key hunt across a large castle that is dominated by darkness. There's a little bit of everything to be found here, though, and it's a brilliant showcase of just how tense and atmospheric the environment can be. Most definitely worth a look.
Then I found a couple of FM's I had never played. "About Rats, Spiders and an Escape" (or just "Ratten") is a German FM where Garrett finds himself in the sewers and must escape, which takes him through a Keeper compound. I like the sewer rooms in this one for being... well, sewerish, but beyond that there's nothing here worth talking about. "Dancing With the Dead", however, is a much more interesting discussion. A 2-mission FM where the first mission is completely pointless, Garrett finds himself in a Hammerite prison that he needs to escape from. Sounds straightforward until something goes wrong and the Undead come out. This one can be a little tough because the author clearly knows what he's doing, and being a sadist is one of those things. Various jumps have to be just right to work out, and even vital objectives can be hidden a little too well for comfort. The combination lock puzzle is brilliant though, and there's plenty of cool things going on here. Well recommended, but mostly I'm wondering how I could have overlooked this one all these years.
Finally I figured I'd have a crack at something I have outright rejected in Thief in past years - the Japanese FMs, most notably JIS's efforts. "Elevator Mission" is his so-called magnum opus, and I figured I'd at least have a look. Well, I looked and I found it to be shit. It's one thing to create a difficult mission using the tools and rules of the Dark Engine, but when you purposefully base that difficulty on the quirks, faults and shortcomings of the engine, you're just being a dick. That sums up "Elevator Mission" - it's an exercise in futility to even try to play it, leaving it only as a curious oddity to upcoming DromEd'ers.
after almost a year away from thief, I decided to play Death's cold embrace.
It's one of those new beautiful missions/campaigns we get and people say it's a must play. And indeed it is. I only played the 1st and 2nd mission, and the story and setting are really interesting. Architecture and atmosphere are top notch. the background music is quite different from what you see in thief normally but fits the winter snowy setting perfectly. there are the Camvators, but they're very well done and short. Now, on more detailed points on both missions.
Mission 1: Nice short introductory mission, a small section of the city. You get to know the families, the characters involved, read some readables that contains hints on specific members of both families. But about the readables: Why everybody in the city keeps a diary at hand. They write all their daily activities and leave these on plain sight, this is more noticeable in the second mission. I really like the setup of you being on a mission when some simultaneous actions happen, like the burglars looking fora key in the apartment of the archaeologist. Visually the mission is outstanding, but I feel the general layout being a little "square-y". All angles are 90 degrees. Though I don't think this is worrisome, since it's the style of this section of the city. I really like the basement creature, and I was really amazed seeing what model was used for the creature, specially since I've read the inventor's diary, I imagined just that "known" model.
Mission 2: A mansion mission, which are my favorite style mission in thief. Nothing like robbing nobles of their possessions. You are tasked to find a formula for synthetic emeralds. It's a 3 store mansion, one of the most detailed ever seen in the dark engine. I imagine FM designers would make amazing architects. I really like the fact that Garrett arrives at the time when the servants/guards are at an end of party they throw after the family went on a trip. It was funny that after I blackjacked everybody, the captain, an iron helmet unknockable guard, was patrolling as if nothing was off, and maybe he thought everybody maybe had a lot of drinks... there were an instance in the refrigerator that I got lock up by benny. The thing is that I missed his speech and reloaded to see it again but took another route and he never appeared again. Nice. Now, on the negative side, those readables are kind of worse, because now there are people confessing crimes on a diary and leave them over the table so anyone could spy. But this mission has a serious flaw: main missions objectives are dependant on finding secrets! Not that they're difficult but it's the equivalent of pixel hunting. And with all readables telling so many secrets, none of them give any hint on essential location of essential items. For instance, to enter the lord's office, you have to find the key in his room, but the key is inside a secret compartment. there's no hint that the key is in his room or that he has a secret vault. Them after that, you go to the office, there's another secret that shows a vault with a code locker. You have no idea where this fucking code is and when you find it, it is on the most unlikely and ilogical place ever. and it would qualify as another secret but it is not. I have no problems with pixel hunting for secrets, but when it affects main goals? That's mean. No way to progress without looking every nook and crany or checking a loot list/walkthrough.
Bear in mind that I always play thief on expert.
Well, overall, I'm enjoying the campaign. I hope this secrets being mandatory doesn't happen very often.
Well, played through some more DCE till mission 7. so:
Mission 3: return to the same map of mission 1 to deliver the goods acquired on mission 2. I find it completelly unecessary, feel like a revisting the just to read more diary entries in the previous readables to account for things that happened in between. One thing I forgot to talk about mission 1 that I can correct here is the flat nature of the level: no roofs, beams, attics. Besides being very "square-y", is has no verticallity. You have one climbable roof, one place to use rope arrows, and generally, all places have just one point of access. In any case, the mission is kind of filler.
Mission 4: there's no mission 4. we have a cutscene instead, which is really well done. Also, this is a good place to talk about the great voice acting, probably the best I've heard on any FM ever. The writing quality is a little forced, but slyfoxx gave his best garrett, and that benny sure sounds like stephen russell's voice. The animation is really nice, and I like the "cinematic" approach of the whole duel and the cerimony on the hammer church.
Mission 5: Again, we play on the same map of the first mission. With the addition of the fairbanks' mansion, the northern area and the hammer chapel, which were inaccessible previously. Fairbanks mansion felt a little small, compared to highthorne's family state. But that's normal in all FMs in which some map is dedicated to a whole mansion, and these have lots of rooms, doors, gardens, etc; and there's those maps that take place in a city area with lots of places to visit, and when there's a mansion in these, they tend to be a bit constricted, and sometimes incomplete. The chappel is the good part of this mission, though again I got stuck trying to find a book and there's no hint where to find it, and if you think about the library, you are right, but it's a huge library so good luck. One nice detail is that the city has a different weather and lighting compared to mission 1, now it's not snowing and there's a full moon right above, which makes the streets less shadowy, and so you don't have many hiding places.
I talked about the voice acting being good, but here in mission 5 is that the story kind of gets bad: the solution for Julia's predicament (DEATH), is talked about his father, garrett and the hammer high priest. They all talk about it as if it is some trivial endeavor. In a more realistic situation in thief universe, garrett would obviously decline or do the job being very reluctant. Also, the hammer priest would consider this an heresy. They never consider how wrong it is the idea of bringing julia back. They should have learned by now.
Mission 6: It's mission 2 again. Get loot, meet a guy, read new diary entries, discover that the captain had to face his destiny, goodbye mission. No secrets anymore. Filler.
Mission 7: The best of the whole package until now, an actual big hammerite church. It's a new level, with hammers and after a twist, some undead. It makes the best part of mission 5 kind pointless, because even though mission 7 is an original mission, it's a hammer church, a theme already explored in mission 5. But I loved it, and it's the first straight forward fully fledged mission in this pack. It has variety, without having secrets getting you stuck because they're necessary.
Now, I'm on mission 8 and mission 1,3,5, here we are again. I'll come back later and give my final impressions.
They were a vehicle for the story arc, and since you don't seem to be much into the story, it's no wonder you find the return visits onerous. I knew going in it wouldn't appeal to everyone, though, but it's a story I wanted to tell regardless.
They were a vehicle for the story arc, and since you don't seem to be much into the story, it's no wonder you find the return visits onerous. I knew going in it wouldn't appeal to everyone, though, but it's a story I wanted to tell regardless.
Actually, the way I say may look like I hate returning to previous levels, but that's is not my real complaint. I actually like story driven games and I like that in FMs too. I am enjoying the story, and in the returns to previous levels there's different areas that were not explored previously. the campaign is interesting and I would recommend. The thing is my expectations watching the trailers and hearing some people saying the word "campaign", and classic thief levels, I was expecting a full campaign in the veins of T2X, or keeper of the prophecies (which had repetition too). And I kept myself distant to what UC, Jarl and other members of this thread had to say to avoid spoilers, so I enetered the mission with no previous knowledge other than "campaign" and "classic thief levels".
My main complaint is with mission 2, which ties secrets with main objectives, and that was really a letdown for me - actually I think this is unforgivable. I am a seasoned thief player and maybe I'm rusty, but I feel strange no one complained about this. Did i miss a readable that would give me a lead on how to progress or I would have to be randomly searching everything? At least didn't happen in the other missions, secrets were just secrets. The let down was very hard specially because if it wasn't for this particular choice of design, that would be the best level of the campaign.
And also, the story presentation is amazing, I really cared about the characters, and I can suspend my disbelief with "audiolog syndrome". Yes, i went back and read UC review of DCE, and I agree with him, but it doesn't really bother me. Because at least the story is engaging. My only complaint about the story is how they naturally accept the idea of bringing Julia back, which I feel forced even for thief standards. But I can pass that.
Now, I have to finish it. Don't get me wrong, I'm having a blast. Mission 2 was a disappointment, but it's flaws doesn't repeat in the next missions which is a plus. And I was expecting something else.
One final FM I took a look at before taking a break from taffing:
"Business at Midnight" is an old TG FM where Garrett is so strapped for cash that he'll take any job - this one in particular involves breaking into a Watch station to make a problematic corpse disappear, along with any evidence of it ever having been there.
Despite there being a sizeable cityscape present (and an equally sizeable sewer system) they are essentially empty, the core of the mission is the Watch station, followed by the manor of the Warden. The biggest challenge is managing the guard patrols and the "checklist" of things needed to do there, while the manor itself is a cakewalk by comparison, despite having its challenges. Speaking of the manor, its layout and architecture is almost child-like, as if the author ran out of time and just released the FM... though the fact that the mission is bugged and won't end without a DML-fix probably confirms that.
Despite all of its flaws, I think "Business at Midnight" is worth a playthrough, but more importantly I see the potential for greatness here. If (and that's a huge "if") someone were to sit down and update this mission to modern standards we could be looking at an all-time classic FM here.
Mission 8: Another time on the main city area, now with mechanist office and another shop accessible, plus some areas in a few places. Loved the closure of the lady servant made by the inventor and the final setup. I enjoyed this mission much more this time around since I already knew what to expect. The ritual scene is really cool, and of course, something goes awry... so, we have a new mission. anyway, there's not many things to be said about this mission. I had some trouble mantling in the closed window to the quill shop, sometimes it worked, sometimes not. I manage to get it right on my first try, then died sometime later, and my last save was before unlocking it. Here was when I couldn't mantle again. It is bugged somehow, but i managed to shot a rope arrow on the wooden part of the window and used my lockpicks from there. no harm done at all in the end.
Mission 9: Very simple mission with lots of elemental enemies. The effects here are stunning. The enemies "smoky" design is really cool. No secrets or loot here. Just gathering info and items and doing some tasks to destroy the power source of the villain necromancer. Nice gameplay effect with those footprints. The thing is that I did the fucking mission and then a vortex send you back in time to the ritual scene (which i dislike and I felt this time travelling affair a little out of place in this mission), but the game hasn't acknowledge the objectives being completed, and the ritual went on, fade to black and the game is stuck. And fuck, I didn't save before deactivating the dryman power source. Checked TTLG and someone had the same trouble, probably because he didn't have newdark 1.25. I did and got this bug. but then, I reinstall thief, new dark, missed my installed FMs in my FM selector (though I had backups of all saves), and here I had to replay the whole mission again. Now everything went all right. I like the ending. And I loved much more the scene after the credits. Will we have a modern day FM sometime?
Overall, I give it 7/10. It's a good campaign, a great story, nice presentation (cutscenes, voice acting, visuals). But repetitive and some gameplay design choices that are annoying, and some plot points I think weren't that great. That bug in the final mission pissed me off. On to new missions.
I finally finished "Behind Closed Doors", by nicked. I've also read Unkillable Cat's review of it. Before delving into this FM, I want to clarify one last thing about Yandros's DCE: my expectations were so high because I mixed up the acronyms and thought that DCE was TBP (the black parade). I didn't payed too much attention to videos posted in this thread to avoid spoilers and there's a page here in which we have preview youtube videos for both DCE and TBD. So, when DCE was released, I thought "oh, that campaign with skacky missions" and even though I see Yandros as the FM builder, I though it was that big joint effort made by a team of FM builders. It kind of felt really strange because I've read it would be for thief gold but since I didn't bother to recheck, I thought that could be just another set of FM made by someone else. So sorry. My expectations were high because of that. I was expecting a full campaign while playing it.
Back to BCD (another three letter acronym): I Loved it. It's that kind of big city area level with ledges, rooftops, hidden areas (well, no actual secrets in this FM), hard to reach areas, and great visuals. I see that nicked is fond of day light and "modern" graphics: We see daylight a lot in sturmdrang peak and the shadow maps in Death's turbid Veil look a little more sharp. I really like the "dusk" visuals, and I must say that I disagree with Unkillable Cat statement that it fuck's up with the gem system. There's less dark shadows to hide, but it's not that much of trial and error. It works as it always worked. There's the other point about the "obstacle course" nature of the mission, but it didn't bother me at all, since you can open the "blocks" and the mission has lots of shortcuts. What annoyed me though is the fact that you have to sometime go back and forth from one side of the map to the other a lot of times. It takes a lot of the player's time due to having a ton of objectives. On another take, the mission is not that difficult and I didn't get stuck at all, as it often happens in some FMs with obscure mechanics.
I really like the setting, the murder story, the love story, the ratman and it's army. I thought that you would eventually find a cure for poor ratman. There's the carnival aftermath props that are relly funny. It should have a burrick cart. Oh, and the "lady" in the inn's room.
Another thing I've read here is that it's compared to dishonored. Yes, it's reminiscent both visually and architecturally. I like dishonored a lot and I don't consider the comparison an insult. Actually, dishonored is the closest thing we will ever get close to thief in terms of gameplay in this modern age. So, Unkillable Cat, I know you have reservations against bethesda games and avoid them like the plague, but don't be so hard on judging it because bethesda. Pirate it and try, and do a "no power" playthrough. I'd love to rear about your complaints on the readables audiolog syndrome! You tried thiaf, you taffer.
The level has it's flaws, though! Some rooms/places don't make much sense. There's a room, mentioned already by UC, in which there's a lot of furniture inside a place with very small doors. And the upper floor of lord Davenish's castle have no door or stairwell to the ground floor. There's not even those fake doors which are just a texture. The room has a electrified statue, and the only door leads to a toilet, and the other exit leads to the roof, the tower, but no hint on a door that connects it to downstairs. Another thing is the church's tower, which is enourmous and gigantic it doesn't seem right with the small nature of the front chapel. It's odd, though I can actually imagine that maybe there are church's like this in real life. And the main aisle of the church is decorated with very odd looking hammer columns, that deviates to much of what's established for hammerites iconography.
It kind of felt really strange because I've read it would be for thief gold but since I didn't bother to recheck, I thought that could be just another set of FM made by someone else. So sorry. My expectations were high because of that. I was expecting a full campaign while playing it.
I'd love to rear about your complaints on the readables audiolog syndrome! You tried thiaf, you taffer.
