Mission #9: Return to the Cathedral

            “Return to the Cathedral” is the penultimate mission in Thief: The Dark Project and one of the game’s best. It’s a large mission with several different buildings to explore and smacks of open-world role-playing game design. There are even several fetch quests that pop up in the second part of the mission—a ‘love or hate it’ facet of open-world RPGs. The mission’s first part, tightly cloistered, is like the intro portion of an open-world game. The mission is a triumph of fundamentally sound design.

            Garrett’s come back to the haunted Hammerite cathedral, and with the Four Talismans, he can unlock the entrance. The ominous whispering of the Eye greets the player as they first walk into the cathedral. The first part, the main cathedral building, or sanctuary, is relatively small. The Eye sits atop the altar at the end of the sanctuary. Zombies, and a new AI, “Hammer Haunts”, or restless, undead Hammerites more goulish and cunning than a typical zombie, walk the halls. But there aren’t many of them, and the task is to grab the Eye and get out. This first part, then, is very small, direct, and simple. The level will open up much wider in its second part, though.

            Once Garrett nabs the eye, the ‘spirits become restless’—or, more zombies and haunts appear, and a few ghosts start roaming around. But it’s a short distance to the front doors, and then the player should be able to escape. Easy? Well, it could’ve been. But the front doors are locked tight. The Eye sealed them again (it’s a very powerful gemstone). The stone thought it would be too easy for Garett to just stroll back out the front door. Indeed.

           So the player now heads out to the cloister area, at the back of the cathedral, in search of another way out. Here, they meet the ghost of the Hammerite ‘Brother Murus’. Brother Murus’ ghost is the ‘quest giver’, if I continue to use the open-world RPG simile for this mission. Murus gives Garrett task after task, all with the promise that Garrett’s reward will be a way out of the cathedral grounds. This is classic open-world RPG design. And the cloister area of this mission is very much like an open-world. There are five buildings: a living quarters, a workshop, an observatory, a library, and a bath. There’s also a graveyard, though it’s locked at first. Murus’ tasklist will have the player explore all about these buildings and the greater cloister area.

            The first tasks involve giving Brother Murus a proper burial. His body is buried in the graveyard, true—but it wasn’t correctly blessed. Garret must gather items to do this. I referenced earlier that ‘fetch-quest’ stuff like this, whereby the player is given a list of explicit chores to go and do, is a love-it-or-hate-it gameplay design. I think it works well as a foundation to encourage the player to explore a given area. Here, searching and finding all the items Brother Murus’ needs gives the player license to explore the haunted cathedral grounds as they wish. I love it.

            After getting these items—a rosary, a holy symbol, a candle, and a prayer book—Murus has some other tasks for Garrett. He asks Garrett to find and bury the bodies of a couple of his colleagues, which are both back in the main cathedral building. Lastly, Murus asks Garrett to kill all of the Hammer haunts. This last request I don’t like—seeking out and killing the Hammer haunts breaks the immersion, because an important part of the horror atmosphere is that the haunts are tough, creepy, and to be avoided. Having to confront them, or kill them stealthily from behind, breaks that. This is also the only mission in the first two Thief games that requires the player to kill.

            Brother Murus rewards Garrett by giving him a key to the attic in the Cathedral. In this attic, Garrett finds a “sunburst” device—basically a huge land mine—that he can use to blow up the giant gateway into the cloister and escape the cathedral grounds.

            “Return to the Cathedral” is not only a great horror mission but a great open-world mission. Its tight beginning, ‘opened-up’ second section, and series of quests, combined with a thick horror atmosphere, make it a prime example of great game design.