Thief I Fan-Mission: "Cult of the Resurrection", by "Sledge"

             Fan mission author “Sledge” made “The Inverted Manse”, a classic Thief II FM and a masterpiece of design. His first mission, and what “Inverted Manse” is sequel to, was “Cult of the Resurrection.” This Thief I FM would, like its sequel, offer substantially different experiences on each difficulty setting. This was the first Thief FM to do so to such a noticeable degree.

            The mission’s architecture is a well-done labyrinth. It has a small area of entry, here a small temple that opens up via an underground passage into a large complex, including an underground temple of a group of cultists. But what I want to highlight here are the difficulty settings.

            The three difficulty settings offer a different play experience. They do not only stand for the degree of challenge, and so they do not correlate to the game’s standard ‘Normal’, ‘Hard’, and ‘Expert’ settings.

            The first setting, “Burglar”, has the player complete the basic set of objectives, but also includes the objective of stealing the “holy sword of St. Edgar” (this isn’t on the other two difficulty settings). The second setting, “Assassin”, has an objective not seen in any other Thief mission: kill all the AI, which here are the “cultists.” Sledge wouldn’t repeat this objective, and it isn’t in any other Thief mission, as it’s certainly not a popular way to play. But, here it was part of a design experiment.

The final difficulty setting is a bit more interesting: it wards the player from killing the AI, which most Thief missions do, and thankfully so (you’re a thief, not a murderer). But it nonetheless has the player dispose of the cult’s two leaders. One of them must be gotten rid of so as it appears to be an accident. This setting also tasks the player with stealing “all” of the loot in the mission, which is a rare objective for a Thief mission.

            Sledge would execute on this design principle of creating three different mission via the difficulty settings much better in his second mission, The Inverted Manse, but with Cult he got a good start. It’s one of the most well-designed Thief I missions.