'Thief I' in Review

-Thief I, in review

Below I include quotes from the Gamespot and IGN reviews of Thief: The Dark Project. The segments I selected are the parts that echo moreso the points I’ve made in this project.

-from the Gamespot review, by Greg Kasavin

“But if it looks good, Thief sounds incredible. Because you're always trying to stay silent, you'll find yourself cringing at just how conspicuously audible your footsteps are. At the same time, you'll smile from the shadows as you hear some lonely guard shuffling nearer as he hums some tune or mutters to himself. Each floor surface makes a different noise as you walk upon it, and all of your actions, from using lockpicks to quaffing healing potions, are complemented by vivid sound effects. Since listening to the environment is so important, and because the game sounds so good, you'll find yourself turning the volume much higher than you're used to while playing Thief.

First-rate voice acting brings the game to life. The cynical Garrett is never at a loss for smart remarks, but he knows to keep his mouth shut most of the time so that he can listen to guards bantering, religious fanatics whistling hymns, and more. Of further note, Garrett's subhuman foes, including all manner of undead and man-beast hybrids, sound positively terrifying. Thief also takes full advantage of 3D positional audio if you have the right hardware, which makes the game even more dramatic. There's no music during the missions themselves, but the pounding industrial soundtrack during the beautiful, stylized animated cutscenes perfectly suits the game's dark magic-and-machinery setting.”

[…]

“You'll guide Thief's charismatic protagonist through a dozen missions, over the course of which a serious, surprising story will develop. Although there aren't many missions, most of them are huge, and more rewarding at higher difficulty levels because you'll have many more objectives to accomplish. There's further cause to want to try a mission more than once if only because the nature of the game is such that you can accomplish your task in many different ways, but in the end, you'll still wish the game was longer. You'll have a few complaints with Thief - the game isn't perfectly stable, and sometimes your foes won't act as intelligently as you'll expect them to. But between its novel premise, its artistic production, and its superb design and implementation, you'll find that those rare concerns fade from sight even faster than Garrett.”

-from the IGN review, by Trent C. Ward

"For years now, long before everyone else realized that people were eventually going to get tired of running around and killing monsters over and over, Looking Glass has been looking for new ways to take the first person shooter genre forward. In Ultima Underworld, a game that foreshadowed titles like Trespasser, Arena and Everquest , the company took a remarkably smooth 3D fighting engine and added complex (for the time) elements of conversation trees and magic. In System Shock, the company once again created a first person engine designed to add an element of realism to the era's severely limited shooters. The end result was phenomenal and is widely recognized as one of the best games of its time. Now the company finally has the tools and the technology to realize one of its long-term development dreams. In Thief: The Dark Project, you get a glimpse of what the future of gaming is really all about ¿ the exploration and manipulation of a believable virtual world."

[…]

"Other than some pretty serious video card compatibility problems (three out of the four machines we had in the office would never run the game no matter which patches we downloaded) Thief is nearly flawless in its execution. The game's AI, its brilliant look and feel, and its challenging levels all work together to make a play experience that every thinking gamer will enjoy."