In 1998, game developer Looking Glass Studios
released Thief: The Dark Project, a PC game that was critically
acclaimed at the time and that has held and grown a loyal, dedicated fan base
since. The game drew inspiration from an earlier work of Looking Glass’, Ultima
Underworld, but unlike that role-playing game, Thief had
no role-playing statistics and mechanics at the forefront. Instead, Thief took
on the more immediate, accessible design of an action game and, like Looking
Glass’ other titles, added depth to this otherwise simple setup. Thief was
dubbed a “first-person sneaker” at the time, as it was first-person and part of
the game’s design was to sneak by the artificial intelligence (AI). But Thief was,
and is, much more than a stealth game. Its level design, narrative design, and
atmosphere make it a unique, unparalleled experience. This is the case not just
for gaming, but for entertainment in general.
Key
to Thief’s design is that the stealth gameplay takes a
backseat. Thief is a great ‘stealth’ game precisely because
its main focus is not on stealth. The requirement of players
to remain undetected and avoid confrontation is used to complement and enhance
the greater goal of the game, which is to explore and discover. This is a basic
goal, as most games arguably involve exploration and discovery. But Thief does
not just involve it to some degree—it executes the sense of exploration
perfectly. The stealth aspect forces players into a ‘fly on the wall’ position,
from which, lurking in the shadows, they can explore.
This
design complements the narrative and story aspect of Thief. Thief’s
story is formed through ‘narrative caches’ throughout the game’s missions.
These are either journals or other ‘readables’—books, scrolls, letters, or
pamphlets lying around—, conversations between AI that players can overhear,
and paintings and other artwork on the walls. Much of Thief’s story
is conveyed through paintings and other artwork, such as statues, that players
will see decorating manor-houses and other buildings. The game’s subtle method
of delivering its backstory adds extra weight to the game’s fiction. Rather
than something directly fed to the players, the fiction looms in the
background, part of the thick atmosphere that overhangs the entire game.
Thief does
have ‘briefing’ cut scenes before each mission, narrated by the
player-character Garrett, but these serve only to set up each mission. The
backstory of the gameworld is conveyed through the aforementioned narrative
caches.
The
level design is excellent. Most of Thief’s levels are large
and labyrinthine in structure, and allow players to explore as they please, in
non-linear fashion. A few of the missions I highlight in these blog entries are
like ‘mini open-worlds’.
The
game series’ fanbase has iterated on all these design principles excellently in
fan-created Thief missions, or ‘Thief fan
missions’, created using the game’s editing tools, and distributed through
Looking Glass’ fanbase (ttlg.com). (I consider many of these fan missions to be among the greatest entertainment and narrative experiences I've encountered, and will highlight
some of them in this blog as well.)
-Thief
Introduction-
The Thief series
consists of four games. The focus of this blog will be on the first two: Thief:
The Dark Project (1998) and Thief II: The Metal Age (2000).
Both titles were developed by Looking Glass Studios, and are the series’ best.
The third game, Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004), is a mixed bag.
It was developed by Ion Storm and had technical limitations and design
fundamentals that gave it a lukewarm reception among the fans. One of its
missions, however, will be covered in this blog, as it is one of the finest
segments of the Thief series and is Deadly
Shadows’ saving grace. The fourth Thief game, a
reboot titled only “Thief” (2014), was released recently and developed
by Eidos-Montreal. This game is not very good, was ill received by fans of the
series (who had anticipated it with much cynicism in the first place), and will
not be covered at all in this blog. (Indeed, this blog’s author refuses to
recognize this latest Thief as a Thief game
at all.) The fan missions covered in the blog will all be for the original two,
Looking Glass-developed Thief games. For the blog
entries, Thief: The Dark Project will be called simply “Thief
I”, and Thief II: The Metal Age just “Thief II.” Thief:
Deadly Shadows will be called “Thief III”.
With
the formal introductions out of the way, let's move on to the story specifics. In
the Thief games, you play as Garrett. When players first meet
Garrett in Thief I, he is a stray child, who, in his own words, had
no parents and had to keep “running messages and picking pockets to keep [his]
ribs from meeting [his] spine.” But Garrett runs into an old man one day who is
a Keeper. The Keepers are one of the different sects in Thief’s
fiction, a group who remain hidden, read prophecies, use the “power of glyphs”,
and try to maintain balance in the City.
“The
City” is Thief’s setting. It is always and only ever referred to as
“the City” in the game—there is no proper name. Thief’s world is a
blend of many different eras. There’s medieval, Victorian, and even some early
modern flair and style all mixed together in a fantasy world decidedly flavored
steampunk. Thief I is mostly medieval, with a ‘dark middle
ages’ vibe. Thief II is mostly Victorian, with art-deco style
throughout. Thief III returned the series more to medieval
fantasy, toning down the Victorian style of Thief II. But in
all, Thief’s setting is fantasy, and best described as a
medieval-Victorian hybrid with a little steampunk.
So
you’re Garrett, in the City, and you learn from Thief I’s intro
that Garrett got invited into the fold of the Keepers through the coincidence
of bumping into one of them. From the Keepers, Garrett learns the “art of not
being seen.” This learning process is the setup of Thief I’s
training mission. Garrett could use this “art” of the Keepers to…be a Keeper.
But he decides to ditch the shadowy organization and go out on his own, using
the ways of the Keepers to be a thief. Thus begins the story of the Thief series.
Throughout
his adventures in burglary, Garrett will deal with all the wonderful people of
the City. One large organization in the City is the Hammerites. These are the
religious people of the Thief universe, their order, “The
Order of the Hammer”, being, essentially, the Thief world’s
Catholic Church. They’re like technophiles, worshipping the ‘Hammer’ and all
the tools for building and constructing, praising their “Master Builder” for
delivering them from humanity’s dark, wild past. They wield huge, heavy
hammers, which they will use to swiftly crush Garrett if they catch sight of
him in one of their temples.
Opposite
the Hammerites are the Pagans. In Thief I, players never see
Pagans, though they read of them many times (and their mystique of ‘being
unknown’ overhangs the atmosphere). In Thief II and III,
players will see and interact with Pagans. They’re enemies to the Hammerites,
as Pagans loath the constructs of civilization and prefer, instead, to live
wild in the woods. As the Hammerites practice technology, the Pagans practice
magic. They worship “the Woodsie Lord”, an ancient god whom the Hammerites call
“the Trickster”. The Trickster is basically Thief’s devil.
It’s
important to note that these two groups, integral to Thief, and
especially Thief I’s backstory, are introduced gradually through
the afore-described narrative caches. And it’s never cheap, because players
never pick up a book titled “An Introduction to Hammerites”. Indeed, players
are first introduced to the Hammerite vs. Pagan dichotomy via a painting
in Thief I’s first mission. At the time, players don’t even know
it, as they don’t know anything about Hammerites or the Trickster in the first
mission. It’s an early, subtle introduction.
In
addition to the Hammerites and the Pagans, there’s the star of the show: the
City Watch and private guards. These guys are the guards players will see and
hide from in most areas of the game. The City Watch patrol the streets, and
private guards patrol manor-houses. Private guards and City Watch look and act
very similarly. There also appear different ‘characters’ amongst the guards who
serve as the game’s humor. There’s the slow, stupid guard; the straight-talking
guard; the drunken guard; and others. All the guards and their dialog serve as
comic relief. It’s amusing to hear guards mumble “must’ve been rats” or “just
the wind I guess” whenever the player makes a noise, alerting them, but the
guard gives up the search. Guards will also mumble to themselves things like “I
haven’t had a thing to eat in days, when will they bring me my dinner” or
“Someday I’ll show them all…someday they’ll get what they deserve.” One comic
guard, named “Benny” by the fans, has some particularly funny dialog. Some
guards’ conversations are done in classic straight-guy / funny-guy style, as
one is from the very first mission of Thief in which two
guards discuss going to “the bear pits.”
Then
there are the already-introduced Keepers, who players don’t run into much, but
who do get in touch with Garrett every now and then. They play their biggest
role in Thief III. They have their prophecies, their glyphs, and
their dedication to maintaining ‘balance’ in the City. They also always keep
their eye on Garrett.
Thief
II has a unique group, the “Mechanists”, an outbranch of
the Hammerites and, as far as the Hammerites are concerned, outright heretics.
I guess you could see the Mechanists as Thief’s Protestants. It’s
thanks to them and their mechanical inventions that Garrett has to deal with
security cameras and robots in Thief II. In the style of the
series, these security machines are not just for gameplay—in all of the
Mechanists’ devices there is evidence of their crazed religion, with the
security bots spouting Mechanists’ “propaganda” and scripture, all recorded by
the Mechanists’ founder himself. In most other games, security bots don’t say
things like “blessed be the children of metal” as they patrol around—but this
is Thief. Story and gameplay always intertwine, the two supporting
each other; and hardly, if ever, in conflict.
Garrett,
the player-character and “master thief”; the shadowy Keepers; the zealous
Hammerites; the mysterious Pagans; the humorous guards; and, in Thief
II, the crazed Mechanists; and also the City itself are the major
characters of the Thief world. Throughout my blog entries, how
the games introduce these groups will be an area of focus.
Lastly
I want to briefly describe how a typical Thief mission begins.
First, there is a mission “briefing.” No one is briefing Garrett—only Garrett
speaks, talking either to himself or the player. Following this is the screen
listing the mission objectives, and the option to change difficulty setting and
to see the differing objectives for each setting (Thief’s three
difficulty settings are ‘Normal’, ‘Hard’, and ‘Expert’). Following this, in
most cases, is a menu that acts as a store—as if Garrett is buying equipment.
You can either buy or ignore any of the equipment available, and how much money
you have to spend depends on how much loot you got in the prior mission. After this,
the mission starts. Throughout my project will be gameplay recordings and videos of the mission briefings.