The Dark One on 13/7/2017 at 05:58
More Airship Ballet! I know I need to do Quinn Co., but it will be delayed.
The Smiling Cutpurse places our hero in the titular inn, something that he would normally dismiss as a waste of time, but there’s more to this inn: They’ve agreed to store a disguised bank vault, and our hero is targeting it, and whatever else he can find in the inn.
This is the first mission I’ve done in a while that’s a straight-up heist mission, and it does it well. The inn has a simple enough layout, with a fair bit of variety to the rooms and guests and alternate route or two if you’re willing to look. The little bits of backstory you find out are probably my favorite part of the mission, but I think the notes ended up reversed, so go to the “last” and then go back. I should also note that there are two ways to complete this mission, which I found to be a nice touch.
This mission falls on the “easy” side of things: There’s no loot goal so in theory once you find the vault you’re done. It’s also pretty easy to blackjack most everyone in the inn, giving you free reign. Yet, I don’t think that’s bad per se, nothing wrong with a well-done easy mission, and this is very well-done, barring an odd sound glitch at the vault and one wimp who died when I hit him with my blackjack on my first playthrough. As well as an item you could grab that was a holdover from when the mission was planned to be part of the Quinn Co. series.
All in all, a fun, solid mission. Recommended.
twhalen2600 on 15/7/2017 at 18:43
While the City Sleeps, Thief 2 X mission by Raen (of the Dark Engineering Guild), Thief II, 2005Night-time city missions are not in short supply and atmospherically
While the City Sleeps is one of the strongest. It is the third mission of
Thief 2 X and the first time players take Zaya on a thieving run in the streets. She must infiltrate the Market District, under curfew, and snoop around her cousin Kedar's shop for some info on the smugglers who killed him. Like
The Trials that Shape Us, this nighttime escapade establishes T2X's mood and style. The City's guards do this more than anything else. The doofuses in the museum are outdone by the City Watch here - some of my favorite
Thief NPC lines ever are in this mission.
City Sleeps is small relative to other city missions but with tight design, excellent ambiance and funny guard lines, the small size is easily overlooked.
Inline Image:
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XLohdWb13sg/WWpeUFNky-I/AAAAAAAAA80/33Pwq8hfOlwk36R4K-DsV7du7NPH2paNQCLcBGAs/s1600/T2X%2BWhile%2BCity%2BSleeps%2Bscreen%2B%2528Thief%2B2%2BFinal%2B1.24%2B2017-07-15_13-04-35%2529.jpgThe first NPC dialogue you may hear is between a couple guards at the gate to the Market District. One of them wants some “coffees”. (This references a guard's line from the original
Thief II about having had too many coffees.) They deliberate over the matter and then stroll to the nearest coffee shop. While the guards are away you have an opportunity to enter the Market District via the front gate. There is plenty of time - the guards dither unusually long in front of the coffee shop as they realize, painfully, that it's closed. I think the guards' absence from the gate, being a ridiculously obvious opportunity to enter by it, was intended as humor by the designer, as if the guards were saying: “Sure hope no taffer tries to shoot that lever, enter in the code we just showed, and go in the front gate! Yep, sure hope that doesn't happen as we walk away and spend longer than usual noticing a place is closed,
nudge nudge.”
But there's another way to enter the district besides this gate. You may go around to the area left of the gate and onto some roofs. Getting up onto a ledge above a body of water requires using an Ice Arrow, one of
T2X's unique weapons that's activated by using an elemental catalyst. I have trouble getting on the icebergs created by these. Jumping onto the ice causes a loud noise but I can't mantle onto it from in the water. This creates a dilemma each time I play - should I use ice arrows and, if so, should I burn a moss arrow on its surface to land quietly? Whether you struggle with the ice platforms or not, if you pay attention atop the roofs you may find a readable with some chat between the developers. It's interesting stuff.
Inline Image:
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E2Uh7DsEJ4E/WWpeVrNMw_I/AAAAAAAAA84/dAZnbDrE1yAMz_ZL_PsabCJn-6YfuQpMwCLcBGAs/s1600/T2X%2BWhile%2BCity%2BSleeps%2Bscreen%2B2%2B%2528Thief%2B2%2BFinal%2B1.24%2B2017-07-15_13-16-21%2529.jpgOnce in the Market District you have wooden beams, ledges, open windows, locked doors, loot, and even a sewer system. It's everything you could want in a city mission! You also have some great guards. As I noted above, their lines are some of my favorite. I'm glad the
T2X developers made unique guards rather than just reuse the standard
Thief II NPCs. There's the redneck guy, the Scotch guy, the nerdy lady, and more. Some of my favorite lines are, “If I don't get something to eat soon, I'm gonna lay down and die”, “I hope no one hears me talkin' to meself” , “...I want a gold sword...a gold sword that smells like coffees”, and the glorious “I was standing here” monologue. Even the batty old Hammerite is humorous talking about his “failing eyes” (more on that when I cover
A Question of Knowledge). The voice acting is marvelous. I love
T2X for it.
There are scripted conversations in the Market District. One is between two thieves in a weapon-and-armor store. I like it but it leads to a pet peeve of mine with
Thief: rogue AIs alerting guards and causing the guards to then pursue you. It's a shortcoming of the game's AI. Guards, I want to say, if you've just killed the two thieves who alerted you, don't keep saying “I know you're around here somewhere!” and so on. I didn't do anything - stop looking for me!**
Inline Image:
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EpZLOXVXkN4/WWpeVh_0Z7I/AAAAAAAAA88/rS6Y4nIqPnEGwv-9FGFfF5s7CMD8Kt7kwCLcBGAs/s1600/T2X%2BWhile%2BCity%2BSleeps%2Bscreen%2B3%2B%2528Thief%2B2%2BFinal%2B1.24%2B2017-07-15_12-51-35%2529.jpgThe Market District's shops have some interesting names - you'll want to read them - but you can't enter every building no matter how tantalizing the sign. A locksmith's shop is possible to enter, though, and inside you may find a key to the Market Square - where Kedar's shop is - and one to the Hammerite Crafts Center. If you go to the Hammer place, from mold you may create a lever to open the gate to the Market Square. The central objective is Kedar's shop, in a cozy attic room, where you learn more about the smugglers that Zaya is after, setting up the rest of the game.
City Sleeps is short for a city mission - I typically finish in an hour - but the strong content makes up for that. Once you have completed the other objectives, you exit the city via the rooftop area you may have come in at or by the sewers (I've never tried the front gate as an exit). The ambiance and hilarious NPC lines make this mission a great one.
* I recognize some voices here that were also in some of the great early FMs like
Seventh Crystal or the recently discussed
Gathering at the Inn.
On my most recent playthrough of
City Sleeps I heard lines I had never heard before. This is because I kept playing some even after guards noticed me (whereas before I'd typically hit “quickload” as soon as I got noticed). One of my favorites: “The hourglass of your life just ran out of sand, lady!” I love these guys.
** There is a counter to my complaint. If you are a guard and see a thief and then kill this thief, you may stay on alert in case there is another one. But I don't think this is why the AI in
Thief act how they do in these situations. I think it's an unfair bug. “These two taffers alerted the guards, now the guards are walking around looking for me - when I've been a perfect ghost?” And when other guards walk by they say “ah! Murder!” as if they don't know it was one of their own who did the killing. These moments are one of the technical downsides to
Thief along with guards ignoring doors and ropes. However, some fan missions enhance the AI and, otherwise, I'm happy to suspend my disbelief. This is a game and every game has bugs.
The Dark One on 18/7/2017 at 03:52
It’s not a habit, I can quit anytime I want.
Old Habits (by Obsttorte) is a pretty straightforward mansion mission. Our hero is bumming it at the bar when he runs into an old and recently fired friend. Said friend was formerly employed at the estate of Sir Aaron, and managed to find a weak spot, a weak wall near the sewers. “There’s a jeweled scepter in need of stealing, now get to work.” That sums it up.
Old Habits is a relatively short mission with a few points of note. For example, the oddly colorful and very nice garden, which has some hidden secrets for those who search it and is probably my favorite part of the mission. Also, the outside yard which is a tad too well-guarded, but offers some nice parkour. Finally, the difficulty. It’s hard. And not in the fun way.
The second floor of the manor suddenly dumps you in a linear path filled with torch wielding guards (in a hallway that’s already well-lit so logically they don’t even need them) who you can’t knock out. You are granted some tools to deal with them...if you can find them, and even then it’s a trial. I don’t mind difficulty, heck long time players of Thief might be rubbing their hands at the thought of a spike like this, but it makes the latter part of the mission far too tedious if you go in unprepared. The loot goal is mostly reasonable, though on higher difficulties you have to find a certain number of specific objects, which is slightly trickier, but still doable.
All in all, a decent if difficult mission. Normally I’d recommend it in spite of those flaws, because it is still good, but the author remade this mission and balanced it out and added more to it. Therefore, I’d have to recommend this only to people who want a challenge.
The Dark One on 22/7/2017 at 07:59
Pretend that I have something witty here.
Obsttorte returns with another mission, The Builder Roads, which has 100% less roads. This time our hero is a trader whose latest deal has gone sour, leaving him without the means to pay his debts to the Very Nice People. His only hope is to make off with a recently discovered scripture from the nearby church.
This mission is, like Old Habits, harder than your normal mission, mainly on high difficulties, which forbid anyone from seeing or hearing you. The number of guards you encounter also rises with the difficulty, and those player on higher levels would do well to explore before completing objectives.
The mission is relatively open-ended, allowing you to explore the church/barracks at your leisure, and with a plausible layout to boot. Little touches, such as transparent windows, help with planning where to go and what to do. Loot can be well-hidden, and on the highest difficulty you’re going to have to find most of it. That being said, the mission is mostly simple in the first part, with only a few guards on patrol, with the difficulty kicking in once you find out where to go. On lower difficulties I think it might be too easy, if just because it won’t take you long to knock out the guards.
Compared to Old Habits, this is much fairer on difficulty: It’s still tricky, but careful planning can get you through, and the more non-linear layout helps quite a bit. There was a few times when it felt like I had failed the mission for no reason since none of the guards seemed to have been alerted to my presence, but those were few and far between. The last segment could have used some tweaking, since it’s possible to do it too quickly and mess up even if the sequence is done right, but even that was a mild flaw, fixed with a quick load.
On the whole, a very solid mission with a good challenge for those on higher difficulties. Recommended.
twhalen2600 on 23/7/2017 at 03:18
Cell 6 (Thief II, 2013) by Yandros, Random_Taffer, and Tannar There are choice grim stories throughout the Thief missions, and one of the grimmest begins with Garrett disguised as a cook in the tightly-enclosed corridors of the Baron’s Imperial Prison. It’s tightly-enclosed for a reason: released as part of the NewDark 64-Cubed contest, Cell 6 had to fit within certain dimensions. It also had to have a content advisory placed in its info file due to the aforementioned grim tale. Designed by Yandros, Random_Taffer and Tannar, or the “Three Anonymous Amigos” – anonymity was a requirement of the contest – the mission features solid design and atmosphere start to finish. My only quibble is the ridiculously obscure location of one hidden switch, but we Thief fans have to try frobbing every inch of a room sometimes, right?
Dark secrets and a cruel warden lord over this jail house. You must be sure not to draw undue attention to yourself or go where you shouldn’t, Undercover style. Pull this off and keep out a good eye for keys and hidden switches, and you’ll have this dark mystery unraveled. Grab a frying pan and dive in.
Inline Image:
https://thiefdiaries.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/cell-6-screen-1.png?w=960 Soon after starting you may overhear a conversation between a guard and a servant, voiced wonderfully by Yandros and Random_Taffer, revealing the problems: a bloodstain that won’t go away Canterville Ghost style and a haunted interrogation room. The two are connected: the bloodstain is in cell 6 and the prisoner who died during interrogation was being kept in cell 6. This prisoner is also who Garrett is looking for: his fence Shylock’s father.
A nearby book, Banishing Evil Spirits: A Practical Manual, details what angry spirits may do: haunt the place of their violent death until they find resolution for the wrong done them. Finding reslution for the ghost of Shylock’s father becomes the central objective. You can swipe the key to the old, haunted interrogation room from a guard and in this room meet the ghost of Shylock’s father. To release his spirit, you need to give it a signet ring, the same family heirloom Shylock wants you to find. Once the spirit has been appeased, you must find evidence to incriminate the cruel warden.
The level design is tight, as noted, with lots of steep stairways and narrow hallways. There are quite a few guards on patrol – no way Garrett could have snuck through this one. Key areas include the noted interrogation room, the cell block, the Warden’s office, and the records hall. There’s an optional objective to free one of Sheriff Truart’s top officers, a dead rat whose name may be familiar to you, a pet frogbeast, singing prisoners, and a frustrated procurement officer (read his journal). Nice touches also include a Mechanist who will reset the power system once you shut it off Gathering at the Inn style and not just one, but two audio files that had also been used in Rose Cottage. If you’re harkening back to Rose Cottage, you’re making a fine FM. All the audio ambiance is done very well, especially Yandros’ mixing of Thief I sounds. The only sound I didn’t like was some of the ghost’s wailing you hear early on; it can be cheesy (“Woooo, woooo!”). Custom textures and objects are used heavily to great effect.
The story resolves itself in a gruesome revelation and you’re left in awe at the abuse of power of a very evil man. Though Cell 6 did not win the 64-Cubed contest it came second and is a great-small FM. Its design, story, and ambiance are excellent. At over four-years-old it can now be considered a classic.
Inline Image:
https://thiefdiaries.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/cell-6-screen-31.png?w=960The Dark One on 26/7/2017 at 01:26
It’s not a habit, I can quit anytime I want.
Old Habits (by Obsttorte) is a pretty straightforward mansion mission. Our hero is bumming it at the bar when he runs into an old and recently fired friend. Said friend was formerly employed at the estate of Sir Aaron, and managed to find a weak spot, a weak wall near the sewers. “There’s a jeweled scepter in need of stealing, now get to work.” That sums it up.
Wait, did that already.
In my review of Old Habits, I mentioned that I’d recommend it in spite of flaws if it hadn’t been for a rebuild of the mission done by the same author. This is that remake: Old Habits II.
While the set-up is the same, the mission has gotten a complete overhaul. This is obvious from the very first room. In the original, you had a long tunnel to go through to reach the mansion proper, even though it was established that you could hear the sewer just from pressing up against the wall. Here, the wall actually is next to the sewer. Little things like that.
The mission also benefits from more non-linearity. The main issue with the first Old Habits was that you had no other options than a linier, guard filled hallway. Here you can do some parkour to find slightly different routes, and the second floor is less guard choked and has multiple pathways to your target. There’s also a bit with a chapel that’s quite fun, with hints scattered across the mission, though it’s a little too easy to lock yourself out of it without knowing, but in fairness the creator gives you a buffer to avoid that.
Most of this mission’s issues are technical. There’s a non-critical note in one of the bedrooms that sounds like you’re adding it to your inventory when no such thing happens. I also would sometimes phase through a ceiling for a split second in the chapel at times. The main issue is getting the key to said chapel, which, due to the quirks of the physics engine, can very well result in the mission crashing. I’m honestly tempted to just say that you should feel justified in noclipping through the door. It’s a shame, since it’s such a smear on a very good mission.
On the whole, this is a very good mission. The difficulty isn’t as high, yes, but I’ll take a solid, challenging but fair mission over something hard for the sake of hard. If you can get get around the chapel issue, recommended. If you can’t, it's still recommended.
The Dark One on 29/7/2017 at 09:18
For the record, kyrrma (the creator of this mission) also worked on Exhumed.
In A Time of Need is about need. Your need. Our dashing hero is targeting a merchant who’s been dealing in spice and has made a bit of money with it. So a simple smash and grab is called for.
This mission is honestly rather small, which might disappoint those who like voyeuring their way across mansions.. Still, it makes good use of the layout, offering multiple ways into the home and making the layout feel plausible. Another plus is that the mission does change between difficulty levels, though the difference between medium and expert is one of loot goals. Still, it’s a nice change.
Sadly, there isn’t much to say about this mission. It’s a good first effort with a non-linear style that I like. Recommended, but more experienced players might be a tad underwhelmed.
twhalen2600 on 30/7/2017 at 00:00
Insurrection, Thief II FM by HipBreaker, 2005HipBreaker’s third FM offering was
Insurrection, an undead-apocalypse mission with a cityscape and a manor. Immersive ambient noises and a few areas of appealing visual design are pluses, but the mission falls short of greatness because of a quasi-straight path design with unenjoyable backtracking.*
Insurretion is a fair mission, somewhere in the good-not-great category. I first played it on a school-day evening when I needed a good FM fix. Insurrection fit the bill and it’s been one of my “cult classics” since, despite the half-and-half design.
You begin in a sequestered area of the City with a gloomy ambient noise playing. There’s a quarantine going on, and the undead are rising and spreading an infection. It isn’t clear whether people become zombies or not. All you know is that the buried dead are rising and a Lord Krauft has an antidote for when people are bitten by them. The objective is Lord Krauft’s manor and the antidote. Being a thief who needs healthy citizens to rob from, you want to steal this antidote and be able to sell it. Krauft only sells to the highest bidder.
Inline Image:
https://thiefdiaries.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/insurrection-screenshot-thief-diaries-drunk-guard.pngGhosting is difficult on Expert mode. Design is tight and guards patrol so that breaks to sneak by are small. One drunk guard near the start offers an easy blackjack, if you don’t mind doing that. From there you may veer to one of two other areas in the City. The one to the right offers a couple buildings with loot and readables. In one of these buildings you’ll discover a man gone inside from the Armageddon around him.
The other city area offers a couple more buildings without much in them, so you’ll want to head down the sewer drain which connects to Krauft’s manor. When in the sewers, you may walk up into a graveyard, though it is infested with undead. On the way to Krauft’s you’ll run into undead regardless, as the sewer has a group of zombies nigh-impossible to sneak by. Once up out of the sewers, you’ll be in the backyard to Krauft’s manor and may enter by way of a chapel window. The chapel has appropriate ambiance: it feels like a sacred place where one might seek hope amidst the growing darkness of the undead uprising.
Out of the chapel you enter the manor proper. A nice little tune plays, very fitting for a manor house, like some melody lifted straight out of another game set in a world of lords and castles. However, this little tune may sour as the rest of Krauft’s manor gets frustrating. Like the cityscape, the place is tight and well-lit. You have to pull off some Houdini stunts to ghost it, especially in a dining area where a servant NPC sits at a table and a guard strolls nearby. Either one of these NPCs always caught me – I gave up ghosting and pulled out the blackjack. Even still, I encountered a bug whereby two guards would spawn in this area out of nowhere, one of them on alert. I think it only happened after I picked up one of the golden candlesticks. Regardless, I’ll chalk it up to NewDark, as I don’t remember this occurring on previous playthroughs.
That wasn’t the only unfair bug I encountered. When I first entered the manor’s music room, the guards inside were on alert and searching. I think they had been alerted by the harp on stage that an NPC had been playing. Even the NPC playing the harp was on alert! After reloading an earlier save, though, they were all at ease, and the NPC was playing the harp like normal. I’ll blame NewDark again – I don’t remember this happening before either.
Inline Image:
https://thiefdiaries.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/insurrection-screenshot-thief-diaries-manor-mech-statue.pngThe design of Krauft’s manor is like a straight path. You progress from one point to another, without many directions to choose from. It doesn’t feel like a large house the way the estates in
Ominous Bequest or
Rowena’s Curse do. There aren’t multiple, circuitous paths around the house. You’ve got a straight path from the chapel to Krauft’s bedroom, with only a few side areas to veer into on the way.
This straight-path design can work.
Deceptive Perception 2 is designed such but the nature of that mission, an episodic tale that gets weirder as it goes, complements the design.
Insurrection has a city-manor setup and no tall tale told at a bar. When you backtrack through the manor, the straight-path design is emphasized as you pass the same doorways and hallways all over again – the same manor, the same chapel, and the same sewers you just went through, with no alternate paths available, only facing a different direction. It’s frustrating, but does allow for one memorable jump scare – the scarecrow you see just outside the dining area has more than meets the eye.
Inline Image:
https://thiefdiaries.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/insurrection-screenshot-thief-diaries-scarecrow.pngThe reason you backtrack is to get inside an observatory in the city area you started in. In the observatory is the demon overlord responsible for all the undead madness, whom Krauft knew about but kept quiet on so he could keep selling his antidote. Forget ghosting – pull out the Holy Water arrows and flashbombs and go to town on the demon overlord for any chance of completing the mission. Odds are you’ll need to blackjack the guard at the front of the observatory, too, because of a haunt inside the entryway, though with perfect timing you may slip by the guard and not be seen by the haunt.*
Insurrection isn’t a bad FM. I like its atmosphere and it has some nice secret areas. One of them has an NPC fall out, dead, from within once you open it – quite dramatic. In another darkened area of the manor a guard patrols with a lantern, a nice touch, and you may see a zombie walking by through a window, adding to the atmosphere of this manor being the last bastion amidst an undead uprising. But the level design is lacking. Going back and forth on a straight path isn’t effective Thief mission design.** If Insurrection was open-ended, the tight design, bright lights, and plentiful AI may have been enjoyable, but as is such difficulty is only frustrating because it’s married to weak design.
I’ve always had a soft spot for this mission, regardless. It gave me a much-needed FM fix back in the day and has remained in my rotation since. Check it out for a fair undead-apocalypse with city-and-manor fix. You’ll enjoy the ambient noises along the way.
*There’s another bug I experienced on my most recent playthrough that I don’t remember from before. Once you kill the overlord, his corpse starts appearing throughout each area of the mission as you go back through it.
**Again, I recognize there are some exceptions. I noted Deceptive Perception 2 and another is The Vigil. But neither of these required backtracking like Insurrection does.
nickie on 30/7/2017 at 18:52
And yet again I must apologise for being so slow to add these to the OP (I won't use big words because Purgator gets bothered by them). The reviews are very much appreciated and despite the lack of comment, I can see the posts are being viewed.
I will try to get them added tomorrow, it's just unfortunate that life gets in the way of the more important things.
Thank you.
Isn't it annoying when you think you have an extraneous comma and continually try and delete it only to eventually find it's a mark on the screen. Probably bits of that tomato that splattered everywhere.
Purgator on 30/7/2017 at 19:24
Extraneous? Are you freaking kidding me right now?
Aaaarrgh!
