Selete on 12/8/2009 at 03:59
If you're interested in the aesthetics of morality, this might interest you. I've been pondering why someone like myself, who normally can't bear to play even remotely evil characters, enjoys stealing people blind in Thief so much.
It's not like Thief is a game where all our (fiction-directed) moral sensibilities are stifled by design. Thief is pretty unique, I find, in that it makes killing humans unpleasant. Even when you're on 'normal' difficulty, it's messy and awkward and wince-worthy. They scream and bleed all over the place, and when they finally fall down and die, they often seem to be in quite a lot of pain, which makes nice girls like me feel bad for them (even though they were about to kill me.)
But when you're just
stealing from them...
Well, frankly, it's nothing short of delicious.
We're good at it, we're getting away with it, and we know it. Snatching loot is addictive and satisfying. Even if it's actually more expensive to get it than to have it, you want to put it in the lootsack. Everything must go in the lootsack. And if it cannot go in the lootsack, we sometimes feel we must place it in (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=128130) great big piles someplace so that everybody will know that it is ours and we stole it.
Rarely do we ever feel guilt about doing all this. In fact, I can only think of a couple times in the game it ever so much as
occured to me to feel guilty that fictional Mr. X was going to wake up without enough money to get his son medieval braces (or medieval dentures, as dentistry probably required.)
But then again... in a world like the thiefverse, it's very difficult to really care about that sort of thing. The world sucks so much that one can't help but feel like a hero for not being boring and banal and trodden upon by those with the power to idly tread upon us.
I think this is the biggest reason why gameplay meshes so well with the climate of the lore in Thief. Thievery, unlike murder, is a crime of dispassion. You don't hate the people you steal from; mostly, you just don't care about them. In a City which reeks of impersonal distance, the selfishness of thievery becomes a way to defy the unfeeling masses and embrace personal empowerment.
Did anybody who played this game ever feel guilty about stealing what they were stealing? Or about the reactions they'd cause in innocent people when others saw their handiwork? Or did you actually delight in it at times, as I did? (*Imagining a pile of bonked guards waking up on top of one another in a closet, next to a bunch of carefully placed bottles.*) If so, what are the elements that make it so much damn fun to act the part of a jerk?
raevol on 12/8/2009 at 05:08
It seems in Thief you're always stealing from some rich dude, or some crazy religious organization, or some people who are entombed a little ways away and are too dead to care.
Now, stealing in Morrowind was different for me. I legitimately would feel bad if I took something from an average peasant, unless they had really ticked me off.
jtr7 on 12/8/2009 at 05:23
Since my first Thief experience was TMA, I hesitated to take the money from the servants' quarters in the Rumfords' basement while helping Basso & Jenivere.
Digital Nightfall on 12/8/2009 at 05:55
It's all about the setting and story for me. I tend to ignore loot once I've reached the loot goal, and before I reach it looting seems more like a chore or a hassle. I never use much of the gear, so the equipment store is no reward for lots-o-stealing. Loot objectives have ruined missions for me in the past, because they can seem so pointless and contrary to the plot, not to mention "kill" a setting by making you comb over it so thoroughly that it stops being a "place" and becomes just a pac-man maze.
I'd rather be the thief who steals the prized jewel and leaves everything else in the place untouched, than the one who also takes the guard's lunch money.
lost_soul on 12/8/2009 at 05:55
When I play the game, I generally try and bonk everyone on the head. (even the servants) It doesn't make me feel bad. I often end up laughing my head off when I knock out 2 AIs next to each other and one of them (while on the ground) yells "Oh my god! They killed him!". It is also funny to either knock out or kill an AI and then quickly save your game. When you reload it, they'll pop back up and fall again!
sNeaksieGarrett on 12/8/2009 at 05:55
An interesting topic, this is.
I never really thought about it to be honest. When it comes to killing though, I always felt bad about that. If I knock somebody out, and there's a bed nearby, I'll put the person on the bed so that when they wake up they're not lying on the floor... (yeah I know, it's not real, and the people never wake up but there's just something about pretending that I can't help but do.;))
Back to stealing: In thief, I never really thought of garrett as a necessarily bad person, just one that is sort of forced into a certain life because of the world he lives in. I mean, there's so much corruption and bad stuff around him that it almost seems justifiable for garrett to steal from certain folks, like rich nobles. It's like, garrett is the hero, and the nobles are actually the evil ones.
I force myself to believe that garrett ain't such a bad guy, but also come to realize that it's just a game and that stealing is the name of the game. I guess that's another reason I never felt guilt, or never thought about it. I mean, that's what thief is about, isn't it? (well, thief 1 was more about exploration and fighting monsters, but thief 2 was the more "thieving" game.)
jtr7 on 12/8/2009 at 05:57
Also, I paused a bit when stealing from a room with a cradle.
Stath MIA on 12/8/2009 at 06:25
Good topic. :thumb:
I tend to not feel guilty about robbing people, though I do occasionally feel a twinge of remorse for people who are legitimately "the good guys" (such as the dude in the FM Two Fathers). I think that I can bring myself to accept Garrett's crimes on the basis that, in his world, just about everyone is more corrupt than he is; it's hard to feel bad about robbing a noble if he's secretly a crime boss, or a church if it's member periodically round up rif-raf either for torturing or conversion into cyborgs. Even the cops in this City are less than honorable. Garrett is unique in that he has standards, low standards but standards none the less, which he does not break (unless the player is playing psycho-Garrett at the moment), this causes him to appear, not as a criminal, but as a moral man who is just doing what he must to survive amid a sea of evil and corruption.
In short, I believe that the player has difficulty blaming Garrett for being a thief because he is actually more honorable than everyone else.
sNeaksieGarrett on 12/8/2009 at 06:27
Exactly, MIA, well said.:cool:
Truart was one example of a person who was a dirty cop that was just as bad as a thug.
Dussander on 12/8/2009 at 07:02
I felt bad after stealing Widow Moira's inheritence
