Thief and the Undead - TTLG Forums

killerecho on 24/3/2006 at 05:19

One of the things that has always intrigued me about the Thief series is its menagerie of undead. Don't get me wrong, they scare me senseless -- I'd beat around the bush stalling myself from going on to the next mission for days if it's supposed to contain undead. (It must've taken me weeks to work up the courage to attempt Shalebridge) But alas, with the fear comes this morbid fascination that makes zombies and their ilk so compelling. Guess it's kinda like agitating that cankersore with your tongue -- hurts like hell but you can't stop doing it...anyone? No? Anyways I don't think I'm alone in this -- some of the defining missions in Thief had an undead theme. Say what you want about how much you hate haunted levels -- it's the dread and terror that make them so memorable...and good.

So for my first thread on this forum, I'd like to elicit your opinions of the undead -- favorites, scariest, lamest, not just the undead but the missions they inhabit, and defining moments.

Here are mine:

Favorite (and scariest) has to be the haunt, that's probably expected, but I'm actually at odds over which incarnation is tops. You have the ragged, sword wielding original from TDP, the less ragged hammer variant from TMA, the screeching, bloody-skulled horror from TDS and the skulking, scimitar-sporting adepts from T2X.

Runner up - Puppet from the Cradle, reason being the level design and atmosphere made them appear more horrifying than they actually are, but nevertheless...

Lamest is a tie between the apparition from TDP and the skinny zombie from TDS. The apparition sounds more annoying than creepy, has crappy aim and is easily be hacked out of existence with conventional weapons. As for the zombie, the first time I found it inside that cell inside St. Edgar's, I'd mistaken it for an emaciated prisioner instead of undead. And it is just me or does he bear an odd resemblance to a certain Lord of the Rings villain?

Missions - Shalebridge hands down. It's the only level that took not hours, but months to finish. RTC must be mentioned of course (the Winter tunnels, gives me chills just thinking about it). That ghost haunt from "Framed" (TMA) scared the crap outta me the first time. Cragscleft -- the first one's always special for that.

moria on 24/3/2006 at 10:19

I absolutely HATE zombies. I'm such a girly wimp. I wish one of you clever chaps on here could come up with a tweak to turn them into pink rabbits or teddy bears or something. I played the Abysmal Gale part of TDS last night, and I was a total nervous wreck. I had to turn the sound down a bit, because the noise was doing my head in. And when I played TDP, I must admit I used the cheat code to skip all the zombie levels. Maybe I'd be a bit braver if I knew how to kill the dam' things.

TenTailedCat on 24/3/2006 at 11:18

Still too scraed to make a serious stab at Cragscleft. I've got a little way in but the lack of holy water in my immediate vicinity kind of stalled me.

I really hate zombies. :(

Jarkko Ranta on 24/3/2006 at 14:26

Zombies are fun to play with until I screw up with them... Outsmarted by one is the most annoying thing that can happen. But they are great guineapigs for various "tests" for Dromeders (zombie parts destroy zombies in (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104087)) and in the Life of Party to destroy the Spire's zombies only with broadheads by knocking them in the burning pit.

T-Smith on 24/3/2006 at 14:30

My first ever Thief experiance was the Thief 2 demo (after that I rushed out and picked up Thief: Gold, and then later after Thief 2). In the Necromancer's Spire, I read that damned book, and POOF, zombies. Scared the life out of me, I tried slahing them until they dropped down. I thought I was safe then, but nope. Tricky taffers got back up! I was just so scared at that momment I lost all reason and jumped out the window, bringing an end to Garrett's life :laff:

Nowadays, the only undead in the Thief series that still scare me are The Puppets.

moria on 24/3/2006 at 14:54

OK, so what CAN you do about zombies? I blasted all the ones I could find on the Abysmal Gale with fire arrows, but that seems a quite profligate use of ammo. I don't like holy water, because you have to get quite close to them to use it. Urggghhh *shudders*. I'm sorry, but Garrett is a craven coward in my hands.

gunk on 24/3/2006 at 16:27

mines are effective to..

T-Smith on 24/3/2006 at 16:52

Quote Posted by moria

Fire Arrows work great (you can also throw down an oil flask and light the oil on fire with the arrows, I'm not sure if this keeps the zombies at bay or not, but it should).
Holy water (in Thief 3 you throw it, and you can throw it onto the ground to make a puddle that they can't cross, and if they do they die. In Thief 1 and 2, Holy Water just activates holy water arrows).
Explosive Mines work great.
FLASHBOMBS. All too often I've come across Thief players who don't know flash bombs are quite effective against the undead.

jermi on 24/3/2006 at 17:23

This has been said so many times, one more time won't hurt ...

The Cradle was scary until the inhabitants appeared. At that point you spent a few moments trying to figure out whether you were looking at buggy rendering or animation, or whether it was intentional. "Intentional, then. Ok, this just turned into crap, but let's move on anyway." Meeting the inhabitants takes the Cradle from "experience" right back down to "videogame" and instead of being scary, they prevent the rest of the mission from being scary.

Ominous cowl on 24/3/2006 at 17:58

Jermi, that's a valid point. It is always more scary not to show the evil things, but intead only to give hints about their existence. Take a glance at the movies:
Before 1968, horror movies were comprised by evil ghosts or hauting spirits. The stage directors did not or only rarely show the root of evilness. This, however, has completely changed with George Romero's "(http://imdb.com/title/tt0063350/) Night of the Living Dead". In this famous horror flick, zombies made their first appereance in a movie, and Romero changed the point of view of horror film-makers. Now it is quite common to show the reason of scaryness in person, instead of giving subtle hints.

So, in the cradle the inhabitants could have been replaced by moving shadows, which could equally track you down - although of course Garrett would not have been able to backstab them. Although I am a true zombie enthusiast, I would have prefered such enemies over the undead in this situation.

On the other hand, the horror movies before '78 without any zombies would have been quite hilarious once the directors would have agreed on (http://img483.imageshack.us/img483/4141/s8rx.gif) showing the evil entities in their films... well. ;)
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