twisty on 18/7/2010 at 10:03

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Having just completed my second playthrough of this game after a six year break, I felt a desire to put a few thoughts on paper about my experience of the game. Unlike Thief 1 & 2, which are games that I have played more times than I care to remember, I originally completed Thief DS shortly after its release, yet never felt compelled to play it again for a number of reasons. As I have recently acquired TDS through a purchase of an Eidos' pack in the latest Steam sale, I decided to give it another chance.

I realise that for most of you, my reflections on TDS are nothing new. It would also be fair to say that some of my opinions are more a matter of personal taste than an official adjudication of the game. What I have found interesting though is that whilst most of my objections to the game have remained, I have gained a greater appreciation for some of the final levels in the game.

In no particular order, a rather long-winded summary of the good, the bad and the ugly:

• Too much comedy and most of it was not particularly funny. In contrast to the previous games where examples of amusing dialogue were more subtle and applied sparingly throughout the game, TDS injected so much comedy into the game that this final part of the series felt like a parody of the episodes before it. This had an undesired effect on much of the game's atmosphere. One example that springs to mind is outside the Abysmal Gale, where a couple of guards who appear to have stepped out of the Spinal Tap school of comedy, engage in a conversation about the ghost ship. The way in which this conversation unfolds implies a near complacency and “every-dayness” about the undead that does nothing to provoke a sense of foreboding to the player as a prelude to the mission ahead.
• Some of the most annoying voice acting ever. Not just the voices but some of the dialogue as well. The Pagans stand out in particular as being able to combine both. I felt that overall the dialogue and voice acting in the first two games were consistently better.
• Regarding the animations, “stiff” and “robotic” are the words that spring to mind, and are a large step back from the motion captured animations in the Dark Engine games.
• Probably my greatest dislike for TDS is the movement of Garrett. It doesn't bother me at all that they included 3rd person as an option, it's more the fact that they never designed this game for a first-person perspective; they just changed the camera position between views. This lack of optimisation results in unintuitive movement where the intended direction of movement is at times incongruent with the outcome, as the position of the feet has greater bearing than that of the head (the centre of the screen). During parts of the game where the player is required to traverse over relatively tricky sections such as scaffolding and pipes, I found myself having to go into 3rd person to avoid potential disaster.
• The interface feels terribly disjointed, and parts of it are unrefined and ugly. The start and inventory screens are examples of this and feel more placeholder than final product: the chunky brown buttons on a swirling blue background and the un-optimised fonts. Switching through items is a big improvement through.
• The AI is a bit of a mixed bag. Eggboy, the main programmer behind the AI in Deus Ex and TDS, implemented some notable yet subtle improvements and throughout the game there are hints of unused potential in the AIs. Unfortunately, the AI appears to have been hamstrung by poor design choices and bugs that make a lot of the game too easy, regardless of the chosen difficulty level. Examples of this include guards sometimes losing sight of you as soon as you turn a corner or scale a wall. I guess that I was expecting the AI to be a big improvement on the dark engine games.
• Fluorescent hair and tribal tattoos - these just don't feel like they belong in the Thief universe. All we needed was some psychedelic trance to go with it.
• Grand Thi3ft Auto: the side missions were just silly (killing bugs and growing trees); the ease of acquiring arrows made shopping almost pointless; there was so much money around anyway that looking for loot became irrelevant in so far as preparing for future purchases; it was just too easy to escape pursuit by jumping into a loading zone. Meh.
• Speaking of shopping (and voice acting)...some of the female dialogue was appalling: “Ooh Garrett - I can't believe I have you in my shop;” “Something about you and that hood;” “Can you sign an autograph?” Garret was transformed from the greatest thief the world has never seen to a Dillingeresque celebrity.
• The replacement of the rope arrows with climbing gloves remains a lasting disappointment as this feature was unique to the Thief games up until recently (Trine). The bow and arrow is a major step back from the intuitive and “realistic” feel of the dark engine games.
• Although the maps were fairly small, I would have liked to have been able to see my position in some of the levels for the sake of convenience.
• Getting wet lands you in prison. Nuff said.
• The 3d cut scenes looked like crap. They did a good job of recapturing the feel and style of the original cut scenes in the 2d cut scenes though.

I found most of the missions to be fairly bland and uninteresting until after the Abysmall Gail. From this point onward the game really improves. Had the previous 10 hours' worth of gaming been as exciting and well designed as these levels, then this would earned a place for me on my list of all-time favourite games. As it stands however, I don't think that I could stand playing through the game again just to get to those levels. Perhaps in another 6 years time...

jaxa on 19/7/2010 at 15:53

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What struck me about the menus and buttons was just how completely unresponsive it felt. You get floating, 3Dish buttons with fog effects, but I needed to click the eye candy more than once or slowly to get it to work most of the time. The load/save menus were also crap. I think only two saves were displayed on the screen at once and you had to scroll to get to the rest. It's all a step backwards.

Beleg Cúthalion on 20/7/2010 at 12:04

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You're comparing blueprints to hand-drawn map to say that the latter are better? Honestly? These anti-TDS threads go more down silly road every day. How about comparing them to the map of Constantine's mansion or the Haunted Cathedral? But if you see (http://www.tradebit.de/usr/stock-photos/pub/9002/653191.jpg) this on the street you don't try to levitate, do you?

Beleg Cúthalion on 20/7/2010 at 12:22

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I think they are of course more diverse and pretty, but the TDS map aren't completely useless, plus, I don't think a hand-drawn sketch is bad in general. If you take the Lost City map or the question mark of Trail of Blood (followed by the Mechanist drawing), you don't have things helpful as maps per se either.

But honestly I'm not sure anymore if people are just trying to be kidding.

cast on 20/7/2010 at 12:51

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I would prefer a hand-drawn sketch rather than a fully detailed map too, but what we have in TDS is really an exaggeration... I mean, come on, when I'm purchasing a map of the museum via black market, I expect to get a MAP OF THE MUSEUM, not some drawing that looks like done by a 8-year-old ADHD kid just running around aimlessly...

I liked how the problem was solved in Casing the Joint - at first, it's unlikely that Garrett has any clue about the mansion's interior, so we get nothing except for how it looks from the outside. As we explore, Garrett makes himself a map that really does look like a map, not just "there's a room and then a room and another room and wow big door!!!111one" (and this is how TDS maps are done, it seems ;x)