Huckeye on 4/1/2008 at 00:58

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I know I responded to a thread like this in the past, but I was thinking of this the other day as well.

If you play Thief fan missions and then play Thief 1, you are likely to think, "how could they release this awful looking piece of junk?" The textures are plain, they are low res and flat, the decor is empty, the engine is clunky, the character models are horrible.... But if you played Thief 1 first, and you never had played any kind of stealth game before (as almost everyone who played T1 first hadn't) then you were most likely floored by the amazing atmosphere, detailed plot twists, voicing of the characters, gritty feel to a world that seemed to fit perfectly with the content of the game, and sitting in shadows and planning your attacks rather than charging in unprepared (for the very first time in your gaming career)...

The fan missions have made the original T1 and even T2 missions look pathetic at best. But the thing to remember is that Looking Glass made the genre, the engine, the story, and the game play, everything else came from fans who had the free time to scrutinize the game assets and they did not have a publisher breathing down their necks and saying no to every clever idea they had.

All this to say, I can see how someone can come along and play the later iterations first and not understand why people would like the original so much more. To those who started with T2 or T3, you feel like you are going backwards with T1. And if you enjoyed T2 then you probably appreciate it as the game you cut your teeth on. But for those that hung on every press release of T1, TG, T2, the hype of T2G, T3, the demos, and all the news and fan missions that surrounded them, I think there is a passion for what came first, and how great it was compared to everything else on the market at the time.

To this day, when I think of a hardware purchase, my first thought is, "will it play T1?". No game has even come close to the experience I had when playing this game through the first time.

Hope this made enough sense to help.

sparhawk on 4/1/2008 at 13:14

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Which of course is




WRONG!!!!!

Huckeye on 4/1/2008 at 23:08

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I know my original answers always had to do with content. I felt like T2 made cool maps and then tried to tack a story on at the end. But what I was thinking the other day is that my exposure to the Thief world was completely saturated by the time I got to T2 and the fans made some great looking stuff to boot. T2 was great, but I was expecting for my Thief experience to start all over anew with it and it didn't. I'll bet folks that start with T2 or later also have overhypped expectations from listening to us old people talk about how great T1 is.

I know this has been discussed to death but I'm bored right now :p

theBlackman on 5/1/2008 at 03:13

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In my case, I think I prefer T1 because Garrett was Garrett. A rebelious self-serving master thief.

I also liked the first real application of true "stealth".

In T2 he becomes a empathetic, altruistic do-gooder.

True, circumstances forced the issue. If he, or someone else, did not stop Karras, everybody, himself included was on the road to oblivion. I much preferred him in his earlier persona.

T3 followed that same trend with Garrett being Mr. Fixit. Even though in part he was, in the latter part of the game, acting in self-preservation.

salass00 on 5/1/2008 at 10:25

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Not everyone prefers Thief 1 to Thief 2.

Personally I like both in their own ways but if I had to choose just one of them it would be Thief 2.