It's been postulated - aptly, I believe - that one of the primary appeals of contemporary
video gaming is wish fulfillment.
Why make Uncharted or Tomb Raider?
Well, the average person probably won't be embarking on an archaeological spelunking
expedition to sift through the remnants of an extinct civilization in some dank, sand-caked
chasm filled with gun-toting minorities - unless, of course, you happen to be Morgan Webb's
OBGyn.
But the fact remains that a sizable contingent of future gaming releases will remain focused
on satisfying what are, in essence, power fantasies.
For example, the power fantasy of flying through the galaxy on your personal stealth warship
staffed with half-naked, turqoise alien broads, sexy robots and one repressed homosexual.
But in the case of today's subject, the power fantasy is clear.
To experience the thrill and tension of being somewhere you shouldn't be... while doing
something you shouldn't be doing.
No, it's not an autobiographical Piers Morgan video game.
But it is a simple concept of deceptive complexity.
There are many influential titles in the swollen, puckered annals of interactive media, but
preposterously few whose influence is no less immutable today than it was when America still
had a functioning fuckin' economy.
Having long since taken its place alongside Deus Ex and System Shock atop the holy trinity
of game design, today's episode is a comprehensive history and analysis of Looking Glass Studios'
peerless pioneer.
My favorite video game series of all-time: Thief.
It's worth noting that long before the Thief series had ambled across its first steam-drenched
rooftop, Looking Glass Studios already had a record of excellence that was rapidly becoming
the envy of the industry.
They effectively pioneered the sandbox RPG format with the almighty Ultima: Underworld
in 1992.
You're welcome, Elder Scrolls!
They invented the modern RPG/Shooter hybrid with the original System Shock as early as
1994!
Think nothing of it, Mass Effect!
When Terra Nova dropped in '96, despite bombing harder than Ralphie May after gastric bypass,
it became the standard-bearer for squad-based, tactical mech gameplay.
Here's lookin' at you, MechWarrior!
And contrary to what Yahtzee reported after 15 full seconds of exhaustive research on
Wikipedia, Looking Glass's Flight Unlimited series was both a commercial and critical
success within the flight sim genre, which at the time, was still more lucrative than
France's white flag industry.
But even among such illustrious company, the game initially entitled simply 'The Dark Project'
stood immediately apart.
Hell, it even managed to depart from the rapidly proliferating pack of 3D stealth pioneers
like Metal Gear Solid and the criminally-underrated Tenchu: Stealth Assassins, both of whom, like
our president's seed on a White House intern's aquamarine frock, were both released in 1998.
I'll be honest: Thief: The Dark Project is far and away my least favorite in the series.
This is chiefly a function of the game not even being intended as a full-on stealth game
until literally just a few months away from the game's actual release.
Consequently, I find much of the title - which, in case the developers forget, is neither
Tomb Raider, Relic Hunter or Garrett, Zombie Slayer, but motherfucking THIEF - suffers
from exceptionally schizophrenic level design.
A brilliant burglary-themed mission and a superb, Shawshankian jailbreak scenario...
are followed up with a positively laborious, noctambulant stroll through tombs filled to
the fucking risers with more undead than Boca Raton.
But the presence of the undead isn't what I object to.
It's the sheer fucking volume that gives me pause.
A few undead peppered throughout an atmospheric house of horrors?
It's a good fuckin' time.
Spooky, creepy, and more importantly, each individual encounter remains impactful.
But, as I believe we've all learned from Dead Space 3, when enemies of every conceivable
configuration are perpetually shambling the fuck towards the player with an eye for some
carotid carry-out... you invariably find yourself more de-sensitized than a drunken leper.
It's a masterful game, don't get me wrong, and it might have the strongest actual narrative
of any game in the series, but it's impossible to escape the feeling of taking one step forward
and three steps back while playing Thief: The Dark Project.
Lucky for Thief, then, that the 'one step' was so motherfucking monumental.
But if the level design suffers from the odd blemish, the lasting legacy is utterly immaculate.
I really can't stress enough how profoundly different the stealth genre, and gaming at
large, would be without the presence of this titan of treachery.
If I was scoring for long-term impact, The Dark Project is a perfect 10.
But grading this as an actual gameplay experience, it registers at a very respectable:
4 flashbombs out of 5.
With a bit more focus, and a tad more actual fuckin' thievery... this game would have been
the best in the series hands-down.
And speaking of which...
Thief II is the demigod asian kid at the arcade dry-humping the Marvel Capcom 2 machine for
weeks on end, calmly readjusting his glasses and swilling Sierra Mist as you frantically
squander your college fund in a vain attempt to salvage your last modicum of masculinity.
It's so good, it's actually obnoxious.
If you find yourself so inclined, consult my - SHAMELESS PLUG - Thief II review for
further extrapolation on this topic, but the abridged version is no less glowing, I assure
you.
With every flaw in the Dark Project ameliorated and every strength amplified, along with a
spoonful of graphical upgrade, Thief II is the dictionary definition of 'perfect sequel'.
This game is a masterpiece.
15 enthralling missions of staggeringly dense detail and baffling scope.
From a simple shipping dockyard sandbox with innumerable entrances, exits, nooks, crannies
and hidden depths... to a rooftop trek through several city blocks that concludes with Garrett
infiltrating a 6-floor motherfucking tower, this game features one of the only instances
of missions within missions within missions.
And unlike The Dark Project or Oblivion, these massive spaces aren't emptier than Bethesda's
promises...
*ahem* or Obsidian's excuses.
Look, I've played this game over a dozen times, and I haven't even come close to discovering
half the hidden shortcuts, easter eggs, and metric shitpiles of hidden loot on offer in
the Life of the Party mission.
It's a tour de fucking FORCE.
Factor in a brilliant plot about a charismatic madman leading an already fanatical religion
clean off the clerical cliff in an attempt to burn away the imperfection of human flesh
to make way for the immortal machine...?
It's one of the few examples of the medium rendered as art.
Playing The Dark Project at launch in '98, in retrospect, I think I was more attracted
to the potential of the game than any of the data that was actually pressed to the fuckin'
disc.
Oh, sure, you had moments of unsurpassed genius like the Assassins mission, wherein Garrett
survives a failed attempt on his life, only to tail the criminals back to their employer's
castle, at which point he delivers a very pointed message by literally swiping the coinpurse
from a crimelord's belt.
But then you also had Strange Bedfellows.
And an Undercover mission with a 'social stealth' mechanic that's spottier than Gorbachev's
forehead.
And lest we forget the 31 flavors of tomb raiding.
And sadly, Thief Gold only compounds the problem, by proffering the single worst mission in
the entire series in the form of the Downwind Thieves' Guild.
The brightest light casts the darkest shadow, or so Chris Nolan's dusty tome of filmmaking
clichés informs me: Which serves as an explanation for why the odd blemish in The Dark Project
can often make a pimple look more like a goiter.
But Thief II exfoliates.
It moisturizes.
It drinks three bottles of water every day and pisses like a racehorse in consequence.
It casts a wide net of influence, encompassing all in the genre in a vast... overextended...
metaphor.
Look, there is no greater stealth game in existence, motherfucker!.
Pure, artistic kleptomania. 5 flashbombs out of 5.
Grease your pitchforks and douse your torches in fanboy tears, fellow villagers, because
depending on who you are speaking with in the Thief community, 2004's Thief: Deadly
Shadows is alternately a brilliant and innovative sequel... or a botched abortion of Kermit
Gosnellian proportions.
With the untimely end of Looking Glass Studios - a death which I will hasten to note was
not caused by the self-destruction of John Romero - as certain perpetually misinformed
Anglo-Australian Perma-Twats have alleged - the rights to the Thief franchise defaulted
to Ion Storm's Austin branch, best known for producing the video game equivalent of the
Arc of the Covenant in Deus Ex - with a proportionate number of melted faces.
And this time the anal divot in the producer chair belonged to the almighty Warren Spector,
whose work at Looking Glass on the original Thief title had actually served as his main
inspiration for Deus Ex itself.
I like this game.
I like it a lot.
In fact, there are certain things it does even better than Thief II.
The overhauled, dynamic lighting system, which allowed for transitory light sources and shadows
which Garrett could actually hide in - a feature Eidos Montréal is currently foisting as a
brand new innovation in the upcoming Thief 4!
Because lies!
The birth of the Cuty Hub, a perpetual, open-world, albeit heavily condensed rendering of The
City that appeared to evolve with the player as the game wore on.
Sometimes for the better, often for the hilarious.
Even the game's sound engine - already a mammoth pillar of the series' core design - had a
massive facelift, and remains the only game in the franchise that actually supports dynamic
surround sound out of the box.
The introduction of a lockpicking mechanic, literally creating gameplay where none had
existed before.
Quite possibly the greatest soundtrack in the series...
What curb-stomps the game's potential, sadly, predominately stems from inter-office politics
and the death throes of Eidos Interactive in general.
With such a wide and innovative feature set, sadly, some things - like swimming and rope
arrows - had to be cleaved from the game's design entirely in the name of budget and
time constraints, while other new additions probably should have been.
The introduction of what is, in my view, a very welcome optional third-person perspective...
requires a very practiced and soft touch.
But with deadlines closing in and Eidos going up like the hindenburg, what required a scalpel
had to be done with a jackhammer.
You can piss and moan about the game needing to make concessions for consoles - and you'll
certainly have no shortage of company - but that's not a party I'd turn up for.
While the original Xbox's memory limitations likely didn't help...
Thief: Deadly Shadows' shitpiece of a game engine had more to do with that than Microsoft's
anemic console.
Look at the back of the PC game box, for fuck's sake!
256 MB of RAM?!
In 2004?
That's how much applied RAM the PS3 has now.
I mean, having one gigabyte of RAM was a fuckin' novelty in 2004.
By the standards of the day, this game was a fuckin' resource hog, and that is a fact.
Xbox... or no Xbox. that it turned out to be, in my opinion, the
second-best game in the series, is a testament to the incredible talent, vision and dedication
of Ion Storm, and so many of the ex-Looking Glass employees who transplanted there.
With missions that strike the finest balance between horror and theft, a brilliant and
satisfying conclusion to Garrett's narrative arc, and without question the single most
horrifying game level ever made...
Thief: Deadly Shadows - taken on its own terms or measured against its predecessors - is
a worthy sequel in every conceivable regard.
Having beaten all three games seven ways from Sunday and back again... you will never convince
me otherwise.
4 1/2 out of 5.
Ion Storm: Rest in Peace.
Well, the ball of dung's in your court, now, Eidos Montréal, and I'd be lying through
my 'TEEF' if I claimed the trepidation wasn't beginning to reach fever pitch.
You can pre-emptively pat yourselves on the back for 'remaining faithful' all you like,
but between Stephen Russell being kicked to the curb in favor of Gerard Depardunce with
a Quebec accent that's thicker than a J-Lo pre-nup, slow-mo, contextual third-person
kills, bone-snapping finishing moves, and linear jogging set pieces you hijacked from
abominable shitpieces like Need for Speed: The Run... at this point Newt Gingrich is
more faithful than you motherfuckers.
I mean, all he did was diddle some other skank while his wife was on her death boudoir.
At least he didn't power-inject the fuckin' cancer cells into her aorta.
Drop the syringe and re-assess, Eidos Montréal.
Because, between the five years of development, redoubling your Napoleonic resolve to cling
to 'next-gen exclusivity', the divebombing gaming market, and your shameless censorship
and antagonization of the diehard Thief fanbase... this is looking distinctly as if it will be
your Waterloo, my friends.
I'm RazörFist.
God - fuckin' - speed!