Unlike many gamers on the market, I have always been a great fan of stealth games and The Thief series has created a way to fill that gaming need. On top of that, I get to steal stuff. Thief and Thief 2 have earned a place among the greats of PC gaming. As such, I have to hold my breath when it comes to Thief 3. Sequels to such excellent games, especially if it is the third in the series, tend to fall from their pedestals. Driv3r did it, Lords of the Realm 3 did it, and so I began to fear that Thief 3 would suffer the same fate.
Luckily, Thief 3 created a very strong gameplay mechanism. Since it is a first person shooter at its foundation, the basic controls are very easy to employ. The mouse looks, the AWSD keys move you around, and the mouse buttons activate the world or your weapon. At first, because of the pacing of the game, everything felt to be very clunky; movement was slow and I noticed the world shifting around a bit. I quickly realized when I switched to the optional third person mode for the first and only time, that the game simulates the bob of your head as you walk and the speed is intentional. The optional third person mode is a nice touch, but it took far too much out of the game to be of any use. I always enjoyed doing things from the perspective of the character.
The game still employs the famous stealth tactics. The light gem is back and helps you determine if you are in the right place to keep hidden. It is very useful since sometimes a place that you think is a good place to hide ends up being a bad place entirely. The goal of Thief 3 is to complete your objective by being as unobtrusive as possible. As such, you need to learn how to move around your environment with as little presence as possible. You can put out lights, but guards and other characters will become alerted to your actions. You need to steal things when no one is looking, and characters will frequently notice when something is missing. Killing is usually a bad idea as it makes too much noise. The low and slow doctrine is highly important. Because of this, gamers who are looking for a game where you can run into the open and beat on the enemy will be out of luck. Garret carries a dagger and the guards have swords; Thief 3 takes a lot of patience and precision, which many gamers don’t find very entertaining.
Thief makes its name based on the plethora of cool items you can use to make it around the world and complete your objective. The arrows are the most used item: water arrows put out fires, fire arrows hurt and can take down the un-dead, moss arrows keep your movement silent over loud surfaces, noisemakers distract attention and gas arrows knock out opponents quietly. There are also other items like gas bombs, land mines, and holy water. The coolest item is the wall climbing gloves. These gloves allow you to reach high places as well as are a useful tool for evading the guards. A tool that was left out was the remote eye. I liked being able to toss out that little ball and check around corners before moving into the next room. I have no idea why it failed to make an appearance in this game.
Mission goals are very fun as well. I don’t want to give away any details, because I don’t want to ruin anything, but the best one was the Cradle level. The whole premise of it was just cool. The Museum level was also fun.
Between the missions, you get to wander the city. This is cool as you can go around breaking into houses, picking pockets, and mugging people for their valuables. It also creates an overworld so you don’t end up jumping from mission to mission; you actually have to go through the city to get to new missions. While in the city, you can stock up on items and fence your stolen loot. This opens up a very well created world.
There are a few flaws in the gameplay that make things a bit unreasonable. The biggest flaw is the clipping issue. I have encountered many times where Garret got stuck in an object for no apparent reason. He would get stuck in open chests, and even once when I was going to the Clocktower mission, he just got stuck in the pipe leading to it. Such critical errors are not cool at all. The other problem is there are a few invisible walls keeping you away from things. These are primarily on actual walls when climbing around; stuff just blocks your way for no apparent reason and you have to find another method to reach your goal.
Visually, the game is very well done. Thief’s atmosphere is by far the best I have ever seen. Character models and level designs are very well done. The best portion of the game is the lighting because everything casts shadows; fire flickers and those shadows actually affect gameplay. I snuck down a corridor once in the shadow of an NPC. Light streams through windows and little bits of dust can be seen floating around in the moonlight. Be sure to keep the game dark though. Sure, it can be irritating to not see anything, but when you raise the brightness option, the atmosphere is ruined.
Character animation is a bit strange. They still seem to have that stiffness that was evident in the previous titles. There is also a rag doll physics system in place, but it feels very primitive in comparison to the one in Far Cry. When enemies are killed or knocked out, they crumple into weird positions. It isn’t uncommon to see someone fall over backwards and balance themselves with their back over their legs because they don’t bend all the way.
The sound is very good in Thief. There is no background music, so you can fully feel the power of the surround effects. The atmospheric sound such as rats, rust mites, water, and footsteps are very well done. The directional sound system is also very well done and I never had a problem locating where something was coming from. Echo effects were oddly absent though; sounds should have echoed like crazy in those stone halls.
Speech is, for the most part, good. Story-driven voices are very well done and highly believable. Unfortunately, random speech is laughable at best. I think the boys over at Ion Storm were trying to be funny, but it turned out to be just stupid.
The story itself is very good. It starts off with some random thieving missions like the previous games, and then it introduces the main story. The story unfolds in an impressive fashion and doesn’t disappoint.
The replay value of Thief 3 is decent. The game took me 25 hours to get through, so the initial run was sufficient. There are tons of side missions that I never managed to complete, so there is even more time that can be spent on the game.
Thief 3 ran very well on my system. I was surprised to find little to no slowdowns on the highest graphical mode, especially with such nice visuals.
On a side note, there is this strange little bug evident in the game. When you start a mission on the hard mode, then save it, the game reverts back to normal. That wasn’t very cool as I ended up forcing myself to finish the level before quitting for the day.
Overall, Thief 3 did not disappoint me. Unfortunately, the glaring clipping error kept the game from true greatness, as did the minor glitches in the rag doll system and the difficulty modes. Still, if you happen to have enjoyed the previous Thief titles or any other stealth type game like Splinter Cell, then Thief 3 is well worth the purchase.
