Life with Carpal Tunnel: ‘Thief’

This dude is Garrett. What a taffer.

For my first post I’d like to try and keep things in a positive mood, despite the temptation to rant and complain about everything in sight like a lot of bloggers. I’m pretty bad for complaining on a day to day basis; my girlfriend could tell you all about that freely. I’d rather you’d think I was a friendly sort of fellow than some bitter troglodyte hissing at the sun from behind his bedroom curtain.

Anyway, I thought I’d start my video game perspective, ‘Life with Carpal Tunnel’ with Thief, by Looking Glass Studios, with the

Looking Glass is now defunct, which is an absolute shame as I firmly believe that if they were more profitable and had more support from their main publisher, Eidos, they’d still be one of the best developers today. Because the Thief series was at the time truly unique and has a lasting legacy even now.

These games come generally under the label of ‘stealth’ or ‘sneak-em-up’. This is a genre that is consumed and dominated by games such as the great Metal Gear Solid series and the definitely not-so-great Splinter Cell series. These games have largely set the tone for this genre, with games being generally very modern and technical and not having a lot of punishment for the player for breaking stealth.

Not so with Thief. What needs to be remembered is that the first game came out long before Splinter Cell and only two months after MGS, and in my opinion Thief was more of a revelation for me than the assorted escapades of Solid Snake and co.

The first thing you notice about Thief is that it looks like Doom and the various other first person shooter games that were ever so popular in the 1990’s – but if you play this game like an FPS you’re in for a surprise. One of the few memories i have of being 9 or 10 was trying to charge and kill every guard in sight, and being slain in about 3 hits from them. The impression was left fairly quickly that I had to take a more subtle approach, and not throw myself at every enemy begging to be turned into sliced salami.

The player character is quite obviously about to become mincemeat; the orb at the bottom is the light gem.

Fortunately for the player, the first game, Thief: The Dark Project is helpful in that it quickly allows you to get to grip with how to play in the Tutorial; it’s all based around the ingenious use of the light gem at the bottom of the players screen, which shows how visible you are. Using it you could easily find the shadows to avoid being detected and sneak past the bad doodz to your objective. However there were also other obstacles to watch out for, such as tiles, metal and noisy surfaces that would give away your position (though I never understood why Garrett never just wore slippers or something). These could be avoided via an inventive array of items and googaws at your exposal, such as moss arrows and rope arrows to get over them.

Not a good image but it shows how light and dark work so well in Thief.

Anyway, I suppose I should tell you a bit more about what it’s about, and I’m very happy too because the developers of Thief have made an impressive setting and a great of characters. The player character and ‘Thief’ himself is Garrett, a wisecracking master sneak who will often come out with an entertaining jibe or twenty as you play along. Garrett lives in a fictional fantasy metropolis simply called the city; a city where there is steam technology and electricity but where culture, politics, weapons and fashion are distinctly medieval. Garrett has been trained from birth by an enigmatic order called the ‘Keepers’, who seek to balance order and chaos in the world. However Garrett is more concerned with his own greedy little self and decides to strike out on his own, eventually seeking a mysterious artifact called the ‘Eye’ for some creepy chap called Constantine….

I suppose that’s enough exposition of the first game. Thief : The Dark Project is an excellent game for purely its setting alone. The noirish world of Thief was so completely original to me, and ranks on a par with George RR Martin’s ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ universe for interestingnessnessness.  I was completely engrossed in a stunning grimey world caught between SteamPunk and the Middle Ages. The First person viewpoint and the wealth of books and scrolls to read only improved the immersiveness; and ‘Immersive’ is one of the defining adjectives most fans would describe of these games. The by far outdated graphics don’t even matter.

I have to admit, I was a whiney kid when I played the first game, and sometimes the immersive nature is too much. Thief 1 was a very scary game. From the second mission it had you battling undead religious zealots and zombies from the world go, and the less said of the level ‘The Haunted Catherdral’ the better. A darkened church full of murderous undead religious fanatics is a recurring nightmare for me and still has me jumping out of bed and running to mummy from time (ok, not really, but it was scary).

Abandon hope.

Responding to these Criticisms, the developers decided with the sequel to make missions more based around typical Thief activity than tomb raiding and monster battling. The eventual sequel, Thief 2: The Metal Age was an improvement upon the original if you ask me, although the graphics were largely identical (not that it mattered). They greatly expanded the maps and the areas that you were allowed to burgle, adding a whole new feeling of freedom to the games. This culminated in the epic level ‘Life of the Party’, which had you darting across rooftops to the ememy’s tower, raiding houses along the way. It’s far better than how I described it.

Thief 2 also had you battling a mad as fucking batshit maniac priest and his followers, the Mechanists as they sought to impress a technological future on everyone else. The mad as fucking batshit maniac priest,  Karras, is one of the best villains i’ve seen in a videogame. Thief 2 is well worth the 5 bucks it goes for nowadays (and if you can get it working).

Karras. a fucking douche

After looking glass another developer made a new game on another game engine called Thief: Deadly Shadows. Although it has some terrific levels, such as the stunningly atmospheric Widow Moira’s Mansion and the Cradle (gulp!), it was let down by the truly awful city sections which were just a hassle (and should have been great), odd characted models and sub par voice acting. There is one particulatly irritating female shopkeep called black eye bessy or something who i want to strangle with a sock. Also there is a genuine consensus it was ‘dumbed down’ for console players and the story was mediocre. Worth a try though.

It looks as if Thief 4 is in development by yet another developer subdivision of Eidos, and it looks like its in Third person and looks like Assassin’s Creed. All I can hope for is that it will capture some of the magic of the original.