At the time of writing, Emuparadise has announced that while its doors aren't closing, the contents of the house are nowhere to be found. Maybe they've been stolen by a thief, trained to deftly move through the darkness in a thieving simulator like Thief: The Dark Project.
A mostly medieval first person stealth-er dotted with steampunk and horror, Thief drops us into the shoes of Garrett, a thief (as you could have guessed) who will have to use his skills for missions he might not have thought he'd ever take on. Missions that start simply enough, but soon scale towards a plot involving some rather rowdy folks being welcomed into the world - and we're going to have to put a stop to that.
Get your gamma slider at the ready, because we're about to turn the lights off and skulk in the shadows.
Fun Times
I've been aware of Thief for a while, because it tends to get brought up in conversations about the stealth genre, but because my childhood was so focused on consoles, where stealth meant Metal Gear Solid or even Hitman, the Thief series on the PC was something I'd likely never bother getting into - not unless I gave myself the challenge of playing a bunch of old games.
Like usual, I'm basically going into it blind, so it's handy that the first thing I see is a difficulty selection and a training level. It's basic, introducing you to the necessary controls and concepts of the game, but it gives a flavour of the things you'll want to be doing, like sticking to the darkness and being awfully quiet, to the things you definitely don't want to do, like fighting someone.
You are not a soldier. You can swing a sword, certainly, in three different ways and can parry and whatnot, but you are not a soldier. Your opponent is probably a soldier. They know how to swing a sword. You don't. Not really.
To make sense of all that, I'm going to be gutted very quickly if I'm found out in this game. Tutorial complete, it's time to begin.
Each mission will have a number of objectives, depending on the difficulty, and you'll be able to check and manage your loadout between each one. You'll be able to attack people - not that you'd want to - as well as swig health potions and so on, but you've also got access to a handy bow with all kinds of Batman-like arrows.
We start with water arrows, for example, which sound physically impossible, but imagine a water balloon strapped to the end of an arrow that actually flies straight, and with it, you'd be able to put out distant fires. If there's no fire, there's no light, and if there's no light, there are more shadows to sneak through, making your life much easier.
Now you can see how Thief opens up and becomes almost a playground of possibilities.
Frustrations
But I didn't use those water arrows, or my bow, for that matter, for two reasons. Firstly, as soon as I loaded into the level, I reverted to a kid desperate not to trigger any kind of response from any kind of person who may be anywhere in the vicinity.
My movements were slow and crouched. You can choose to run or sneak, to stand or crouch, but I'm comfortable right here, thanks, close to the dark wall, in the dark corner, where nobody can see me. A meter down on the bottom of the screen shows how obvious you are based on your actions and position in the world. When it's lit up like a Christmas tree, so are you. When there's nothing there, you might as well be a ghost.
Unfortunately, I'm a clumsy ghost, for the second reason I didn't use those water arrows is that the default controls are stuck over on WASD, but they don't WASD like you think they would. A and D turn left and right, and you would not believe how many walls I've seen up close when I really wanted to sidestep.
You can change the keybindings, of course, but that'll be the death of me. Again, I mean. I was being attacked by a soldier up there if you couldn't tell. I damn near immediately gave up, fell over and died, such is the difficulty I have in sword fighting in this game.
Further Fun Times
There's no denying that Thief is a dark game, and probably no denying that my gamma settings ought to have been changed, but for all the screen squinting I was doing, I was absolutely absorbed into its world.
You could argue that it's a bit on the empty side, or a bit simple, but try thinking that when all you care about is wondering where that whistling guard went to, and whether he's paying attention to you.
Each character will react to their surroundings, and you can influence them. Chuck something over the other side of a room and, if it's loud enough, they'll investigate. Get your controls wrong and make noise yourself and they'll investigate you too. They'll even be able to see you in what you thought was a nice dark shadow, should they have been able to narrow their investigation down and hone in on the idiot making all the noise in the corner.
A guard in the first level holds a key to a well which I can use to get into the manor that holds the target of my night inside someone else's property. As an open environment with characters navigating around it, reacting to your actions, you have the freedom of choice when it comes to going loud or quiet. Do I steal this drunk guards key, or do I smack him around the back of the head with a Blackjack, knocking him out for good, and then steal his key?
Bodies don't disappear, so do I leave him be or carry him into the darkness and hope he's well hidden? Seeing as I'm about to drop down a well, I leave him be and hope for the best.
Sound is your friend in this game, as it's often your first clue that there's someone else in the area, and while that someone else could be a lowly civilian of some sort, who would run to get help rather than fight you, they could also be a soldier with a sharp sword.
All my movements were deliberate and methodical. Corners were looked around with peeks to the left and right. They look awkward because I was still messing up the controls, having not switched them from the defaults, but they were useful for the paranoid part of my brain that insisted there was someone right there.
Further Frustrations
After what felt like twenty minutes, I was lost. I found myself going into and out of this building a few times, trying to get my barrings. The map is a hand-drawn and doodled affair, which is pretty good if I knew that the blue bit wasn't water, but actually a highlight of which particular room or area of the level I was in.
I got back into the manor and headed upstairs, triggering a few inner thoughts and quips from Garrett, but I still couldn't find what I was looking for. By this point, I couldn't even remember what I was looking for.
The following scenes were not screenshotted until the panic was over.
Seeing nothing in this bedroom I heading back for the door, inching my way around the corner to the left. It was dark, but not terribly so. I immediately saw a soldier, barely ten feet away. "Did he see me?" He kept walking towards me. "Shit, shit, turn around, fffff, wrong button, your bastard, no, leave me alone, I'm not here!"
I told you those controls would be the death of me. Again.
Final Word
I attempted the level twice and only managed to get one of the objectives, but upon calling it quits, I did think that if I got the controls set up just the way I'd want, then Thief would be a game to explore some more of.
It's amazing how simple it looks, but how complex it can get. You will have, eventually, arrows that allow you to grow sound-dampening moss on the floor to muffle your footsteps. There's a rope arrow to make climbing even easier - the jumping mechanic even has a ledge grab (though without any helpful animations you've just got to hope your actions worked). There's a fire arrow, of course, and it does what you think.
There are all these little systems that you can manipulate in order to draw characters this way and that so that you can get on with completing your objective. I watched a speed run of it to see some of them get abused in creative ways, and it's there that I wondered whether I actually would continue with Thief.
The plot gets a little strange. It's not obvious, I suppose, so it has that going for it, but when you've got a game that gives you that thrill of cat and mouse gameplay, do you then want to have to run around dodging zombies? I don't.
I know what needs to be done before I next try Thief, and while I like the idea of it, I don't see myself fully exploring it. Maybe you'll find more treasure here than I did.
Fun Facts
The developers didn't want NPCs to instantly turn hostile upon hearing a sound or seeing the player and instead programmed them to have states akin to being suspicious or investigative, turning hostile only if the situation merited it.
Thief: The Dark Project, developed by Looking Glass Studios, first released in 1998.
Version played: Thief Gold, PC, 1999
Version watched: Thief, PC, 1998 (Games Done Quick)