"Thief" Review

There are some things that Thief does flawlessly, masterfully, in fact. But there are also several things that Thief does that make it seem like possibly the sloppiest game I've played this year. In the end, I find it hard to really fault Thief for the things it does wrong because it does the things it actually set out to do so well. Let me be clear: I played one Thief game back in the day, back when I was still too young to truly appreciate the stealth games that I would eventually come to love. It was "Thief: Deadly Shadows," and I got through maybe the second mission. I mention this because I want it to be clear that I am going in to the reboot of "Thief" as a technically new player. But I feel like the things that it does wrong will offend long-time Thief fans as much as it did me.
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"I'm the Thief the city deserves, but not the one it needs right now" (1)

"Thief" puts you in the shoes of Garret, the master thief. Like any good thief, Garret receives jobs from a large man with an Italian name and doesn't work well with others...although, I suppose Garret isn't actually an incredibly talented Thief. After all, he walks along streets filled with guards while wearing a hood and his thievery outfit. You'd think that if a guy were trying to lay low, he wouldn't wear a long cape and all black on the streets, but maybe I just don't understand the culture of larceny. Yeah, nothing is very special about Garret's character. His character is about as flat as his batman voice acting, but I suppose that Thief is more about the stealing experience than about character development, but further on that note...
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"I can handle myself! I'm going to be really cocky and arrogant and mean because that it apparently the only way women can be strong and independent!" (2)

The minute I saw the character in the above picture, Erin, I knew that there was not going to be a single compelling, three-dimensional character in this entire game. Then I thought, "I'm being too quick to judge based on what they made the character look like." But then, one of the first lines out of her mouth was "I can handle myself." Seriously, men? Have we not moved past this kind of cop-out writing? Seriously women? Is the feminist market still falling for the "I can handle myself" thrown bone? I have said it many times before and I will say it again: If you have a woman character and you make her say "I can handle myself," you lose all credibility as a character designer because it shows that you have no idea how people work, and even less of an idea of how women work. I am not a woman, nor do I fully comprehend how their minds work at all times, but it doesn't take an elementary understanding of humankind as a whole to know that women are made strong and independent not by saying "I can handle myself," but through actions and showing that they, in fact, can handle themselves! Just look in a flipping history book, video game designers! Women didn't win the right to vote and strike a blow against the patriarchy because they sat around saying "I can handle myself." They'd been saying that for centuries prior to winning their rights. They struck their blow to the patriarchy through ACTION!!! Few things in video games drive me more bonkers than "I can handle myself," and the minute I saw Erin, I knew she was going to be that kind of character, and because such a character exists in this game, I knew that the character designers weren't going to be competent enough to craft any decent characters. And you know what? I was right! There isn't a single compelling character in this entire game. Not one. Zip. Zero. It is just a bunch of mustache twirling rich people and starry-eyed "the people are suffering" types. So thoroughly stereotypical is the nature of the villainy that the city watch all but says "bwahaha, I shall now oppress the poor people because I am riiiiiiiich!" Like I said before, the purpose of Thief isn't compelling characters, it is the experience of being a thief, but still, why have characters if you aren't going to make them compelling?
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The "House of Blossoms," one of the few interesting levels...for about half of it, at least (3).

Since I am currently talking about the negative aspects of Thief, I'm going to go ahead and just get all of the negatives out of the way first. There were numerous technical glitches, such as character animations being entire scenes of dialogue off (like, the characters were mouthing later dialogue, and the audio was earlier dialogue) and side characters having their dialogue repeat in loops over and over again, sometimes simultaneously. One of the more frustrating technical things that got to me was the climbing. One of the mechanics of the game is that you can climb over and on top of low cover like boxes to reach high places...but not all low cover and boxes. There is no indication as to what kinds of cover you can climb on, and the kinds you can't climb on never make any sense. There are also times when you will be at a piece of cover that you know for sure you can climb on top of, but you won't be able to climb because the climb button just decides not to work sometimes. I spent about half an hour trying to find another way up to where I needed to go because the climbing button wasn't working. I eventually got desperate and just started mashing it, and I eventually climbed up, but it was incredibly frustrating. On the note of climbing, it isn't a technical thing, but there are also a few Assassin's Creed-esque climbing puzzles in which Garret switches to third person view. I use the term "puzzles" lightly here, because it isn't much of a puzzle. It is just a "which way do I climb up" type thing, and it just feels incredibly out of place. Another thing is the way that the in-between sections were handled. Before every chapter, Garret has to go someplace in the city to figure out what to do, and the city itself is a map all unto itself, and that in-between city is the best space in the game. Too bad it is laid out so poorly. I don't know what it is about it, but the fact that it is made up of a variety of separate sections linked together by loading screens really discouraged exploration for me. Oh, and also, the map you have is just horrible, it gives you no information about anything, and it doesn't even remotely help if you get lost. In addition to the many technical things, there are also a few non-technical things that really got to me.
The first thing is the fact that maybe 2 out of the 8 levels were interesting, and even then, these levels were only interesting for about half the time. Don't get me wrong, the stealing was still fun, but the levels in which they took place were utterly bland, and a lot of them didn't use the fantastic atmosphere that the in between sections had to their advantage.
The second thing is the fact that the story is so completely filled with inconsistency and writers simply forgetting what they wrote that honestly, I couldn't tell you what happened. In the creative writing class I took last semester, I learned the difference between good ambiguity and bad ambiguity, and this was bad ambiguity at its worst. They throw in so many different possible twists and turns and then they forget all about them. Ultimately, the story of Thief leads up to an incredibly unsatisfying ending that neither answers questions nor provides any closure.
The third thing is the structure of the story in relation to the gameplay. Do you know what the structure of this story reminds me of? Bio. Shock. Infinite. Bioshock: Infinite appears to have started a trend of beginning the climax at about halfway through the game so that you are fighting through end-gamey conditions for half of the time. And. It. Needs. To. Stop. Because it is a HORRIBLE idea! It is headache inducing, it takes away any hope of power in any twists you might choose to take, and not to mention, end-gamey conditions are NOT fun to play through unless they are at the END of the GAME!!!! And what makes it worse is the fact that this is a stealth game. What I mean by that is this: Stealth games have a horrible habit of not making stealth and stealing compelling in the final level. No matter how good it is throughout the rest of the game, I haven't played a single stealth game other than The Last of Us that managed to make scavenging for things to take compelling in the final run.
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This isn't a boss fight, but I didn't want to spoil anything (4)

Here's another thing, and then I'm done with the negatives. I simply don't understand why SOME stealth games (I'm looking at you, Deus Ex: Human Revolution) feel the need to have boss fights! In a stealth game, your entire focus is to avoid conflict, so why on earth do stealth games feel the need to throw in boss fights and give the player a bit of whiplash. Thief has two boss fights in it, neither of which is necessary, and both of which are more trouble than they're worth. Now, if you slip up in a normal stealth situation, the ensuing combat is manageable, even with a large crowd, assuming you are light enough on your feet. But, the boss fight combat simply makes no sense at all.
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The environment is dim and hopeless, and it is the perfect backdrop for a stealth game such as this (5).

I have spent a good deal of time talking about the negatives, and I have been harshly worded about it. So, you may be asking, "You enjoyed this game, how?" Well, I'll tell you how. The primary thing is atmosphere. Atmosphere is an aspect of any game that is incredibly important to me, and Thief is simply oozing with it, overflowing with it, just radiating with it. Especially in the in-between mission spaces, you get this sense of just how downtrodden the people of the city are. It is an atmosphere that is immersive and undeniably grand. Structures are crumbling, and the ye olde London floor stones are dimly lit by the few torches and street lamps scattered along the roads. If it weren't for the decision to make the city proper a collection of separate maps connected by loading screens, I would have spent all of my time in Thief exploring. I simply cannot describe how much I loved just looking around because of just how immersive the environment in this game was. Even with below-average graphics overall, the development team for Thief managed to hook me with its visuals.
Before this game came out, I heard it called "a lesser Dishonored." Having played Dishonored, I can understand where the comparison might be made. But here is the thing: the world of Thief did not feel random to me. I don't know why, or what caused it, but even not knowing a thing about the world and not having any context, I felt that the city was a long-standing thing. That is more than could be said for the city of Dunwall in Dishonored, which felt completely out of the blue and random to me even with all of the context documents lying around and all the lore to be found. So, in addition to the amazing atmosphere, Thief also does an incredible job of putting its universe somewhere, with making its world seem natural and long-standing. Dishonored could take a page or two from Thief's book on this. I don't know how else to describe it, but they do it well.
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Water arrows (for putting out fires) are just one of the many, many tools at your disposal for getting around unseen (6).

But what is the purpose of Thief? Thieving, of course! And it is in the stealth and the stealing that Thief truly excels, where it truly makes a name for itself and reserves a seat at the table with some of the better stealth games I've played. This is due, in no short part, to the tools you have at your disposal: things like water arrows for putting out fires, blunt arrows for breaking things on the opposite side of a space, a screwdriver thing for getting through vents, etc. Getting through places unseen is never easy, but it is always doable with a little bit of thinking.
The first non-nintendo game that I ever played was The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and the first thing I did when I got out of the prison was make the discovery that I could snatch anything up. From that point on I got in trouble with the Imperial guards numerous times because I stole everything in my path. The reason for this anecdote is this: In games where thieving is an option, I like for there to be a lot of it to be done. For this reason, the fact that there were so many things to steal both during missions and in between missions was a major positive of the game. There are sometimes hundreds of small things lying around that Garret can steal, and this makes stealing an incredibly active and rewarding mechanic. In most missions, you have a major target that you are searching for, but the many side things to take and safes to crack make even the more boring missions just a tad bit more entertaining.
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Thief is a grand time to be had, for the thievery aspect, if for nothing else (7). 

I had a fantastic time playing Thief, but towards the end, I simply stopped having fun with it, and it became more of a nuisance than a good time. As much as I would love to give this game a 9 or a 10 because of how well it accomplished the things it set out to do, there is simply too much wrong with this game to give it these higher scores. I thought long and hard about what score to give Thief, and I have been genuinely conflicted the entire time that I've thought about it. The entire last half of the game was bad enough to seriously warrant somewhere around a 6 even without factoring in the horrible characters, story, and technical aspects. But then I took a step back and looked at the game as a whole, not just at the bad parts or the good parts, and I came to a realization. This is a good game. It is a good game that is also incredibly flawed on so many levels. But I had such a good time in the good parts of the game that I can't in good conscience grant this game too low a score. All in all, I would advise you to purchase and play Thief, because, even though it is flawed and is only good for about half the time, the half of the time that is good is fantastic. My score is going to seem low, because on other ranking systems it is a subpar score. But in my score system, this score says all that I have said, it is a good time to be had, but it is also incredibly flawed.
7/10
Great job, Square Enix and Eidos Montreal, great job. But shame on you, technical people, shame on you.

Picture Sources:
Cover: www.en.wikipedia.org
(1) www.gamerfitnation.com
(2) www.thiefgame.wikia.com
(3) www.bigstory.ap.org
(4) www.pastemagazine.com
(5) www.vg247.com
(6) www.enixorigin.com
(7) www.gameinformer.com