Thief: Deadly Shadows

aka: Dark Project: Deadly Shadows, TDS, Thief 3: Deadly Shadows, Thief 3: Złowieszcze Cienie, Thief III
Moby ID: 13460
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Description official descriptions

Master Thief Garrett is contacted by the Keeper Artemus, who wants him to steal two valuable artifacts. Meanwhile, Garrett learns that the coming of a Dark Age had been prophesied long ago. Gaining access to the Keeper Prophecies, Garrett learns that an ancient book known as the Compendium of Reproach contains more information about the prophecy. As Garrett is trying to solve the mystery, it becomes more and more clear to him that there is a traitor in the order of the Keepers.

Thief: Deadly Shadows is the third installment in the Thief series. The game follows the same design philosophy and gameplay structure that distinguished its predecessors. As before, stealth is the key to successful completion of missions. Avoiding confrontation with the guards, Garrett has to make his way through the levels towards the objective. Shadows and sounds play a large role, as guards will react to suspicious noises, and studying their patrolling routines is essential.

A few gameplay elements have been slightly altered. Garrett can no longer swim, but is able to use climbing gloves that attach him to the walls. He can also flatten himself against walls while standing; if in shadow, he remains completely unnoticeable that way. The player can see Garrett's limbs even if he is viewed from first-person perspective, allowing more precise movements. Switching to third-person view is also possible.

The most significant gameplay change is the non-linear exploration of the City, which has been added to the largely linear missions. In order to access the next mission, Garrett has to explore the City. On his way, he can overhear conversations, steal valuables, avoid or knock out the guards, and even accept secondary missions, which will influence his reputation with some of its factions.

Spellings

  • Thief 3. Тень смерти - Russian spelling
  • 神偷:死亡阴影 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

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Average score: 83% (based on 44 ratings)

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Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 105 ratings with 7 reviews)

All good things must come to an end

The Good
Admittedly my expectations were quite low, what with Ion Storm’s much touted bungling of ‘Invisible War’...I almost made the 3 hour journey to Austin to scream at Warren. Luckily ‘Thief: Deadly Shadows’ has in no way suffered the same fate. The list of good and bad aspects is a long one, so here we go:

The most prominent improvement is, of course, the update to the Unreal II engine. More than capable of rendering real-time lighting and shadows, it also gives a boost in the AI department. Because of this, I had to be more mindful of my actions this time around, because guards and others would often become alerted or suspicious if a torch was doused, if valuables were not in their proper place, or even if a guard was not present at his scheduled patrol station. Speaking of which, NPCs will often randomly stop to talk to one another and react to each other’s actions, and even start fights!

Graphics and AI upgrades aside, the nucleus of the Thief atmosphere is one thing that has not changed at all. In fact, ‘Deadly Shadows’ feels much more like a Thief game to me than the mechanical environment of ‘The Metal Age’ (even though such an environment was vital to the story, but still…). One thing I loved about the first game was its dark, gritty appearance, and that it really did give me the creeps. Thankfully, this atmosphere has made a return, and is in fact much more sinister and frightening at times than even ‘The Dark Project’. Also, a lot of familiar entities, friend or foe, have made a comeback as well, including a couple of “old friends” from the first game.

Perhaps the most outstanding difference between ‘Deadly Shadows’ and the previous two games is, rather than employ the traditional complete-a-level-and-then-transport-to-the-next-one, most of the time you’re required to journey to the next mission yourself throughout the various quadrants of the City. Along the way, you’re allowed to break into establishments, pickpocket unsuspecting citizens, and sell your loot to buy supplies at fence shops. Excellent!

The Bad
I only have a couple of major grievances, and they’re artistic ones.

First of all, I was highly disappointed at the disappearance of the between mission cut scenes that the first two games had. Gone are the tantalizing quotes and slide-show movies; now we simply have Garrett reading text that sits against a smoky background. Second, the interface was changed. I’m not exactly sure why; it can’t be because of co-development with XBOX, because the Thief games already had a very simple control scheme. This most likely won’t bother most, but it did irk me, so if you want a more traditional Thief UI I’d suggest going to TTLG.com and downloading the “tweaker”, because it does wonders. Also, there is a known bug with the enemy AI, but the 414KB patch can be downloaded from Ion Storm’s homepage or TTLG.

Many have complained about the “load zones” throughout the game (to accommodate the memory limitations of the XBOX), but I didn’t find them to be a huge distraction. Many of my favorite FPS games such as ‘Deus Ex’, ‘System Shock 2’, and ‘Undying’ have load zones, so I don’t see it as anything to gripe about.

The Bottom Line
It’s well known by many how much of a devoted Thief fanatic I am, so people like myself are 99% more likely to be extremely critical of this game. I can say with confidence that ‘Deadly Shadows’ is most definitely a Thief game in almost every sense of the word, and surpassed my expectations across the board. I confess that it doesn’t surpass ‘The Dark Project’, a magical game than can never be duplicated. In my opinion however it does offer a much more satisfying and thief-like experience than the heavy sci-fi overtones of ‘The Metal Age’. Old-timers like myself will be happy with the conclusion, and newbies will want to know more about this bizarre world that is the City.

So long Garrett…thanks for six years worth gaming righteousness.

And Mr. Spector, thanks for restoring my faith in you.

Windows · by HandofShadow (49) · 2006

Garrett Makes His Triumphal Return

The Good
Garrett’s back! The personable thief, yet again voiced by the talented Stephen Russell, is as much of a badass as ever. The series that made popular the pattern of gliding from one pool of darkness to the next, snatching up loot along the way, and laying a guard low with a blackjack when he unsuspectingly wanders into Garrett’s path. It’s all back again, with some welcome fresh technological touches.

Arguably, the biggest change is with the visuals. Thief: Deadly Shadows is powered by a modern Unreal engine, the same engine that powered Deus Ex: Invisible War, optimized in this game for torches and pools of darkness to hide in, and boy is the engine demanding. If you have the hardware to keep the engine roaring, though, the payoff is enormous. Dynamic lighting makes the gameplay in Thief shine, and it makes snuffing out the many torches with water arrows almost a crime. The way that shadows dance on the far wall is reason enough to pause, as is how you can see your shadow while you’re creeping up behind someone, blackjack in that dark shadow’s hand, raised at the last moment to strike. Oh yes, the visuals are something to behold, that much is certain.

Hand in hand with those visuals, is the new ‘body awareness.’ Look down, you’ll see your legs, look from side to side, you’ll see your arms, weapons in hand. While climbing a ladder, scaling a wall, and all that jazz, you’re very much aware of where your body is at all times. Being able to see your own shadow is something you get used to pretty quick, but body awareness…now that’s something novel. Far from being distracting, it’s just one more method of keeping track of where you are, in a game that puts a lot of emphasis on being in the right place at the right time, so you can go unseen by the passersby. This kind of awareness is something I ache for in Valve’s Source engine, and I hope it’s not limited to Thief 3 as time goes on.

Now we come to something that really shines in this new engine – the level design. With the enhanced color palette, and the increased ability of the engine being used (no offense intended to the wonderful Dark engine, which powered the first two games), level design has reached a new height in the Thief series. Buildings made of stone actually look made of stone now, and rear up impressively. The soaring towers are reason to pause in your thieving, and the level designers made full use of what this engine is capable of. Unfortunately, the city levels are broken up into smaller sections, and each mission is generally made up of two areas linked together. More on that bit in the ‘Bad’ section, but aside from the minor annoyance that this level segregation brings, it fortunately doesn’t distract from the level design all that much. All in all, the level design is breathtaking at times, which is something I didn’t expect from this game. One of the levels in particular, Shalebridge Cradle, is also one of the spookiest I’ve had the pleasure of wandering through in a game, even factoring in the hair-raising Ocean House mansion in Vampire Bloodlines.

One great thing about the Thief series has been the sound in the game, and most notably, the voice work. Overhearing conversations has been a highlight in all three games, and many of the old voices are back again. This is one very good thing, as something familiar and as well done as ever is very nice in the light of all the other changes to the game. A conversation is still a delight to come across, and the sounds of the level are as capable of setting the mood as they ever were. Since much of the game is spent in darkness, and hiding, a great part of survival is simply listening to your environment and the enemies within it, and this game doesn’t slack when it comes to letting you use your auditory senses to keep Garrett in one piece. Sometimes the sound is a little TOO effective, as Shalebridge Cradle again brings to mind. That level manages to show off the game quite nicely, though it comes at a later point in the game.

Ahh, gameplay, isn’t that what Thief has always been about? Graphics were certainly never the main draw, and the amusing conversations have just been a bonus. No, the Thief games are all about making a profit as Garrett the Master Thief, while being given motivation to steal through well-written pre- and post-mission briefings, as well as a potent story advanced mostly through nicely done cutscenes. The cutscenes themselves are very close to how they’ve always been, and mission briefings are still narrated by Garrett, though the briefings have changed, which I’ll get to in a bit. The loot that you can pick up is now highlighted by a timed ‘glinting’, and while this happened to throw me off at first, when factoring in how rich the game world is now it’s a very welcome improvement. Even with the loot glinting, I still had to keep a sharp eye out in order not to miss any loot. Knocking out guards is still as fun as ever, and being able to see your shadow while doing it just adds that extra bit of cinematic feel, bringing you in even closer to the action. Gameplay was transferred intact to this new game, and is all the better for the changes that have been made.

An interesting touch is also the inclusion of walking around the city, getting to your mission areas by actually travelling to them on foot, and selling the loot from the previous mission along the way. Stopping by a thieving supply store, of which there are many, is also part of the game now. What this manages to do is bring life to The City, of which we saw in some missions in the previous games, but never really got much of an impression of The City outside of them. The City is definitely well-represented here, if it does seem a bit cramped. An element of realism has been placed, and it’s done nicely.

Oh, and my personal favorite touch – no more spiders. While not terribly afraid of them in real life, the spiders in the first two Thief games were...a bit much, for my taste. Hissing gigantic spiders that take up the whole screen, no thank you, sir!

The Bad
Well, for one thing, the pre-mission briefings no longer have their still-image cutscenes to go along with the narration. While not something that adversely impacts the game, it’s still a disappointment, as this was one hell of a touch of class for both of the previous games. That Garrett is still Garrett, and that he does the narrating, helps to make up for this, but the change is still there.

As mentioned previously, the levels are split up and segmented. Strangely enough, the city levels suffer from this more than the missions themselves do. Maybe it’s the amount of traveling that you will do in the course of the game, but the city segments feel a little off somehow. While it didn’t take much out of the game for me, the loads between Old Quarter and The Docks are definitely where you’ll ponder your feelings about the level segmentation. I’m sure there was a reason for keeping the levels split up, most likely performance-related, but it’s still one of my main complaints.

Swimming has been removed, and replaced with climbing gloves. The gloves feel gimmicky to me, and though I did manage to find several places to use them cleverly, I do wish that swimming had been able to be implemented in this new engine. Again, nothing game-breaking, but when you die the first time you encounter deep water, you’ll wonder what happened to make Garrett lose the ability to swim.

The Bottom Line
The Thief series has always been one of my favorite games, and Thief 2 is still a contender for my absolute favorite game, depending on the mood I’m in. When playing this new Thief, I tried to keep my feelings for the previous games separate from this game, but by the end, I had to admit that this is a true Thief game. Changes have been made, but overall, they seem to have been for the better.

If you’re a follower of Garrett, as I am not ashamed to admit being, then this game is worthy of your attention. If you have no idea what I mean by that, then all I have to say is to check out the first two games, and then consider this game again. Much of the storyline has attained closure at the end of Thief 3, storyline that has been developed through two previous games as well as this one. A fantastic storyline, at that.

At the end of the day, Thief: Deadly Shadows is a good game, possibly more if you let it be. While Thief 2 will remain this reviewer’s favorite of the series, Thief 3 has shown itself to be worthy, and because of that, I can’t recommend this game enough.

Windows · by Bet (473) · 2005

Equilibrium.

The Good
I remember my cousin handing me his copy of Thief back in 1999 and he said “You've never played anything like this before”. From promos it looked like it belonged in the same genre as say Quake or Doom. After installing and playing I didn't find myself running around blasting monsters but avoiding that and keeping myself confined to the shadows. The problem was playing such a game at a young age brought a lot of tension and alas I found myself too scared to continue this game. So it's safe to say that I've never actually experienced a Thief game except for the start of the first one. I'm aware of this game's influence and pioneering of the stealth genre and I've even played Looking Glass Studio's magnum opus “System Shock 2”. That's why in 2009 I've decided to swallow in some courage and face my fear, play a Thief game.

I decided to start from the latest and possible final release and that being Deadly Shadows. It's a shame that Looking Glass closed it's doors before production of this game due to bankruptcy. Ion Storm picked up some of the development team and decided to make the third installment together. Being a fan of Deus Ex, a game directly influenced by Looking Glass Studio's System Shock 2, the idea of these 2 working together would seem like a good idea. Besides Warren Spector worked in both these companies and on both the above mentioned titles. So failure would most likely be equal to John Romero making you his bitch.

Thief 3 Deadly Shadows is my first real experience of this series. The game is powered by the Unreal Engine 2 this time instead of the usual Dark Engine and with havok physics added under the hood. Surprisingly I liked this game's visuals more than any other Unreal 2 powered game. It utilizes Dynamic Shadows and this has been integrated into the gameplay as I found that I could hide behind an opened door's shadow or push the a box from it's stack and be discovered as the box shadow only covers half my body. The physics are pretty good for it's time, ragdoll physics are obviously present and essential for this game.

The game follows it's traditional style of gameplay but this time they've added in the city which you're free to roam as long as you confine yourself in the shadows as a city guard or enemy is just about to brush his shoulders against you. Not to mention an optional third person perspective to complement the game's trademark first person view. You have an indicator notifying you of how hidden you are, just like the original. The levels follows a procedure of “Days/Mission/Rinse Repeat”. You'll start off at day 1 then you will head towards your mission. After the mission is complete starts day 2 and so on. These days basically take place in the city at night and have no time limit whatsoever allowing you to roam it freely to purchase equipment, loot people and places, sell loot and complete side-missions.

Storyline may also develop during these city levels. Speaking of equipments you have an impressive arsenal of them. Water arrows, oil flasks, moss arrows, flash bombs, climbing gloves to scale walls, the essential blackjack and many more. Some of them have more than one purpose for e.g. The water arrows can take out small fires and put out torches at the same time remove any blood spills and even expand the moss patches created by the moss arrows. It's obvious that the thief series has some awesome thought process going on in the designing stage.

And to further backup the above statement the A.I seems to have a lot of realism put into it. They notice torches put out, noise created by footsteps or bumping into objects, missing comrades and missing loot. The sound is simply perfect and of the highest quality. It's the major driving force behind the atmosphere of the game which is simply brilliant. The world seems to be alive, with people stopping for conversations, greeting each other and eavesdropping on conversations can even lead to a side mission or clue. There are notes laid out here and there not to mention books and journals. These can help you discover hidden loot around the city or discover side missions. Side missions can reward you with maps to a future mission's location or even the benefit of an ally.

Yes there are two factions in the city, the Hammerites and the Pagans. Somewhere in the middle of the game both sides give you a side mission & performing either one will anger one faction as well as please the other. Being an ally to these factions will benefit you in certain parts of the game adding a non linear element to the game.

The main missions which are around 9 are pretty diverse in location and length. Takes place in locations like a church, zombie infested ship, insane asylum/orphanage hybrid, mansion etc. All of them follow a rather standard blueprint. Break into location, steal a certain percentage of loot depending on difficulty level selected, find main object and leave. But this is not always the case, some missions like the insanely awesome mission “Robbing the Cradle” have some mind blowing concepts behind them.

“Robbing the Cradle” is the main reason you should play this game especially if you're not a fan of the Thief games. I may have been afraid of the first Thief game because of the tension it creates but this is just way beyond that. At the age of 21 in broad daylight in an apartment filtered with traffic noise, I almost wanted to wet my pants in the most bone chilling atmospheric level I've ever witnessed. I'd be bold enough to say that this even kicks Silent Hill's arse. So what's so great about this level? Well everything, at this point Garret the protagonist is clueless and has no lead on the lady who tried to attack him in the Hall of Statues so he seeks out an Inspector who's tracking down the hag. He is advised to visit the Shalebridge Cradle, an Orphanage which then turned into an Insane Asylum then for a short while ran as both!!!! Before being abandoned due to a fire breaking out. I won't ruin the rest but in the words of the protagonist Garrett “If there's a way to cram more misery into one building's history, I can't think of it.”

The storyline is often conveyed with cut-scenes, pre and post mission narrations by Garrett and two types of FMV. One using the in game engine and one having a kickass art direction to it. The Storyline itself is interesting although at first it may seem a bit confusing but that's probably the fact that I've not played the first 2 games. The protagonist Garrett is just awesome, they've managed to portray him well without overdoing things and just like most of the characters in the game he is voiced perfectly. There are other characters who are presented in a rather subtle manner but still manage to be memorable.

The game is rather lengthy, gameplay time can be from 25-30 hours or even more and the slow pace of a stealth game is not the major factor here. 9 city levels and 8 missions won't take a weekend and maybe not even a week.

The Bad
When I have to look at the negative aspects of the game, it lies in the more experimental parts. The movements try to recreate a very realistic feel. In first person perspective you'll notice some very natural head bobbing not to forget the fact that you can see your entire body from first person and this game does it the best, even better than F.E.A.R's attempt. If you look right you'll see your weapon, basically your head is the only thing moving when you turn your mouse. Very realistic but very annoying, takes a lot of time to get used to and very distracting. And for those you get nauseous at the sight of head-bobbing then it's your unlucky day as the game doesn't have an option out of the box to turn it off. The third person works better but really makes the game a whole lot easier allowing you to look around corners by just swinging the camera.

To make things worst the game has very clunky movement and clumsy collision detection. I often found myself stuck in the games environment between boxes and even a weird bug where i jumped against a wall and the animation got stuck but i could still move.

I mentioned the realistic A.I before and still think it's impressive but when you got such a good thing going on why leave a loophole in it? I often found that I could bonk a guard with a blackjack “BONK” he lets out a “UHHHH” and then his sword falls “CLANG TANG THISH” and the guard which is just few feet away will act like nothing just happened. Meanwhile I brush against a box which goes “TICK” and the guard which is around 8 feet away will go “I think I heard something”.

The game would be a lot better if the city didn't need me to maintain stealth and instead leave that factor to the actual missions. To make things worst the city resets itself after a mission so you may have to bonk that same guards head around 20 times. At the start it was all good sneaking by the city guard to head to the next area but after a few missions I found it frustrating but still enjoyed it in the actual missions.

Each section of the city is split into various areas like South quarter, Docks etc. All of these are joint by loading zones and the load times are pretty long. So the city missions which require you to travel a lot can get a bit annoying.

The hud and G.U.I is just bad and unattractive. You can call this a console port from the main menu itself. The text in the pre-mission dialog screen is unnecessarily large. Not to forget that you'll be scrolling a lot to see your goals and notes as that screen has no real sorting options whatsoever. The completed tasks will stay at the top while your current tasks will be at the bottom. I found myself scrolling just to read 5-8 lines of text thanks to the super huge font. If someone was so visually impaired why would they play a game that's practically taking place in the darkness?

Lastly the character models aren't too impressive except for maybe Garrett and the puppets in Shalebridge. Most of them follow a rather similar skeletal structure. It's hard to tell the difference between a Hammerite and a City Guard from a distance or a Pagan from a Thug.

The Bottom Line
I cannot say whether Deadly Shadows is a disappointment as compared to the previous two as this is my first experience of a thief game but I can say it's definably true to the stealth genre the series help pioneer and it's probably my favorite stealth game so far and this is coming from someone who's played Splinter Cell and Metal Gear. Those games went strong in certain area, Splinter Cell had good gameplay but a uninteresting story while Metal Gear had a good story but really limited gameplay as 90% of that game is dialogs and cut scenes. Despite the mentioned flaws Thief 3: Deadly Shadows is balanced well in gameplay as well as story which has an interesting plot and a rather epic ending. And with missions such as “Robbing the Cradle” you can recommend it to your horror loving friends looking for a scare trip and I'm sure they'll thank you for it.

Windows · by dreamstealer (126) · 2009

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Trivia

Difficulty bug

Both the Xbox and PC versions shipped with a bug that affected the AI. The difficulty setting of the AI would default to Normal from all other levels (Easy, Hard, Expert) upon reloading a save game or re-entering a load zone. The game would still indicate that the setting was unchanged, so the only noticeable effect was that the awareness of the guards was easier and they dealt less damage. Ion Storm released a small patch (415 kb) for the PC version that fixes this problem.

Engine

Ion Storm developed Thief: Deadly Shadows with a heavily modified Unreal engine. Its the same engine that was used for Deus Ex: Invisible War.

Graphics

Originally the game did not work properly on ATI Radeon cards. Textures popped in and out, causing walls and floors to turn black and making it appear like there were shadows where there aren't supposed to be any shadows. This was fixed with the Catalyst 4.8 drivers.

Mods

Even though Ion Storm was shut down by its publisher-owner Eidos in early 2005, mod software tools for their final game Thief: Deadly Shadows have been released shortly after.

The mod tools could be found at a number of web file download sites like FileShack and 3DGamers. The 323 MB download will allow players to modify or build new maps for the game along with scripts, conversations and more. It also includes a number of tutorial maps.

[Source: Computer Games Magazine (Feb. 2005)]

References

The various painted portraits gracing walls throughout the game actually depict members of the development team. They were drawn by comic-book artist Frank Teran, who supplied much of the concept art for the game.

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2004 – Best Sound of the Year (PC)

Information also contributed by Alan Chan, EndlessDespair, Jack Lightbeard and Jeanne

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Game added by PhoenixFire.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Sciere, Scott Monster, Xoleras, UV, Havoc Crow, Klaster_1, Patrick Bregger, ZeTomes.

Game added May 26, 2004. Last modified March 17, 2024.