Thief: The Dark Project

aka: Dark Camelot, Dark Project: Der Meisterdieb, Dark Project: L'Ombra del Ladro, Dark Project: La guilde des voleurs, TDP, The Dark Project, Thief: o Projeto Negro
Moby ID: 357
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Description official descriptions

Garrett, discovered on the streets as a beggar, is taken in and trained by the secretive organization known as the Keepers. However, Garrett's plans for his training is different than that of his masters and so Garrett soon parts company. Surfacing as a master thief, Garrett must enter forbidden places and appropriate the treasures of the rich and the powerful. Of course this line of work is offensive to many people including the rich nobles, the town guard and the religious order of the Hammerites. If Garrett can keep his head while he relieves these forces of their valuable trinkets, he should be able to do quite well....

Thief: The Dark Project is a first person game focused on stealth. It is set in a metropolis called "the City", a medieval fantasy world with some elements from the industrial revolution era of technology. Garrett's main skills are in using the shadows to avoid being seen (the level of visibility indicated by a "light gem") and to avoid being heard (different surfaces make different noises). Guards can be alerted by either, and remaining hidden is ever important. Entering combat against armed opponents is not recommended, though some enemies (notably the various undead) can be taken on directly or avoided. It is also possible to silently sneak on guards, incapacitate them with the blackjack, steal their keys, and move their bodies.

At Garrett's disposal is a wide range of equipment, including lockpicks, a blackjack, a sword, flash bombs, holy water, explosive mines, and a bow which fires normal arrows in addition to water, fire, moss, rope, and noisemaker arrows. Each type of arrows has a unique purpose: water extinguishes torches, moss covers the ground to soften the sounds of footsteps, ropes can be used to climb in certain spots or cross chasms, etc.

The levels in the game are fairly open, and most of the time there are several paths and ways to accomplish the objective. Certain objects can be interacted with, moved from place to place, or destroyed. The game has three difficulty levels distinguished by the amount of goals needed to fulfill. Lower difficulty levels may allow the player to skip some of the harder areas due to the lack of a mission objective leading there. On higher difficulties, additional requirements (such as completely non-lethal way of finishing a stage) may be added. Loot gained from Garrett's thieving can be used to purchase additional equipment for the mission ahead.

Spellings

  • 神偷 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

144 People (125 developers, 19 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 91% (based on 35 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 176 ratings with 15 reviews)

Excellent

The Good
A quiet revolution on launch, 'Thief' plays like a cross between 'Rainbow Six' and the old playground favourite 'What's the time Mr Wolf'. As a sneaky thief, you have to steal your way through a series of absolutely enormous, atmospheric 'steam-punk' levels, avoiding guards, laying traps, and hiding in the shadows. Like almost everything by Looking Glass, 'Thief' was intelligent, well-presented, extraordinarily deep, and commercially only so-so.

The stand-out elements are the excellent, shadowy level designs, and the spooky, tense atmosphere. Your character is no good at fighting, and you have to sneak around behind people who might turn around at any minute, often in dark rooms, sometimes in haunted caverns. Imagine a really scary ghost story, crossed with the tension of bomb disposal, and you're there. The level design is highly original - the level set in a giant sarcophagous, in which you turn corners to find yourself face-to-face with large, gas-breathing dinosaurs, is an all-time classic.

It's best to hunt out the 'Gold' version (now on budget) - that added three new levels, a level editor, and some bug fixes.

The Bad
Not much is wrong with 'Thief' - even the between-level FMV sequences are excellently done. Compared to something like 'Half-Life', the graphics are relatively primative, but the engine is doing a lot more. Often the hugeness of the levels makes working your way through the game seem impossible at time, and although your character is a thief it would be nice if he was at least competent with the sword. Apart from that, buy it.

The Bottom Line
An astonishingly good 'sneak-em-up' that takes a while to grab you but, once it does, your previous life is history.

Windows · by Ashley Pomeroy (225) · 2000

One purse too many.

The Good
There can't be any better way to spend my weekend again... and again... and again... I've been playing this game from when it was released, and I still haven't got bored to sneaking around in the dark streets, gloomy temples and grand mansions. Actually, I've found more places to break in and steal the treasury from. The level design is perversely exquisite, on the streets and in the houses. Not so much detail, but the dark textures and the glorious architecture kept me going deeper.

When it comes to enemies who are clearly on your way, I prefer to sneak around them unnoticed, shoot a rope arrow somewhere high and past the guards by going in the ceilings, and as a last resort, knocking them out. Never using my sword or arrows. It gives you a great feeling to achieve something like completing the game on expert-level with knocking only the the guards that you really have to or entering and leaving a mansion without being noticed at all. The zombies weren't the best enemy there could be. Though the rest of the undead were great, especially in making the atmosphere. They all did their jobs good.

The Bad
There wasn't anything particular I didn't like. But the enemy AI could've been scripted better, now the guards automatically stop searching you if you've hided in the shadows enough, which makes the game easy. Then there was the burrick caves in few levels, they didn't give any competition and were kind of boring so I would've leaved them out of the game.

The Bottom Line
Release your inner thief. Sneak on dark alleys, snatch a key from a drunk guard to get inside a mansion full of riches. All and all, a game you don't want to miss if you happen to be even slightly interested in sneaking.

Windows · by Dae (7182) · 2023

An utterly unique game in a world a copycats

The Good
Although a number of stealth games came out around the same time, Metal Gear most notably, this was the one that really focused on Not Being Seen. Yes you could take out your enemies with arrows or your sword but doing so was no guarantee, and a direct violation of the level goals if you were playing on hard mode. The most points, and satisfaction, was had through not even being seen on your way through a mission, which was very, very hard.

The game engine was built from the ground up to make sound propagation and shadows an integral part of the game world and it shows. In no other game do I remember standing in one location for five minutes hidden in shadows, palms sweaty, listening to the local sounds, waiting for my moment to reach out and snatch a key from an oblivious guard as he walked by humming while I prayed he didn't notice me. It's an impressive game that can make standing absolutely still for minutes tense and enjoyable.

The game is honestly scary. Not since System Shock had a game actually installed a sense of fear in me, but this one did, and I don't scare easily. It's ability to create an atmosphere, and back that atmosphere up with game-play, is amazing.

Add to that a unique story well told with good voice acting and strong art direction and you've got a sleeper hit. Many of it's levels were huge, sprawling affairs with multiple (and sometimes changing) goals and hidden areas galore with multiple ways of doing any given thing. It was a game you could get lost in and not mind it. A game you could finish and then play again and have a different experience and then play again because you KNOW you missed something. And because they released an excellent level editor there are fans making some fantastic new levels (and even new story lines) to this day (for Thief II mostly).

It and it's sequels are unique games, like no others before or after them, and it's not very often you can say that these days.

The Bad
Even at the time it was released the graphics were dated. Unreal and Quake were both out by then and the dark blocky graphics, low polygon models and limited special effects found in Thief just didn't measure up.

It had REALLY long load times, which was bad for a game in which you tended to die a lot.

The designers weren't sure of how their new 'sneaker' game-play would go over so they tried to hedge their bets by including a number of fight based levels and monsters which negated much of your sneaking skills. These are often sited as being the worst levels in the game.

It was hard, even at it's easiest level the learning curve for this new stealth game-play was quite steep in Thief and many people gave up playing after dieing numerous times. There is a reason the game came with 'normal', 'hard' and 'harder' difficultly level settings. And dedicating yourself to finishing all levels at the hardest setting while completing each objective and stealing every available piece of loot without ever being SEEN was a life time achievement. It's possible, and some have claimed to have done it, and all I can say is WOW.

The Bottom Line
Its a different game, and not for everyone. It's game-play is tricky and hard, even for Splinter Cell masters, and the story and art direction are unique with it's steam punk atmosphere, rock soundtrack and dark single City at night setting. But if you play it and like it, you'll never forget it.

Splinter Cell is now the crown jewel of stealth games, and justifiably so, but nothing feels like Thief. It's a dark gem, gleaming just outside the light ring of a guttering street lamp.

Windows · by Jeff Thomas (18) · 2005

[ View all 15 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Duality hribek (28) Mar 24, 2009
What can/ could You take away (add?) hribek (28) Mar 22, 2009
Garrett on steroids hribek (28) Mar 22, 2009
Garret looks like Nicholas Cage? hribek (28) Mar 13, 2009

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Thief: The Dark Project appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Basketball

Like other Looking Glass games like System Shock and System Shock 2, this game also contains a hidden basketball court. (See Tips & Tricks for details on accessing it.)

Development

Originally, Thief was to be a game called Dark Camelot where Merlin was a time-traveler but it eventually became Thief... before that it was a game involving Communist zombies!

Editor

Thief fans requested the level editor, so Looking Glass Studios released DromEd (subsequently included on the Thief (Gold) and Thief II disks), there are now hundreds of fan missions available for download.

Hammerites

"The Hammer of Light" in the game are a group of religious warrior/knights, similar to the Knights Templar during the height of their power in Europe

Inspiration

Members of the design team have said that books by Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose among others) were a big inspiration for the atmosphere and setting of the game.

Taffer

According to an interview made by the now defunct PC accelerator to project designer Steve Pearsall the word "Taffer", which many fans went to great lengths to define as some sort of long-lost "olden" word, was actually created by level designer Laura Baldwin. It was originally meant to be some sort of slang for common criminal but it evolved from that point on.

Thievery

There is a group of people working on a free Thief inspired conversion for Unreal Tournament. It can be accessed it from http://www.thieveryut.com.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • April 1999 (Issue #177) – Runner-up as Best Action Game of the Year
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #40 Top Game of All Time
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #45 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
    • Issue 03/2000 - Most Innovative Game in 1999
    • Issue 12/2008 - One of the "10 Coolest Levels" (For "The Sword". It uses the player's expectations against him - instead of the usual quick burglary, it sends him on a horror trip which manages to wear out Garret's earned self-confidence.)
  • PC Gamer
    • April 2000 - #27 in the "All-Time Top 50 Games Poll" (tied with Tribes)
  • PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/2000 - Best 3D Stealth Game in 1999
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/1999 – Best Action-Adventure in 1998

Information also contributed by Jack Lightbeard, Neon Hammerite, PCGamer77, Scott Monster; WildKards and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by robotriot.

Additional contributors: Trixter, blade51, Zovni, Indra was here, Rantanplan, Shoddyan, sfabien, Jack Lightbeard, Havoc Crow, Ms. Tea, Kidofthecentury, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added November 1, 1999. Last modified March 27, 2024.