Thief: Gold

aka: Dark Project Gold: L'Ombra del Ladro, Dark Project: Der Meisterdieb - Directors Cut
Moby ID: 1404
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Description official descriptions

Thief Gold is a reissue of the game, Thief: The Dark Project, updated to version 1.37. Thief Gold includes three entirely new campaign missions which deepen the plot and provide new challenges, as well as five new types of enemies to overcome. Some of the original Thief levels have had minor modifications, including bug fixes, small design changes, and the new enemies.

Thief Gold also includes a bonus "Behind the scenes at Looking Glass Studios" footage and DromED, a level editor for Thief.

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Credits (Windows version)

82 People (77 developers, 5 thanks) · View all

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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 92% (based on 10 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.3 out of 5 (based on 64 ratings with 6 reviews)

Hmmmm, must have been the rats

The Good
I played Thief Gold after playing its sequel. The sequel ironed out most of the bugs and honed in on the best aspects of gameplay, so visiting its predecessor was a little disappointing. However, I fully recommend this game.

The gist of Thief is that you are Garrett, trained thief and anti-hero who finds himself in the unenviable position of having to save the world. In Thief, you must stay in shadows, pay attention to your noise level, knock out guards, douse torches, etc. In this game, if you aren't a proficient thief, you'll die. That simple rule made the game incredibly immersive and I really felt that it was similar to an RPG. You take on the role of Garrett.

The ambient sound and vocal acting was pretty good. Sometimes character voices seem a little campy. The locations are highly detailed although I preferred the urban locations to the outdoor/other world ones. The story is engaging and the bonus levels included in the Gold edition help to flesh out the plot.

Also, this is one of the few games I've played where the difficulty settings seemed to matter. Each level of difficulty offers different objectives and even forces you to play the game in a different way. At the hardest levels, you are often not allowed to make any kills.

The Bad
I've heard that Looking Glass wasn't sure if players would like a fps that relied on stealth rather than ammunition. As such, some levels require combat and there is a great number of undead. Of course, it was the stealth aspect that became popular and coined the phrase "first person sneaker."

Secondly, there seems to be no advantage to conserving ammunition, items, or gold. You basically start from scratch each level. I would have preferred to have had a wider arsenal at the end levels.

The only other quibble I have is with item interaction. To open doors, pick pockets, etc you must maneuver in such a way that they are highlighted. This is useful but I was often able to open doors from a distance, which seemed unbelievable.

The Bottom Line
This is one of the best examples of what a computer game can be. I loved the vision of a medieval city, struggling between paganism and fanaticism. While this game has some peaks and valleys in level design, there are moments that are as riveting as any movie.

For fun, look straight up when you are outside and shoot an arrow-- how's that for physics?

Windows · by Terrence Bosky (5397) · 2001

A revolution-in-a-box yet to be matched.

The Good
My favorite bit of Wolfenstein 3D wasn't gunning down hordes of people, nor running around like a lab rat on speed.

It was the suspense.

In finding my way around, the only warning signs I had were doors opening and closing - once I heard someone shouting, I knew I was busted. Since my sound card was mono and all the doors sounded alike, there wasn't much more I could do than count how many doors I had opened and count down when they closed.

Of course, I'd eventually lose count, or a door would catch me off guard, and I'd become more and more frantic, up to the point where I'd finally lose it and run around firing wildly at the furniture. Not to mention those zombie soldiers that didn't shout at all. Turned me into a nervous wreck.

Doom had it too, to some degree, although the feeling was more fighting an uphill battle than sneaking around. By the time Quake hit, the magic was gone for me, and I shied away from first-person shooters for some time.

...game? I'm supposed to be reviewing a game? Oh, yeah. That.

Thief put the suspense back where it belongs, quietly revolutionizing first-person 3D games. Naturally, everyone was too busy having LAN parties at the time to notice.

There were of course the external trappings, the ingenious industrial-mediaeval age with a modest sprinkling of magic, which got you gas/electricity-arc streetlights, magic crystal arrows which turn into water on impact, heavy-duty mining machinery operated by people in chain mail armor right alongside well houses, drawbridges and archers... Not to mention Garrett, the coolest videogame hero of the late nineties simply because he was the only one of them who dared to be established exclusively by his voice and a few elusive hand-drawn images when he wasn't under the player's control.

There was the sound, the lovely, luscious sound of footsteps on all sorts of materials as you strained your ears to the limit for clues on the opposition; this was the first game to do surround sound and environmental reverbs right. In fact, still one of the few games to really do anything at all with it. (The current trend towards releasing on six consoles and then maybe the PC isn't exactly helping things either, as most of the effort goes into making the soundtrack loud enough to be distinguishable coming out of the crummy stereo speakers on the TV set of Joe Average. Muttergrumble.)

And the difficulty levels, the absolute stunning genius of demanding that you kill fewer things as the difficulty goes up, and then actually making it not suck! The likes of this we may never see again.

The first level is an excellent introduction; there are way more guards than you can overcome, and you start off on the street, which will teach you not to draw your weapons until you need them. Going unnoticed is not simply beneficial, it's an absolute necessity. You quickly learn where it's at: Sneaking in the back, knocking people over the head, peering around corners, hiding unconscious guards...

(Interestingly, Thief delivers what was promised in an electronic Apogee advertisement for Wolf3D, the ability to drag bodies out of the way. Makes you wonder if it was ever in the design, or if it was just a misunderstanding.)

The way you have to concentrate on nuances of light and sound means that this game winds up seriously warping your reality - you may find yourself moving into shadows instinctively, or listening to the sound of your own footsteps like you never have before.

The third level is a strange detour, though; after training five years of Doom conditioning out of players they suddenly throw them into an entire level of killing things and running around subterranean mazes. It's like they were feeling insecure.

The Bad
For a game where shadows are extremely important, it's very bright, and doesn't play half as much with silhouettes and shading as I'd like. The reason for this is probably the Quake 1-style blocky edges on diagonal shadows, which would have ruined a lot of them. Not that there aren't areas that shine in this respect, but there could have been so many more.

To enforce stealth, you're always out of luck when spotted; this makes for rather a lot of saving and loading, and can possibly land you in unwinnable states, forcing you to go waay back in the level. Which can be painful, considering the slow pace of the game. Me, I didn't mind so much, but I grew up back in The Day(tm), when we didn't have them fancy things like F12 keys. Of course, I played with an onion taped to my monitor, as was the style at the time...

Oh yeah, and the way you purchase equipment before missions is a bit flawed; it would have been better to just dictate you a base pack of gear as a sort of "par for the course" and letting you top it off, or at least make a few recommendations. The way you sometimes have to half-complete a mission, then restart and buy gear from what you've learned is the only real flaw in this gem.

The Bottom Line
Going on six years and still worth playing. Still worth getting quadrophonic speakers for, in fact.

Windows · by Ola Sverre Bauge (237) · 2004

Gems such as this are stupidly rare

The Good
I first recall playing ā€˜Thief: The Dark Projectā€™ over the winter holidays my senior year in high school. I was so enthralled with this revolutionary game and played it so obsessively that I think Santa Claus was peeking over my shoulder at 3:00 am Christmas Eve watching me play. You have to realize that in 1998, games like ā€˜Quakeā€™ and ā€˜Half-Lifeā€™ were the standard of the day. While they were good games, they were dreadfully linear and focused on a run-and-gun approach which could wear oneā€™s nerves after awhile. Not so with T: TDP. Never before had I seen such well-written mythology and atmosphere in an FPS, or any other game for that matter. The ā€œsteampunkā€ environment was also highly intriguing; a mixture of 16th century Europe, Industrial Revolution-era England, and the American art-deco/film noir eraā€¦very strange. Itā€™s a game I feel will be more appreciated in the future than it is now for its radical aura.

Needless to say I was ecstatic when I learned that in late ā€™99 the game would be reissued with the three missing levels, which couldnā€™t be finished in time for release. Thief Gold for the most part it is in fact the same, but much longer than the original version, and in my eyes, more complete and logical in regards to plot. Some of the niggling bugs were fixed, and the levels from the original were renovated and retooled to fit the story as it was originally envisioned. A perfect game in almost every way.

The Bad
In terms of voice acting, plot, and level design, I have no complaints whatsoever; perfect in every respect. However, the Dark Engine, which drives the game, is highly prone to bugs that can sometimes be debilitating to the game play. There were more times than I wish to remember where I got hung up on a staircase and was forced to do a quick load. There were also times where the NPCs would get stuck in similar predicaments (which could oftentimes work to your advantage). Also, the graphics were fairly dated even by ā€™98-ā€™99 standards (256 texturesā€¦yes you heard me correctly), and this unfortunately turned many people away.

The Bottom Line
I say with absolute authority that this is one of the best game in history, PC or console, and my #1 game of all time (right alongside its sequel). And since itā€™s now priced at only $9.99, you have no excuse not to pick it upā€¦taffer.

Windows · by HandofShadow (49) · 2007

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

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Game added by Kate Jones.

Additional contributors: Xoleras, Danfer.

Game added May 4, 2000. Last modified March 17, 2024.