Thief: Gold

The Good
"Thief" is an extremely well put-together game, its production values range from high to impeccable across the board. The graphics are fine and fluid, the animation outstanding, music is scarce but extremely effective and has an interesting style (it's sort of an ambient-industrial blend) and sound design is simply perfect. Adding to that, "Thief" boasted quite an A.I. for its time, which can be considered to be quite effective, even today. The interface is complex and yet easy to control (with a small amount of learning applied), but most important, its initial premise of playing a thief, who is basically a weakling and won't be able to live through a second fight, is both original and fun. One has to sneak past guards, stay constantly in the shadows, pickpocket bloated, rich madmen and silently kill enemies (very frightening ones, too). Unless, of course, one chooses a higher difficulty setting which will most certainly go with the condition to not kill anybody. In my opinion, this a wonderful design element of the game, actually aimed at influencing the player to kill as few enemies as possible on any difficulty setting, for the whole tone even of the existence of such a feature suggests that killing will only be resorted to by "rookies", and that it's unnecessary for the "real" thief. Some game developers should have a look at such an idea and re-evaluate their own "the bloodier, the better"-routines, for here it is: a game where one may kill all sorts of people, yet is encouraged not to do so, not merely out of "heard-em-already" moral reasons, but because it is simply more of a challenge! And this is just one of "Thief"s many intelligent ideas and devices, and there are a lot more points which are in desperate need of flattering.

"Thief" is one of the few games I know that ties its different elements so closely together that the final game approaches complete homogeneity. It ceases to be merely a parallel display of graphics, music, content and control, on the contrary, all these elements are fused so well that one is bound to forget that this game was not created by a single artist. This becomes clear when one has a look at one of its extremely well designed levels, namely #5, "The Sword". It starts out as a regular thieving mission to some guy's mansion, however, the introductory cutscene mentions something about said guy being extremely extravagant or even...crazy. The level begins normal enough, one breaks into the house, raids a few rooms, then, suddenly, one is standing on a floor's ceiling, the walls have slowly become more and more tilted, colour palette has changed from subdued brownish to twisted LSD, and with these changes there are eerie sound effects coming up, a sinister, silent laugh, getting louder and louder as one approaches the central aim of the level, where all sorts of spooky, natural sounds, evoking the thought of a dark and threatening forest, will hit the player while the level's ending cutscene doesn't deliver any relief to this rising tension but makes it leap to yet another level. Sounds, graphics and even cut-scenes completely blend in with level design, just because "Thief" does not continuously try to impress the player with its technical prowess, but aims at mastering the art of dosage, of pacing, of build-up. If you want to have an effect of real, intense loudness, go ahead and start out silent, that's the philosophy behind "Thief". Music is only used sparingly at chosen moments, sound design will always come up with new, uncomfortable surprises, and the graphics really come to life due to the architecture employed during the different levels. Here, too, "Thief" succeeds in delivering the maximum effect because of its masterful change between immense structures vs. creepy tunnels, light-flooded mansions vs. dark prison cells and civilized casinos vs. zombie-infested graveyards.

This whole philosophy of merging elements and applying them at just the right time is also true for the whole world displayed in this game, and what a world it is. This has nothing to do with your average,"Lord-of-the-Ringy" fantasy stuff - and boy is it nice to have some change in that department going on once in a while. "Thief" employs a steampunk, "futuristic Victorian" look, combines it with medieval elements, adds a whole load of horror stuff and delves it in a simplified kind of a Miltonic, "split" world-view where you'd have:

reality vs. dreams, light vs. darkness, security vs. fear, order vs. chaos, stagnation vs. creativity, Satan/Pagans vs. God/Hammerites

As I said, it's all quite simplistic, but it's extremely focused and to the point, offering a highly original, yet familiar world where one feels immediately "at home" in spite of all the strange things going on. Moreover, the moral ambiguity with which both main fractions of the game (Pagans and Hammerites) are portrayed actually makes the main character's own shadowy, "neutral" (albeit self-serving) way not only the most appealing, but probably the better one, too, and all this is addressed not only in the game's background (by exploring, reading stuff, etc.), it's all part of the main story and one's own character's development as well. However, the best thing is the way the game's title ("The Dark Project") is implemented into the story, and the resulting paradox.

!!!WARNING!!! UPCOMING SPOILER:

How great is it to create a game where the player is absolutely dependant on darkness and not-being-seen, yet has to look for something called "The Eye" and prevent the world from a total black-out?

The Bad
This is one of the very few games where I could not find a real flaw. Moreover, I find many of the flaws found by other players quite wonderful. I thought the zombies were plain horrifically well done, and I did not find that "Thief" was lacking a freely explorable city, on the contrary, I found that the division into different levels actually helped the game's sense of drama.

One could criticize the ever-oppressing nature of "Thief" though, and the sheer intensity of all the sneaking going on. It can be quite an exhausting game because it never offers any "relief" - however, I like that, too.

The Bottom Line
The perfect blend between all its different elements, their ingenious, individual executions and an overall great sense of pacing and dosage make "Thief" stand out as a masterfully created, frightful experience destined to distract the player from reality for quite some time (it's a rather long game, after all). And when one re-enters that reality, one may well think about the amount of hypocrisy and of stubborn, religious fundamentalism to be found there, too, or about our desperate need to shut out as many reminders of our own mortality as possible - for that is, after all, one of the reasons we put lights everywhere, isn't it?

A final note on this version of the game: The "Gold" edition of "Thief" features three more, superbly designed levels which are well integrated into the games plot, making the its division into introduction-main part-endgame more balanced. In my opinion it's the best version of "Thief".