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Originally Posted by Singer
Hey, what happend to "meditative"?  I found that much more descriptive.
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I reread my post, and the idea of 'meditating' on a guard sounded too weird to me
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I finished Thief and it deserves all the praises it gets for quality and genre innovation, but I didn't like it nearly as much as as many do. It WAS too unforgiving in places, and I found the strategizing to be fairly limited and repetitive. I'd guess that's why they added the undead stuff. Did they improve that with Thief II
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I have to confess, I haven't actually finished Thief, although I left off deep enough into it to intuit (heh!) the essence and nuances of the gameplay. I did not like the zombie levels (Thief was made at the time that zombies were just too fucking fashionable in games) but I did love the possibilities it had for strategizing. For example, knowing that burricks hate zombies, I often lured the undead to an innocent burrick that was otherwise in my way. As they got 'acquainted' with each other I snuck past. Saves holy water and water arrows, that's for sure!
The reason I couldn't finish the game was that I had acquired a new CPU and the old Celeron was in bad shape, couldn't transfer the save game files over. I installed the game in my new rig but the sound was jumpy and I never figured out why. You know how absolutely vital sound is when playing Thief. Once I find a solution I will definitely jump back into it after such a long time. It's that good for me.
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I actually preferred Splinter Cell as a better balance of stealth, action, and strategic CHOICE, so I'm looking forward to Pandora Tomorrow more than Thief 3. That said, I'm eager to see what the Thief team has up its sleeve. Count me among those who aren't put off by the 3rd person addition. 
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That's interesting, because I found Thief to offer far more choices in how to accomplish any given mission. I also feel that the sound design in Thief trumps Splinter Cell's ten times over. I mean, I could just simply play Thief blindfolded, that's how fluidly exquisite the sound is. I'm finding Splinter Cell to be too 'on-the-rails' and 'lead-you-by-the-hand' for my taste, but it's still a great game. However, the level design in Thief is simply ingenius! Remember the mission where you had to steal that magic sword? There were so many rooms in that mansion, and leading up to the atrium where the sword was kept. It was incredible for me and very time consuming, part of it spent having to decide which pathway to go, each one was guarded very well. And the level design and soundtrack for the level where you had to find the Horn of Quintus had me dreaming, almost floating.
I also have Thief II: The Metal Age but haven't played it yet. I promised myself I'd play them all in order, so I can't touch it yet until I finish Thief: The Dark Project. It's still my benchmark as far as pure stealth, I consider it far more refined and elegant than Splinter Cell and more sophisticated in its simplicity than Deus Ex or Hitman.
As far as point of view, I'm gonna stay hardcore and play Thief: Deadly Shadows in first person. Believe me, it's a shitload more suspenseful that way, and more immersive. From what I read, though, that this game's gonna do a few missions and/or sequences only in 3rd person so there's nothing I can do about that except switch back to 1st person immediately after.
