[ragnar]

How not to be seen, a review of Thief 3: Deadly Shadows by Ragnar Ouchterlony

Introduction
Thief and it's second successor Thief 3: Deadly Shadows are mostly about stealth, the ability to hide in shadows and avoid guards and monsters rather than engaging them in direct combat. Stealth isn't a new feature in games, but with Thief it began to become popular and these days every other game have at least some element of stealth. This can make for more interesting game play where you won't need to kill everything in sight, but with stealth you can, and should, avoid the enemies instead.

Thief 3 continues the story of Garrett, the master thief, where he saves the world through his thievery (don't try this yourselves). This time around, Garrett, after some initial casual thieving, is contacted by a Keeper to help sort out some problem with an ancient prophecy. The Keepers, as mentioned is one of three major factions which all have different goals. The Keepers are those who keep books that they study and write. The Hammerites are a religious sect that like to build things and especially like metal. Lastly, we have the Pagans, which are nature-adoring and want to destroy everything which is not natural. Because of their opposite goals Hammerites and Pagans tend to be enemies.

Game play

As I said above, Thief 3 revolves around stealth and thus keeping yourself in the shadows is very important. To your help you have an icon that tells you how much light there is on the spot you're currently on. The more light, the easier the guards will spot you. Another sense that the guards will use to locate you is sound, so the more noise you make, the easier they will find you. You can also use sound to distract the guards so that they will make off and leave that door you want to go in through. And you make more noises if you run than if you walk and more if you walk than if you crouch. And you can make a noise if you pick up an object and drop it on the floor, since there is no way you can put that object down quietly. Unfortunately there is no use smell in the game, which is odd since there are monsters like ratmen that you would think mainly used their nose to track you down. This would also have added more variety to the game play.

To his help in thieving, Garrett has a number of tools and abilities. The most important one is the bow, which can be loaded with a number of different types of arrows. The broadhead arrow is just to kill enemies, the water arrow to put out burning lights and so on. An arrow-type that is missing is the rope arrow, which would be a most useful tool for someone who wishes to hide. Another tool is the bludgeon, which is used to take out your opponents non-lethally. You also have flashbombs to blind your enemies and holy water to throw on undead and you can get special gloves to be able to climb the walls.

The lighting effects and sound effects are both impressive and this is good since they play such a vital role in the game. Other than that I'm not overly impressed by the graphics or the music. The graphics is rather uninspired and mundane and especially tress and other objects of nature have lots of sharp angles. Also, the moss arrow effect look rather ugly.

The AI is marketed as being brilliant and the best thing since the cheese slicer. However, the brilliance of the AI is limited to the calculation of sight lines, shadows and sounds. All non-player characters have only four modes: non-aware of enemy, aware of enemy, attack enemy and flee from enemy. Flee from enemy mostly equates running to get more guards to attack the enemy in question. Note that the enemy needn't always be you. It could also be others like Hammerites against Pagans etc. Also AI gets aggravated by bodies, making them go into aware-mode. However, waiting the out always get them back to non-aware mode. They never work in teams to better search the area and pin you down. They don't collaborate in any good way when they have found you. They almost seem completely unaware of each other. Almost all guards and monsters, including walking statues, talk very much, so you always know exactly where they are and what mode they are in. It would have been much more fun if the guards were more silent and be better at collaborating. How unnerving wouldn't it be if you try hard to get away from one searching guard and discovers that another one is coming up to you from behind, silently communicating (with signs and body language for example) with each other. But no, they almost at all times behave rather stupidly and without thought.

My thoughts

Thief 3 could very well have been one of the greatest games of this decade. The game play certainly is very good, but there are lots of small, but irritating flaws that makes the game fall down to merely a good game. The story, for example, is rather flat and doesn't support the game play to the extent that it could have.

Let me draw your attention to the game world. I am severely disappointed by it. It's inconsistent and doesn't let you feel that you are a part in it. Instead it feels more like a theatrical set-piece or something from The Truman Show where people walk round and round the city without purpose and goals, just waiting to be pick-pocketed or bludgeoned. The guards act more like dolls, walking up and down the streets mechanically. The city not only lacks the dynamics of a normal city, but it also lacks a past, the only historical references being to things in the previous games, and an environment around the city. There doesn't seem to be anything outside it. It is very much isolated both in time and space. The development of the city is also rather strange. They have electricity and seem to make it in abundance, but it's only used for a few lamps and some elevators and of course big, big machines. Not only that, but they also use lots of fire-torches and other types of lamps using fire. The result is a mishmash of influences from modern society together with medieval society and fantasy elements and you wonder where the direction of the creation of the world is. It's hard to create a well thought-out consistent world from scratch. It might seem tempting to make your own world and get rid of all the restrictions it would get you by using a correct historical setting. But it isn't that easy! It's in fact very hard to make your own world, populate it with rules, history, countries, cities and all the other things that make it have a context. Many things that you can take for granted with a historical setting, you have to make up in a consistent way with your own creation. Thief would have gained a lot from being in a historical setting instead of this a-little-bit-of-everything-without-thought-setting.

Another issue concerning the game world is that every place seem to only be designed to be robbed. The homes of the people you rob doesn't look like someone live there, but just a robbery set-up. Not only that, the guards in the places you rob are placed so there almost always are obvious way to get past them. Where would anyone with something to guard set the guards so that there always is such an obvious way for a thief to take? It would be better if the guards were better placed and that you have to be a little imaginative to get past the guards.

There are lots of details that's poorly done or simply missing. Each one is rather insignificant, but together they pull the game down considerably. It's a shame, considering that the game play is worth more than this. So if you only consider the game play and can stand that the story is boring, the ending even worse, the characters expressionless and the other flaws of the game it is well worth being played. But for all of us that want something more out of the game experience it is a sore disappointment unfortunately.