I try to write reviews of most of the games I’ve played and post them here on Giant Bomb. While it’s likely that few people will ever read them, I still enjoy the act of compiling my thoughts on a game and drawing conclusions about why I did or didn’t like it. If I can help even one person to make a good purchasing decision, it’s worth it in my book. Lately, I’ve gotten a bit bored with the way I write reviews. Most of them use a simple outline that makes them easy to write but (I assume) boring to read: story setup, discussion of the story, gameplay explanation, gameplay discussion, graphics/music (if applicable), conclusion. It’s an effective formula but one I’ve grown tired of using time and time again.

As such, I wanted to try something a bit different: a smaller blog post about a game that doesn’t stick to a rigid structure. This will not only allow me to talk a bit more freely about things I’ve played, but it will help alleviate my writing backlog of games I’ve already finished but have yet to write about. Hopefully, this means I can keep my thoughts short and to the point, although I make no guarantees. I may experiment with different styles, but the purpose will always be the same: note what I think worked and didn’t work for any given game. In the end, I’ll give my verdict on whether the game is worth playing or not. I’ll see how this experiment goes before I commit to any regularity with my posts, but I do have a few games ready to be talked about in mind. Let’s start with the 2014 reboot of the Thief series, titled only Thief.

I have no prior experience with the Thief series. Before playing this reboot, the only knowledge I had of the series came from Kieron Gillen’s famously-excellent piece on Thief: Deadly Shadows’ horror-themed Cradle level. This piece was enticing enough to get me to purchase the game on a random Steam sale many years ago, but I could never make it deep enough into the game to see that level. The Thief series is one that has always fallen squarely into the category of “fascinating yet too mechanically dated to keep my attention” games for me, making it hard to give it a fair shot amidst all the other games I want to play. While I knew the reboot was poorly received, I still wanted to give it a go, thinking that it might be an easy way to introduce myself to the series before going back to the older games. What I found was a game that does have some substantial problems but is not entirely without merit.

Thief’s first and biggest problem is its claustrophobic level design. Each story mission or side mission takes place it its own unique area. Unlike as in games like Dishonored and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, these instanced areas do not feel realistic in any way. Instead, they feel like video game levels, designed to funnel the player from one end to the other without any real semblance of place. Even when optional paths and ways to complete objectives do appear, the way they are so plainly laid out for the player ruins any sense of discovery or pride one might feel for taking them. One level in particular does manage to create a great sense of space and realism, but the rest of the game’s levels offer little to no incentive to explore these areas more fully.

The “open” hub city between missions is even more flawed in design. Instead of being a singular open world that you can explore from end-to-end, the city is instead divided into several smaller areas separated by lengthy loading screens. This stilted traversal is made more annoying by a lack of any fast-travel and the fact that certain important NPCs are often all the way on the other side of the city from your next objective, requiring a prolonged yet boring trek across town. The optional houses you can plunder around the city are also worth mentioning. These areas are laughably small in size yet require loading both into and out of through a lengthy window-opening animation. I quickly grew tired of the animation and opted to simply avoid going into any of these areas, even though the rewards were often useful. Because of this constrictive design, the world of Thief feels even more like a video game, sectioned off and entirely unconnected. I’m sure this design is due to memory issues of a game that had to be cross-generational and wasn’t intentional, but the end result is still too awkward to forgive.

I also think the story is really awful. The characters are instantly forgettable and poorly acted/written. The plot starts with an interesting twist before subsequently taking much too long to reveal information that is plainly obvious and entirely boring. Most baffling of all is the odd framing and pacing to all of the game’s cutscenes; the camera never seems to focus on the parts of a scene that matter and jumps from character to character with no sense of flow. All of these missteps come together to form a plot that manages to rob any dramatic moments of their tension and remain completely baffling throughout. Having played the game only a month ago now, I cannot come up with a single moment from the game’s plot, something I feel speaks to the complete void this game’s story leaves in its wake.

While I don’t think Thief manages to create an interesting world to explore, it did manage to incentivize my exploration in another way. As you might expect, there are countless things for you to pilfer in the game world. Each item adds to your wallet, giving you currency to spend on upgrades and skill points. In addition, the specific mission areas all have a set amount of things to steal, with a percentage tracked and a bonus given to those who manage to track everything down. There was something immensely satisfying about knowing I had picked an area clean of all its valuables, particularly if I did it while being unseen and unheard. I loved picking locks, opening safes, and finding hidden switches in bookcases, even if the actions of doing so were somewhat repetitious. It was an addiction, causing me to backtrack and dawdle around areas looking for that last pair of earrings to get my total to 100% for the level. I did eventually burn out and give up on doing every level in this way, especially since some of the later levels don’t easily facilitate backtracking, but my desire to plunder helped me get through a game I might not otherwise have finished.

My favorite part of the game is a level that comes about midway through the story. This level is an obvious loving homage to the Cradle level I mentioned above: a creepy trek through an abandoned orphanage. It starts slow as you climb up to the decrepit building, find a way inside, and start to push deeper into the various wards. There’s a fantastic amount of tension that builds slowly and surely as you explore the rooms and try to learn what you came for. Over the course of this build, the game stops playing on typical horror expectations and starts doing things that are truly creepy. Most impressive are the moments that actually defy expectations of what is possible in the game engine, many of which managed to get a jump out of me.

It’s a shockingly good level, keeping me on edge for nearly an hour of gameplay with its intense sound effects and general sense of unease and dread. The level falls apart at the end when it makes the things creeping at the edges of your vision manifest in a lame way, but the build-up is still phenomenally well done. Even though this sequence is so obviously imitative of its predecessor, down to the setting being exactly the same, I felt nothing but respect for it in the end. In a game as rough and unpolished as this one, the amount of care the developers put into this sequence makes it stand out brightly. It is the best part of the game without question and even manages to rival some pure horror games in the effect it had on me.

All in all, I came out of playing Thief just barely appreciating my time spent with it. Its flaws are severe, making for a tedious gameplay experience that will likely appeal to very few gamers. I’m glad I spend time playing it, if only for its few interesting moments, but I can’t ever see myself playing it again. As much as I liked the asylum level, I cannot recommend playing through an otherwise banal game to get to that point. If you want to see this section for yourself, I suggest catching a video of it on Youtube instead; it won’t have the same effect, I’m sure, but you can still appreciate its subversion of a game that otherwise has nothing to do with horror.

My final verdict: NOT WORTH YOUR TIME

Nice piece! Being particularly fond of stealth games (though, to my discredit, I have never played the previous Thief titles), I gave this a shot back when it first came out. I came away with a similar verdict to you: not horrible, but not particularly memorable either. The mechanics were sufficiently compelling to keep me playing, but the throwaway story, unlikable protagonist, and funnelling level design--a real flaw when compared to the proximate release of Dishonored--meant it wasn't a painless journey.

Thankfully, we have Dishonoured 2 in the works!

I'm the weird guy who liked the Thief reboot. While not without obvious flaws (Especially the nonsensical story), I appreciated that it was trying to be a stealth-ass stealth game and not a Deus Ex-esque hybrid like Dishonored where you are totally free to murder everyone the second you get caught or teleport around the levels like a magical ninja god.

I haven't played a ton of it, but I do like what I've played. It feels a little clunky, but fun. I didn't know there was a Cradle homage in the game... that really makes me want to go back and play more.

The Thief games were an enormous part of my gaming adolescence, so I gave the reboot all the chances in the world. But no, it starts off shallow and crappy and at about the 70% mark you can almost see the exact point where the studio ran out of time to make the game, those last few levels are just square geometry populated by barrels and boxes, like someone spent five minutes in a level editor making them.

It was heartbreaking - I loved those first two games so much.

@macka1080:Thanks! I entirely agree that Dishonored completely shadows everything about this Thief reboot. Maybe with better design it could have stood a chance?

@arbitrarywater: Parts of it certainly had potential; it mostly just felt like the developers didn't have the time/money to polish the rough edges. Better level design and a story that matters could have made it worth playing.

@shagge: It really makes me want to go back and play up to that point in Deadly Shadows. I've never seen it myself, just read about it. From what I remember, it seems remarkably similar to the Asylum level from this game.

@strathy: Ugh, no kidding. It all culminates in that terrible boss fight and a cutscene that falls so entirely flat that I was left shaking my head during the credits. It really feels like the developer just didn't get the time to work on it, but I guess we'll never know for sure.

I just finished my second play through of this game today, and I'm not quite as critical of it as you are, even though I approached it with the view that Thief 2 is my favourite pc game ever.

Yes, it has a disappointing amount of linearity, terrible AI, and I also got sick of opening windows and pushing planks of wood out of the way while the game loaded, but the game captured just enough of the Thief 2 feel for me to enjoy it. The parts that involved breaking into the large-scale houses were quite well designed, and the feeling of stealing everything in sight gave me just enough of a nostalgia kick to get me through the rest of the game - which is still unlike anything else in the stealth genre. This game was compared to Dishonoured a lot, which I also liked, but Thief's approach to zero-combat, light-based stealth is still a superior experience to me. I also appreciated the ps4 controller lighting up when you entered high-visibility status.

Overall I think there's a good game in there, but to implement it's concept it needed to built on the more powerful UE4 engine (and probably suffered from being released in between two console generations). I also think that the ideas of the previous Thief games just don't appeal to a broad enough audience any more, and shoehorning in lacklustre combat and linear levels which avoid taxing the game engine left this game stuck between two worlds, and not being very good in either of them.

@apolloj85: One of the best things about my lackluster experience is that I do now want to go play through those old games. It will be nice to see what a bit more craft and love could do with such a fun concept.

Yeah, I liked it a lot too for those same reasons, but at the same time I won't defend how rough this game can be

I liked the game, navigating the world could be a chore in some areas, trying to find the correct path of window opening to get to where you want to go was annoying, but the stealth was very good.
I liked slinking around inside buildings, picking locks, finding hidden mechanisms, the mechanics of stealing things felt good with some nice animations, the quick stealth swoop move was easy and fun to use.
It's easy to compare this game to Dishonored despite their differences, i played through Dishonored before Thief and really didn't like it, there wasn't enough polish around all its mechanics to feel rewarding and i was glad it ended. It's story was pretty bad too, Thief does slightly better in this regard so that combined with its more rewarding mechanics and better presentation puts it ahead for me.