Crank9000 wrote:- Thief 1 had some unnerving levels, still haven't played Thief 3 but I'll fix that sometime in the future
You really should play Thief 3. It's generally regarded as being the worst of the three original Thief games, and I agree, but that's still a very high bar, and T3 is a great game. It's just that it used an engine that was less than ideal for the purpose, and so lost some of the features like swimming and rope arrows, and what it gained (realistic shadows, and moveable light sources, basically) wasn't enough to justify the engine change, in many people's eyes. Well, the writing wasn't as clever as in the first two games, and the open world (a very limited open world) city felt too small and the loading zones broke the immersion somewhat.
Still well worth playing, though. I must have played through it half a dozen times, and will do again. But to me, the best Thief games are:
Thief 2 > Thief 1 > Thief 3 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Thief 2014
Thief 2014 is bad all around. There's nothing good about it at all. Even from the beginning of the first level, it shouts out how it doesn't even try to build on what made the first three games so great. You start off running across the roofs, just because. Even though in the first three games you never ran unless you had to, as running is noisy plus it doesn't allow you to silently stake out the area for threats. And in 2014 you have a one-key-does-everything button for jumping/climbing, running, etc. So the player doesn't get confused, presumably. And lots of things that realistically you'd be able to climb up or over or under can't be traversed because jump/climb/run key (or button, if you're using a joypad) isn't set to respond when facing that item/way.
The atmosphere and lore of the first three games is gone, the charm and aesthetics are absent too, and every nth word from an NPC is "f*ck" or "p*ss" or other real life swear word (the proper words, I mean, I've just put the asteriskes in to get past any swear filter on this forum), instead of the original Thief's inoffensive, idiosyncratic style of made up expletives like "You utter taffer". For example, Thief 2014 has dialogue like "You stink of sh*te, p*ss off". Utterly charming.
In a couple of cutscenes, Garrett moves like Spider-man, as he runs of a roof at full speed, twists in mid-air, fires his grappling hook (yes, grappling hook) at the roof, and swings safely through a window into a room. As soon as you pick up any item (jewellery, golden hairbrush, etc) is somehow magically turns into money that you can spend freely. The game feels far too linear, and can kill you if you try to go out of bounds into an area or spot that should, judging by it's looks, be safe. There's little feeling of exploration or freedom. The plot is boring and forgettable (appropriate really, since it starts off with one of the oldest gaming tropes of all, you have amnesia and can't remember the events of the last year).
I could go on and on, but if you're curious just google and read any of the fan-written reviews, diatribes, and complaint-filled posts about the game. It is almost impressive how Thief 2014 manages to abandon almost everything good about the first three games. To make it even worse, the Thief fan-base is one of the most hardcore and vocal on the 'net, so Thief 2014's makers had almost unlimited opportunity to speak to hardcore Thief fans and find out what they wanted in the new game. But no, instead the makers choice to dumb it down, to make it 'adult' by throwing endless real-life swear words and a couple of pathetic sex scenes, to remove the lore and feel of the original games, to make the game un-ghostable by having all-but-unavoidable detection systems (i.e. dogs in cages who bark when you come near) or by having the enemy in too tight patterns near light sources that you can't put out. And many other problems that I can't recall after all this time. Basically, it's a very weak rip-off of the original games by a team who evidently didn't know what was so good about the originals.
Worst of all, the game's not great sales, and it's disastrous reception, probably killed off any chance of any more sequels. Like we needed anothe reason to hate Thief 2014...
Still, Dishonoured, and Dishonoured 2 are great games, and very Thief like. Dishonoured 2 is especially good. I'd recommend both Dishonoured games to any Thief fan (I haven't yet played Dishnoured 2.5, Death of the Outsider yet, though). Also, the fan-made game The Dark Mod (http://www.thedarkmod.com/main/) is a free and reputedly excellent Thief style game, which I've been meaning to play for years but somehow have never gotten around to. But since there's little on the video-gaming horizon to attract my attention at the moment (aside from the looking-to-be-excellent Cyberpunk 2077) I might give The Dark Mod a try.