“Don’t turn around… don’t turn around… DON’T TURN AROUND…” If guards are actively chasing you, however, they’ll see you regardless of how dark your gem is. A combination of the gem and the graphic engine’s deep, unambiguous shadows are almost assured to keep you safe. This is a white rectangle at the bottom which brightens in relation to how visible you are, with a superfluous red/yellow indicator next to it to further drive home your risk of being spotted. With no ability to see you own body, you only have vague expectations that the shadowed area up ahead will be enough to mask you from sight. What’s not naturally intuitive is how visually hidden you are. There’s even limited sound occlusion – guards won’t hear your racket through a few stone walls, and you can likewise lean against doors to listen for passing footsteps on the other side. Is this guard far enough away to sprint to the next room? Will he have turned around if I move too slowly? Floor surfaces also matter, with stone floors making a loud clatter, but rugs allowing you to move quickly and quietly. Your own movement speed (creep, walk, run) determines the amount of sound created, forcing to you to gamble between speed and safety. Guards mumble their status to themselves (the oldest of stealth concessions) and their footsteps can be tracked across a very accurate stereo audioscape including panning and distance. Noise is also extremely natural and intuitive. Garrett’s comically long reach aside, the glow means you can swipe this key with the right mouse button. Objects you can interact with light up, allowing you to scoop up loot, silently pluck keys from the belt of a passing guard, or open doors and peek in. Thief feels astoundingly “natural.” Movement keys (and combinations) let you move Garrett’s virtual body in nearly every helpful way you can think of, including leaning out from around corners, tilting forward to peer down on a landing below you, crouching in the shadows, or holding space to climb up short ledges. You can’t peg Thief as the beginning of “stealth” as its own genre (that would probably fall to the MSX version of Metal Gear), but its decision to bring stealth into the first person view actually enhances the gameplay beyond simply being novel. After an initial heist, the plot kicks in – pitting Garrett against the mechanically-inclined Order of the Hammer, and the diametrically opposed, nature-worshipping Pagans. He’s at one with the shadows and there’s no security he can’t break. Garrett was trained up to be a member of a secret order known as the “Keepers,” but after a falling-out, he left to pursue a nomadic lifestyle paid for through robbing the rich and powerful. You play as the enigmatic Garrett – a master burglar learned from an early age. Forget about half-baked stealth sections in other games – if you ever wanted to play as a first-person thief, brother, this is the game. But Looking Glass took this one-line idea and expanded on it, drilled into it, and thought it through until they had the most rich and detailed game about first-person thieving they could – the finest execution of the original premise that technology could allow. While it weaves a tale of intrigue through cutscenes and in-mission events, the concept ultimately goes no higher than that. Thief is a first-person game where you avoid guards and steal things. sessions later, and I had come away with one of my all-time best gaming experiences. A week or two’s worth of bleary-eyed three A.M. One of these games ended up being Thief. When I finally nabbed a bargain bin copy, I didn’t quite know what to expect. Between losing money at poker and getting caught up in more drama than a teen TV series, I took some time to check out lost PC games (the result of which solidified the JGR we have today). Away from parents and free to squeak by on the absolute minimum of effort, I ended up with a lot of free time in college.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |