Looking at: Thief (2014)

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Vertically challenged

I can't jump.

I'm cowering in the shadows of a stock yard. My mission is to get past a gate blocking my way through. I can see at least four different ways to get past this gate, but all of them some acrobatics, or at least the ability to jump. Were this Dishonored, or Thief 2 I'd already be past the gate and probably half-way through the warehouse that lies beyond by now. But in those games I can jump. And here?

I can't...fucking...jump.

Here's the thing about this blog. When I talk about a game I usually play it for a good long time. I want to get a full sense of the game, so, unless the game is exceedingly short or front-loaded with all of it's features, I try to put at least several hours into it. With Thief14 I quit after just two hours. I could't take it anymore. This is such a generic, bland, uninspired, un-fun, creatively bankrupt, IP-raping, classic basterdizing shitstain of a game that I just could not force myself to play one more minute of it.

Pumping Blood into a Corpse

Doing a reboot of an old IP is always a gamble, and despite recent success in the forms of Wolfenstien: New Order and Tomb Raider 2014, most reboots are doomed from the get-go. The fact is, the industry is sick, and often the people deciding to reboot a franchise have little-to-no idea what made the originals great. Worse, they attempt to just BE the original, and fail miserably because we already have the originals and wanted to see the series go in a different direction.

Let's look at my two examples, and why these are great reboots. Both of them recognize what was great about their original games, and decided to apply that to a new skin. With Wolfenstien, they made it a sort of stealth shooter, because in essence that's what the original game is. You are escaping from a dangerous situation with limited resources and must fight your way out. The original Wolfenstien couldn't handle stealth, but that was 1992, and this was 2014. Tomb Raider decided the weakest thing about the series was Lara Croft, so it decided to keep the gameplay and rebuild her, somewhat literally. A reboot shouldn't just be the original game, it should use the ideas of the game and apply them to a new game.

Thief14 doesn't do any of that. Sure, there's still sneaking and stealing, but that's about it. Everything is different here, and it's all pretty damn terrible. Be forwarned as I go through the various issues with this travesty, I'll be referencing Dishonered and Thief 2 a lot. In fact, here's a short list of better stealth games you can play to feel sneaky:

Dishonored
Thief 1&2
Thief 3
Hitman Blood Money
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
Metal Gear Solid 3,4,and 5
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Batman Arkham series
The Last of Us
Far Cry 3&4

All of these games handle stealth and action better then Thief14 does. Let's break this badness down.

Like a Dump in the Night

Ok, fine, let's start with what Theif14 doesn't completely fuck up. Graphically it looks decent. There's an interesting pseudo-steam punk-but-not-really look going on that at least tries to ape the feel of the original games. Electricity is commonplace, even despite the wooden medieval exterior of the world and it blends together in an interesting fashion. The lighting engine is top notch, which is for the best considering your need to see what is and isn't in the shadows. Textures are, for the most part, pretty decent. There's a pervasive brown, grey and black, but the original games had that too, so it's not completely Theif14's fault.

With that out of the way, let's go through the bad. First up: the story. It's terrible. The original games only had the loosest of stories to tie them together. The plot was only there to give you a reason to sneak and steal stuff, and wasn't really the main draw of the game. Here though, the experience is entirely story driven, to bad the story is shit.

As always you play as Garret, a master thief who often gets caught up in conflicts much bigger then him. In the first games Garret was an uncaring misanthrope who actively avoided people at all cost, and scoffed at the squabbling of the various factions he associated with. Even Thief 3 still had him as an angry loner, and it fit him well. Here's he's portrayed as some sort of noble thief, a regular Robin Hood who bows to the beggar queen and has friends. The story concerns Garret's protege/girlfriend getting killed and his search for revenge, or something. It's annoying, and not helped by Garret's new voice actor that doesn't have any of the gravely charm of the old Garret.

That brings me to the matter of the sound mixing. It's also terrible. It's rare that I talk about audio design in a game, because most AAA games manage to at least get that right. Here though, the sound design is horrible. The music is way to loud in cutscenes, and it's impossible to hear anything. Voice acting is acceptable, especially given how much there is, but there only seems to be a handful of VO actors through the entire game, and enemy barks repeat infinitely. The script really doesn't help with some particularly cringe-worthy moments.

The list goes on...

As a master thief, you're main objective is to sneak around and steal stuff. In the past this meant approaching a situation, figuring out the best way forward, executing your plan, and adapting as the need arises. This time around it's slamming the F-key until you spot the obvious path you're supposed to go, then slamming space when you're in the right spot and watching as super fucking long animations play out, occasionally with unnecessary QTE's thrown in for spite. There's very little exploration, and when there is it rarely pays off. Every mission only has one, maybe two ways to move through it, and they're never satisfying.

I keep harping on how this isn't Thief 2, so ok, let's judge it on it's own merits. It's still not a great stealth game. We see the return of the infamous stealth gem from the original games, an indicator that you either are or are not in the shadows. This works, but feels antiquated, and pulls you out of the immersion. Dishonored handled this better by darkening the screen's edges so you knew you were hard to see as you leaned around corners. Oh yeah, Thief14 fucks up leaning too, almost forgot. Unlike EVERY OTHER FUCKING STEALTH GAME you can't just lean out, you have to awkwardly attach yourself to the corner THEN execute a lean. Why? Why can't I just lean normally?

Enemy AI is...workable. They see you when your exposed, and don't see you when your in the shadows. Actually, the AI is one of the better parts of Thief14, since unlike the original, they can actually see you when you're right in front of them, regardless of light levels. Fine, great, you got one thing right. Never mind the fact that stealth-game AI is one of the easiest to program, since really all it is is checking whether they see you or not, and if they do then they need to attack you. Patrols are predictable, and, while you can hide bodies, it's unnecessary most of the time since guards rarely share paths.

Combat is a joke, which almost seems intentional as a way to encourage stealth. But most stealth games at least make combat an option as a "just-in-case". With Thief 2 your sword was formidable and you could hold your own at least somewhat in a fight. With Dishonored combat was so frantic and exciting that many players forgot about stealth and just went around slashing people's heads off. Here, combat is awkwardly hitting the Q button to attack and dodging with timed V button presses.

Actually, that brings me to another point, the controls are awkward as shit. The mouse is completely under-utilized, save for looking around. The Q button is relegated for any combat actions, E is interaction, F is use Focus which allows Garret to see in the dark and spot things, and space is "jump" and (I'm being serious here) "swoop". Swoop is Thief14's shitty answer to Dishonored's Blink ability, and the hilarious attempt to speed up gameplay. It allows you to whoosh around the level like some sort of stealth based Sonic the Hedgehog.

Developmental trouble

Last thing I'll harp on here is how bizarrely put together Thief14 is. I was a big fan of the first two games, and  when I heard they announced a new Thief game I was rather excited. To say that Thief's development path is messy is an understatement. It was initially announced in 2009 under the normal, not shitty title of Thief 4, later Thi4f for some fucking reason. It promised to be a return to style for the serious, going back to the first person stealth non-action of the originals and straying away from whatever Thief 3 is. Then, almost fittingly, silence.

Finally, something emerged several years later, and what it was looked terrible. It was a weird, scripted E3 walkthrough that ended with Garret escaping from a burning building in a QuickTimeEvent laden action sequence. QTE's? Burning Building? Action Sequence? These aren't really the hallmarks of a Thief game. Apparently the game's development was so riddled with office-politics that, according to one source close to the game:

"The current version of Thief barely resembles the initial concept"

Much as it pains me to do so, Polygon has done a good job of some of the back-room going-ons of this game.

What's immediately evident is that this version of Thief14, shat out onto us, the public, is a scrambled mess of half-finished ideas cobbled together. Notably, the end of the first real mission has you escaping through a back alley. There's the option to stealth this, in theory, but there are so many guards lounging around, and so few shadows to hide in, that it's pretty obvious it was meant to be an action scene.

The previously mentioned QTE's were removed late in development, replaced apparently by horribly animated cutscenes and endlessly repeating short scenes where Garret awkwardly stands still until you hit the correct button. The whole game stinks of half-baked ideas that were shoved out the door to try and recoup some of it's inevitable loss.

Out like a Light

I hope it's become evident how much I hated Thief14. It's not just that it's a bland, uninspired game, that's pretty crappy. But there are a dime-a-dozen bland, uninspired games on Steam or XBLA every day. What really sets Thief14 apart is how little it cares for it's own source material. This is a game by committee, made for an audience that doesn't exist. This is a game made for the sole purpose of reminding people that the Thief franchise is still alive, not forgotten in the mists of time. That the once great king of stealth has fallen this low is truly horrifying.

Thief14 is a dumb game with no redeemable qualities. It's writing is shit, it's controls convoluted, it's audio mixing awful, and it's gameplay atrocious. Even though the stealth genre is often strained for good games, I still can't recommend this game. The original thief games are each $10 on GOG.com, and The Dark mod is a free Thief homage game made with the Doom3 engine. All of these are better choices then Thief14. Don't pick it up on sale, don't pick it up period.