Thief (PC) Review

There is one word that can describe Thief perfectly and that word is 'tedious.' Following a different style of stealth-based gameplay that holds a greater focus on waiting and method than action, the game fails to make itself interesting and, instead, devolves into lengthy wait times, frustrating stealth, and tops it off with one of the most self-righteous and dull characters possible. While the game does hold moments of interesting design and is not actually 'bad,' the sheer volume of stupid involved in its presentation outweighs any hope of it actually being 'good.'

The story follows a thief named something that would likely be censored on most review sites, so it nicknames him 'Garret.' Without playing the prior games in the franchise it is difficult to believe that this is the same Garret who starred there, and it is far more likely that this Garret was simply an admirer who abducted a young girl, told her that her name was 'Erin,' and then ate a large amount of poppies to top it off.

While out being a thief one night, Garret runs into Erin, and the two decide to embark on a little bit of thievery. Erin has developed a new tool for herself, though, called 'The Claw.' It's a handy little thing that allows her to reach ladders and grates beyond her reach, and can function as a valid weapon. This causes Garret to devolve into a whining fit because she "isn't relying on stealth" and killing guards instead of merely knocking them out, so he steals it from her. How he did this without thinking, "What if she jumps off a building edge expecting to use her claw on something only for it to suddenly not be there and goes splat on the ground?" is difficult to answer. Thankfully, Erin survives, only to be caught by a soul-sucky-thingy controlled by an evil cult that causes all her pent up anger and aggression to be unleashed on the city in the form of a depressing haze called 'the gloom.' Presumably, the actual Garret and Erin were smart enough to leave the city right away, while Garret hung around in the clock tower moping for several months before trying to be a thief again.

Here is the Thief's first problem: the main character of Garret. He is completely unlikable. The entire story happens because he was so self-righteous and self-absorbed that the thought that Erin might do things differently, rely on her tools instead of shadows, and kill people was enough for him to steal her claw, then go right back to running around in open light, using the claw as a tool to climb up the same grates, and setting guards on fire. His own arrogance is the whole reason for the plot to even happen, and it does not endear himself in any way. To top it off, instead of having anything remotely resembling a personality, he speaks in a voice so monotone and dull that even speech synthesisers on old computers have more emotion than him.

Then the actual gameplay comes into the mix. Thief tries to be a slower, more methodical, type of stealth game, and this is not inherently bad. However, it tends to sacrifice 'game' in favour of 'slower' and 'methodical.' While the later levels pick up the pace for the majority of the game, players will be doing little more than 'sneak in the shadows for a bit while the guards pass by, find an open window/way to the roofs/path behind their back, repeat' as they sneak through houses and pickpocket everything. It could have been interesting with a greater variety, but, for most of the time, it's just the same thing repeated over and over. Even on the actual levels this holds true, as a sizable chunk do not involve creative thinking to open passages, carefully figuring out routes, or anything of the sort and, rather, just going through the motions.

To make it worse, this extends into places that it shouldn't do, such as the overworld city map. For example, if Garret is walking around on the street and a guard finds him, they will immediately take chase. This may have been fine in restricted areas or even with the paper-thin justification of a 'quarantine' being in effect. Instead, though, the guards are somehow able to pick Garret out, despite multiple civilians on the street and give him chase, making sticking to the rooftops key… only to find that travelling about on them often requires dropping down to street level or passing through windows that require furious tapping to open each time, making simply travelling around the city an annoying sneak-fest, despite no mission being underway.

Then there are all the glitches. In any game large enough or detailed enough, glitches are near inevitable. However, they should still be rare and unexpected - not happen multiple times over. Dialogue opts to loop over and over again, and guards deciding to suddenly spin around rapidly in place become nearly reliable. Similar issues occur throughout.

This isn't to say that Thief is entirely bad, though. When everything is functioning right and Garret has decided to be quiet (which is most of the time), the game can be quite fun, and sneaking about with the challenge of not being spotted at all is actually quite engaging. The problem is that these moments tend to be frequently ruined by poor decisions or scattered too far between the tedious designs to make it truly engaging as a game.