Thief - New birth of old series

Step into the silent shoes of Garrett, a dark and lonely thief with an unrivaled set of skills. The most challenging heists, the most inaccessible loots, the best kept secrets: nothing is out of your reach.

When Thief saw for the first time the light of the day back in 1998 it brought a real small revolution as a game where stealth is a primary component of gameplay. Sequels that followed in 2000 and 2004 only cemented the cult status. Of course a variety of copy / paste games followed, but none had such as good quality as the demo. Now, 10 years after the last game, Thief returned.

 

The new Thief is a game of extremes and is, in addition, without any consistency. At one point this will be a memorable adventure and a unique experience, while in the other you will curse the game, the developers, publishers and everything in between. The story situated in one such game with high atmosphere level could emerge the game among the masses, but it definitely does not succeed in doing so. Garrett is back, and although he still draws attention, the rest of the game is lagging significantly behind. The story could have been a striking view of the divisions between rich and poor so that the rest of us could have something to identify with, but instead, supernatural theme is practically forced upon us, which has been already very much seen and chewed up. With the untapped potential of the story, all the characters except Garrett are secondary in the true sense of the word. All to the last one are ordinary, stereotypical representatives who you will forget as soon as your interaction with them is over.  

Gameplay is definitely the best part of the game, but there we also encounter problems. The first one is A.I. of various guards and soldiers who, like the whole game in the end, is a little bit up and a little bit down. If you are not on a bright spot and crouching down opponents will not see you even if you were in front of them, which shows that the stealth mechanics have not been fully refined. If they see you and follow you, you can just squeeze into a narrow corner, and it is quite possible that they will crash into each other and in that way they would block themselves their way to you. Navigation is most easily compared with that in Assassin's Creed, only in the first person. Your body has a weight and you feel it while moving, climbing and jumping. Unfortunately developers’ laziness is also evident here. Namely, you cannot jump and climb when and where you want to, just where the game allows it, so, for example. you cannot climb on a simple stroller because it "is not intended," while you can climb up a big box just a few meters from the side. These things certainly restrict movement, which the game is forcing to be vertical. While outdoors, 90% of the time you will spend on the roofs and on various beams and paths between the houses and buildings. 

This would not be so bad, but A.I. has been taught not to look up, which means a similar situation as when standing in front of the enemy in the dark. However, if you are noticed, there’s no way out because the sheer battle is very bad, but we consider that by this way, in fact, we are forced to play a game in the intended way. In theory gameplay sounds great. You have a "darkness measurer" that lets you know about your visibility. Arrows, ranging from fire to water, are primarily used for distraction rather than to kill, even though it is sometimes necessary. On the way, you can pick up bottles and by throwing them you usurp guards, who then check what is happening while you sneak up behind them. All of this, or at least similar things we've seen in the predecessor Thief, but now you also have another ability that is a characteristic of modern gaming. Focus allows you to see all the objects and / or people with whom you can interact. Using it makes the game much easier, but there is an option to turn it off, and the entire HUD, if you have the courage and decide to play in the "old school" way.  

Unnamed town in Thief looks great and is a true indicator of what next-gen games can do. Unfortunately this means that you have to be careful this time about the minimum configuration required to start playing the game, otherwise you will be stuck with an unplayable semi-finished product. Regardless of the configuration, we must admit that loadings are frequent and have too much influence on the course of the game, and we are completely sure that it is up to the programming, not the hardware requirements. Except Garrett, as we mentioned above, the other characters are negligible, in stature, and voice, and generally the game could still use a little work on the literary part.

Although the new Thief is not as good as the original trilogy, it’s still a solid game and it might have an even better position if it didn’t carry the burden of a famous name. Therefore it came under a magnifying glass and each flaw was further amplified which is evident in previous reviews. We would certainly recommend Thief to the fans of the series, as well as those who love stealth games, while others may find more pleasure in games like Dishonoured, Skyrim, or for lovers of the third party, some of the older Assassin's Creed titles.

Dealing with theft after a certain time becomes a routine. It’s not like we know it first-hand, but it's the universal principle of functioning in all possible activities. A routine is in the games very close to the monotony so the Square Enix in reboot of the Thief series concluded that the Thief must not be just a game about theft. In it, in fact, must be present a background story, and in that case it is advisable that it contains a great mystical conspiracy and supernatural elements. In the final results it looked like as if the developers were inspired by justifications of some of our politicians who are accused for magic tricks of hiding money.

Thief begins in a somewhat predictable plot in which the protagonist Garrett during a routine mission loses his assistant Erin, and then he takes a vacation in a coma. This makes room for the largest possible cliché, so when he wakes up after a year, Garrett does not remember anything. Well, he remembers some things, so it’s concerned with some kind of selective amnesia, but it is still a big cliché.

Either way, things in his town in the meanwhile have gone for the worse. Streets are infected with the plague, and the ones who are not killed by the disease are broken by the dictatorship of the so-called Iron Baron. Garrett has a good opportunity for theft, but these plans will be tampered by one bearded general who's targeting thieves, and later the mutants from Dimension X. Kidding, of course, they’re not from Dimension X. But you just do not care where they come from.