Thief 3 : Deadly Shadows – Day 2

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Just a short post today as I just had about half an hour on Friday to play a bit more Thief 3. I start out in my house which is small and basic but there are a couple of arrows I can pick up at least.

I take the opportunity to explore and pick a few locks while I’m here and break into my landlords room. I learn that he is being blackmailed and where to pick up his bribe money.

After looting all the apartments, it’s outside to explore the city. The engine handles the outdoor environment very well and it looks excellent. I figure that I’m going to steal everything I can although all I really need to do is find my fence.

There are quarantine notices up and I overhear a conversation about a boat coming into the docks possibly carrying some sort of plague. I’m sure for now this is just a way of locking me out of part of the city although the quarantine might be relevant to the plot.

There are plenty of city watch around. I knock them out where possible and attempt not to get caught. I’m not always successful though and I end up being chased by the watch occasionally. After half a minute of running they always get tired and stop for a rest which would make just running through these levels a definite possibility. It certainly makes escaping from them very easy as I can just run round in circles until they need to catch their breath.

After collecting my landlords bribe money I visit my fence in a shady area of town. He has been beaten by Lady Elizabeth’s thugs and has told them I was responsible for stealing the opal. He can’t trade my opal because of this but I do sell him all my other stuff. He tells me to go to Black Market Bertha in stonemarket. There is also a shop next door where I can buy arrows, flashbombs and the various tools of the trade from the last 2 games.

I carry on exploring and find the Lady and her goons blocking my path to Stonemarket. They soon split up when one goes to collect his payment and I take them out one at a time, as well as stealing the payment money from Elizabeth, knocking her out for the second time in as many levels.

When I arrive in Stonemarket, these two are stood in front of the Hammerite temple discussing burgling it. While they argue I pinch the map one of them has pinned to his belt. I don’t find a way into the temple for now but I’m sure I’ll be going in there later.

I find Bertha’s shop behind the temple and sell her my opal. She gives me a note from the keepers saying that they want to meet with me in the plaza.

I head straight to the rendezvous. The keepers are going to allow me to see their prophecies apparently but first I have to prove myself by carrying out two missions for them.

I’m given a note with the two missions. I head for the well first to steal a paw from the Pagans.



There is another strange and creepy cutscene to start the mission where a pagan is apparently growing plants using his blood. I’m not sure I want to be stealing from these guys, especially after we were starting to get on so well in Thief 2.

I left it here for now. I quite like the way the city hub level works so far. I don’t feel like I got any real benefit for exploring it thoroughly though. There was a little treasure but one of the things with playing on expert mode is that I’m always forced to burgle huge amounts of treasure in each mission so I’m never short of it anyway. The little bit of the city I played through here was split into 3 zones + another for my house all of which load far too slowly, I just hope I don’t end up having to do too much crossing the city later on to sell and buy stuff. I’ve been warned that the hub level gets tiresome later on so I may just go straight to my objectives from here on out in the interests of keeping things moving along quickly.

Thief 3 : Deadly Shadows – Day 1

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As usual, it’s been longer than I intended since the last post but I’m back again for another game. I’ve been playing more Steam games in the last few weeks including the Penumbra series and Bully which has been keeping me away from here. I saw that the Ultima 4 Neverwinter Nights mod has been updated over on Ultima Aiera and was going to play that next with the aim of doing a trilogy of Ultima remakes with Lazarus + the U6 project but I found out I needed the second expansion pack for NWN and I only own the first one. I’ve ordered the second off Amazon for all of 1p+postage so I’ll have to wait for it to arrive before I start on those so in the meanwhile I’ve decided to finish off the Thief series with Thief Deadly Shadows.

There isn’t an intro movie and it’s straight into the game’s first mission. The first thing I notice is how big the text and interface is. This is similar to Deus Ex II and clearly designed more for consoles than PC gaming. It does feel in my face using a monitor but it does the job even if I do feel like I should be sat a few feet further away. The first mission involves stealing a medallion from a Lord Julian who is staying at a local inn.

I should mention that I’m having to use a hack to get the game to play in widescreen. This appears to work well at first but I later discover than it causes the savegame screen to crash and the game also crashes when I finish the level so I’m forced into playing this in 4:3 in the end.

I can’t set the difficulty in the first level so I’m stuck on normal mode. It’s a training mission where I’m guided through every stage, right down to glowing footprints on the ground with my trail to follow.

The gameplay mechanics are very familiar after 2 other Thief games. The new engine is a serious improvement visually. There are real time shadows all over the place and it still looks excellent. The character models don’t bear up too well sometimes when you get close to them but they are well animated and look fine at any sort of distance. The only snag to this engine is just like Deus Ex 2 it doesn’t half load slowly. I’m really going to have to be careful in this game not to get into fights with the guards as I can live without the 30 second load time when I get killed.

The lockpicking mechanic has changed in this new game. I have to swing a pointer around to one of the four compass directions until I see the lock start to move then hold it steady until the lock clicks. This is easy enough once I know what I’m doing, although the instructions just mention finding the sweet spot and I only work out that this is only ever in the same 4 places by trial and error. It may get more complex later in the game I guess but even if it doesn’t it’s still more interesting than swapping between two picks as in the earlier games.

I knock out the innkeeper and have a look at his book to learn where the Lord’s room is. The blackjacking is slightly different. I just click to swing and I can’t hold to build up power. I prefer the original games system over this but it’s only a minor change. Combat with a dagger is similar – I try to avoid this but I do end up taking out one guard this way later on. If anything my combat prowess is reduced further than eaelier game and I really cannot afford to get in fights if this is anything to go by.

There is another new element for Thief 3 where I can hug a wall to hide against it. Not sure how much benefit this will really be in the game but it reduces my visibility a little so it might be useful somewhere.

I find the Lord’s room but he’s not here and neither is his treasure. A note suggests that I should look in the Lancaster room.

He is sat by the fire discussing a plan to steal an opal. This plan requires a medallion which he has in a bag on the table next to him which can be used to open the vault containing the opal. I sneak to this table and grab the bag before heading out to finish the level.

The games first cutscene follows. A man is writing smoking letters in a book. These letters then morph into other symbols, he rips the page out shoves it in his desk and I see a blinding light coming through the drawers keyhole (from an in-drawer viewpoint). I have absolutely no idea what this was about but it will no doubt mean something later.

In the mission briefing, I learn that my fence has identified the medallion’s crest as belonging to the Rutherford family. The opal is in the hands of Lord Ember (Julians cousin) and I like Julians plan so much that I decide to follow it myself. I get close to the mansion on a supply cart and then I have to signal the cook to open a door to get in by dousing a torch outside the building.

I’m facing the torch I need to douse at the start of the mission so I just shoot a water arrow into it and then a door opens up above and I climb up and into the building.

I spot a note on my way in which hints that the mission isn’t going to be entirely straightforward. I’m also playing this at expert level, which looks to be the same as normal except I need to find 90% of the treasure in the level as well as 3 “special loot” items so I’m going to have to explore everywhere.

I start exploring the house. There are plenty of guards but also loads of shadows to hide in. I struggle taking out my first few guards but I soon find my feet and things get easier after that. This place is much bigger than the previous level although still not huge and I soon find the staircase down to the cellar. There is a guard standing watch but he never changes direction so I just creep up behind him and wallop.

The portcullis I read about earlier is in place and I’m going to have to figure out how to open it.

I spot a strange looking fog at the end of a corridor. This looks sinister but I walk into it to see what happens – it turns out that this is just the exit to the next part of the level. I don’t exit the level yet as I figure I may as well explore every nook and cranny of this one first.

The exploration pays off. In a locked room, I find a box I can push to reveal a hole in the wall. Crawling through here gets me to a balcony with a valuable portrait I can nick.

I move onto the next part of the level and get a new set of guards to cope with. Some carry torches which doesn’t make them any easier to hide from and I need to make sure I approach them from behind.

The inner quarters of the Lord and Lady are in this part of the castle. I steal the two other special loot items from their rooms but I’m still a long way from the 90% treasure I need. I learn that the Lord and Lady don’t exactly get on and she has plans to poison him.

I search the Lords room until I find the secret switch in the form a torch on the wall. This opens up the portcullis back in the first level.

Before I head for that, I explore the rest of this level to find any treasure I can. There is a lift to get me down to the ground level and the working quarters for the house are all down here with a few treasures to steal along the way.

When I think I’ve explored everywhere, I head back and find the portcullis has swung open and I can now get into the vault and steal the monumentally large opal as well as a couple of jewels.

This still doesn’t get me the 90% treasure I need to I end up spending about 20 minutes wandering around trying to find the last bits. I eventually spot a ring on this statue which gets me to exactly 90%. God knows where the other 10% is but I don’t worry about it and instead head for the level exit.

The next mission looks a bit different as it isn’t really a mission. I just need to wander through the city and find my fence to take him the opal to be cut up and sold. I guess this is going to be a hub level of sorts but I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out.

I’m liking the look of what I’ve seen in this game so far. It’s a modern version of the older games in the series with slightly tweaked gameplay. My major reservations for now are to do with the engines limitations. The game certainly looks good but the loading times are really poor, especially when I’m running this on a machine far faster than anything that was out in 2004. If I have any serious difficulties anywhere in the game and end up having to reload a lot, it will get seriously annoying. The size of the levels could also be an issue. The fact that it had to split the first real level into 2 sections doesn’t bode well. The whole thing put together would still have been a small level in Thief 1. Ion Storm appear to have compensated by slowing down the speed I move and this was a further irritation when I was searching around for the last bits of treasure. I’m also concerned about the games longevity, I understand their are only 10 missions in total and I’ve already done two after playing for just an hour or so. A hub level smacks of padding although I don’t necessarily have a problem with the idea provided it doesn’t prove too much of a chore.

Thief 2: The Metal Age – Day 10

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Replaying the final mission proved to be a lot easier than playing it the first time around. Getting the robots to blow themselves up works well – I only discovered this trick halfway through the mission before but this time I can save my ammo and still make the place safe. Now I know my goals and route through the level, I grab all the necessary parts and make my mine bulbs while I’m building stage 1 of the beacon saving myself a load of walking. I soon have my beacon rebuilt and I also find a few tricks that I didn’t notice first time around like a light switch in that gives me a chance to run through an area in the dark disabling all the security. After about an hour I’ve got the beacon built and 4 levers pulled.

I head to the turret room to give it another go. This time I’ve been saving my ammo. I notice another explosive for me to shoot with a fire arrow, which takes an extra turret out + I manage to throw the other explosive between a couple of turrets and blow two up with one shot. I also discover that I can throw a mine at a turret to blow it up. I take out all but two of the turrets like this and run through those to get to the lever and back out again.

I find the final switch through a couple of rooms of computers. I take the lift up being careful not to step to either side so that the sneakily placed turrets get a view of me. I throw the final switch and head back to the entrance.

I’ve taken out every danger on the way back so it’s just a five minute walk to where I came in and the final cutscene starts.

The cutscene shows me making my escape while the gas is released in the cathedral finishing off Karras and all his creations in one go. I meet up with a keeper who tells me that all this has been written but this isn’t the end and there is still more of the prophecy to fulfil (in Thief 3 no doubt).

The final mission really has been an anti-climax for me.  I’m sure I didn’t play it how it was intended but 14 levels of sneaking with no release from the tension probably influenced me here.  I was really enjoying this game for the first 2/3’s and it’s tailed off and left me a little dissatisfied with the experience. The lack of variety was possibly Thief 2’s biggest problem and it was relentless with its approach. In hindsight, I guess the zombie missions did break things up in the first game although I still prefered this without them. 

This was one of the last games developed by Looking Glass and it’s such a pity that a studio like that ended up going bust with the track record they had. Out of their major franchises the Thief series is probably my least favourite but that’s down to personal preference and they are still great games. I’m not interested in playing their flight sim games but I think I’ll give Terra Nova a go sometime if I can get hold of it. I’ve heard good things about it and I think it will fit into this blog as well as any other game.

I thought about going straight to Thief 3 next but the price on Steam was silly. I’ve bought a hardcopy instead which is in the post but I’ll have to wait for it to arrive. I can’t get the joystick working in Super Wing Commander with Freedo. Since the emulator is being developed, I’ll hang on until this does work before I play the game. I think the time has finally come to start Lazarus.

Thief 2: The Metal Age – Day 9

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After a couple of days without chance to play I got around to trying to finish off Thief 2 again last night. When I left off I’d just built the beacon I needed to transmit a signal to recall all the servants. I now need to place this beacon and then flip 7 out of 8 signal towers to use my beacon instead of the original one.

Before I do that I decide to take JCC’s advice and manufacture some mines. I’ve got blueprints for all sorts of my equipment and it’s made in a similar manner to the beacon. I have to go all the way back to Bay B to make a mine bulb and then return to where I am to use the sealing machine to manufacture mines. On the way, I find this fountain in a dark spot which heals me. Very useful on a level like this.


For the first machine I can just chuck everything in together and keep pulling the lever and I get 6 mine bulbs out rapidly. The second machine is far less helpful and I have to make each one by one. This is particularly annoying when I have to get across a largish room and climb up and down a vine arrow each time I want to start the machine up.


The beacon needs to be placed at the top of the northern apse. It’s behind a locked gate which means a bit of climbing and jumping around the apse before I can get to it.


I soon have the beacon placed. Now I just have to flip the 7 levers.


The first of these levers is nearby (in a ridiculously dark screenshot) and I flip it to start the process off. Karras doesn’t appear to notice.


The northern half of this level consists of loads more giant machines. I wander around clearing out loads of robots and slowly flip more levers. I quite like this room with a giant burner in the middle that lights up the room each time it fires. The rooms don’t really have much more to offer though. It’s all about avoiding/killing the giant robots and there are certainly plenty of them. A room with 4 of them in provides a particular challenge but none of the rooms are all that interesting.


I find Karras himself although he is behind a locked door so I can’t get to him. He is as much machine as man by the looks of him and bears a strong resemblance to his servants. There doesn’t seem to be anything I can do here so I leave him alone.


I manage to flip 6 out of the 7 levers I need then come across this room full of turrets which is a complete nightmare. Almost anything I do seems to be instant death and I’m not exactly stocked up on weapons any more since I thought I was about done with the level and stopped conserving them. I find a big explosive which takes out one turret when I shoot it with a fire arrow but I find it impossible to get to the lever that probably opens the grate that would take me to the final lever.

I’m making a serious attempt to reach the lever and am just about there and make a quicksave when I’m shot in the back. Unfortunately my save game was just after I was shot and it still allowed me to make it. My last savegame before this was right back at the start of the level so this means I have to play the whole lot again…..

I’m not too impressed with this. The level was already my least favourite in the game without having to play it again. It’s been far too much about combat with robots and the sneaking has been left behind. Building things with the machines is less than entertaining also and more of a chore – especially when I was making mines. It’s a less than satisfactory end to an excellent game. I’m not going to get this far without finishing though so I’ll start the level again after a couple of days break. It will be a lot easier second time around. I’ve discovered that I can kill the robots off with fire arrows and frog beasts now + the trick with getting them to shoot themselves works really well now that I’m getting the hang of it.

I’m still not sure how to cope with that turret room although I’ve got a few ideas. Next time, I’ll throw my explosive down from the walkways high up in the room and I should be able to take out all the turrets near that switch in one go with a bit of luck. Provided I can get that switch flipped I should be able to run through and get to the last tower. Whatever else I’ll be making a second save game before I enter that room again.

Thief 2: The Metal Age – Day 8

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For mission 14, it’s back where we were and I’m in the same mansion as last time. This time I get to knock everyone out at least but this is still a huge level and there are a lot more guards than last time around.

New treasure has appeared all over the place and I need a lot of it to complete the level. This means I still need to explore near enough all of the house even though I only really need the masks.

The guards have a nasty habit now of teaming up in pairs like this one making it very difficult to take them both out without one of them noticing. It is just about possible by taking the rear one first as long as there is enough corridor left before the second turns around.

I head straight to the top floor where the masks should be. I find this strange contraption where 3 alcoves allow me to turn off a particular coloured light. This has to be important and I later discover that it turns off the gas traps in certain rooms depending on which colour is off.

The servants are in evidence but contrary to what I’d expect they are particularly easy to deal with. They remind me a bit of the cyborgs from System Shock 2 and sometimes thank me when I kill them.

The masks I need are all in near enough identical rooms. Stepping on the carpet has an odd effect and makes it bounce up and down like an enormous subwoofer on full volume. If I haven’t turned it off it also emits a load of gas which is lethal. I trek back and forth to the foyer to make sure the right colour is turned off and go around collecting all these masks.

Also up here is the cultivator that I apparently need. Dealing with the guards is a pain but I manage to grab it and then leave this floor by jumping off the balcony.  

I still haven’t got enough treasure so I have to explore the other floors despite completing all other aspects of the mission. The central room in a nightmare with loads of guards and it’s brightly lit. I manage to slowly clear it out and grab the meagre amount of treasure on offer.

Some more exploring and I get the treasure I needed. I head straight out and miss off the rooms I still haven’t looked around. This hasn’t been that bad a level but it hardly had anything new to offer over the one before. It’s very strange that the masks weren’t just there in the mission before and I had to play the same map twice and it looks a lot like padding the game out.  I wouldn’t have had a problem with 14 levels so it’s unneccessary. Even knowing where I was going, this level must have taken me going on 2 hours to play.

Viktoria has used the evidence I’ve collected and found that the Mechanists have built some kind of weapon using the rust gas. It feeds off vegetation and since the lords who got the free samples all have huge gardens it could be used to destroy the city. I’m not quite buying this I have to say, surely it would just destroy the gardens. It’s all a bit of a convenient link to Viktoria’s plant making abilities….

Anyway, Viktoria’s plan is to go to the Mechanist cathedral where she will make loads of plants. In the meanwhile, I’ll be somehow finding a way to attract all of the servants back to the cathedral so that when they are set off the cathedral will be destroyed instead. Conveniently the cathedral is airtight so everything else will be ok. This sounds just like the sort of hare-brained scheme that makes up a final mission but Garret doesn’t like it and leaves to come up with his own plan.

One of the Keeper’s tries to change my mind and I learn that Viktoria has gone on her own. I try to rescue her which seems out of character but I only arrive it time to see her sacrificing herself to create enough plant life for the reaction. It’s back to plan A and I have to get all the servants to return here.

As soon as the level starts, I’m immediately spotted by Karras and he sets some of his “children” on me. Throughout this level there don’t appear to be any human guards and I just have to deal with the various mechanical creatures. I’ve only got 10 water arrows which doesn’t make this easy for me.  

From a book I find, I learn that Karras has been transforming Mechanists into servants. This might explain the lack of human guards. The servants are the least of my troubles anyway as I can just hack them down with my sword if I have to.

The cathedral is truly huge with the biggest rooms I’ve seen in the game. Through this arch is another area described as the upper levels on my map but I never even explored that in this days play. Instead I stuck to the factory area at the south end of the cathedral and attempted to figure out how to make the beacon I needed to attract the servants.

I find some storage rooms with loads of strange equipment. I know well enough never to leave anything behind so I grab everything. It’s amazing just how much Garret can carry.

I soon find the plan room which contains a myriad of scrolls, including the blueprints for the guiding beacon. I’m going to be spending the rest of today attempting to build this beacon.

I also find instructions for using the beacon but I never get around to trying these out.

The first few stages of the process are not too hard. I basically have to throw parts into these giant machines, flip a switch and take the thing it makes to the next machine. The machines are spread all over the place which means a lot of trekking back and forth.

When it comes to coping with factory bay D, I have a lot more problems. I end up with 3 of the children in here with me and no water arrows left to do anything about them. By accident I discover that I can get them to blow themselves up by getting them against a corner so they shoot the wall instead of me. This isn’t easy but it works well enough for me to clear the room and get through the next stage of building the beacon.

I go from one machine to another and finally get the beacon built. I’ve given in finishing the level today at this point. It’s probably taken 90 minutes to get this far and I don’t think I’m even halfway through yet. This level has certainly been a challenge although I’m not that keen on it so far. If I had a better supply of equipment to take out the robots then it would be ok but I spent far too long just avoiding them when going backwards and forwards through the same areas. I think the levels have probably been going downhill a bit since Life Of The Party. I do seem to have found myself going back over the same ground in each of them far more than I would like and having the same level twice in a row didn’t help, neither did playing a level I’d already seen in Thief 1. I gather than I need to flip a load of switches in the cathedral to switch the signal towers to my beacon next which sounds a bit more promising.

I was impressed with the cutscene after Level 14. There haven’t been many of these animated cutscenes as the game usually sticks to panning over static images. I particularly like it when they show the characters in silhouette. It fits in with the games dark atmosphere and the movement is strangely lifelike adding to the creepiness factor when Viktoria starts growing roots out of her arms. I’m hoping for something similar at the end of the game – I’m expecting Karras to turn out to be half machine or something similar.