Near the end of my first play through I found myself looking at shops and houses from a thief's perspective more and more - windows in shops that looked out onto dark alleys had me really eager to finish the game so that I could restart as a character with good points in prowl, lock picking and pick pocketing so that I could sneak through the darkness and slip in through windows and go to work.

However after getting to Tarant and waiting for night to fall I found to my utter dissapointment that the isometric view hides windows. I can still get in by picking the lock on most shop doors but that really isn't the same. Playing as a thief is still really awesome (and almost adds an entirely new subgame) but I was wondering if there was any sort of patch or fix for this?

As far as I know of, no. Unfortunately this is one of the main issues with isometric games. Though, as a possible work around: If you know where the window is on the side of the house you can sometimes highlight it (and therefore lockpick it) if you just move your cursor over the roof over where the window is supposed to be. It doesn't always work though.

Also, in my experience a lot of the windows in Tarant are actually broken shut, which is strange, but possibly so you have to use the door (which makes it more difficult as a thief).

Or smash the window open.

That makes noise and can either wake people in the building up or draw guards to your location.

Though, that reminded me: if you can unlock and open the window from inside the building (during the day when you are allowed inside) you can then usually direct your character through the window into the building even if you can't see where the window is. Granted, this is still not really roleplaying because you might as well stand inside the building and wait until midnight and plunder the building from the inside. But that is even more power/meta gaming.

Ever notice that shopkeepers open and lock their bedroom doors behind them at dusk/dawn? It is possible to get into their inner sanctum where they keep their shopwares by letting them open the door and passing in at this opportune time. Roleplayers ought to waltz in stealth in at this time but it isn't necessary. Is that Limburger cheese I smell?

In brief testing, I found that most shop owners locked their windows when they locked their doors - did I just pick my test cases badly? Several shopkeepers carry keys to their back rooms, which can add to the fun - if you can pick their store chest, you can drain all their cash by repeatedly selling them the same item in the daytime (which is even cheesier from a role-playing perspective).

There is one shopkeeper who carries a key to both his back room and the store chest -- that one can be exploited early on with no ranks in pick, providing effectively infinite cash. He doesn't carry much, but shops and their cash refresh daily so long as they are offscreen when the refresh time arrives.