Thief™ 3: Deadly Shadows

One can simultaneously expect too much and too little from the third title in as seminal a series as Thief. Deadly Shadows' chilly public reception of late (I say 'of late', because the game was actually very well received upon release) is further evidence of this fact. While it's true the game suffers from niggling maladies like the removal of swimming and smaller level sizes, these points of contention are, more often than not, exaggerated to an appalling degree by some of the more fanatical elements in the series' fanbase. The truth of Deadly Shadows is that it refines many of the core elements of the series' style of play: Dynamic shadows that can move and thereby radically affect gameplay, a more nuanced audio engine with enhanced sound propagation and finer gradations in noise level, enemy A.I. that FINALLY takes note of stolen objects and missing comrades, and the addition of a city hub that reacts in real time to Garrett's choices throughout the game are all feathers in the cap of Deadly Shadows that the previous games simply do not possess. While I wouldn't put it above Thief II: the Metal Age for sheer scope and replay factor, Thief 3 stands well in advance of The Dark Project for several reasons. Chief among these: It knows exactly what it is. The Dark Project was an experiment. Developer interviews in subsequent years since the game's 1998 release have revealed that most of the team wasn't even cognizant of the fact that they were making a 'stealth' game until just a few months out from launch... and that's very much reflected in the final product. Deadly Shadows, flaws aside, is a stealth game first and foremost. A masterful one. Don't follow the herd and miss out on this masterpiece. You'd be depriving yourself of one of the finest stealth games ever made.

Thief: Deadly Shadows is the third game in the Thief series. Whereas the first two games in the series were released soon after each other and used essentially the same graphics engine, Deadly Shadows came out a number of years later, used a brand new graphics engine, and was the first game in the series to be developed for multiple platforms (not just the PC). --- The new graphics engine results in this game looking much nicer than the previous Thief games. More importantly, this engine delivers even better lighting and shadow effects than before. This is also the first game in the series that lets you play in 1st person or 3rd person perspective, and I thought both were implemented very well. (I particularly liked how while in 1st person view, you could look down and see parts of your body.) Other improvements over Thief II include ragdoll physics (for the unconscious bodies you carry around), the ability to put out candles (as well as torches), and a new mini-game for picking locks. --- The core gameplay is very similar to the other games in this series, and many of the same weapons and gadgets are present, with some minor adjustments. For example, in Thief I and II, you had to hoist the blackjack over your head and then let it fall onto an enemies skull; this resulted in it feeling like it had substantial weight to it, and made each knock-out all that more satisfying. In Deadly Shadows, you just swing the blackjack quickly, and I felt like it had the weight of a wiffle-ball bat. On the other hand, shooting arrows in Deadly Shadows feels even more satisfying than before. When I play Thief I and II, I usually avoid killing any humans, but in Deadly Shadows I can't resist putting arrows through the necks of a few guards. --- The storyline is quite good, and resonates with the stories told in the first two games. The ending in particular brings the series full circle in a very satisfying way. The dialogue and acting are also quite good; the protagonist is voiced by the same excellent voice actor as before. --- The design of most missions in Deadly Shadows is pretty good, but the settings and objectives are not as interesting and original as those found in Thief I and II - with one notable exception! One mission found late in this game is widely regarded among PC gamers as the most interesting, creative, and scary "haunted house" level in any game ever. It's probably worth playing Deadly Shadows for that mission alone. --- Overall I found this game less challenging than the previous games in the series. Once you've mastered the basics of stealth gameplay, taking-out a lone guard with a simple patrol route is child's play; the challenge comes when you encounter multiple guards watching each other's backs or guards with long, complex patrol routes. Unfortunately, Deadly Shadows didn't deliver many situations like that. Even on the highest difficulty, I found it pretty easy to blackjack one guard after another without requiring much planning. --- My biggest complaint with this game is that each map area is much too small, and most missions are broken up into several small map areas which makes the game world feel artificial and really hurts the level of immersion. One of the most innovative things the game does is present a "city" area that serves as a hub; to get from one mission to the next, you sneak through the city, avoiding guards and pick-pocketing civilians as you go. This was a wonderful idea in theory, and if they could have built the city as a single map area it would have tied the game world together nicely. But instead the city, like the missions areas, is broken up into half a dozen tiny maps with noticeable load times between them, which made me eventually hate the whole idea. The last third of the game involves a lot of crisscrossing back and forth through the city, and by the end, I was sick of having to sneak through the same areas so many times and REALLY sick of watching loading screens. --- A few other minor complaints: The objectives screen, while very useful during a mission, is displayed in a ridiculously large font, had no option to hide completed objectives, and required a stupid amount of scrolling as a result. Another frustration was that several times I got stuck on the geometry in the world; this never required me to reload but usually did require 30 seconds of loudly and awkwardly jumping and strafing to get free. Now granted this only happened when I was in unusual spots, like up in the rafters or slipping behind a piece of furniture, but a stealth game should reward--not punish--that kind of exploration. Finally, while I thought the lock-picking mini-game was a slight improvement over the way it was handled in previous games, I found it bizarre that the game reused the same lock-pick combinations over-and-over again (that should have been the simplest thing in the world to randomize). --- So what's the bottom line? The small maps and frequent load screens prevent me from giving this game a ringing endorsement, but if you are already a fan of Thief I and II, I think you will enjoy Deadly Shadows as well. It is true to the spirit of those games, further develops the overarching storyline of this series, and it gets most of the stealth gameplay elements right. If, on the other hand, you've never played Thief I and II, you should play those first, BECOME a fan of them, and then come back to this one.

This is a solid Thief game, despite the compromises made in order to cater for the XBox, on which this title was also released. The open city is a nice derivation from the first two entries to the series, and the development of the story did make me quite jumpy. Plus, it features one of the scariest (if not the scariest) level I have ever experienced in a game, The Cradle. That experience alone is worth the 10 bucks.

Very fun in and of itself. With gameplay that differs quite a bit from the first two in the series, it was a little difficult to get into this at first, but once I did, the more open concept was a welcome addition. After doing absolutely everything there was to be done in the game like three times, I can say that I still wanted more. And really, I don't think I can say that about many games. I did however think it was a little broken to not refer even once to what must have been the aftermath of the metal age of Karras. No steambots or even spare parts lying around. To get my fill of that sort of thing, I had to go play the fan made expansions through http://www.thief-thecircle.com/ (I may have even made one or two inferior levels myself). I highly recommend the t2x project.