Thief™ Gold

Where to start with Thief? The setting? The sound? The atmosphere? The stealth mechanics? It's a masterpiece through and through.

Thief: The Dark Project is a first person Stealth game developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos in 1998. Thief Gold improves on the original, adding new levels, enemies and several other features. In the sprawling City you play the role of Garrett, master thief and former novice of the secretive Keepers. Through an excellently written story you encounter the orthodox order of the Hammerites and the chaotic Pagans, becoming an unwitting pawn of forces unknown and almost bringing the City to ruin. Using an arsenal of tools which include exotic ones such as water or fire arrows, you must stick to the shadows and accomplish your objectives through fifteen complex levels. Harder difficulty levels add new objectives and enemies and provide fewer resources. Patience is essential and mastering the game's sound and lighting systems is a must. Loot is the main resource of the game, represented by objects of value you must steal in order to procure tools for each mission. Boasting an impressive sound design and an atmospheric soundtrack by Eric Brosius, along with horror elements, Thief makes you forget that you are sitting in front of a monitor and will rob you of your time as quickly as Garrett robs others of their loot. The master thief is brought to life by the very talented Stephen Russell, with Terri Brosius of System Shock fame voicing Viktoria. I recommend Thief Gold on the merits of its story, gameplay and atmosphere. It is a very good game, considered by many to be a pioneer of the Stealth genre. It stands as testament to Looking Glass Studios as a game developer. Praise the Builder!

Odds are, the folks purchasing Thief Gold either played it when it was new, or wished they had. For those, this almost satisfies. The gameplay is fantastic - exactly what Thief was, and should be. That's the good news. The bad news: the GOG.com port doesn't have any cutscenes that tell the story, and Thief's cutscenes were notoriously edgy and cool. Without them, it's a bunch of well-crafted missions with no discernible plot. YouTube to the rescue: all cutscenes are available, in order, at the following link. And since you can alt-tab out of Thief to reach your desktop, you can actually keep up with the story - but it's hardly immersive that way. That's why I can't give it a 5 star rating. It seems it should have been a simple thing to include! www.youtube.com/watch?v=URsk9JyUpuA&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL9F1B213CA942A8F0

Thief is a game all about stealth and thievery. Get tasked to steal a valuable item, preferably without being seen or leaving any corpses. But however you tackle it is up to you due to the three different difficulty options. Normal lets you get away with killing and only focuses on stealing the main objective. Hard and Expert puts in extra objectives and an amout of loot you have to steal, like items for total of 500 coins. With a dynamic light system, great locomotion and soundsteps that make different noises depending on what material you tread on, it all makes for a great suspenseful and sometimes quite scary experience! But what will make you stick through is the fantastic storytelling and the imaginative world. You want to know what happens next and reading various books and scrolls in the levels reveal more about the world and so on. All in all, it's a classic title with surprisingly amount of deftness and subtley, both in gameplay and story.

This is still the best thiefing simulator out there. You have much more freedom to tackle each mission than in its grandchildren like Dishonored.