The "What should I know before I play this game for the first time?" Q&A!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The "What should I know before I play this game for the first time?" Q&A!

Retroblique: Oct 16, 2002; Now the wild world is lost, in a desert of smoke and straight lines.

Thief: The Dark Project

Thief is a first-person sneaker, not a first-person shooter.
Many people gave up on the game without ever getting past the first level, all because they tried to play the game like a shooter. It sounds ridiculous now, but at the time Thief came out stealth-based elements in first-person games were a new concept to many gamers. Anyone used to the likes of Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake defaulted to plowing through levels, taking enemies head-on. I lost count of the number of otherwise intelligent gamer friends who simple gave up on Thief, complaining, "The sword fighting is just too hard! I end up with a million guards chasing me through the level and it's impossible to kill them all!"
Seriously, if you're constantly getting into sword fights with enemies, you're not playing the game the right way. You could technically muddle through the game on the default "normal" skill setting if you choose the "sword & plow" method of gameplay, but you won't really have much fun. On the "expert" skill setting it's almost impossible to play this way, because you're not allowed to kill human NPCs.
You play Thief by sticking to the shadows (there's a light meter that indicates the ambient lighting of your current location), moving quietly (different surfaces create different sounds, speed is a factor), finding safe havens to evade enemy patrol routes, etc. If you want to take enemies out, sneak up on them, render them unconscious and hide their body. Enemies are intelligent enough to react if something looks out of place -- i.e., they come across a body, discover a locked door open, find an object missing, etc.
While it's not explicitly documented, you can play System Shock 2 (which uses the same tweaked Dark Engine as Thief II) the same way.
The skill levels don't add more enemies or give them more stamina and heightened awareness. They give you additional side missions, require you to collect more loot and ensure that you don't kill any humans. In other words, the "hard" and "expert" skill levels basically double the length of the game, open up more of the levels for you to explore and require that you generally act more thief-like. I recommend starting on "hard". The "normal" (easiest) skill level is just there as a concession to people who find stealth-like gameplay confusing.
Yeah, there's zombies to deal with. But their AI is pretty much identical to the human enemies, meaning you can hide from them in the shadows too. Not only that, but you can kill them without penalty and there's many interesting ways you can do that. Arrows dipped in holy water. Hammerite holy symbols dipped in holy water. Overheard sword strikes while they're unaware. If you want to evade them, they're pretty slow too. Trust me, you'll miss their presence in Thief II (a small cameo appearance aside).
Read all the scrolls and books you come across. There's lots of great world building there, as well as clues to secret caches of loot and hidden areas of the game. You sort of miss System Shock's method of voice recorded logs, but they function in much the same way. Thief II does give you voice recordings in later levels, but it's all done in a plausible way.
If you're buying this game on eBay (or anywhere else really), make sure it's the Thief Gold edition, not the vanilla Thief: The Dark Project. The former's the most common, but be careful. You can't patch vanilla Thief into Thief Gold. Thief Gold basically adds three new missions (which are interwoven into the existing story and not tacked on as optional extras), overhauls a couple of others and generally tweaks, optimizes and removes bugs in all of them.
The game's a complete bitch to get running on modern systems, but it's well worth it. You'll have a (slightly) easier time of it if you're running Vista and an 8x or 9x NVIDIA card (or ATI equivalent). It seems to be a lot more problematic on XP and older NVIDIA cards. The TTLG forums are full of knowledgeable people who can help solve most compatibility issues.
There's a very active fan community that still continues to churn out exceptionally well-designed levels. You'll need a front-end GUI called Dark Loader that makes the process painless. Keep an eye out for T2X: Shadows of the Metal Age. It's a full-length sequel to Thief II that borders on Looking Glass quality in places. Also look out for The Seventh Crystal, which features the best-designed/most atmospheric mansion mission that anyone's ever created for Thief. (Plus there's a great scare moment that will require you to be peeled off the ceiling.)
Many people on Thief's development team went on to work on System Shock 2 and BioShock. What more of an excuse do you need?

# ¿ Oct 10, 2008 16:09

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 08:49

Retroblique: Oct 16, 2002; Now the wild world is lost, in a desert of smoke and straight lines.

Morpheus posted:

Are you sure? I seem to remember always having them find me in the shadows, no matter how well I was hidden.

I think they're a bit more persistent with their searching once they're alerted to your presence, but by default they will behave like the guards and can pass within inches of you if you're hidden/undetected without them wanting to snack on your brain.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2008 02:24

Retroblique: Oct 16, 2002; Now the wild world is lost, in a desert of smoke and straight lines.

Skilleddk posted:

Assassin's Creed 2

Don't be afraid to spend money restoring Monteriggioni. The sooner you start restoring it, the sooner it starts pumping out extra cash for you to collect and spend. You'll soon reach a point where you can't spend money fast enough.

Try to do as many Codex missions as you can before moving on to trigger the next Memory Sequence. You will need to find every single piece of Codex in order to complete the game. If you decide to "save them for later" you'll reach a point near the end of the game where you have to go on a massive Wind Waker-style collection quest to round them all up.

If you're playing the PS3 or 360 version, buy the two main DLC packs before you start playing the game. It integrates them seamlessly into the main game and extends the overall running time by a couple of hours. They're already included in the PC version.

At some point deep into the game you may find yourself trying to climb a tower, only to find yourself halfway up with no apparent way to reach the top. Don't worry, you're not missing anything. You'll unlock the ability to climb it properly later on as part of the main quest.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2010 13:46

Retroblique: Oct 16, 2002; Now the wild world is lost, in a desert of smoke and straight lines.

I've had the X3 games (Reunion, Terran Conflict and Albion Prelude) sitting in my Steam account for ages but never really touched them. I've enjoyed a whole range of space combat/trade/sim games so figured I'd get something out of these games eventually, but I also understand they can be a bit esoteric.

Should I play all three, or should I skip any of them? Any newbie traps that could gently caress me up in the long run? Basically, what should I be doing in my first few hours of the game(s)?

# ¿ Aug 29, 2013 05:25

Retroblique: Oct 16, 2002; Now the wild world is lost, in a desert of smoke and straight lines.

Currently playing Mass Effect 2. I checked out the game's entry on the wiki, but one thing it doesn't tell me is at which point I should ideally be playing The Shadow Broker DLC.

I'm about 30 hours into the game but have still yet to trigger the IFF mission. I've spent all this time getting the squad together, doing all their loyalty missions, doing every side quest, etc. I'm currently just finishing up the Kasumi DLC, then I'll have a few minor side quests to mop up, then I'll need to decide whether or not to do the Shadow Broker before I complete the game or vice versa.

I get the feeling that it ultimately doesn't matter. BioWare apparently wrote the Shadow Broker dialogue from the perspective of someone who's finished the game, seeing as that's the order in which they were released. But some people are saying that some of the upgrades you get via Shadow Broker are useful to have during the ME2 endgame.

I guess what I'm most curious about is whether or not any of your decisions in Shadow Broker carry over to ME3, in which case I'll probably want a save game that reflects that.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2014 00:56

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 08:49

Retroblique: Oct 16, 2002; Now the wild world is lost, in a desert of smoke and straight lines.

Dr. Quarex posted:

The Thief reboot (I could have sworn I saw hints for this somewhere, but nothing on BeforeIPlay)?

For starters it's nowhere near as bad as some people make out.

I'd describe myself as a pretty hardcore fan of the original Looking Glass games -- I've loaded up Thief Gold and Thief 2: The Metal Age every other year since their original release and consider them some of the best games ever made -- but I quite enjoyed New Thief and it didn't send me into the paroxysms of rage inflicting much of the Thief community. If you wade into the game expecting a Looking Glass-esque experience, looking for things to annoy your inner Thief fan, you're going to have a miserable experience. Go into it with a more open mind and treat it as a new stealth IP that just so happens to borrow some trappings from the original games.

Before you start playing the game though, head into the Game & HUD options menu to turn off as many of the Babby's First Thief crutches as you feel comfortable with. By default the game holds your hand way too much, so by turning all those aids off you'll make it more like the original Thief experience. For the record I've got mine set as follows, but your mileage may vary:

Focus mode: On
Navigation prompts: Off
Interaction prompts: On
Waypoint markers: Off
Threat icons: Off
Threat health meters: Off
Mini-map: Off
Mini-map rotation: Off
Reticle feedback: On
Journal updates: On
Pick-up notifiers: On
Light gem: Off
Object highlights: Off
Loot glint: Off
Lock-pick helper: Off
Frame-search helper: Off
Location updates: On
Health meter: Timed fade
Focus meter: Timed fade
Ammo counter: Timed fade
Weapons bar: Timed fade

All of that actually encourages you to explore your environment, take note of your surroundings, and really dig into every nook and cranny, rather than just blindly running from one waypoint marker to the next, grabbing everything shiny along the way. You can still access a map via your journal screen if you do get hopelessly lost though. Turning the light gem off might seem odd given how the original Thief made use of it, but there's other subtle clues as to your level of visibility -- the edges of the screen take on a dark or light vignette depending on whether or not you're "hidden" or "visible", which functionally does the same thing as the light gem.

Also, when you start a new game, check out the the Custom difficulty level and take a look at the various things that further tweak the Thief experience. You can do things like turn off the manual saving system to use a checkpoint one instead, reduce the number of upgrades or tools available to you, turn on no-kills or no-alerts, enable iron man mode, etc. You may want to just ignore these for your first play through, especially if you haven't played a Thief game before, but they're all there to essentially let you customize your own New Game+ experience.

I'm not blind to the game's flaws, but really most of them are blown way out of proportion. There's a lot to enjoy there and it's a fun experience, just as long as you leave any existing Looking Glass/Classic Thief baggage at the door.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2016 07:54

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The "What should I know before I play this game for the first time?" Q&A!