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 UPDATE: For details on the new Thief (2014), skip ahead to the more recent posts. Welcome to what I believe is SA's first Thief Thread. The trilogy of games has just recently become widely available on digital distribution services. Since a lot of people have been picking up the games in holiday sales, it seems like a good time to discuss them. At the very least, it'll be good to have one place where the best Theif resources can be referenced. So what is Thief? The original Thief was released by Looking Glass Studios in November 1998. It was one of the earliest games emphasizing stealth, coming out about three months after the original Metal Gear Solid. It features a light and dark mechanic that allows players to tell how exposed they are to passing guards. Sound is also an important factor, with the proximity and intensity of certain sounds raising the awareness of guards by a varying amount. If Splinter Cell is supposed to be realistic stealth and Metal Gear is "action stealth," then Thief is the best of both worlds, allowing the player to advance as they see fit. Many Thief missions will have you robbing cathedrals, mansions, citadels and crypts. Many have multiple entry points and once inside, you can proceed toward your objectives in different ways. It's very much like Deus Ex in that it allows you to a number of different paths toward your objective, more so than simple violence or stealth. Currently the series is a trilogy, Thief: The Dark Project (1998), Thief II: The Metal Age (2000) and Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004). A reboot titled "Thief" (2014) is out Feb 25, 2014, but early impressions are not favorable (skip ahead to the end of the thread for more on this). What's so great about a 16 year old game? For me, it's the setting and story. Thief takes place in a unique mix of dark-fantasy and the early Industrial Revolution. Elements of Steampunk are occasionally introduced as well, especially in the second game, but don't worry, its use is very modest. You won't see many giant mechanical spiders or other Wild Wild West influences here. Wikipedia defines it as "a cross between the Late Middle Ages and the Victorian era, with more advanced technologies interspersed." You play as Garrett, a thief . He's a bit of an anti-hero, but not in the Wolverine sort of way. He's more of the quiet, occasionally smart-alecky type. He was raised by a mysterious group called the Keepers. By the time the first game begins, Garrett has left the group and gone independent. Like the the company's other brands (Ultima Underworld, System Shock), story is key. Reading is encouraged (although usually not essential) and can help players learn more about the world. Moody cutscenes greet the player before every mission. For example, here's the cinematic for the first mission: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnITr3sv0Pc Need more convincing? Just watch this then. Where can I get the games? Both GOG.com and Steam have all three games. Steam currently has all three on sale for $5.99 each. Of course, there's always boxed copies available as well. (As a side note, all digital version have Thief Gold, which includes three extra levels. There are other changes, but I've never played the original so I can't comment on them.) So what should I do to make this work and keep it from looking like rear end? Yes, vanilla Thief 1 and 2 have not aged well, with its 800x600 maximum resolution, no widescreen support and low-res textures, but unlike most games from this era, thanks to a super active fan community it's super easy to fix this! These two patches below have come out within the last few months and make it much easier than previous installs. For Thief 1 and Thief Gold: TFix_1.18 - This is the main file you will need. It comes with its own installer which allows you to pick and choose upgrades. It includes: - widescreen support - custom resolutions - sky and water upgrades - upgraded textures and models - some bug fixes - click the link for a more detailed list. Thief Gold HD Texture Mod - This mod is pretty new and is currently receiving regular updates. I haven't tried it yet, but I hear it works with TFix. Currently only works for Thief 1 as far as I know. For Thief II: The Metal Age: TafferPatcher TMA 2.1.2 Beta: This works in a similar fashion, upgrading a number of different items with its own installer, again, allowing you to pick and choose upgrades. It includes: - The unofficial 1.19 patch which removes all of the issues with modern hardware, including widescreen support, multicore support, triple monitor support, and a ton of other fixes. - It also improves texture resolutions - Improved sky and water - More in the link.  What about Thief: Deadly Shadows (Thief 3)? It uses the same engine that Deus Ex: Invisible War used and suffers from some of the same problems, although not as bad. It suffers from consolization, back when that word carried with it a lot of venom (justifiably in my view). Before trying anything else, consider giving Theif 3 Gold Beta a shot. It's new, so I haven't tried it yet. Additional changes will be added soon, but here's what they have so far: TTLG posted:This version has the following "features": The Thief 3 Sneaky Upgrade adds widescreen and FOV support. It should also fix most of the performance or hardware issues you have. Like the links above for T1 and T2, this one comes with an installer. The Minimalist 1.4.1 mod also looks very promising, altering some of the odd design choices made in T3. You should read the notes in their entirety and make sure you're OK with the changes. It also seems to make some pretty significant changes to the difficulty. If you want to change the difficulty back to something more manageable, open the DEFAULT.ini and change the values. John P.'s Collective Texture Pack 1.0.3 A high resolution texture pack. Installer included. Seems to work OK, but may interfere with some of the other patches like Minimalist. Use common sense when deciding which features to install. You can view a very lenghty tweek guide here. This should allow you to make all sorts of gameplay changes. Most of the other options seem to require more trouble than they are worth, but you'll need to experiment. Other posters may have better advice. Fan missions? Quality fan missions and mods are plentiful. Here are a few: - Thief II: Shadows of the Metal Age is a mod for Thief II that creates a whole new campaign, complete with intro-movies, art, new characters, etc. Upon its release, it was considered extremely ambitious. Trailer here. - The Circle of Stone and Shadow is an in-progress Theif II mod with some maps already released, again, complete with introductory cinematics. Impressive trailer here and a Lets Play here. - The Dark Mod is a total conversion for Doom 3 that recreates the Thief feel in a modern engine. Apparently it's pretty good. - ThiefMissions.com appears to be the most comprehensive Thief fan missions website. Its not pretty, but it does provide the ability to search by game, rating, name and size. Reading this you'll get a good idea of exactly how big the Thief community is. It's BIG. - From the TTLG forums, Upcoming missions that are under development. Still being updated as recently as this month. Fan missions by type including by most recommended. Also, there's this if you need help loading fan missions. Other resources? The best site for Thief related stuff is this forum dedicated to Looking Glass games and other similarly immersive series like Stalker and Deus Ex. The Thief Wiki is good too, but inevitably is going to have some spoilers, so beware. The Steam Forums have a section for Thief as well, like this tweek guide, but beware, some of these links are outdated. There are much easier ways to patch these games up. Here is GOG.com's Thief series forum. Finally, Here's an odd little thread that accumulates a sort of "best of" thread discussions on Thief. Technical Problems? If you're having trouble getting something to work, chances are someone has already encountered that problem, so search around or post here. Also, make sure your saves are actually saving once you begin a new game, otherwise you'll find yourself very upset once you die 30 minutes into a level. If they aren't saving, it's probably because its a write protected folder. Either run the game as administrator, or install to a location not write protected. EDIT: - Added missing link to TafferPatcher. - Added High Resolution Texture mod (T3) and info about difficulty customization for T3. - Added link to Thief Gold HD. - Updated version numbers. - Added info about Theif 3 Gold Beta. - Some info about T4. Other changes. StickySweater fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Apr 6, 2014 |
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Dec 24, 2012 23:06
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Just found this QuakeCon 2012 panel on Looking Glass Studios (System Shock, Thief, etc), which went out of business in 2000. Lots of big names came from Looking Glass and you'll no doubt recognize some of them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1zTTNBwZiY
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Dec 24, 2012 23:45
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Lt. Danger posted:As I heard, with the second game they designed the missions first, then wrote the story to fit (kind of explains the disjointed narrative of the first half or so). I agree the mission quality ended up more variable - sometimes, it's Life of the Party, and sometimes it's Casing the Joint. The mission I really welcomed in Thief 2 was the bank heist mission. Citadels and cathedrals are all well and good, but that was one of the big things missing from T1. There's nothing quite as intimidating (and important for a thief) as a classic big bank heist. Couple that with some interesting internal squabbles and social commentary and you have a pretty good level. I only wish there'd been even more loot scattered about. It seems like that should be the biggest haul Garret ever brings in. It's actually third after Life of the Party (2853) and Casing the Joint (2685), which considering the setting at least makes some sense.
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Dec 25, 2012 20:35
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For the next 8 hours, you can get all three Thief games for $6.74 on Steam.
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Dec 26, 2012 20:03
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Personally, I moved the crouch buttons to the more modernized Ctrl key. If I remember, by default S is walk forward, while W is run forward. I moved the walk forward to the shift key with ASD being your normal side to side and backwards. If I ever want to approach slowly I either crouch and run forward, which is the rough equivalent of a walk upright, or I occasionally (but rarely) use the shift key. Not perfect but functional. Finally, by default ~ clears your primary weapon from your selection queue and backspace clears the secondary queue. I think I eventually moved the secondary clear queue to F. While I'm posting, I might as well give my views on Thief: Deadly Shadows since I've put a few hours into it now. I'd say its a passable game for when it came out, although it's a step back in both the series and for gaming in general. That said, it does look nice. Very moody, if somewhat claustrophobic. Not as bad as I feared and it did make some improvements which were sort of necessary to bring it into the modern age. Oddly enough, my chief complaint is more philosophical and taste based. I don't even think Thief 3 qualifies as being in the same genre as the first two games. The first two Thief games are in the rarely talked about and even rarer to come by "Immersive Sim" genre. That genre title is kinda like RPG, it doesn't really mean anything anymore. That said, it does have several defining features that I miss in gaming. Sprawling open worlds with multiple paths toward objectives is probably the genre's most defining feature. Thief 3 is a Thief game, but it almost feels like playing a spin-off, rather than a game in the main series because this feature is far more limited. StickySweater fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Jan 3, 2013 |
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Jan 3, 2013 15:59
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Lots of theory-crafting here: With regard to Thief 4, as mentioned in the OP, there was this leaked video which is just a piece of a cinematic (which I believe) they were planning on using for E3 last June. A developer, Eric Wong apparently, accidentally posted it or something. So I guess they decided to pull their presentation. My guess is that we'll probably see more this E3. So hopefully 2014 release.
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Jan 3, 2013 20:58
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Thief is back on sale on Steam if you're so inclined. http://store.steampowered.com/sub/14734/
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Jan 4, 2013 08:16
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toggle posted:Can't wait to see what collectables this game will have! Hope it has an Evanescence style soundtrack. Really hope there's that a slow motion slowdown sound effect for cinematic jumps and kills and stuff. I hope there are weapon unlocks and upgrades! Is there a skills tree??? XP?? Imagine 
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Mar 14, 2013 22:02
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It is legitimate to point out that the initial "black nail polish" Garrett is a bad sign that shows poor judgement. That they changed it back to something more familiar is a good sign, but doesn't completely make up for that initial oversight. I don't think we'll know what direction this is really going to take aesthetically until we hear some dialogue -- something beyond some dumb taglines. "What is yours can be mine" from the original game is a good example of a tagline that doesn't really capture the tone of Garret as a character. It's designed to get the user psyched up to be a thief. The only other turnoff I have at this point is the relatively minor title decision. Calling it Thief is just confusing. It'll inevitably be called "Thief 2014" as a result. Like Prince of Persia 2008. That just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
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Mar 15, 2013 17:01
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Wow. That's far worse than I could have imagined. Also, with the use of anonymous sources, is this what game journalism looks like?
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Apr 26, 2013 20:53
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Do you really think someone is going to attach their name to going on record and outing a failed project they were involved in? Not likely. You misunderstand; I was praising them for using anonymous sources rather than just taking the word of the company or outright killing what is obviously a newsworthy story. It's rare to see anything that looks like this in the gaming press.
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Apr 26, 2013 21:32
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Every time I play Thief 1 I do the jumping mode of travel through most of the game. It takes some adjustment once I start Thief 2 though because I forget I can't do that anymore.
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May 16, 2013 15:36
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Isn't Thieves Guild one of the Thief Gold levels? Aren't they generally seen to be somewhat weaker compared to the "core" levels? I thought it was OK, but slog is probably the most accurate term. Fake Edit: It appears that was the case. The other two are The Mage Towers and Song of the Caverns.
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Jun 27, 2013 22:01
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Clearly there was an attempt to move away from strictly supernatural, non-human enemies when they made Thief 2. I think it was a good call at the time, but it may have actually gone a little too far. It works well enough though considering the plot of the games is forces of nature being the primary protagonist in T1 and forces of order and technology being the primary antagonists of T2. Averaged together, T1 and T2 have a good balance for level variety. At the end of T1, I definitely wanted more heist levels with humans. By the time I finished T2, I wanted more caves, underground mines and supernatural nasties. Overall, I'd say playing a thief tends to make me want to trend toward playing the latter more, but both have their moments. I finally finished Thief: Deadly Shadows a few days ago. Speaking strictly in terms of plot, it felt a bit more limited, but still very much a thief game. The ending was a satisfying way to end the series. That said, I don't think I'll be rushing to play it again any time soon. Least not until I get a solid state drive to pretty much eliminate those loading screens. It was a slog to get through, though it did get better as the game went on.
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Jul 8, 2013 15:16
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Accordion Man posted:Eh...then I have a feeling I'm not gonna like this game. I love stealth games but this game feels really anal to me. Is 2 a lot better? 1) Sounds like you've done this, but check your keybindings run/walk/crouching etc, again. I have run set to 'W' and if I want to sneak I use shift (opposite from most games but works well here). Crouching and sneaking simultaneously is sometimes necessary. * Generally, walking mostly upright and knocking people out while moving at full speed is possible. You just have to be quick and on a semi-quiet surface. Now, if you're walking on tile, then yeah, basically impossible to sneak up on someone. That's the only real exception though. 2) Outside of the patch mentioned at the beginning you shouldn't need anything else. 3) T2 is essentially the same. Edit: *Now that I think about it, this is very true in the basement of Lord Bafford's castle (1st level in T1) because the floor is stone. Most areas aren't so hardcore sensitive. Wood, grass and carpet (obviously) don't generate nearly as much sound. StickySweater fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Aug 16, 2013 |
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Aug 16, 2013 17:14
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I'm playing through some of the "most recommended" fan-thief levels right now. Some of them are really pretty impressive. Just playing T1 right now. T2 will come later, but so far I'm enjoying the extra Thief goodness. Calendra's Cistern is probably my favorite so far. If a 10/10 is "Life of the Party," then I'd give this one a 8/10. Geller's Pride is also great (8/10). Bloodstone Prison is solid, if a bit confusing at times. Very good sense of atmosphere though (7/10).
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Aug 19, 2013 18:28
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Shibawanko posted:I liked how nothing of note seemed to exist outside of the City apart from the pagan forest, no larger world is ever mentioned. There were very few major characters and all of them had minor roles except for Garrett himself. I really liked that somehow, I hate when people take a simple story or game and try to make a dumb "universe" out of it with all kinds of magic-ruining backstory and needless fleshing out. For some stories this works, but Thief had a kind of narrative claustrophobia which it thrived on so I don't want a whole cast of generic characters, love interests and background info. I agree of course, but there was a tiny bit of discussion about an outside world. If the Thief wiki is to be believed (they cite things so this is probably accurate), "the city" is at war with a neighboring city called Blackbrook. This is according to documents found in Thief 1. A Baron (who acts as a city head) leads the city and often goes off to fight in wars, in the case with Blackbrook, over economic interests. You really need to dig for this stuff though and it's irrelevant to the larger story. In more modern games, everything tends to tie in to the main story in some way or another so as to "rhyme" as George Lucas might say. If Thief 1 were written today, you'd find out toward the end that the Baron was manipulated by the Trickster into going off to war and leaving the city defenseless. That kind of thing. It's stupid, but is typical of the types of problems you might expect from games made by large committees.
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Aug 23, 2013 15:43
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"Bank Heist Preorder Trailer" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mqB4NTkiyU Edit: Shows very little. What it does show, we've already seen in demos. Meh. StickySweater fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Sep 25, 2013 |
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Sep 25, 2013 17:02
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Not that I want to be seen as necessarily defending this game or DLC in general, but lots of pre-release DLC isn't necessarily an example of financial stress or harvesting a games assets prior to release and public review. There are quite a few games that have a ton of DLC at or after launch, but still manage to be quite good. Just Cause 2 and Dawn of War 2 come to mind.
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Sep 25, 2013 17:48
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Fleve posted:"Every building - chances are I've robed it, slept in it, or pissed up against it. [Or walked through it, ate in it, looked at it, touched it, kicked it. Hell what do I know, there's a lot of stuff you can do with buildings. I think I've smoked in some too. Man, buildings are awesome. That's why I go to every building in the city.]" I'm Master Thief Garret and this is my favorite building in the city.
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Nov 1, 2013 19:09
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Hank Morgan posted:The video in question if anyone cares or wants to put themselves through watching it. Looking at the positive (just for giggles), I'll give credit where its due. The lip syncing does look good. Also, I guess the addition of the girl as apprentice thief was a welcome addition. Many people were complaining that was seemingly not included, so there's that at least. quote:In good Thief games news it seems like the Thief Gold HD texture pack is coming out this week.  Reinstalling...
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Dec 9, 2013 16:37
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What about the darkness shroud? I didn't see it mentioned. That was one of the things that annoyed me the most about the early demos. It was very distracting. If there's an option for a "Light gem" then having the option to turn off the shroud would make it playable. Not day 1 purchase, but $10-$15 maybe.
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Dec 9, 2013 20:39
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If games continue to be made like this -- that is, as much hand-holding "cinematic" sequences as actual gameplay -- I might have to quit video games, grow up and be an adult. Either way is fine I guess, just stop teasing me games industry.
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Feb 12, 2014 16:57
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Yeah, video stream is working now. I'm no day-1 buyer, but it looks OK enough. Visually it's nice. I'm not really a big fan of T3, even though the story was pure Thief universe. I actually think this game might be on par or better than T3 (in terms of gameplay). (EDIT: After looking at the stream, I'm more than slightly skeptical.)
StickySweater fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 05:38
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A couple of quotes from the chat on the video:Leaked Theif 4 Chat log posted:how the hell is this a "stealth" game + how the hell does next gen have loading screens every 5 meters + these npcs dont react to anything + what the *** did they do to thief ?? omfg why
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Feb 20, 2014 15:41
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Too bad this game probably can't be modded. I'd like to see the entire soundtrack replaced by that of Thief (1981) just for kicks. I'll give it this, the game does look nice. Too bad that's basically meaningless without a game to go with it.
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Feb 25, 2014 17:10
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Does music have a separate volume knob? I guess if I wanted to play super-purist-Thief I could turn that all the way down, yes? If so, only cutscene .movs would have music -- or is it all interconnected, on-the-fly generated cutscenes?
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Feb 27, 2014 18:45
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DreamShipWrecked posted:Yeah, there's a reason why they added in the lovely Switch Spotting Mode. From GOG.com: GOG posted:this is a known issue, ctrl, alt and shift keys cannot be mapped normally from the ingame menu. you will have to create the entries manually in the proper bnd file. use this thread as reference. TTLG posted:It seems impossible (on my Win7 system anyway) to map the Control key to crouch from the key config screen. Attempting to do so maps LCTRL, RCTRL, and CTRL all to the same action, which Thief apparently hates and just ignores. I had to manually dig into the BND file and map crouching to LCTRL only, which works, but seems glitchy in that it sometimes takes a second tap to register.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:39
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Thanks for posting that. I've been looking forward to it for about 2 weeks now. As an asside, here is his review of the original Thief: The Dark Project. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/544-Thief-The-Dark-Project StickySweater fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Mar 12, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 19:37
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I kinda want to play Dishonored again, this time without blink at all to try and recapture that Thief feel, but I'm not sure if that's going to be much fun or a chore. Either way, I'm looking forward to the even more stealth friendly Dishonored 2 or whatever. I have to play the two DLCs as well at some point.
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Mar 19, 2014 20:24
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That's kind of a big deal. I will add it to the OP. Thanks. If anyone tries it let me know how it is.
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Apr 6, 2014 05:47
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With regards to Thief 2, that you never see Karrass until the very end of the game, yet he was not some giant spider, alien, Jabba the Hut fat slob type character, but rather just an ordinary looking guy, must have taken great restraint. I was really expecting something else. I'm not totally sure which way is better.
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Apr 16, 2014 15:09
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:28 |
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The game has been out for 1 month, 3 weeks. A rapid discount, no doubt, but I've seen worse.
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Apr 17, 2014 21:48
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