Thief: The Dark Project

Looking Glass Studios

I keep saying that this blog is going to cover boomer shooters and immersive sims, and today I aim to make good on that second promise. There's been plenty of debate on what makes an immersive sim, let alone what an immersive sim even is. This isn't the space to litigate that, but there has been comparatively less controversy on what the first immersive sims were, with Warren Spector, the coiner of the term, pointing to Ultima VI: The False Prophet and especially Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss as the progenitors of the immersive sim. But while these games — which Spector worked on — laid the groundwork, we can really point to Thief: The Dark Project (which he also worked on) as the first "true" immersive sim, or at least the one that best demonstrated the design philosophy of immersive sims.

The premise of Thief is simple: you are Garrett, a master thief. You live in a sprawling city in a fantasy world that is not terribly forthcoming with details on the broader setting (who is the Baron? Why is the City nameless? Why are the neighboring cities Cyric and Bohn at war? Who knows?) Aesthetically speaking, the City and its technology level is a hodgepodge of Renaissance Europe with Victorian London, with touches of 1920s art deco, German expressionism and film noir.

As befits the premise, Thief is a stealth game, through and through. Garrett was raised by a secretive organization called the Keepers, about whom little is revealed save that they hide in the forgotten corners of the city, they view Garrett as important to their plans somehow, and they're notorious for talking in riddles and being as obtuse as possible. They taught him the art of being unseen, and to that end you'll have the ability to seemingly disappear entirely in darkness, with only physical touch giving you away. A "light crystal" — really just a UI element — shows you how visible you are, with the idea that it reacts to how much light it's currently in. To aid your thieving, you'll be armed with some tools: a sword for defense; a bow with which you can fire a variety of arrows, from typical broadheads to water arrows to put out torches with; your requisite set of lockpicks; flash bombs; and more. A typical level might see you breaking into some fat nobleman's manor, dodging guards and servants, and stealing everything valuable that's not nailed down, often including something particularly juicy. Most of the time you'll be tasked with reaching a given minimum amount of loot; you'll be using that loot to buy equipment for the next job. And so on. Most of the time your enemies are perfectly ordinary. From guards of varying levels of intelligence, to heavily armed religious zealots, you'll be robbing all sorts of inhabited places, ideally without being seen, but if you have to take someone out, make sure you stash them somewhere out of the way. Sometimes, though, you'll have to go somewhere a little darker; one early mission has you descending into a sprawling tomb complex, and not all the dead are restful. And that's not even getting to the strange monsters that assault the city in the game's climax.

Thief: The Dark Project might seem a little strange to modern players. Certainly, there are people who ding it for its fantasy horror interludes, and prefer the more down-to-earth experience of Thief II: The Metal Age. Obviously, there's no accounting for taste (I personally love the horror aspects of Thief, and most of my favorite fan missions tend to lean in that direction) but in total fairness to the game, the shifting tones of the game can be attributed to its development. While Thief has no connections to Ultima, beyond both franchises being set in fantasy worlds, there are some links that do place Ultima in Thief's DNA. For starters, Looking Glass Studios was founded by former Origin Systems personnel; originally called Blue Sky Productions (not to be confused with Blue Sky Software, the Vectorman guys,) its first game was an ambitious dungeon crawler with simulation elements, originally just titled "Underworld" before being rebranded as Ultima Underworld. Beyond the Ultima background, Thief's own development history led it through some weird territory, including a concept for a humorous Cold War sci-fi game where you fight zombies with a sword, as well as a sinister take on Arthurian legend tentatively titled Dark Camelot. Little wonder, then, that Thief would have everything from zombies to lost civilizations to monstrous underlings of a violent god of nature. Probably there was also some influence from Tomb Raider, at that point already a blockbuster franchise: aside from Garrett making direct reference to it, both games were published by Eidos and sold in the iconic trapezoidal packaging that stood out on game store shelves.

Eleven months almost to the day after Thief: The Dark Project's release, Eidos would release Thief Gold. Like the Gold editions of Tomb Raider games, Thief Gold is a re-release of the game with numerous bugfixes and new content, in this case three new missions of varying quality, inserted into the game's storyline, as well as a bonus "blooper reel" mission to show off some of the game's quirks and development history. While not everyone likes the new content, or at least some of it, Thief Gold remains the definitive version of Thief: The Dark Project and is the version available on modern digital distribution platforms.

A big part of Thief's success is its atmosphere. Each chapter is preceded by a "briefing" cutscene, a series of sepiatone images as Garrett narrates his plans, priming players for the job ahead of them. The game's use of sound and lighting made for a profoundly atmospheric experience, one of the best to ever do it. Even the voice acting was top notch for 1998, with a variety of different character types, especially with the guards, who range from gruff professionals to loud dumbasses (known in the fandom as the "Benny" archetype.) Legendary voice actor Stephen Russell is the voice of Garrett, a role that likely has defined his career even as he has taken other iconic roles in the years since. There's also something comforting in its low-poly aesthetics; using an early version of the criminally underrated Dark Engine, Thief boasted no colored lighting like its followup, very similar to the original Quake (which also had a lot of atmosphere and impressive use of light and shadow; I even remember there being a stealth mod for Quake.)

More than that, though, is just the way the game plays. As befits an immersive sim, Thief uses a variety of systems that interact in interesting ways that aren't necessarily coded by the developers. Torches generate light; tile floors generate sound. You don't want to be seen or heard, and you have a number of ways to avoid doing either. You could douse the torch with a water arrow, or simply hide in the existing shadows while a guard checks the room on his rounds. You could lay down a patch of sound-dampening moss, or if you're brave, you could simply walk slowly to avoid making too much noise. Everything from the AI to the lighting system to the sound system to everything else is designed to interact with each other. "Emergent gameplay" is a buzzword that gets tossed around a lot, but there's a lot of different ways to approach a problem in Thief.

Despite the game's age, it's still quite playable with NewDark (a terrible name, but whatever.) Released by surprise in 2012 based on code discovered on an old development drive leftover from the canceled Sega DreamCast port of System Shock 2, NewDark is effectively a source port of sorts that aims to update the engine for modern systems. While it's essentially a Thief II port, it runs the original game just fine, plus a few QOL additions from Thief II like being able to eavesdrop through closed doors. I also found out that it has the very cool feature of a subtitles system, allowing you to play the game with in-game closed captions for the very first time. That's a big deal for me!

In spite of this, you'll still need to do some setup. The GOG release of the game features an outdated version of NewDark, and to my knowledge the Steam version doesn't have NewDark at all. TFix is the go-to method for updating Thief; your options are the original TFix, or TFix Lite, which eschews most mods. The full version of TFix also includes graphical updates, including backporting Thief II's updated character models. You could also go with RoguePatcher, which I did for this most recent playthrough, but it installs the Enhancement Pack 2 mod, which I'm not the biggest fan of.

Speaking of mods, I did fool around with some for this playthrough. One was a mod that made carried bodies match the actual character model of whoever you were dragging around (it otherwise defaults to a Hammerite, one of the aforementioned religious zealots.) The other was a lantern mod that served as a flashlight of sorts in darker areas, which came in handy. I also used the Thief II models and a version of Enhancement Pack 2 with the world textures deleted, leaving only the new object models. Sometimes the new models stood out against the 1998-era textures, especially on doors, but that doesn't bother me so much, especially after I disabled texture filtering.

As you might have guessed, there is still an ongoing community around Thief. The existence of a map editor has led to a cottage industry of "fan missions" still going strong after nearly thirty years; you can find several good listings here, and Thief Guild is probably the best place right now to get them. I don't have a lot of love for the Thief community for reasons not worth getting into here, but I can't deny that a quarter-century of creativity puts it up there with Doom in terms a faithful community still making content for an old game. The fandom might be smaller but the output is pretty comparable in terms of relative size.

Thief is one of my favorite games of all time. I'd been excited for the opportunity to play through it again, and my other project had a bit of a video game dry spell (turns out, watching five TV series with a total of over sixty episodes is a lot of TV!) so it felt good to play something different for a while after all that Call of Duty. And all it's done is make me want to play more Thief, so definitely expect some fresh Thief content in the coming months.

MISS1: A Keeper's Training

Randy Smith, Greg LoPicollo, Mark Lizotte

An optional training mission, set a number of years before the main game as Garrett learns how to be a Keeper. You get a glimpse of the Keeper compound, including their characteristic circular libraries, as well as a rare daytime sky. Otherwise, it's as linear and safe as can be — not even the guy who teaches you to fight can hurt you.

MISS2: Lord Bafford's Manor

Dorian Hart

The first real mission of the game. As Garrett explains, it's a pretty simple job, dominated by a single medium-sized residence with not a lot of security. The only way in is via the well-house outside the manor walls, necessitating a bit of a swim until you reach the broken cellar wall. From here you have the run of the place so long as you mind the guards. The trickiest part is Bafford's personal quarters, as a pair of guards patrol a tiled corridor with only some rugs to deafen your footsteps. Otherwise, a decently lukewarm dip into the game proper. Fun fact: if you grab the one piece of loot at the end of the training level, you can use the additional cash in the item shop.

MISS3: Break from Cragscleft Prison

Mike Ryan, Tim Stellmach, Ian Vogel

The introduction of the Hammerites is appropriately medieval: a dark, dank prison built over an old haunted mine up in the mountains. You're here to rescue the fence who gave you the Bafford job, but as often happens, things get complicated. The difficulty takes a bit of a spike here with lots of blind corridors and tricky shadows, not to mention your first encounter with zombies, who roam the mines and are unkillable without the aid of holy water (luckily there's an old chapel nearby.) Upstairs the Hammerites regularly patrol the prison compound, and given that the prison has four identical wings and you'll need to visit at least two of them (three on expert) means it's easy to get lost.

MISS4: Down in the Bonehoard

Dorian Hart, Nate Wells

Time for a little dungeoneering. It's a sprawling tomb and you're here to raid it. Your primary objective is the Horn of Quintus, which you'll hear long before you see it, but depending on your difficulty level, you'll also have to retrieve one or both of a pair of gems called the Mystic's Heart and the Mystic's Soul. The first part of the mission is pretty straightforward, working your way through a series of catacombs and chambers before stumbling on one of the game's most annoying enemies: the burricks. They nest in groups and dig great warrens beneath the earth, and you'll have to get past them to reach the final area, a large, confusing maze made up of several tall octagonal chambers that connect to each other with a variety of catwalks and ramps. Oh, and it's full of zombies. The Gold version adds a "fire shadow," a flaming figure whose sole purpose is to drop fire crystals for your bow to solve a necessary puzzle. It's a weird, abstract little level that, more than almost any other in the game, reminds me of Quake.

MISS5: Assassins

Mike Ryan, Greg LoPiccolo

One of the best missions in the game, "Assassins" is on paper another manor job like Bafford's, but with the twist that you'll first have to tail a pair of would-be assassins after they murder a shopkeep by mistake. There's a lot of ways in and out for the observant thief, and despite the lack of a map, the manor itself is laid out pretty straightforwardly. There aren't too many guards, but watch that you don't bump into the servant on his way to or from the basement. Fantastic music. Definitely one of my favorite missions.

MISS15: Thieves' Guild

Sara Verrilli

One of Thief Gold's most controversial additions to the game, "Thieves' Guild" is, on paper, a twofer manor raid. In practice, it's a lengthy, complicated, and well-patrolled rat's nest of two manors, a restaurant with an illicit basement casino, and an enormous maze of sewer tunnels and basements, all occupied and well lit. The map isn't terribly helpful for getting your bearings, and on higher difficulties the loot limit is extremely tight. More often than not, when I reach the end of the mission, I realize I've forgotten both to get a mandatory piece of loot down on the other end of the map, and I haven't enough loot besides; I usually just skip ahead at that point. I like this mission in theory, but in practice it's a slog.

MISS6: The Sword

Sara Verrilli, Nate Wells

Get ready for the strangest mission in the entire game. You're tasked with finding a sword somewhere in a nondescript mansion. You have almost no guidance for what's inside, and it's clear pretty early on that this is no ordinary mansion. The first floor is almost normal, but the deeper you go, the more topsy-turvy things get, with rooms in all sorts of directions, a massive interior garden space, a literal forest, strange giggles as you explore various rooms, and more. The Gold version adds an entire new section called Little Big Land, a Lilliputian adventure where after a brief visit to a miniature village, you go down the drain and wind up in a massive, oversized pair of rooms that evoke the "Rats" genre of Half-Life (and Counter-Strike) maps that Chris Spain pioneered in 1999. All in all, an unconventional, difficult map that most embodies the strange turns the original Thief takes. I didn't like this mission when I first played it, but it's really grown on me.

MISS7: The Haunted Cathedral

Randy Smith

Marc Laidlaw, accomplished author and erstwhile lead writer for Valve Software, once cited Thief: The Dark Project as a major influence. Given the similarities of "We Don't Go To Ravenholm" to "The Haunted Cathedral," I can most certainly see it. In "The Haunted Cathedral," you've been commissioned to track down a mysterious artifact known only as the Eye, which is currently located within an abandoned Hammerite cathedral deep in the Walled Section, a sealed-off area of the City's Old Quarter that suffered a disastrous outbreak of the undead some fifty years prior. What remains is a haunted neighborhood of empty streets covered in dead leaves, ruined buildings, and the scorchmarks of once-great fires. Zombies and ghosts wander the desolate maze of thoroughfares and alleys, spiders hunt the dark corners of the ruins, and burricks and craymen (this being your first encounter with them) burrow tunnels beneath. The only other appearance of the fire shadow in Thief Gold can also be found here. While there are plenty of emergency lights still operational, most of the power grid is otherwise offline. You can reactivate parts of the grid at will, though you may not want to, to better get the drop on the creatures that lurk the windswept streets. While "Return to the Cathedral" gets top billing, this is my favorite "horror" mission in the game.

MISS16: The Mage Towers

Rafael Brown, Sara Verrilli, Mike Chrzanowski

Your trip to the Haunted Cathedral was something of a bust, but now you have a new quest: find four elemental crests to unlock the magic sealing the place up. They're scattered in a few different places, and your first destination is a college of elemental mages, keepers of the Earth Talisman. Their fortress is made up of a central keep and four elemental-themed towers. Aside from a heavy guard presence, the mages themselves are no pushovers, and inside their towers they're an extreme threat given the frequent lack of shadows, noisy floors, and blind corners, to say nothing of the environmental hazards. Honestly, my least favorite mission in the whole game.

MISS9: The Lost City

Mike Ryan, Tim Stellmach, Greg LoPiccolo

Where's Mission 8? Who knows. Like "Bonehoard" or "Haunted Cathedral," it's another lengthy Dungeons & Dragons-style adventure mission. This time around you'll be exploring the caverns deep beneath the city in search of the Fire Talisman. At the bottom lies the ruins of a once-great civilization of vaguely Egyptian/Mesoamerican cast. In addition to the expected hazards of lava (everywhere!) and a few traps, the ruins are not unoccupied: burricks lurk in the ruined streets and nest in some of the buildings. And they're not alone: this is also your first introduction to fire elementals, floating balls of fire that spit fireballs at you. On the plus side, one water arrow will douse them, so bring plenty. In the original version of this mission, you also had to deal with craymen; in Thief Gold, they've been swapped out for an expedition of Mages who mostly occupy the southernmost ruins. Also changed for Thief Gold is the fact that the Water Talisman, previously located in the Emperor's Tomb, has been given its own mission. It's a big quest; you're going to spend some time down here, as the tunnels can be confusing and the map you're given is a little vague.

MISS17: Song Of The Caverns

Terri Brosius

This one's a little bait-and-switch. The initial premise seems like another colossal cave adventure: journey into the flooded caves beneath the city in search of a fortified shrine that the Keepers built to house the Talisman of Water. After getting past a bunch of spiders and craymen you'll find the shrine, but the Talisman is gone. As it turns out, it was stolen by the guard of the nearby opera house at the behest of its owner, Lady Valerius. With a little help from the opera house's previous owner, your job is to break into the opera house, retrieve the Talisman, and rob the place blind in the process. Plenty of secret passages make getting around the largely bi-symmetrical building unseen a little easier, but there are still a lot of tile floors and a few awkward spots. Fun mission.