Thief
| Thief | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| English-language logo of the first part with characteristic lettering | |
| developer |
Looking Glass Studios Ion Storm Austin Eidos Montreal |
| Publisher | Eidos Interactive / Square Enix |
| First title | Dark Project: The Master Thief (1998) |
| Last title | Thief (2014) |
| Platform (s) | Windows , Xbox , Xbox 360 , Xbox One , PlayStation 3 , PlayStation 4 |
| Genre (s) | Stealth computer game |
Thief [ θiːf ] (English for "thief") is a computer game series that founded the genre of stealth computer games , in which clandestine action shapes the course of the game, together with Metal Gear Solid and Tenchu: Stealth Assassins . In the older reporting, the series is also referred to as Dark Project after the German lead title of the first two publications . The series consists of four parts: Dark Project: Der Meisterdieb (1998), Dark Project 2: The Metal Age (2000), Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004) and Thief 4 (2014). The Thief series is considered to have shaped the genre of stealth computer games and influenced subsequent titles such as Deus Ex and Dishonored: The Mask of Anger .
Gameplay
| 1998 - | - Dark Project: The Master Thief | |
| 1999 - | - Thief Gold (Director's Cut Version) | |
| 2000 - | - Dark Project 2: The Metal Age | |
| 2001 - | ||
| 2002 - | ||
| 2003 - | ||
| 2004 - | - Thief: Deadly Shadows | |
| 2005 - | ||
| 2006 - | ||
| 2007 - | ||
| 2008 - | ||
| 2009 - | ||
| 2010 - | ||
| 2011 - | ||
| 2012 - | ||
| 2013 - | ||
| 2014 - | - Thief |
The story of Thief is about Garrett, a master thief who undertakes various raids to secure his livelihood, but most of them turn out differently than he thought.
He turns out to be a selfish antihero and loner . The plot itself takes place mainly in a city with a medieval flair, mixed with steampunk , fantasy elements and with machines that are atypical for this age. All four parts of this city has no name and is usually only the city (Engl .: The City ) called. The atmosphere is reminiscent of a Middle Ages , which was seized prematurely by industrialization and resembles the appearance of the Victorian era . In the first part, for example, there are alarm systems, from the second even robots powered by steam. The locations vary between magnificent or strange noble houses, prisons, old ruins and crumbling tombs . With the help of drawn, stylish cutscenes, the player is informed at the beginning of each mission about Garrett's plans and the location of the action.
During the journey through dark and sometimes seemingly unreal walls and scenes, Garrett meets all sorts of guards and soldiers. Also the priests of a " sect ", called the Hammerites , who serve their god, the builder , as well as undead and mythical creatures belong to the opponents. In Dark Project 2 , however, because of increased criticism, many mythical creatures were removed.
Garrett's greatest enemies are light and noise, because only when he moves silently in the shadows will he not be detected. But if Garrett is found, the only thing that helps is to flee, because a thief is a bad fighter. Only when pushed into a corner is Garrett's sword a halfway good help, but a fight with the same usually doesn't end unharmed. The most important tools on the thief tours are the club , the lockpick and the bow , with which various types of arrows can be fired:
- Rope arrows are used to climb higher areas, but can only be anchored in wood or earth and then taken back with you.
- Water arrows delete annoying light sources such as B. Torches. In the second part of the game series, robots, which have a kind of steam drive, can also be put out of action with water arrows.
- Moss arrows make it possible to move noiselessly on any surface by means of a moss carpet applied with them. Furthermore, in the third part, enemies can be put out of action for a few seconds if they are shot in the face with a moss arrow.
- Noise arrows distract opponents and can be collected again after use.
- Breitkopf arrows can hurt opponents and are also used to generate noise, but go there as opposed to noise arrow to break when you do not shoot in a wooden body.
- Fire arrows explode on impact and cause serious injuries or can, for example, detonate powder kegs or ignite torches.
- Gas arrows are arguably the most efficient weapon in the game because they stun instantly without killing. However, these cost a lot and are rarely available.
Basically the game can be solved without killing a single opponent or knocking unconscious with the stick . At least as far as killing is concerned, this is also specified in the first two parts on the highest level of difficulty as a condition for successfully completing almost all missions. Should the player still fail to achieve this goal, the mission is deemed not to have been fulfilled and the player will be punished with the premature end of the mission.
Factions
There are three main factions in the game:
The Guardians (in the original Keepers ) are an old covenant of observers who are committed to maintaining the balance of the world. Garrett was raised by them, but later decided to part with them. At the same time, however, the training he has enjoyed with them is the basis for his success as a “master thief”. Although he refuses to have anything to do with them, he plays an important role in their prophecies in each of the three parts and works more or less into their hands in the process. The guardians draw their powers primarily from the power of the glyphs (cf. hieroglyphs ), which give them the power of magic and whose books are written in these glyphs. Even if the Guardians largely know what the future will be, they never actively interfere in what is happening in the world. Instead, they make use of Garrett, whom they indirectly lead on the right path. The Guardians only have their first real appearance in the third part of the series, in the previous parts you only see them in cutscenes. The most important of them for Garrett is Guardian Artemus , his former mentor and the only one Garrett even listens to. The symbol of the guardian is the lock or the keyhole.
The Order of the Hammerites (in the original Hammerites ) is a sect of religious fanatics, some of whom are gifted with magic. They have their lives to their God, the "builders" ( Builder ) prescribed. They carry his word out into the city, which in their eyes has little room for sinners and unbelievers . They carry a huge hammer with them, which they use as both a religious object and a defense. Above all else, they despise the unbelievers, the heathen , who worship nature and worship the trickster . Your writings and beliefs are harsh and draconian . The Hammerites focus less on conversion than on torture and imprisonment. Nevertheless, they are the driving force in the city and represent order and religion. Their appearance unites many features of the medieval Christian Church and the Inquisition . Their symbolism is on the one hand the hammer as well as the metalworking process on which many metaphors are based.
The pagans (in the original Pagans ) represent the forces of nature. They pay homage to the forest prince , far away from the cities in forests or underground, abhor any technology and live in harmony with nature and its creatures. Few pagans are experienced in combat, so they rely on cunning and camouflage rather than face-to-face confrontation. They too can work the powers of magic . They don't like the townspeople and the Hammerites see them as their enemies. Her symbol is the trickster's third eye.
Another faction appears in Dark Project 2 , the Mechanists , a schism of the Hammerites, led by the charismatic, self-proclaimed prophet Karras . Even more than the Hammerites, they despise all nature. Also among them are the magical priests of the Karras and the Builder . They invent steam-powered robots and machines, the story of which forms the entire plot in the second part of the Thief series.
Characters
- Garrett: He's the protagonist of the game, an antihero and a sarcastic loner . Although he only wanted to earn a living through his raids, everything turned out differently than he thought. Contrary to his ambitions, he is always included in the stories of the city and prophecies of the Guardians, although he never wanted to. In the German language version Garrett is spoken by Andreas Brucker ( Dark Project ) and Torsten Michaelis ( Dark Project 2 ), in the English original by Stephen Russel .
- Father Karras: A self-proclaimed prophet and fanatic with the idea of destroying all biological life in the world so that nothing but his machines tarnishes the shine of the builder. In the second part of the Thief series, he splits off from the Hammerites and founds a schism of the religion that he calls Mechanists. His plan to exterminate the city with the help of his servants is thwarted by Garrett and he dies at Soulforge Cathedral at the hands of his own children . In the English version , Karras has a serious speech defect, which does not detract from his charismatic personality.
- Caduca: Interpreter Caduca reads out the Guardians' prophecies from the dusty manuscripts in the Guardian's libraries. The interpreter is blind and reads the glyphs in Latin using only her hands. The little girl Gamall translates the spoken Caducas into understandable words.
- Gamall: Translator Gamall is an outwardly young girl who translates the strange texts of Interpreter Caduca . Under her skin, however, is a witch called The Hag , who has been searching for the last of all glyphs for centuries, the only force that could stop her powers. It is to which the prophecy of the Brethren and Betrayer refers. Ultimately, their machinations will be foiled by Garrett and their power will wane. What exactly happened to her after the events of the third part is unknown.
- Guardian Artemus: The Guardian Artemus is another important person in the game. Like all Guardians, he tries to keep the balance between good and evil (or between nature and machine). Prophecy shows that a renegade Guardian will change the world and save it too. Artemus believes Garrett is this renegade and is by his side as best he can. However, it never reveals too much and always appears mysterious. Fans of the series complained to Eidos when Artemus was killed by Gamall in the third installment of the series.
- Cutty: Garrett's client in the first part of the series. When Garrett has to steal a scepter for Cutty, the Hammerites arrest Cutty and lock him in Cragscleft prison. When Garrett tries to free him, Cutty dies of pneumonia, but tells Garrett about a horn that lies in the catacombs of the noble Quinus family.
- Dodger: The dodger is the god of the heathen and appears in the first part under the name Constantine. Garrett was supposed to get him a stone called The Eye from an old Hammerite cathedral and offered Garrett a million gold for it. When Garrett returned with the eye, the impostor revealed his true colors. But Garrett finally managed to replace the eye with a false eye of the Hammerites and thus thwart the swindler's dark ritual (annihilation of humanity with a curse) and kill him.
- Victoria: Pagan, supposed assistant to Constantine and after his death the leader of the Pagans. She had instigated Garrett to steal a magic sword from the swindler's house, which Garrett came into contact with. After tearing out an eye from Garrett in the first part, she disappeared again and only reappeared in the second part. There she asked Garrett for assistance in fighting Karras and his Mechanists. She eventually sacrificed herself in the final battle against the robots of Karras to fill the cathedral with plants enough for Garrett to spread the poison gas in the cathedral and thus defeat Karras.
- Sheriff Gorman Truart: Sheriff Gorman Truart appears in the second part of the series and teams up with Karras. Truart gives Karras prisoners to turn them into mechanical servants. When Garrett breaks into Truart's house to blackmail him with a recording, he is murdered by a heathen hit man.
language
For German players only recognizable from the third part onwards, the Thief series uses dialects for the various fractions. The Hammerites use archaic word constructions as they were spoken at the time of Shakespeare (or as the developers imagined it; in fact, massive errors in the assignment of the conjugation endings can already be found in the excerpt below, which can simply be traced back to the generally prevailing clichés ). The pagans speak a dialect that comes closest to a pidgin language of English , with deliberate but euphonic grammatical errors. The Mechanists speak in prayers that Karras of the Hammerites rewrote .
Hammerites:
“Thy time is not thine own - it needs must be devoted to the great work of our order. When you take your repast, have care that you do not congregate with your fellows, read thou lure yourself and your fellows into delay. Proper time for prayer mayst be taken at dawn, at noon, at eventide, and at night. "
“Your time on earth is not yours - it is for the welfare of our order. If you eat, do it alone so as not to waste your time or that of your brothers. Appropriate times for prayer are dawn, noon, evening and night. "
Pagans:
“If them Paw is tookered without the ritual, them Jacknall's Paw bes will kills they that tookered it. The foolsy Pugleaf bes deaded this way, in his forgetting. Bes will none us ever forget again. "
“The paw will destroy anyone who dares to usurp it without the ritual. The foolish pug leaf had to experience this firsthand. May his death be a lesson for us forever. "
In addition, the word “ taffer ” is used in Thief . The word, which has no meaning in English, is often used to refer to Garrett when he is discovered while stealing. A corresponding translation would be "snooping around". The phrase “ to taffer ” or “ taffing around ” is also used in the same context. Furthermore, in the third part there are speaking statues that have little articulation skills. Her sentences are formulated slowly and often contain repetitions of the same subject to reinforce what has been said:
"Gone and missing and gone and stolen and gone." Or stronger: "Die and die and die and die and die."
The “Kinder des Karras” (guard robots from the second part) represent a further linguistic feature: As soon as they notice something, a sentence is generated from given building blocks, which has the following form: type of perception - what was found - assessment of the situation, z. B .:
"I saw - an intruder - hostile and violent - heard the words of the Karras." Or "I found - nothing - no danger."
Publications
Dark Project: The Master Thief
The first part of the series, published in 1998, is widely seen as a revolution in the gaming world. In the German-speaking world, the game was released under the title Dark Project: Der Meisterdieb . The English original title, however, is Thief: The Dark Project , so the subtitle was used as the title. Although the game presented itself as a first-person shooter , it was ultimately the opposite of action . If the player behaves aggressively and brutally, not only does the concept make no sense, but the solution of some tasks is also impossible.
The game immediately caused a sensation and a solid fan base quickly developed among the players . Quite a few criticized, however, that the idea of a "thief" was neglected in favor of a mystical story. If you initially suspected that you would prove your ability as a burglar at various locations, you were often sent on real adventure trips à la Indiana Jones instead. You also came across opponents for whom sneaking (the real meaning of the game concept) was hardly necessary.
The game was based on the Dark Engine , which was also developed by Looking Glass . Even then, the graphics and the possibilities of the engine were not up to date. Competitors such as B. Quake II or especially Unreal already delivered engines that surpassed those of Looking Glass. Thanks to the hitherto unique concept, however, this deficiency was mostly overlooked.
Dark Project Gold
Dark Project Gold , the director's cut version of Dark Project , was released in 1999. In addition to all bug fixes ( patches ), it also contained three bonus missions that were integrated into the plot. The Gold Edition also came with DromEd , the editor for fan missions that was used to create the original missions.
Looking Glass was also working on a gold edition for the second part, but went bankrupt before publication . The bonus missions for Dark Project 2 were posted on the Internet after a while. However, they are only “basic structures” of the missions. Some fans went to work to expand these basic structures to a complete level.
Dark Project 2: The Metal Age
In 2000 , Looking Glass released the sequel to Dark Project , entitled Thief 2: The Metal Age . In the German-speaking world, the game was released under the title Dark Project 2: The Metal Age, based on its predecessor . Since the second part is based on the graphics engine of its predecessor, both titles had almost the same look and feel. The game principle of the first part was retained, but many things were also added. Due to criticism of the first part, supernatural beings have now been largely dispensed with, instead, true to the title "Metal Age", you encounter many machines and robots in the game . A remote-controlled eye ( camera eye ) has also been added to the player's arsenal . In addition, improvements have been made to artificial intelligence and female guards and soldiers have been added to the game.
In Dark Project 2 , the everyday life of a thief was more in the foreground, which means that most of the time the player is busy robbing the houses of rich people instead of going on an adventure trip as is often the case earlier. According to Looking Glass, in contrast to the first part, the levels were created first and then a complete story was created instead of the other way around.
The song, which can be heard more often in the credits of the game, in the Mechanists' headquarters and elsewhere, is in the German version "Accingite vos" by Subway to Sally .
Thief: Deadly Shadows
The third part of the series was developed differently from the predecessors of Ion Storm , where many Looking Glass employees were taken after the bankruptcy. The game, released in 2004, was based on the framework of Unreal Engine 2 , which was also used for Deus Ex: Invisible War . In contrast to the previous titles, Thief: Deadly Shadows was produced for both Windows and Xbox .
Mainly for these reasons, the game differed greatly from its predecessors in terms of appearance and gameplay and was received far less positively by numerous fans of the old titles.
A big change was the ability to explore the city. Instead of jumping from job to job as in the predecessors, Garrett can now wander through the city between missions and visit dealers , fulfill smaller jobs, etc. The city is no longer a coherent level, but is connected by loading zones. In addition, it is always night when Garrett walks through the streets.
Furthermore, the game offers the possibility to switch between first-person and third-person perspectives and to lean against walls. As a result, it was strongly reminiscent of the Splinter Cell series in places.
In contrast to the two predecessors, the third part has no German-language dubbing.
Thief (2014)
In May 2009, Eidos Montreal announced that the studio was working on Thief 4 and that it was still in the early stages of development. This announcement served, among other things, to attract new employees to the young developer studio. However, work on the game only began some time after this announcement. In March 2012, pictures from the game appeared on the Internet for the first time.
On March 6, 2013 publisher Square Enix and developer Eidos Montreal finally officially presented the game. The fourth part of the series represents a reboot, accordingly simply listens to the title Thief and does not tie in with the events from Thief: Deadly Shadows . The player takes on the role of master thief Garrett. Developer Eidos describes Thief as "a first-person adventure game with an intelligent design, in which the player takes complete control, with the freedom to choose his own path through the levels of the game". It was released on February 28, 2014 for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Windows PCs.
Fan community
After an editor for Dark Project and Dark Project 2 was published, many fans set out to create their own missions. In the meantime, hundreds of such fan missions can be found on the Internet (also in German), some of which are equivalent to some of the original missions or are even more popular. After a petition was started by players for an editor for the third part, this was also published in 2005.
After the end of the official support, the fan community tried to maintain the support of the Thief series for new hardware and operating systems via binary fan patches . In 2010, due to a bug in the distribution of a developer SDK, the Dreamcast source code for the Dark Engine became unintentionally publicly available. In September 2012 a major update of the dark engine became available which retrofitted missing support for modern graphics and sound hardware and operating systems, probably based on the leaked Dreamcast source code . A back porting of this variant for Thief 1 was possible and with further texture and mission fixes of the community this engine patch was combined into a community patch called TFix , an update for Thief 2 ( tafferpatch ) and the editor DromEd were also published.
Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age
Thief 2X is a fan-made, non-commercial expansion for the second installment in the series. It includes a new campaign that includes 13 missions as well as new cutscenes , voice output, etc. The development was strictly based on the original in order to be able to continue the story equally.
Thievery UT
Of Black Cat Games comes a playing in the same universe mod for Unreal Tournament named Thievery , the mid-2002 has been published. In this mod, designed as a team multiplayer game, you can either take on the role of a thief or a guard. The mod still has an active, albeit small, community (as of 2009), but is no longer being developed today. The current version 1.6 is from March 12, 2006.
Nightblade
Also from Black Cat Games comes Nightblade , a multiplayer mod for Unreal Tournament 3 . This mod was originally planned for UT2004 , but the developers have now switched to the newer Unreal Engine 3 . Nightblade should be pretty similar to its predecessor mod Thievery in terms of gameplay .
On February 2, 2009, the development team announced on the official website that the production of Nightblade had stalled due to a loss of members. The remaining participants currently hope to be able to stick to their goals through a reorganization of the project, but do not rule out that the development may have to be abandoned.
The Dark Mod
The Dark Mod is a total conversion of the Doom-3 engine, which represents and builds on the genre of the original series, but for copyright reasons neither original content nor some of the Thief -specific concepts or names (e.g. the Name of the protagonist open). The (already achieved) goal of the core team was to create all the necessary content (sounds, textures, code) and tools (including the DarkRadiant editor ), and the community is now taking on the development of missions and campaigns. The project is driven by volunteers, is freely accessible and should also meet professional standards.
After the first two demo missions Thief's Den (January 2008) and The Tears of St. Lucia (October 21, 2008), version 1.0 followed on October 17, 2009 and since then six more releases.
More than 40 fan missions have been created since 2009, including a 3-mission campaign - some of the missions are also available in German or French. In October 2013, the TDM team released version 2.0 of their game. This is now playable without Doom3 thanks to the open-source id-tech4 engine and the specially created textures and map objects.
Web links
- Thief series at MobyGames (English)
- Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age (English)
- Thievery UT (English)
- Nightblade (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2013/03/18/looking-back-at-one-of-the-series-that-defined-the-stealth-genre.aspx
- ↑ Thief limitations inspired creation of Deus Ex - Spector ( Memento of December 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/dishonored-die-maske-des-zorns/news/dishonored,46378,3005460.html
- ↑ Tom Leonard: Thief: The Dark Project - Postmortem ( English ) In: Gamasutra . July 9, 1999. Retrieved November 12, 2012.
- ↑ Sean Barrett: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project . September 19, 2011. Archived from the original on July 13, 2012. Retrieved on September 21, 2011.
- ↑ News from PCGH on Thief 4
- ↑ http://www.xbox360achievements.org/news/news-14546-Thief-Interview---Bringing-Next-Gen-Into-the-Light.html
- ↑ Thief 4 - The mother of all creeping returns
- ↑ [1] Thief (2014) at GameTrailers.com
- ↑ Timeslip: ddfix - A patch for running Dark Engine games on modern hardware ( English ) timeslip.users.sourceforge.net. May 6, 2008. Retrieved January 16, 2012: “ Worked around broken dithering by forcing rendering to a 32 bit render target, Fixed the issue with missing star textures, Removed the resolution switching between the game and menus, Fixed the texture corruption and crashes caused by nvidia forceware drivers newer than 169.xx, Fixed the issue with multi core processors, Fixed the issue with the video codec becoming unregistered, Adds options to use a higher bit depth z-buffer or to disable the windows key "
- ↑ Quintin Smith: Dark Engine Source Code Found In A Bag ( English ) Rock, Paper, Shotgun. December 14, 2010. Retrieved April 15, 2011: “ As of this weekend, Christmas has come early for the Through the Looking Glass community. A CD's been discovered containing the source code for the Dark Engine, aka the engine used by Thief, Thief II and System Shock 2 (not to mention Irrational and Looking Glass' canceled cold war spy game Deep Cover). "
- ^ "Le Corbeau": Thief 2 V1.19 & System Shock 2 V2.4 ( English ) www.ttlg.com. September 25, 2012. Retrieved November 10, 2012: “ This is an unofficial patch for Thief II: The Metal Age (T2) which updates the game from v1.18 to v1.19, providing improved support for modern hardware and correcting many known bugs. "
- ↑ voodoo47: TFix: unofficial patch for Thief1 / Gold ( English ) www.ttlg.com. October 29, 2012. Retrieved November 10, 2012: “ TFix now uses NewDark (v1.19), the brand new update of the dark engine. TFix 1.12 (110MB) "
- ↑ Craig Pearson: Thief 2 Is Now On Good Old Games ( English ) Rock Paper Shotgun. February 7, 2012. Retrieved November 10, 2012: " [...] discovered that it suffers much of the same resolution and widescreen based trouble from the previous release, but this utility [Tafferpatch] fixed all my troubles [...] ] "
- ↑ Tafferpatcher: unofficial complete patch for Thief 2 ( English ) www.ttlg.com. November 10, 2012. Retrieved on November 10, 2012: “ Included patches: - Patch 1.19 which eliminates all issues with modern hardware, widescreen resolutions, multi-core systems, etc. - Various mission, gamesys, model and texture fixes. [. ..] "
- ↑ News on the Nightblade -Internetpräsenz