If there’s one thing this city’s taught me, you can put a price on anything. Secrets, reputations… a life. And trust? If you have to ask, you can’t afford it. But then I suppose none of that matters when you’re me. After all… when did I ever pay for anything?Welcome to another year of TA Playlist! January is a time of new beginnings, where many of us take the opportunity to examine our previous year and look for ways to improve our lives, cut out bad habits, or reinvent ourselves. Video games do this from time to time as well, dusting off an old franchise and remaking or reimagining it for a new audience. That’s why we decided to make January a “New Beginnings” month for the TA Playlist poll, following a suggestion by MorseyBaby and fleshed out by several other users in the TA Playlist Game Suggestion Thread. Our four nominees included DmC: Devil May Cry, King’s Quest, and Shadow Warrior, but one game snuck out to an early lead and stole the victory. The winner of the January 2024 TA Playlist poll was the stealth-action reboot Thief.The Thief franchise got its start back in 1998 with the PC release of Thief: The Dark Shadows, which was developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. Following the exploits of a master thief named Garrett, The Dark Shadows pioneered the use of first-person perspective in a stealth game, as well as using dynamic light and darkness as integral game mechanics. The Dark Shadows received critical acclaim for its open levels, which gave the player freedom to choose how to approach missions and explore the game’s world, something which all subsequent entries in the series have tried to emulate.Flipy Fliperson said:I loved this game. I finished it many years ago, then decided to stack the 360 version. I loved trying to sneak around and steal everything not bolted down.The Dark Shadows was followed by Thief II: The Metal Age for PC in 2000, which stayed pretty close to the mechanics of the original. Looking Glass Studios shut down a couple of months after the release of The Metal Age, so Eidos turned over the next entry, 2004’s Thief: Deadly Shadows, to Ion Storm, the studio most famously responsible for the first two games in the Deus Ex franchise. Deadly Shadows was critically praised but not as highly rated as the first two entries for the series, and it failed to meet financial targets, leading to the cancellation of the planned Thief 4.Fast forward more than five years, to 2009. Ion Storm had also been shut down, leaving Eidos (now a subsidiary of Square Enix) with a languishing IP and no studio attached to it. Rather than carrying on with another sequel, it was decided that the time was right for a reboot of the franchise, and pre-production of a new Thief 4 started at Eidos Montreal, a relatively new studio that was at the time working on its first release, a little game called Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Ten years after Deadly Shadows, the long-awaited fourth entry in the franchise was released – now simply called “Thief.”deathbwithu said:When I first played this game back when it released, I really didn’t enjoy it all that much. Then I played it again recently to get the completion and found myself enjoying it more than I thought I would. It can be bland at times, but it is rare these days to get a full on stealth game.The 2014 game is set in a Victorian/steampunk era, several hundred years after the original trilogy, with a new Garrett (possibly a descendant or reincarnation of the main character from the previous games) meeting up with fellow thief and former protégé Erin to start their next job. They’ve been hired to steal a mysterious gem from the manor of Baron Northcrest, the tyrannical ruler of the City. Following Erin through the streets and over the rooftops, you learn the basics of movement and sneaking and also learn that Erin is a bit reckless compared to Garrett, who prefers to ghost through an area and not kill guards unless it’s absolutely necessary.Garrett and Erin reach their destination, and, observing through a skylight, they see the Baron himself with several robed and hooded figures performing an arcane ritual using the very object they were sent to pilfer. Garrett immediately calls off the job, deciding that the payoff is not worth the risk, but Erin is not ready to give up. The two thieves scuffle on the rooftop, with Erin inadvertently crashing through the skylight just as the ritual below is completed, shooting a column of blue energy up into the sky. Garrett tries to save Erin, but she falls directly into the beam of light, while Garrett crashes to the floor and blacks out.Garrett awakens to find that a year has passed, and much has changed in the City. A plague called “the Gloom” is spreading among the population, and the City Guards are enforcing a cruel lockdown to control the spread of the disease. The Queen of Beggars believes that the Baron’s failed ritual has unleashed a terrible power upon the City, an unnatural force known as the Primal, and that Garrett will have a role to play in setting things right.At first, Garrett wants nothing to do with the politics of the City, but he still has to make a living, and after fulfilling his next couple of contracts for a man named Orion, Garrett finds himself embroiled with an underground resistance movement while being hunted by the merciless Thief-Taker General. What’s more, Erin did not actually die that night, instead absorbing all of the Primal power unleashed during the ritual. Now Garrett must use his skills to stop the various factions who want to use the power of the Primal for their own ends if he hopes to save Erin… and the City.The Noto said:This game is a lot tighter than people give it credit for. I really am enjoying it. […] Just finished the campaign. Honestly had a blast with this. I quickly got into the groove, played this on the Series X, and I have no real complaints except some of the interactables were a pain in the ass. Like turning valves sometimes felt really smooth and other times very choppy and no real feeling as if I was doing anything differently. Happy that the TA Playlist encouraged me to go back to this.Thief is one of those games that didn’t hit the mark with critics back when it first released, earning a Metacritic score of just 69/100 for the Xbox One version, but despite the lackluster reviews, it seems to have found favor with a certain audience over time.bennjjee said:I really liked this game. Excellent stealth gameplay and replayability of missions. I sense it’s got a bad rep which is a little unfair. Oh, and the island mission scared the bejeesus out of me!ShortyTheShort said:Never understood the hate for Thief. It’s drenched in atmosphere and the world has a feeling of loneliness that can also feel quite creepy at times. I can understand the criticism with the traversal being awkward sometimes but it’s definitely a game that rewards players who are happy to be patient and take their time with the levels.One of the dangers of rebooting a cult classic series like Thief is that the new developers have to walk a fine line between nostalgia and innovation. It can be a real challenge to strike the right balance between sticking with the old formula that worked so well, and bringing something new to the table to introduce an old series to a modern audience. Many of the criticisms for Thief seemed to fall in the “not as good as the originals” category, including these point-by-point critiques (we had several good long-form posts this month, so I’ve edited these a bit, but feel free to check out the forums for the full posts):FlopsyTheRabbit said:So, I’ve finished the game now on the normal difficulty. It’s very solid, and still feels quite modern considering it is 10 years old now. I didn’t like the city free roam, just felt like a drawn out way to get from A to B, but other than that it’s a decent 7-8/10 game. If you’ve never played the previous games, you’ll have a great time. But… As a veteran of the series it doesn’t get anywhere close to the heights of previous games. This mostly comes down to the level design, along with few other niggles.Firstly the structure – previous games weren’t afraid to drop you in a huge, connected environment that you could explore at will. You could just go straight for the objective, or look in every nook and cranny, but most importantly in many cases this was all one single area. In contrast the level design of Thief 2014 is a very linear ‘string of pearls’ type layout. You get a bit of freedom within each pearl, but ultimately you’re progressing in an overall linear fashion from one to the next,Secondly, TDP in particular wasn’t afraid to suddenly change up the rules and experiment. The maps where you’re in a large urban building are fine, but I’m always drawn to levels which are a bit strange and supernatural [or] levels where you go in with one expectation but have to adapt quickly […]. I had a bit of hope that mission 7 might be something like that when I saw the ruined hammerite cathedral, but unfortunately that aspect was never really explored and it turned out to be one of the most linear of them all. […]I missed the optional objectives [and] the scribbled maps that reflected how much intel Garrett was able to get about the target, but I can understand they might have been frustrating for modern players.The sound design didn’t feel right either. In the earlier games, you had to pay very close attention to what kind of surface you were walking on. Marble and flagstones made much more noise than wood and grass, and the guards were very attuned to this. You even got specific moss arrows to create patches of quieter footing. It didn’t seem to matter at all in this game. Guards seem to primarily rely on vision, and while they can definitely hear you if you run around, you can creep around all you like on any surface and they’ll never hear you. I even knocked over bottles next to them on a couple of occasions, again no reaction.I wish they had ditched the city area and instead put in a couple of extra levels that were more open, and a bit more experimental. What you get instead is a quite linear game with not much variation in tone.Spa1h said:Thief is a good game; the gameplay is smooth, and the level design is interesting. In my opinion, it doesn’t fully live up to the legacy of “The Dark Project/The Metal Age.” I played those first 2 games as a kid, and I didn’t fully understand them because I was too young and could only manage to beat the first 3 levels, but the freedom of choice and the immersion was unmatched at that time. (which I confirmed for myself many, many years later)Thief is good in many aspects, but there is nothing outstanding. If you are looking for freedom in task-based stealth games, go for the modern Hitman games. If you look for top stealth gameplay, go for the Splinter Cell series. If you like parkouring over roofs, go for Mirrors Edge or Dying Light.The plot and especially the setting did not convince me because for example it’s never fully explained why Garret’s city is run down to that point, or what are/were the motives of the guards and the antagonists to transform a city into a place worse than hell […] Maybe Bethesda, Rockstar and Ubisoft did such a good job in creating compelling connected worlds and levels that, now when I look at Thief I’m amazed how not thought through everything is.Sometimes, the game tries to hint at answers to raised questions, but when I thought about it more, it even raised more questions. So I concluded it is best not to think about it and just enjoy the themed ride that is presented.Also, the guard-AI is missing finesse, and Garret looks very cringy compared to most other characters in the game. The sound mixing is super-bad, which is a real pity as the dialogues are well written. Don’t play without subtitles, or you miss out on many things.So that was quite a lot of criticism, however nothing of it is a reason to not continue playing the game, and so I had a very good time during the few hours I could spare for this game. All aspects combined, it’s a very unique and entertaining game, also perfectly suitable for achievement hunters and completionists. These sentiments echo a lot of the harsher critic reviews that greeted Thief upon release, with many reviewers disappointed that the game didn’t live up to the high expectations set by the original trilogy, but it’s important to remember that reviews are subjective, so don’t let them put you off a game if you think you’ll enjoy it.Allgorhythm said:red MANS pryD3 said:Only ever bean dived the game but I am excited to start this later this month, hopefully. Its reviews were disappointing to see but I’m not gonna let that mitigate my experience as I’ll likely enjoy the game more than the reviews state.I think you will. The 1998 Thief: The Dark Project was such a groundbreaking game that I think a lot of the reviews showed their snobbery. Thief didn’t have the same stature, but it was arguably the first game that showcased the graphics prowess of the 8th gen consoles. I’ve played all the Thief games and reviewed Thief when it came out on the Xbox One: Thief reviews. I tried to be balanced and also provided some historical background of the series and the sister Deus Ex Series. In the review, I stated: “Overall Impressions–an excellent game and one of the early stars of the next-gen library. I still consider this statement valid. Moreover, looking at the game almost a decade later, I think it has stood the test of time very well and does not feel dated as many of the early Xbox One titles do.Thief came out in February 2014, around three months after the launch of the Xbox One. As such, it straddled the line between the 7th and 8th generation of consoles and was one of the first games to clearly show the technological difference between the 360 and the One. Given the nature of the stealth mechanics, the color palette for this game involves a lot of murky blues and grays, so the bump in graphical fidelity on the newer consoles was noticeable.Allgorhythm said:AbyssalOrc33 said:The 360 version was okay, but you can sometimes tell it was meant for a newer system.Exactly right. Light and shadow plays such an important role in the game that it can be regarded as a game mechanic. The Gen 8 GPUs were ideal in that regard. From a story perspective, the game’s atmosphere and ambience benefits from the shading and textures of the new graphics cards. The flickering flames of the fires reflected off glistening streets sets just the right tone for a thief moving about the shadows.Many stealth-action games at least give you the option of going in guns blazing when you’re tired of all the sneaking around, but that’s not the case with Thief… sticking to those shadows is essential for success. If you’re spotted and have to enter combat, you’ll be hard-pressed to fight against the City Guards, and your best option is often to run and hide (or just reload your checkpoint). Allgorhythm said:TheWrestlingGod said:I played this the year it released in 2014. 27/37 cheevos is not too bad, game is very difficult on higher difficulties as the ratios suggest.If you engage in combat, the game becomes very difficult on higher difficulties. Individual enemies outmatch Garrett and are, therefore, extremely problematic in groups. However, if one adopts a stealth-only approach–combat is never required in the game and there is only one instance where combat is easier than stealth; the game becomes only slightly more difficult on Master difficulty. In fact, several of the game’s achievements are tied to being as stealthily as possible, with conditions like “Complete a chapter without alerting anyone” and “Finish the game without a single kill or knockout.” While that certainly appeals to a certain audience, that genre isn’t for everyone…Slayer Reigning said:Didn’t much care for it, but again not one much for stealth anyway.LilGurgi said:Stealth missions have always been my arch nemesis so a game that basically an entire stealth mission….not gonna happen. heheAnd even for some who aren’t opposed to the stealth genre in general, the restrictions placed on the player in this game were a problem.ComicKaze23 said:Kinda over games with difficulty-based achievements or no-kill ones. Apparently I played it at some point because it was free with Gold. One of those games that I’d gladly delete from my profile.Included in this group is regular TA Playlister TymanTheLong, who had some great thoughts on the nature of achievements restricting the style of gameplay in games like these:TymanTheLong said:Sadly I don’t think it’s my kind of game. I just didn’t ever fall into and enjoy the gameplay loop, either due to impatience or just not finding it that fun. […] Part of this is achievements very clearly telling me that I’ve failed if I do things like kill a guard or become discovered and fight my way out. There’s a huge amount of gameplay mechanics that support this and some are cool as heck, I want to do them but when I do the game tells me maybe I’m not playing it right.The worst example of this in my personal gaming experience is Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The game gives me a bunch of cool things, including Typhoon and then tells me I’m wrong to use them. I played that game like it demanded, all stealthy, desperately looking for batteries so I could use them for only one thing: camouflage mode to sneak by yet another group I couldn’t find away around. I finished it the way it demanded and then never went back to play it my way, all the fun had been sucked right out.And maybe that’s my fault for letting achievements dictate the way I played. In one way it certainly was, but in another the game really felt like it was pushing me. […] I feel the same tension in Thief. I don’t wish to say the game is bad or wrong for this dynamic. Perhaps many gamers really enjoy this. That’s fine with me. A game can just not be a game for me while still being a great or even outstanding game for others. What Thief does make me think of, yet again, though, is the concept of designing a game with a lot of gameplay options that the game pushes the “purest” player to never use. There’s something interesting there, is it a nod to capitalism that they need to sell their game also to those who want to just rampage through killing everything or something else? Why design systems you don’t want the player to use? […]Anyway, Thief isn’t my game, and I feel a bit disappointed based on expectations when I bought it. But I do think it’s probably an important game and a franchise that’s earned a minor if merited mention in gaming history.Given that Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Thief were successive projects from Eidos Montreal, it’s perhaps not a surprise that the gameplay and achievements had some noticeable similarities. The comparisons cut both ways, with some, like Tyman, pointing out the common negatives between the two games while others heaped praise on both franchises.RumbleFish10 said:Would love to see more from this series. Thief and Deus Ex are gold, and unfortunately a bit under-appreciated these days. Goes to show how hard it is to make a good stealth game.Allgorhythm said:Shadowclast said:It’s been a while since I played (and stacked) Thief but I really enjoyed it, I played it after it was as patched as it ever got. This game sits at a time when games felt they needed to be open world to stay relevant, and it is hard for games like Thief and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided to be open world without a huge reduction in what makes them special.Very true. THIEF, in particular, relies on its compact maze of intricate passages. In spite of the small geographic area of the City and the chapters, players commented on how mystifying it was to find their way from point A to point B. Almost always, there is more than one path to take, and finding the shortest, least risky route is a huge advantage.One of the purposes of the TA Playlist is to discuss the game in detail and offer strategies and suggestions on how best to approach some of the more difficult achievements. That’s probably never been truer than it was this month. You may have noticed that I’ve already used several quotes from regular Playlist contributor Allgorhythm in this article, and that’s because, as the writer of the TA Walkthrough for Thief, he was posting frequently throughout the month in support of the game and offering helpful hints and tips. In fact, Allgorhythm accounted for 24.5% of the total posts across both the Spoiler and Spoiler-Free threads in January, which must be a TA Playlist record! Allgorhythm said:RiBoP said:Reading the above (and after scanning the walkthrough, thanks for that, btw!) makes me wonder: is it recommended to start on the highest difficulty, mainly for completion purposes? Or is it also the most enjoyable approach?I believe it is the most enjoyable approach. By doing a playthrough concentrating only on the story as presented in the 8 chapters, you get uninterrupted satisfaction from the narrative. If you’re not an achievement hunter, you’ve finished the game and can congratulate yourself on a job well done.If you are an achievement hunter, you can then do your second playthrough on the difficulty of your choosing. This is the exploration playthrough. The City is very expansive and there’s much to see and do–side jobs, secret places, common and uncommon loot, etc. Additionally, since you know how the chapters play out, you can investigate them more thoroughly and investigate the secrets they hold.Check out all of Allgorhythm’s tips, including what custom difficulty settings to use to ensure you don’t fail some of the game’s missable achievements, in the forums!Piemanns Bakery said:I’m really enjoying my playthrough on Thief, which was a game I looked into playing a while ago since it was free with GwG, but it felt overwhelming especially the custom difficulty achievements. Thanks to the positive feedback on the walkthrough, I’ve given it a go, and man, first of all, thanks so much, Allgorhythm, for the detail and time you took on it! The storyline is good, gameplay is great, I really look forward to the second playthrough so I can explore a little more without the concern of being spotted during the custom difficulty playthrough. I just finished chapter 5, and that chapter got my heart pounding during the section with the freaks in the asylum basement. Needed my brown pants! Finding a game like this is why I look forward to the TA Playlist each month!During the month of January, we had 504 tracked gamers playing along with the TA Playlist game, including 314 who started it for the first time and 23 who went on to complete the game’s 37 achievements. In total, the TA community unlocked 2,973 achievements in Thief and Thief (Xbox 360) during January, for a total of 51,080 Gamerscore and 200,042 TrueAchievement Score.The Drop, from the Xbox One version, was by far the most unlocked achievement during January, with 279 tracked gamers earning the achievement for completing the prologue. At the other end of the spectrum, we had a four-way tie for the least unlocked achievement of the month, with A Moral Victory (no kills or knockouts), Clear Headed (don’t use the focus ability), Hard Times (finish the game on Master difficulty), and Something to Prove (custom difficulty of 700 points or more), all from the Xbox 360 version, each being unlocked three times. These achievements all have ratios of 5.00 and above (in the 360 version, at least), but interestingly, they’re not the highest-ratio achievements in the game. That honor goes to ”Finders Keepers,” which boasts a 6.93 ratio in the Xbox 360 version and a whopping 7.57 ratio in the Xbox One version. We have 13 Shout-Outs for January, although that list only encompasses 10 different gamers, since UpliftGecko, TheNeonShadow97, and LLTC1807 all managed to complete both versions of the game during the month. UpliftGecko gets a special shout-out for also clocking the fastest time, just 42 hours and 19 minutes from the first achievement to last in their second run-through on the Xbox 360 version. Time is running out to participate in the February 2024 TA Playlist game, Rise of the Tomb Raider. Either unlock an achievement in the game before midnight UTC on March 1 or drop by the Spoiler-Free and Spoiler Discussion Threads to tell us about your adventures as Lara Croft in the Siberian wilderness. And don’t forget to come back in March for the sci-fi month featured game, Cyberpunk 2077. See you next month!
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