Garrett, the Master Thief, steps out of the shadows into the City. In
this treacherous place, where the Baron's Watch spreads a rising tide of
fear and oppression, his skills are the only things he can trust. Even
the most cautious citizens and their best-guarded possessions are not
safe from his reach. As an uprising emerges, Garrett finds himself
entangled in growing layers of conflict. Lead by Orion, the voice of the
people, the tyrannized citizens will do everything they can to claim
back the City from the Baron's grasp. The revolution is inevitable. If
Garrett doesn't get involved, the streets will run red with blood and
the City will tear itself apart.
Review:
The game is five stars if you play it the way it's meant to be played and two stars if you don't.
This is a game called 'Thief' and you are supposed to steal valuable items, while not getting caught. Self explanatory right?
Well,
despite that being pretty obvious, every singe "professional" critic,
YouTuber and Twitch streamer that I have watched plays this game like
some sort of medieval Call of Duty game, knocking out guards and killing
everything that moves before picking up the loot. Then they proceed to
complain about the terrible level design. Terrible level design? You
eliminated 75% of the level design!
Let me explain.
Every
single level and scenario in this game is a giant puzzle. The reward for
cracking the puzzle is sitting in a vault at the opposite end of this
mansion, asylum, morgue etc. The guards, their patrol routes, the
torches that they carry lighting the environment are all huge parts of
this puzzle and almost the entirety of the level design.
You are
not supposed to to knock the guards out. You are supposed to navigate
the shadows, pickpocket the guards, sneak by and steal the loot sitting
in that vault from under their noses. Yes, from under their noses, not
over their dead bodies. You are a master thief, not a murderer. Killing
or knocking the guards out is like a taking a Rubik's Cube and instead
of twisting it to solve the puzzle, you take out the individual pieces
and replace them in the correct spots.
Let me give you an example.
One
of the first chances you get to play with the guards and steal loot
from a chest in an area they are patrolling happens in the prologue. You
will reach a small courtyard with two guards and a chest with loot. One
guard is standing at one end of this courtyard and another is holding a
torch and walking from one side of the other.
Scenario #1 - You can take out your bow, put two arrows in their heads and then loot the chest. Boring level design right?
Scenario
#2 - Or you can observe the guards and try to figure out a way to get
the loot without killing them. Now you will notice that it takes the
guard about 8 seconds to walk from one side of the courtyard to the
other. If you are quick and flawless, it will take you about 6-7 seconds
to pick a lock and another 3 seconds to loot the contents and close the
chest. So you know you can't pick the lock and loot the chest at the
same time. There is more shadow on the right side of the area so that
will be your best approach route. You enter the courtyard, sneak to the
middle of it avoiding the standing guard, wait for the second guard to
turn around from the chest and start his patrol. You sneak to the chest,
start picking the lock while counting the seconds before the guard
comes back, your adrenaline levels rising as you know you can't make a
mistake. As soon as you pick the lock, you dart for the shadows as the
guard approaches the chest and inspects it. Nothing wrong, right? You
wait again for him to start his patrol and you go back to loot the
chest. You then proceed to make matters worse (for the guards) as you
stick around and pick their pockets too.
Now, scenario #1 takes
about a minute and is pretty boring and no different than looting a
chest in an MMO. Scenario #2 takes about 10 minutes and is nothing like
any other game really offers.
Once you start going further in the
game, these levels get more complex. More guards, more light sources,
glass on the floor, noisy animals in cages, lamps with light switches,
sleeping guards, patrols on balconies etc. If you try to steal the loot
without knocking out or killing anyone you will soon realize how amazing
the level design really is. Every guard is there for a reason,
inspecting an important area or guarding an entrance. Every light source
creates shadows in different places. Sometimes, a broken light will
flicker on and off, which you have to take into consideration as well.
All of this level design leads to the fact that after you sneak by a
whole mansion undetected, pick locks, and finally after two hours get to
the vault, you feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment and really
feel like a master thief. If you kill everyone with your bow and loot
the vault....well you will feel like you just played a level of medieval
first person shooter.
On top of all of this, every important
piece of loot has a story attached to it. Once you get back to your
hideout and inspect the pieces you stole, there is note regarding what
they are, who made them and who they belonged to. The lore is there if
you take the time to actually find it and read it.
So yes, the
game is obviously not for everyone. But you can say that about any other
game out thre. Different people like different things. So if this is
the type of game and the type of challenge you enjoy, then this is a
fantastic game and worth every penny.
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