 In a time when most first-person games were defined by shooting, generic sci-fi environments, and rocket jumping, Thief: The Dark Project sneaked onto store shelves and proved that lurking in the shadows can be just as fun as pumping aliens full of bullets.
In Thief: The Dark Project by Looking Glass Studios, you take the role of a skilled thief named Garrett. Trained since childhood by a guild of thieves, you now make your living by stealing from the wealthy, the powerful, and sometimes by grabbing a valuable artifact from an old crypt or hidden underground city. The setting is a steam-punk dark age with castles and towns lit by torches as well as gas-lights. Armored guards in chain-mail patrol the streets and use only swords and arrows. Everything is made of stone, wood, and steel. After watching a well animated cinema narrated by Garrett as if he were talking to himself (which serves the purpose of giving you back story on the next mission), you’ll then purchase thieving equipment based on what you think you’ll need for the current mission. All the loot you steal as well as your pay from missions goes towards buying equipment for the next mission. Unfortunately, you can’t hoard or save up equipment for later missions as your default load-out is always reset after a levels completion. In other words: “Use it or lose it.”  Thief consists of around twelve huge open levels ranging from castles, abandoned crypts, ancient hidden cities, mansions, city streets, and a prison. Each level is thick with atmosphere and richly detailed with interactive objects and authentic decoration. You’ll sneak around these environments while sticking to shadows and knocking out or avoiding guards while pursuing your objectives. Each level is a complete map that loads only once and then you are free to do whatever you want.
There is an overall plot that slowly develops as you complete missions. At first you’re just doing thief work, but then you become involved in a larger conflict involving supernatural forces. Diaries and notes are left throughout the levels that give insight to the game world and help immersion into the storyline. Sound and light are the two most important elements of game play in Thief. There is a “light gem” in the bottom center of the screen that indicates how visible you are at all times, and every level is covered in patches and swaths of shadow for you to navigate in. Sometimes you’ll need to make your own darkness to sneak in, and this is where the “water-arrows” come into play. These are arrows tipped with what appears to be pointed water packets. If you need to put out a torch, (and you will … A LOT.) then you’ll have to splash them with a well aimed water arrow. Guards nearby will notice if a torch suddenly goes out, but they don’t bother to re-light the torches. The sound design is extremely well-done and important to game play. I recommend you wear earphones while playing as even the noise your feet make against different surfaces, as well as the creaking or slamming of a door can be heard by the enemy. The music is a mixture of creepy ambient noise and subtle melodies that change depending on where you are in the level. Guards and other characters mumble to themselves, whistle, sigh, and have conversations. Garrett will sometimes talk to himself to give you information, observations, or a smart-ass remark now and then. Zombies make terrifying noises, ghosts sound genuinely spooky, and even the spiders you run into will make sounds that trigger true traces of fear. The voice acting isn’t bad and it definitely fits the mood of the game, although you’ll hear a lot of the same voices over and over again. Also, death cries and sounds of pain can sound a little funny and weird. Try knocking a guard or civilian out and dropping them in some water or on a flame and listen to some laughter inducing moans as they drown or burn. The AI is good. Characters basically run on scripted paths until they hear a strange noise, discover a dead body, see a puddle of blood, or glimpse you and go into various modes of searching and alertness. They will run for help if you put up a fight and do a pretty good job of tracking you down if they’re in pursuit. Sometimes the AI seems a little deaf when you slam a door and no one notices. Combat is usually a last resort, and thus it is very difficult to kill a guard in face-to-face combat with a sword. If alerted, they will yell for backup and even run away looking for help if you actually put up a good fight. Sneaking up behind them and whacking them in the back of the head with your blackjack or killing them from a distance with an arrow is the most action you’ll see in Thief. Action junkies need not apply. The graphics are about as good as the first Half-Life, except characters seem a little lower-poly. The motion captured animations are realistic if somewhat jerky when a character runs. Thief has some of the best character animation of a late nineties game. Thief was also one of the first games to give objects physics. You can stack and throw any object you can pick up. You can even stack crates in front of a door to barricade it if you want.
Best of all, Thief has replay value. Playing on higher difficulty levels opens up new areas in the levels, and gives you slightly different objectives. Combined with the large non-linear missions, atmospheric and immersive sound design, and interesting story line that slowly develops instead of being forced down your throat; Thief is a creepy stealth classic that is still enjoyable today. It should be noted that Thief (as well as Thief 2 and System Shock 2) has problems with dual-core processors. The game will lock up, forcing you to do a hard-reboot every time unless you set the game to run on only one of the CPU cores. I had to ctrl-alt-del out to the task manager while in the main menu, right click on the Thief.exe listed in the Processes tab and click on “set affinity” and pick one of the CPUs for it to run on every time I wanted to play. Eventually I downloaded a utility called “Imagecfg” and typed some commands in the command prompt in order to bind the Thief.exe to use only one core of my CPU. This isn’t the fault of the programmers, as dual cores were not in use in home computers back in 1999. Sound-9/10: Top notch sound design. Atmospheric and immersive. Voice acting can be funny on rare occasions. Graphics-7/10: Dark, gritty and effective. Character models can be low poly and textures low-res, but you’ll forget all about it after a few minutes of playing. Game play-10/10: You’ll feel like a dark-age ninja and replay certain missions over and over. Stealth is consistent and logical. Sneaking is exciting in this game. Overall-9/10: Thief is one of the godfathers of the stealth genre. A creepy sneaky classic for fans of stealth games.
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