GamesActionThiefThe black sheep of the Thief series is free on Epic Games Store, and at that price, it deserves a second chanceWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesActionThiefThe black sheep of the Thief series is free on Epic Games Store, and at that price, it deserves a second chanceWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Eidos Montreal)
I have to admit that I was surprised to see the hooded figure of Garrett, Master Thief, reaching covetously for me fromthe free game section of the Epic Games Store, not least because Epic’s giveaways tend to focus on relatively recent games (barring bona fide classics), but also generally well-liked ones. And scouring through the online discourse in the years since its release, peoplereallydon’t seem to like the 2014 reboot of Thief.
The original Thief and Thief 2 were masterpieces of lo-fi stealth and level design, boldly imposing a slow pace, lack of combat, and rigorous stealth systems at a time when the first-person perspective was largely reserved for blindingly fast and brutal shooters. Deadly Shadows, released in 2004, was far more disjointed, but had its merits too,including one of the greatest videogame levels. Thief (2014), meanwhile, melded the vintage elegance of Thief with some of the bad habits of early 2010s game design. It certainly is an odd duckling.
(Image credit: Eidos Montreal)
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(Image credit: Eidos Montreal)
There’s a real elegance to Garrett’s movements as he peels back curtains, places his hands on corners and parapets, searches for secret switches behind paintings, or picks locks. Movement feels smooth and deliberate. It’s a shame, though, how frequently the game pulls you out of this experience to throw you into some Assassin’s Creed-style third-person ledge-shimmying, or decides that you can only clamber certain surfaces and only jump onto certain obstacles, or puts Garrett in front of the camera when the poor guy is clearly so much more comfortable behind it.
Even the best missions invariably end with a chase sequence or explosive set-piece. It’s like the game follows one of those weird action-movie rules about ‘somethingbigneeds to happen every [x] minutes’ even though Thief (2014) is neither movie nor an action game. One of the game’s best designed levels, Baron Northcrest’s mansion, ends with a barely interactive sequence of you escaping for 10 minutes as the whole building collapses around you, before watching it all burn to the ground. It’s a perfect representation of how the game keeps building itself up, only to tear itself down again.
That’s why the side-jobs are such a joy. These condensed little missions assign you to steal doodads for various clients, and in some cases take you to new levels—well structured little shops, dens, small homes—you’d otherwise miss. With no detours into cutscenes or contrived chase sequences, you can go about the simple, satisfying business of thieving, and experience the game’s excellent core mechanics and light-and-sound systems at their best. You can also just run around the city between missions, parkouring (quite restrictively) over rooftops and breaking-and-entering where you see fit. Again, isolated from the story, Thief (2014) thrives.
(Image credit: Eidos Montreal)
There’s one moment that probably best sums up my bittersweet feeling towards Thief (2014). At one point, a grumbling guard refers to someone as a taffer—a great little curse-word invented for the Thief universe back in the original games, and something of a calling card for the series. 10 seconds later, that same guard drops an F-bomb, as if suddenly remembering that he’s in a game that has to appeal to the (imagined) edgy kids playing the game in 2014, as if the wonderfully evocative ‘taffer’ just wasn’t enough. It’s indicative of how Eidos-Montreal lacked confidence to follow through with an unadulterated Thief game, reaching for the low-hanging fruit of what ‘modernity’ meant in games a decade ago.
(Image credit: Eidos Montreal)
I don’t doubt that the studio was well versed in the spirit of the series, but had to balance that against what publisher Square-Enix—which always seemed uncomfortable with managing immersive sim IPs like this, Hitman, and Deus Ex—thought would make the game sell (and in fairness, the game did actually sell quite well). There’s a good reason Square-Enix relinquished the Thief and Deus Ex IPs for a bargain price to Embracer Group in 2022, while Hitman broke away from the publisher sooner and has enjoyed plenty of success since. Immersive sims were never a comfortable fit with a predominantly JRPG publisher.
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Assassin’s Creed Shadows is delayed again ‘to better incorporate player feedback gathered over the past three months’
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