THIEF

[IamLEAM1983]

Thief didn't start on the best of auspices, but that seems to be par for the course, as far as current remakes and re-imaginings are concerned.

Look back a bit, and you'll find traces of fans of the original two games crying foul over the replacement of Stephen Russell as Garrett's voice actor. You'll also find ample evidence of the same sorts raging at the sight of a pallid, sunken-eyed Master Thief who looked like he'd come out of a teenage Goth fixation. Then, there's the fairly risky attitude Eidos Montreal took, in how the game's feature set was unveiled. Instead of showing the core game-play elements we were familiar with, they opted to go for the new sight modes and other toggle able assistance items. Even more surprising, the remake would go along a Blacklist-esque route and track your approach to its presented challenges. In practice, this makes Garrett less of an unconditional shadow and more of a flexible sort. Take-downs can be initiated, bursts of Parkour can see you to hard-to-reach parts of the level, and guards can be killed outright if you're that worried about leaving potential weaknesses.

As expected, the fans of the first hour weren't convinced. I can perfectly see why – but I also don't agree with them.

Initially developed and published by Looking Glass Studios, Thief – The Metal Age and Thief II are crown jewels in the art of first-person stealth game-play. Considering the limited graphical capabilities of the early-to-mid nineties, they utilized the concept of traveling in shadows as efficiently as possible and made the idea of killing guards or innocents rather dicey propositions. As the name suggests, you played as a robber of goods diverse, either through some skilled B&E or careful pickpocketing. A plot would surface across the two games, but the onus was and always has been money. Garrett is a flatly materialistic and grimly realist protagonist, and he definitely isn't the typical “greedy thief” archetype you'd imagine. The gains he makes are purely utilitarian, and what really defines him is the thrill of a successful job. He's also a cut-purse with morals; someone who tries to restrain the amount of lifeless bodies he leaves in his wake.

Unfortunately, we wouldn't see much more than 2000's Thief : Gold re-release. It felt as though the franchise was destined to remain one of the oft-mentioned classics, something people would refer to while dissecting more recent and variably similar products. Then, 2012 graced us with Arkane Studios' Dishonored, a game with all the beats of Garrett's own adventures, a Lovecraftian twist on the proceedings – and a fairly disappointing ending. To bluntly spoil a hidden mechanic of Corvo Attano's own misadventures, the game penalized you for killing, no matter if you tried your best to limit yourself. Depending on your chosen difficulty level, as little as five kills throughout all the game would condemn you to the fairly disappointing “negative” ending.

That sucked, to put it mildly. With an interface that didn't make the constant swapping and switching of the Outsider's provided powers all that easy and a game-play that was a little too ponderous for my tastes, it felt like near-success.

In comes Thief, first branded THI4F and now flatly considered as an outright reboot of the series, to set things right.

The first thing you'll notice is how tactile Garrett feels, as opposed to Corvo. With a voice all his own, a constantly visible shadow, a detailed body and questing hands always lying in wait just in reach of the camera's frame, the City's master criminal feels like a grounded individual – like someone who would want to keep his presence unnoticed. Everywhere you look, you'll find discreetly shining baubles, all waiting for you to be able to figure out how you'll take them. Garrett appears to be in possession of a Bag of Holding, as there's no shortage of hefty silver candelabras, big golden cups, ornate ball masks and heavy necklaces for you to grab. The game goes easy on you at first, presenting you with a stone-drunk individual snoring loudly on his bed, and a small room rife with valuables. Little by little, the game's first actual mission introduces you to the mechanics you'll return to in order to ensure your survival. Garrett can dash across lit areas, or minutely control his crouching speed in order to avoid spooking caged birds. You can use Water Arrows to extinguish distant light sources, or use your hands to pinch candles out. A liberal amount of pickpocketing can be enjoyed – or you can stun guards and take their belongings off of their unconscious heaps. In a bit of a nice touch, any player armed with a headset and a microphone can whisper or speak to attract guards over. Whisper and they'll cautiously creep over. Talk normally and they'll walk towards you, expecting to find a colleague or a civilian. Shout, and they'll come running.

What I personally like – and which others find contentious – is how the game lets you tailor your experience precisely to your liking. You're free to disable any and all forms of assistance and return to the original's days of pure, unadulterated stealth, but less adventuresome players can use the plot-permitted Thief's Sight in order to highlight targets of interest and potential threats. Some Bullet Time can also be applied in order to make your take-downs a little easier to handle. You're also entirely free to put the game in Ironman mode; which implies that a single death erases your entire progress.

Through all this, Garrett is finding himself stepping closer and closer to the core of the City's new crisis, the Baron's triggered Gloom. The City's apparently been undergoing a bit of a Steampunk revolution as of late, and Garrett is an old-fashioned sort. He doesn't fit in well in a world of inextinguishable electric lights and technology powered by pervasive magic. A colleague of his, Erin, is apparently all too eager to use this new development's provided tech in order to make life easier on the average thief. She also doesn't have much trouble killing her marks, unlike our protagonist. Following her through the City on a particularly foreboding night, you're unable to save her as her death causes some sort of ritual the Baron had cooked up to fail catastrophically. The spell that should have unleashed a new era of Magitech perfection was thrown horribly out of whack by the addition of Erin's foolhardy body, the end result being a plague of insanity that starts to spread across town. The quarters are locked up tight, not everyone is equally sane, and the borderline martial law makes it so Garrett starts to find allies in the least likely of places. He might say he's never been the type to involve himself, and the other games might have nurtured that impression – but he's in it, now – and the City depends on his skills.

Plus, making money on the sly is never a bad thing.

Past the first mission, the game reveals itself to be a different beast from its predecessors. Your handler, Basso, is the man you'll speak to if and when you'll choose to advance the plot. In order to reverse the plight of the Gloom, there's a number of required McGuffins you'll have to illegally fetch. Off to the sides, you'll find a small hub area's worth of NPCs to talk to, and most of them have assignments ready and waiting. Each object you steal, be it a Main Quest item, a side-quest component or some ancillary trinket you'll pick up, packs its price in gold. In-between missions, the City's sole remaining accessible area is where you'll purchase new equipment or upgrade what you've obtained. The upgrade tree is really made up of bog-standard Thief and Stealth-Action elements : new armor, a better bow, noise-canceling items and so forth – but also contains everything you might need to turn Garrett into a furtive badass. The more time you invest, the more the game opens up to you. As I've said, Garrett isn't a thief of the Scrooge variety – he won't be afraid to break the bank if this means he'll have better chances of surviving the next story mission. Skill, as he puts it, is its own reward.

I haven't done more than two or three extra missions, and I can't find serious niggles to this thing. Guards do grow progressively alert, so the numb-skulls you'll either knock unconscious or slink past quickly give way to more wily sorts who can spot you in darkness. You always have a way out, however, even if the game seems to be happy to keep you from achieving a consistent approach. In some ways, that's a great thing. I don't think I'd have the patience to try for a pure Ghost play-through, and the game's been tagging me as an Opportunist, thus far. I took down a few guards, hunted for a few alternate passageways and did everything I could to exploit the fact that the level design wants you to get off the beaten path. Following the thoughtfully provided Main Objective marker gets you to where you need to go at less risk, true – but it also means less money in the bank. Less money means less upgrades, means more endangerment over time.

I'm especially fond of the dual ways in which Thief handles lock-picking. Don't put points in it, and you'll be treated to the sight of Garrett's fiddling hands violating that poor lock. Three circles gradually fill up from left to right to indicate if you're getting warmer, and their filling up and fading away means you've unlocked the bastard. It looks simple, but it's just a tad more complex than Skyrim's lock-picking. Invest some gold in that skill, however, and picking a lock shows you a cutaway of its mechanism, allowing you to precisely place its tumblers as required; Gloom energy subtly underlining each pin when it's reached its own sweet spot. Being a few seconds short of an unlocked door when the proximity indicator is just as harrowing as it was back in Deus Ex : Human Revolution is absolutely a plus in my book. Combat and movement receive similar potential upgrades, with Focus-powered precise strikes to user-selected body parts, and bigger jumps that might allow you to close double-wide streets. Pair that with air assassinations, corner take-downs and extremely precise bow-and-arrow controls, and you've got yourself everything you'd need to play it as Steampunk Sam Fisher.

Assuming you're wanting to stick to the series' roots, however, the game doesn't forget you. Shadows flicker in and out of existence as a thunderstorm rages outside, or a lone unmodified gas lamp casts a flickering cone of light that leaves just enough dark spots for you to move in. Guards can be distracted by throw-able items, and careful study can still be an entirely serviceable way to go about things. In fact, you earn a cash bonus based on your level completion - with the Ghost play-style obviously packing the best potential multiplier. You earn more depending on how much current-gen assistance you didn't use, so the complainers really have no ground to stand on. If anything, Thief rewards patience and skill a lot more than Dishonored ever did; and it doesn't insult your middling abilities at playing the sneak (ahem-hem) by presenting you with branching paths that basically go “Oh, hey; you suck! Good for you, here's the Downer Ending for Suckers!”

And unlike Ubisoft, Eidos Montreal didn't feel forced to gate part of its story behind some bog-standard Multi-player components. Feel like blazing through Basso's required missions? Have at it – you'll have a complete plot-line and a slightly higher difficulty curve.

Stability-wise; Thief is another jewel of optimization. I have 4 GBs of physical RAM, but the OS only leaves me about 3. Be that as it may, I haven't encountered severe slow-downs. If anything, I'm forced to play on the Minimum settings and get some stutter in the cut-scenes – as this is where the game does most of its loading. I don't take that as more than another jab at my needing to upgrade my rig. It's still a behemoth of a game, though, clocking in at 30 gigabytes once installed.

The fans needn't worry, this is a welcome return for the Master Thief. It might be odd to realize you're actually playing hero behind all the skulking-about and the stealing-stuff, but Garrett apparently steps up to the plate with his usual professionalism and determination.

[IamLEAM1983]

Making progress is becoming harder as I go along. My antiquated GPU can't render the game's shadows properly and, well, what's Garrett without shadows? The game settles with swaddling the entire level in a black sheen, making it impossible for me to tell shadows apart from weird rendering issues.

Looks like I'm stuck waiting until I have enough cash for another PC swap...