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S2 Ep133: Thief (2014)
973 Plays5 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they step into the well-worn shoes of the world's greatest sneak-thief in this week's episode!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction and Setup
00:00:35
Speaker
how's it going everyone welcome to another episode of soapstone my name is Jake I'm joined by my co-host as always Dave how's it going tonight Dave I'm gonna edit this out
00:00:44
Speaker
Yeah. That's too bad because I have the edit this week. What are you thinking?
00:00:54
Speaker
Maybe like a booming voice of me saying good, or like a whole host of Dave saying good. Good. Right. An alohim sound clip or something like that. Yeah, but not like a commanding voice, more of like a very passive like good, but just like 17. Oh, that sounds pretty good. Which is apparently a host for me. That's apparently enough. I look forward to hearing that.
Introduction Music and Game Selection
00:01:20
Speaker
Good. If you send it over, I guess. We'll see if it makes it live. Yeah, we'll see where it gets. Yeah. I hope it doesn't. People listen to this part. They're like, did I miss it? Yeah. Let me go back. No, I'm lazy. We listened to the intro. I have no idea what I'm going to use for the intro.
00:01:39
Speaker
This episode's on thief and like I don't have any, like usually we grab a song like from the game or like two, if there's two good songs in the game for intro and outro.
Thief Series - Initial Impressions
00:01:52
Speaker
I don't know, like maybe menu music or something. Future me knows, but as of recording, I don't know. So we wanted to do thief because like we followed the thief series loosely, not like played every single game, but we've always enjoyed. You're more familiar.
00:02:09
Speaker
Oh, shit. Quick opens up notes in the Google. Right. Thief is a stealth game. It has like a very cool vibe and lore because this is, I think, my first introduction to Steampunk anything. I mean, I didn't really leverage on it too much in this game. Yeah.
00:02:33
Speaker
But I was really excited when this was coming out because this was the new thief. Yes, yes.
Critique of New Thief Game
00:02:39
Speaker
Granted it came out six years ago, but I was very excited for another edition in it. But then as Jake and I were playing over the past week or so, we kind of messaged each other aside like, yo.
00:02:53
Speaker
It's not the same as we remembered, but even when we first played, I feel it wasn't what we had hoped for. Yeah. Is that fair to say? Yeah. I think the first time
00:03:08
Speaker
There's a couple of points I wanted to touch on there. Apparently, the original thief was more like medieval themed and like timed and things. So like the steampunk was a transition for the reboot. I think there was a lot of potential there, but like the first time I played the game was like probably three years ago, I think. And I apparently put like 16 hours into it, which is a lot kind of. Well, you're probably going for like completionist.
00:03:36
Speaker
Yeah, but I didn't remember like actually accomplishing any story beats. And so when I came back through the game, because usually if I played a game years ago and then I come back and every play the game, I'm like, oh, right, I do remember that that happened. And oh, right, I do remember that that happened. And other than the bird dying, that's the only thing I remember from the first time playing. And that's saying a lot. The reason for it.
00:04:04
Speaker
It's nothing else was memorable from the first 16 hours of the first time I played, I think. It's really tropey as far as story goes. It's very predictable.
Memorable Missions and Mechanics Discussion
00:04:16
Speaker
There's not a lot. There's not any fucking character progression. There's a lot of like flashbacks and like ghost memories of like, you got to go do the thing. Miss mystery. The one thing that did make me laugh and I remember
00:04:30
Speaker
laughing about it when it first came out was I think in like the first or second mission, you have to go find a dead guy and steal a ring off his dead body. Yeah. And in like a cutscene with like one of the main antagonists, he like cuts off or he guts a guy or like cuts off his dick to like get the ring. It was in his stomach, yeah. Sorry, it was in his stomach. But one of the guards then comments saying like, you don't think we also have to pilfer like
00:05:00
Speaker
Cock rings do you? Cause I was surprised that it was being crass at all. So it gave me a chuckle. Put that outside of that. It's like, what is there? Yeah. Other than a couple of witty moments, the story is really just.
00:05:20
Speaker
We haven't even talked about what the game is and the story was so disappointing. I feel like we've already brought it up, but it's kind of generic. Did you see a spy movie in the 90s? Cool. I feel like you're caught up. And honestly,
00:05:38
Speaker
The story probably would have been more fine if the gameplay kind of reinforced it. It wouldn't have been stand out great, but everything's paced really slowly, which would have been fine. Again, this is a thief simulator, but it's paced slowly.
00:05:59
Speaker
And you have plenty of weight. Like what I started doing was just knocking everybody out because I realized I didn't care. And you play as Garrett, not to be confused with Geralt. He's a Witcher. He's a master Witcher. This is a master thief, completely different people, not the same person.
00:06:17
Speaker
Similar sounding voice, not the same person. Don't seem to care about anybody but themselves. Completely different people. Yes. But this guy doesn't kill anybody. But you could totally run up and just knock people out and then scurry away into a shadow.
00:06:34
Speaker
to wait for them to forget about you, right? By the way, regardless of like what light setting you have it at, being in a shadow is like you're near a box or a light's not directly on you. So like its detection sense is you have like a little ball or sphere like an orb on a lot of games use the the light orb, right?
00:06:56
Speaker
Yeah. Where like if you're close up to light, it's very bright. It's like you're under light motherfucker, move. And it's just not lit up when you're enshrouded in darkness. But this means you can be like a foot away from somebody who just their eyes don't adjust. I don't know what happens, but like you're completely good.
00:07:15
Speaker
Yeah, they have like, there's different levels of awareness, which is fine. Like it's a relatively cool mechanic. So basically if enemies are more alert, um, like slash looking for you, then they'll see you in lower light because they're paying attention, I guess, as opposed to just walking around with their eyes closed. This is my day job. Oof, stub my toe again.
00:07:39
Speaker
but they will like all of these games revert to brain-dead behavior if you're just like hidden for long enough.
00:07:51
Speaker
Well, at least now they're like, I guess he got away or I guess not here anymore. Think about the normal lives, but like an older thief, a lot of times like you take a water arrow and shoot it into a torch because obviously if you're in light, you'll be spotted and you can't fight guards in the older games. You had literally just a blackjack, so you had to be behind them and they had to be unawares.
00:08:16
Speaker
But they'd commonly say, like, guess it was the wind. You know, when wind is that strong, you can't hear it, but it does splash. It removes flames.
Combat and Stealth Mechanics
00:08:26
Speaker
Wind sure is wet tonight. Yeah.
00:08:32
Speaker
I think there was, to the game's credit, there is some interactions there which were pretty good. Some guards have torches, so they create ambient light around them. Yeah, that's a cool idea to make it more of a challenge item. But again, they'll relight lamps if you put them out. That's true.
00:08:50
Speaker
that was actually in part of my notes is they didn't do that in the old games, but now they will relay torches, but they still have the issue, which some other stealth games have fixed of, Oh, is this guy unconscious? I guess I'll leave him be. They never pick up the guy or anything. But also you can kill in this game. You can buy broad head arrows for 15 gold.
00:09:14
Speaker
Oh, I never actually used them. Oh, Jake, it is. It is a godsend. So if somebody is not wearing a helmet, headshot dead. If they have a helmet, two headshots. If you have a tooth arrow, which is worth a little bit more money, cuts through the helmet, one headshot. Oh, wow. So you can really just pick people off. That's kind of funny because, like,
00:09:37
Speaker
uh garrett's actually pretty pretentious about not killing people like in the opening sequence he's just like why did you kill that guy it's almost like a batman type situation like i can't believe it robin why are you murdering civilians stop doing that
00:09:53
Speaker
Because that's, I think, I haven't read a lot of Batman, but I assume that has been. It was Steve from Rush Hood. Anyway. But like, without explicitly using that arrow, I don't think there's really a way to kill people short of like knocking them out and like throwing them in a canal. Well, I don't know, I don't know mechanically that works, but in my headcanon,
00:10:19
Speaker
It's something you can do and they would die. So you're killing them. Yeah. Like once somebody's knocked out, obviously if they're killed, they're just removed from the situation entirely. Um, people die when they are killed. But a lot of times you can just sneak up on people, knock them out and then fuck off. Like Jake said, like you'll get penalized for being spotted in some mystery score value. Um, but then you can just do it again. And you have this ability called swoop.
00:10:49
Speaker
Yes. Where instead of space, you know, being jump, which would be normal, you kind of like slide in front of you, usually from shadow to shadow is the goal. You can swoop up behind somebody and then just hold Q, which is the takedown animation, which it feels weird for it to like snap and for the animation to trigger. But then you just blackjack in the back of the head and then
00:11:16
Speaker
usually carry the body like be still my sweet child and then you can kind of chuck their body in a corner. If somebody sees a body, they'll say, wait a minute. Hold up. That's a weird place to sleep. In the middle of hallway. Yeah, no, it's, it's pretty ridiculous.
00:11:40
Speaker
I think so. Like I mentioned, it's not the blackjack. I think it's the claw in this one because you steal the claw like in the opening sequence from Aaron. I think her name is. I don't know. Doesn't matter the other characters in this game. And you kind of use it to like jump up.
00:12:01
Speaker
Um, certain surfaces, but that's the only time you can jump. You mentioned that instead of like space bar being jump, it's this swoop ability. Um, and it's, it's just like, he doesn't kill people with the sharp end of the claw. He hits them with the butt of it. He's like, don't give a donk on the side of the head. Yeah. I don't know.
00:12:25
Speaker
I mean, I'm fine with that. But as you're talking about the claw, it feels really weird for everything to be let me go into some type of animation. So if you want to vault up for something that's like waist height or climb a ladder, jump on a rope, it's always like with spacebar. But it has to be you have to be like right next to it. Mm hmm. Otherwise it just doesn't.
00:12:49
Speaker
And that just feels kind of weird, whereas everything is free running and jumping. If I fall off something, oh, that's on me. Or if I miss the jump or something else happened, cool, fine.
00:13:02
Speaker
Yeah, everything's really context sensitive. And there's like a button to drop down from a ledge. Which I have to Google mid mission after 10 minutes.
Mission Structure and Player Choice
00:13:15
Speaker
Yeah. X is not a conventional PC drop down from ledge button. Well, S is back or down. Oh, X is lower than S. Therefore, it must be X. Right. It's alt. Alt is going to be the drop down button.
00:13:30
Speaker
Now, the controls are fairly ridiculous for PC. There's like, if you're hiding in the closet, which is the metal gear equivalent of like a box or something, you can right click to stealthfully leave the closet or like shift to just barge out, which I literally never did. I guess it's like if you were specifically trying to pick out a card. If there's a guard right in front of the closet, you can just hit it like...
00:13:57
Speaker
push out it kind of like startles them and like knocks them back gotcha kind of like make a hasty escape I believe I guess that makes so the way I was thinking about it is like I'm gonna find a closet on a patrol path and then like hide in the closet specifically so the guard would walk by but it makes more sense if the guard is checking closets looking for you
00:14:16
Speaker
Cause it would be funny to only have the casual exit if the guard is like about to check your closet. You're like, hold up, please. Open door slowly. All right. Fair enough. You've caught me. Good job. I surrender. No, it's, I don't know.
00:14:32
Speaker
I guess we haven't really talked that much about basic. We've talked about traversal and dealing with enemies and stuff, but the main goal of the game is to steal golden things. And that part of it does feel decent enough. I am interested in being stealthy and thieving.
00:14:53
Speaker
And it feels kind of cool, like, oh, I pilfered this. I've done some lock picking to get more valuables in a chest or something else. But then it feels kind of weird in places where it's like, hey, here's a dresser of six drawers. Press E on every single one of them. And you have a full animation where you go and you check. You grab something if it's there or you don't if it's not. Right. And the animations.
00:15:23
Speaker
I have mixed thoughts on the lockpicking. It's not Skyrim's fair enough. Right. So like the lockpicking on this is if you're used to Skyrim slash like Elder Scrolls or Fallout style.
00:15:38
Speaker
Try to pick the lock and then it'll determine, like it will, um,
Skill Tree and Gameplay Loop Critique
00:15:45
Speaker
give you a response based off how close you are to the actual dead spot that you're looking for that particular tumbler. Um, and this one, it's like, you just need to spin it in a circle and it'll show up visibly. Like when you're at the dead spot, but.
00:16:04
Speaker
It's frustrating because it's kind of pointless. It's a completely plausible thing you would do as a thief. Pick a lot of locks. But it is kind of pointless from a gameplay perspective because you do it a lot and it's not fun. Yeah, it feels like unnecessary padding for sure.
00:16:26
Speaker
And it's like, for me, there's only a few situations where there's like some perks because like this focus skill tree sort of thing. I want one of the options. I want to give a big air quotes on skill tree. Yeah, it's like a couple of big air quotes. It's it's a skill sandbar. There's not a lot of trees there, but the
00:16:48
Speaker
One of the options is like faster lock picking. If you're using your focus state and I didn't get it and I didn't really feel any use for it because there's very few points in the game where you're picking a lock and there's a chance someone's going to walk up behind you.
00:17:03
Speaker
There was one that I encountered, uh, cause like a building was burning down and I went to go pick a very small, like, uh, what's a small chest called? Like something that would like be on a dress or a lockbox thing or some jewelry box or something. Kind of like a jewelry box.
00:17:20
Speaker
And I actually saw the flames coming towards me as the textures were changing. So using it there would have made sense. But that was the one thing I encountered out of seven missions that I played.
00:17:34
Speaker
Yeah, usually like the game doesn't put you under high stress situations when you're doing the thieving portion of things. There's the open world traversal where it's like there's guards outside and they're doing all this stuff. But a lot of the time, if you're like clearing an area out, you're not at a huge risk of just being detected.
00:17:54
Speaker
while you're doing the thievery stuff, grabbing stuff off a table or opening locks. There's some exceptions, but for the most part, you're in danger when you're exploring a new area, not when you're clearing everything out. If that makes any sense.
00:18:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's a nice shift though, I think. Cause like you usually have a good idea of when you're safe enough to kind of steal stuff. Cause usually on missions, you're going to a fixed location. You'll have a set number of guards. You have an overall objective of where you need to go or what you need to steal. So part of it is like exploring where the fuck you need to go. And then you're like, I think I need to go over here. This guy's my way. I need to deal with them some capacity or distract them.
00:18:39
Speaker
Throw a bottle or something. You can hold one glass bottle. Yes, it's actually hilarious. He's such a master thief, he doesn't carry multiples of useful items on his person. I've got five flash bangs and 300 arrows, but... Yeah. Pocket full of rocks? Nah. Nah. My last guard, I want to throw in. If you are above a guard,
00:19:05
Speaker
Congratulations. You will never be spotted unless you start pissing on them. Like they, you need to literally hit them from above and then like look up. But if you are above them in the same way, if you're behind them, you get a free takedown option and we just kind of jumped down and give them the bonk. Yeah. And this is kind of where the game, I think.
00:19:27
Speaker
falls apart a little bit because if you're if you're going through so you mentioned the missions right so like there'll be a chapter you start when you go to a next area it's like hey do you want to start chapter three breaking into this guy's house and stealing all of his inheritance money whatever um
00:19:48
Speaker
Then it's like a sectioned off point where you're actually graded at the end for like, oh, how many times were you detected? Was an alarm sounded? Did you sneak past everybody or did you knock everybody out? And then you're supposed to be rewarded commensurate to like the way you played to your play style. And it's very dishonored like.
00:20:09
Speaker
Because Dishonored is very thief-like, I guess, and the way the original was. Dishonored definitely pulled from Thief as inspiration. But the main difference there is I feel Dishonored is very smooth in comparison. Yes. And the shape you knew is really fun.
World and Design Flaws
00:20:25
Speaker
Yes. So there's a pretty low ceiling on things you can do in Thief. Did you sneak up and bonk the guy? Did you use arrows, which Jake did not try and murder people with, but I excessively abuse?
00:20:38
Speaker
I tried to use a blunt arrow on a guy's head to see if I would knock him out. He's just like, ow. He should get thrown in stone. That would be funny. We're monster arrows in this game. What was that? We're monster arrows? I don't think so. OK. I think it's fire, water, blunt, sharp. Blunt.
00:20:56
Speaker
All the elements. Moss arrows was the original green arrow. It was in the older games, I guess they removed it. But if you put it on the ground, it would grow this patch of moss so it would dampen any sound. So if you're trying to sneak up on something, cool. But you could also shoot it into people's faces and they would choke to death because moss was growing inside their lungs. And it was just a really cool addition.
00:21:20
Speaker
that's fairly macabre so you could kill people with arrows in the old one they kept that around but like outside of like your arrow options and like a panic flashbang um
00:21:31
Speaker
That's kind of it. It didn't really feel like you could do much. And the skill tree Jake was talking about is more of making you a little bit better at lock picking, having focus for your Batman vision, and one or two other things. But it feels so minor, the progression, and none of it feels like, oh, I'd be so much stronger and better if I had this. You could forget about it the whole time and be fine.
00:21:57
Speaker
There was something, I played a lot of games that have some stealth aspects to them recently. I was playing Death of the Outsider from the Sonic series. I played Assassin's Creed. I was playing Far Cry 5, which has stealth options. And I was like, man, for a game that is entirely built around stealth,
00:22:17
Speaker
Thief just doesn't make it that fun to be stealthy. Like, everything is a much more reasonable pace if you're an aggressive psychopath than if you were actually trying to like sneak by everybody. Yeah, there's a nice option of like, combat in that or just thief where it's like, I've been spotted, I have to reposition and recoup.
00:22:45
Speaker
Like in Dishonored, they also keep track of like, so they have a chart basically that's like, how stealthy were you? Did you like, were you seen more or less? And then how aggressive were you? And then it could go to the four corners based off of like those aspects. So you're like, oh, you were seen a lot and super aggressive. You're playing Call of Duty up here in this corner, right? Or it's like, you were super stealthy and you didn't knock anybody out. You're playing pacifist and you later it over in this corner.
00:23:15
Speaker
or you're super stealthy and you knocked everybody out, the correct way to play, then you're down here in this corner. And I enjoyed that because it didn't make me feel like I was necessarily playing the game wrong. But the thing I was going through playing Dishonored was just Ghost, which is, there's an achievement if you beat the entire game without alerting detection. You never alerted, were alerted. A guard never saw you. This is basically the qualifier.
00:23:44
Speaker
You didn't have your phone alerts turned on. No, that's not. Yes. Silent mode is very useful for this achievement. And that's the way I like to play games like this, where it's like in Thief, I don't care if I knock out every guard.
00:23:59
Speaker
as long as they never saw me, I consider that success. It's significantly easier to go through and knock out the guards and then put them in a corner. Stack the body corner is what I like to call it. Just stack all of the bodies over here. Let the bodies hit the other bodies in the corner. Yes.
00:24:21
Speaker
And then just go off and accomplish the goal. It's still, I enjoy playing that way more than completely don't interact with the guards at all. Cause if, if you didn't, like if you play dishonored and you never killed people, you're not using a bunch of your kit. Um, but there's a lot of options for dealing non-lethally with people.
00:24:42
Speaker
And if you didn't use that part of your kit, you're actually using very few abilities to get through the game. That seems like a challenge run at that point.
00:24:52
Speaker
Like a what? More of a challenge run. Oh, a challenge, yeah, yeah. Like it makes sense. I heard John and I was like, what's John? What is a John? Because if you're going through something like thief, it makes sense to remove guards because they're an obstacle. They have patrol pass, you don't want to be spotted. Yeah. You need to usually go through their pass to get to a specific spot. So it makes sense to remove them. Same with dishonored, you want to just remove that obstacle, whether it's lethal or non-lethal.
00:25:22
Speaker
Yeah. And if you don't, same for thief, like if you're not taking out the guards and you're not like, you know, even distracting them and things like that, or anything that could get you a little bit of detection or awareness state, then you're, you're actually not using any of the tools you're provided or very few of them. And I think, um, that would be a boring way to play both games. So I don't know. It's.
00:25:52
Speaker
There's other stuff to rant about in here too. Oh yeah, it's queued up for me, my dude. So I will say at least one thing to the game's credit.
00:26:03
Speaker
I like the universe of thief. I like the dark, skulky vibes it has. And I do like the feeling of discovery if I'm going through a mission and there's like a hidden passage or some other stuff and you have that little sound of like, you found something secret. I'm like, I did and I'm a very brave boy. It feels cool. I'm a brave boy. I'm a brave boy. But it's like after that,
00:26:34
Speaker
Like some of the mission designs are definitely cool, but like the overall map itself, it's a bunch of rooftops, couple of streets, some patrolling people, and then it'll reset, but it feels very generic and samey and I don't have any landmarks to find where stuff is. So you can have M for a little mini map in the corner, but constantly I had to open up the big map and like, all right, where the fuck is this one shop vendor? I cannot find them.
00:27:03
Speaker
And if you were to open the big map, there's not a hotkey for that. You have to hit the one journal hotkey button and then click the map every time. And then you don't see the entire map, so you have to click and drag around. You're like, what was it over here? Yeah, you only see the part of the city that you're actively in.
00:27:19
Speaker
And so I hate the map in this game. This game came out in 2014, and it was immediately panned for how bad some of the areas and maps were. But basically, there's the area you're in, the main area, which is slightly lighter shade, and then offshoot rooms, which are darker shade.
00:27:42
Speaker
And those are like apartments you could break into or like you can like open a window with the slowest window opening animation that you have to like mash E4. And sometimes you'll have a loading screen. That's usually for area transitions. But you close the window behind you. So let's say you can read an apartment and you're like, I stole the
Comparison with Dishonored
00:28:02
Speaker
thing. It's worth three gold. Huzzah. And then you have to go back out the window.
00:28:08
Speaker
Yep. For some reason, Garrett re-locks the windows when he breaks into a place, leaving him no escape. Should he leave? But he is the master. If they come back through the window, I want them to think it's still safe. Right. I don't know. He just doesn't understand how normal people work. So he's like, well, yeah, they'll also be out here on the streets coming through their window. All right. Question. How do you feel about the animations for Candles?
00:28:35
Speaker
Oh, they were fine, I think. I feel like- I actually did enjoy those. Yeah. Did you go like- And you had a single candle with your, you know, I'm not afraid of fire hands, which everyone did as a kid. And then if it's like three candles, he just goes up and just does like a little swipe and they just all get blown out. I'm like, yeah. The Jedi mind tricks the candles into not being lit.
00:28:57
Speaker
I like that. And I think that's like, that was one of the things the game did that was cooler was like, it keeps track for these chapters. At the end of it, it'll be like, hey, you snuffed like seven out of 15 light sources or something.
00:29:12
Speaker
And I didn't care about it till I saw it. And I was like, all right, this is part of Garrett's thing. He just really hates the burning of fuel in any capacity. So from that point on, I tried to snuff as many things as possible. Lives, candles, anything like that. But no, it's I like that. I liked expanding the darkness since, you know, it increases your playable space.
00:29:42
Speaker
But again, there's other games that have done this better. The darkness. Where, again, I'm just branching out a little bit here. But in the darkness, Jackie, slash whoever the host is, usually Jackie, can't use darkness powers in the light. So you're just like, oh, I'm going to shoot that light out. And then your demon tentacle arms pop out. You're like, all right, time to go. That's a cooler way to do this than slightly light goes out.
00:30:11
Speaker
I'm going to turn everything into a criticism of this game. He doesn't put out a light source as good as this other guy. Right. He doesn't get demon arms when he turns lights out. So that's count. That is a con drinking. So to add to the knock list and to get some time in the thief three, did you ever play?
00:30:34
Speaker
I did not. I don't believe so. So a dark prophecy. I don't remember the name, unfortunately, but like I only know thief gold. That was the first. It was the first. Yeah, OK. Yeah. Thief three had a lot of the same mechanics. They've not branched up too incredibly much. You did get a climbing claw at a point which did encourage you to explore. But like the story was good. There were fucking factions. And when it got to like late game,
00:31:04
Speaker
There was like a monster chasing you and it fucking mattered and you were scared and like you were invested in the entirety of the game and it all felt really good. Whereas this is like you cheat sneak some dumb AI and if it's like a stronger AI, you're like, do you have a weapon to kill that? No. All right. I'm going to run really quick until I get to the cutscene door. Yeah.
00:31:31
Speaker
It's just really weird in comparison to reinforce your point. The impression I got after playing the game a bit was if I went back and I retried any of these levels or I retried the game, I would run a lot more. That was basically it. Like the game encourages you with this atmosphere to sneak a lot.
00:31:51
Speaker
But most of the places you're looting have nobody in them as far as like the open world addicts and things like that. You can just run through and grab everything. You don't have to sneak everywhere. And that's not a great design, I guess. I don't know.
00:32:10
Speaker
I did have one positive thing. The open world section, is that what you're talking about? Yes, yeah. Like it does feel cool to like, because usually you're up on like a rooftop, you're not usually at like a round level, you're like knock, knock, nobody's home, let me go in. So like it does feel cool. Knock, knock, open up the door and steal. Well played, sir. It's like it makes sense that there's not,
00:32:32
Speaker
as many people up there, but yeah, it would be nice to have something. Because like I said, if you're above anybody at ground level, you're fucking golden and nobody's ever going to find you, nobody's ever going to catch you. Occasionally, guards would, if you were spotted and running away from them, you're climbing a ladder or a rope, they might throw something at you or shoot you with a bow, depending who it was. But then you can just not worry about it too much.
00:33:01
Speaker
like health wasn't that hard to get back. I sold most of like health is food. It follows Wolfenstein, classic Wolfenstein rules, I guess, and like health is meals. And I just sold off whenever I was at a shopkeep, like all of my food, because I was like, I care about money. These health consumables are useless to me.
00:33:27
Speaker
I like to have some on just to like, how did I fuck up?
Missed Opportunities in Thief
00:33:31
Speaker
Instead of just saves coming, I would just press H for the instant half my health back. Yeah. Just shove an apple in your mouth or something. Call it a day. They were all like ration bars, I guess. Yeah. They were, um, what is it?
00:33:47
Speaker
There's a three letter abbreviation, something. Yeah. Well, shitty MRE. I was, I was going to say, I do, did have one positive experience with this game. Um, at least, at least one. It was an optional mission. Oh, so yeah, there is an optional mission where you have to like recover a talking skull. Did you do that one at all?
00:34:15
Speaker
I didn't go through that full optional questline. I think I started it though.
00:34:20
Speaker
Okay. But it puts you in a separate area, like once you actually kick it off. And there's a drunk thief, like super drunk, crazy inebriated thief that you're tailing back to his hideout so you can steal his loot from him. And the funny part about this is like he's continually like waylaid by people trying to talk to him. And as Garrett, you're
00:34:46
Speaker
setting up the situation to keep him moving toward his goal so like if guards come up and talk to him or if he walks over and actually talks to the guards because he's freaking dumb you can like hit a like a valve release that like causes fire to shoot out between them and then the guy turns back and he's like okay all right and like stumbles back onto the path
00:35:08
Speaker
And there's a part where he will talk to a lady who's standing on this bridge thing. And there's a lever with a trap door release that just drops air off of the bridge. And he's just like, where'd you go? And then he's walking forward to his path. And it was this hilarious comic relief part, where it's like,
00:35:32
Speaker
why isn't the rest of the game like this if they just went for making things hilarious and like this mission was totally inconsistent with the rest of the game and mechanically you weren't doing a lot but it was hilarious because of the writing um
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah, it seems like a nice fun thing. Is that all tied to like the mechanists arc? Uh, maybe I'm not sure what his arc was. This is the only mission I did for the guy. He was like a circus, uh, troop leader. Oh, I didn't get around to his before I, you know, got tired and stopped playing. That's fair. So there's a mechanist guy who,
00:36:18
Speaker
I think it's when you're doing the, I'm going to pill for the dead body mission. Did you ever go into the side vents? Side vents, I don't think so. I might not have had the tool unlocked to go into other areas. Well, I think you just need to like jump over some steps to like a secret path. Okay. Yeah, I missed that. But there's like this little side room and there's this automaton.
00:36:43
Speaker
which there's like a stealable or like some logs item next to it. So you go up and you grab and you're like, oh, cool. But then the automaton ahead like slowly turns towards you. And then you're like, that's fucking creepy. But then you can have some quests with the guy who's making these automatons for the Baron. I feel like they should have used it more throughout the storyline because they were kind of awesome and creepy.
00:37:12
Speaker
But it didn't come up that much, and I really was hoping for more automatons in the
00:37:22
Speaker
the asylum level. Yeah. Cause like when thief has done scary levels in the past, I'm like, I have to push through it because I'm a wee little baby and I don't like things moving or just like the suspense. Going back to the murders. Yeah. I want to kill things. I want things to kill me, you know? Right. If they are, I want to see them coming. That's all. Right. You never do.
00:37:47
Speaker
But going back to the asylum, it really wasn't that scary. I think I remembered all the spooky moments, like, oh, something's moving. What moved that thing? Oh, somebody's down the hallway. Oh, they're not there anymore, type stuff. Yeah.
00:38:04
Speaker
But there are some in like the main cafeteria, there was a stage and on the stage, there were some mannequins. There's an item next to the mannequins. I'm like, I know what's going to happen. Yeah. You go grab the item, you turn around and they're like, they're all like closer to you and like facing you and like, I don't like this. No. But like after that, scot free.
00:38:29
Speaker
As an aside, the, uh, the weeping angels to borrow it from doctor who like effect on enemies is like, I think by far the most disconcerting to me, it really is. There's a, what did, what did we play? Um, we play that to two player puzzle game.
00:38:50
Speaker
Um, where we had to relay radio messages to each other into the salt puzzles. We were here. We were here. Yeah. We played the free one. And I remember the, uh, the part on a stage where like we were trying to arrange the stage in time or like make, make it match what the other person was seeing by like switching the props out. And there's like a creeping shadows, like coming in to kill me.
00:39:17
Speaker
I think was happening. I was the guy who was just trying to follow orders, whereas you were the murder victim in the other room. Yeah. And it was a similar deal. The reason I brought it up was like I could look back and see the thing like slightly closer and then like fiddle trying to get things right and look back and it was slightly closer. And I'm like, I don't like any of this. There's something to be said about building suspense of always kind of teasing something off in the distance.
00:39:47
Speaker
like amnesia, we've talked about a million times, did a great example of it. But as soon as you saw what it was, it kind of removed that fear. Yeah. But like in this stealth game, there was not much to drive you forward because you're kind of in the God role of I'm smarter than all these people. I don't have a fixed path. I can be in the shadows and still see things. Yes.
Narrative and Immersion Issues
00:40:12
Speaker
Yeah. It would have been nice to have
00:40:15
Speaker
something. Because even the one shop lady, the old blind fortune teller says, there are things scarier than you in the night, Garrett. And I was like, oh, this could be foreshadowing. Right. But in reality, there actually is nothing scarier than Garrett in the night. Going back to the body count.
00:40:36
Speaker
Yeah. I feel like there was just so many things that they could have leaned into a little bit more to polish the niche angle versus where they went, which seemed like a whole smattering of, we need a spooky level? Oh, we need a chase sequence. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Oh, that would be good here. That was super dumb. It's like three guys around a keyboard going, yo, that'd be so cool. And they just keep adding stuff to the list.
00:41:04
Speaker
The chase sequence, I don't know. It doesn't belong in a game like this, I don't think, because already if a game and Far Cry does this a fair amount, too, actually, but if a game's like you are going to be caught for this sequence, like I allow that a little bit.
00:41:26
Speaker
but a lot of it seems to be like, like in this case, the enemies break in as soon as Garrett's like leaving. It's like, oh no, now there's fire arrows raining down around you. And you're like, you put me in an artificial situation where maybe I would have just sat in a shadow, but instead now I'm running from all of these guys landing on a table, saying hello to all the guards, which was funny.
00:41:48
Speaker
It was good evening. This is good evening to the guard. Good evening, gentlemen. Yeah. That was a nice touch. But the sequence itself doesn't add anything to the game for me. If you put me in a chase sequence, where I clearly just have to run forward through a corridor and periodically jump maybe, I know that I'm safe. I know that if you're shooting at me with fire arrows, they're not going to hit me. Because if they did hit me, it would be unfair, right? So maybe it's just because I've played a lot of games.
00:42:17
Speaker
But I find chase sequences sort of underwhelming in general, especially in a stealth game. Yeah, I'm trying to remember what Horizon Zero Dawn did.
00:42:28
Speaker
I know there were some things where you've awakened some spooky robo shit and it is firing at you, as are a lot of other people. And I think it's more times where if you kind of fuck up mechanically, you're not at the certain point in time, you can be hit by stuff, but that might be equated to like a moving wall sequence. Right. I don't recall exactly for that. Um,
00:42:55
Speaker
But if you're actually interacting with things like cover and timers and decisions for the escape sequence, like you're escaping in the game, then that's completely different. That's actually using the mechanics of the game that's not running straight down to court or hitting quick time events, which is not literally the way it's implemented in Thief, but close to it. Yeah.
00:43:21
Speaker
Assassin's Creed was even worse for this to reference another game I was playing recently. There is this there is a sequence where I literally held forward and the free run button and that was it for like two minutes as things exploded around me.
00:43:36
Speaker
I really hate that. The whole thing I like about games is the escapism, and it's being able to get into the game. So when you have platformers, it's that your actions directly correspond to how your character moves. You have complete control. And in other things, if they take that away in any capacity, obviously, it's great to have some cool cutscenes. Yeah.
00:44:06
Speaker
But if it's like it's an in-game cutscene and you have to participate but you're not really participating, which comes down to like you holding left or forward or a quick time advance, it feels jarring in a way where I'm like, you could have just made this a cutscene or you could have just let me go through it normally and then possibly fuck up and then restart type thing.
00:44:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's the number one complaint with quick time events is this could this would be better as either gameplay or as a let me put the controller down and just eat some popcorn situation, but somewhere in the middle is just dumb. There's no point.
00:44:43
Speaker
It's like if I'm talking to my mom on the phone, I can just put the phone down and let her go. Don't you think so? I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that is a phone calls work though. It depends on the parent. I don't want to throw my mom under the bus. That's fair. That's good. Um,
00:45:06
Speaker
I'll throw my mom under the bus. That is the way that works sometimes. But yeah, I mean, thief is just so this came out a couple of years after now. Same year as Dishonored.
00:45:19
Speaker
No, two years, came a couple years after Dishonored 1. And Dishonored 1 is just a better thievery game, I think. The world's better, the maps are better, it's also a dystopian futuristic steampunk Victorian society. And that would probably explain why
00:45:40
Speaker
This game came out six years ago and they're like, we we might do a sequel. We have some ideas for it. And then the Wikipedia article ended like they had they had some cool ideas. They had like
00:45:55
Speaker
They had cool things going on with the whole light versus darkness mechanics and they just had so much that undercut it. The world being fragmented, having bunches of loading screens. So many loading screens. Just ridiculous. Garrett doesn't keep track of things you've stolen like on the world map so you could
00:46:14
Speaker
unless you literally screenshot the map and then put X's through the locations you've already searched. There's no way to keep track of what you've already grabbed. I do like some of the building if they're like, oh, I found this note. Someone says, oh, hey, we're going to have that trade off down at the docks at 8pm.
00:46:34
Speaker
You're like, oh, there's probably something worth looting there. It is cool to kind of get to know the underbelly of the city. But again, the map blows real bad. So a lot of times you're just going off either free exploring and accidentally find stuff or you're just going to the next mission checkpoint. Yeah. So it feels kind of weird to just pepper it in.
00:46:56
Speaker
And to contrast this, I'm just going to keep ripping on this game, comparing it to Dishonored. But if you were to play a thief in Dishonored, starting with Dishonored 2, there's shops.
00:47:10
Speaker
And you can buy ammo there, you can buy upgrades there, you can buy bone charms there. And if you're just playing through the game, standard mode, you're like, cool, the game has shops. Makes sense. Standard thing. Lots of games have shops. But if you're paying attention, you might find out midway through your playthrough that there's a hint really that you can use to rob that shop.
00:47:33
Speaker
basically get behind, find a secret entrance or something, knock out the owner, and then just steal everything off the shelves and a bunch of money.
Reflecting on Thief's Legacy
00:47:43
Speaker
And you're like, huh, that's cool that that was doable. I wonder if, and yes, the answer is you could have robbed the shop every time you ran into it if you found the secret. And it's a different secret each time.
00:47:56
Speaker
And they did the same thing with Death of the Outsider where it's like the thievery part of it was a puzzle and solving the puzzle got you that reward. I like that. Like that's that's a cool way to do it. It's a nice dynamic way because also you have the reward of like I discovered a thing and I figured it out and I have actually cheated the game.
00:48:19
Speaker
I have best of the game. The game did not program this. I have I have solved it. I have figured it all out. Yes. And those things feel really fucking good. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So anyways.
00:48:33
Speaker
Game's better than green hell, just saying. Better than a raft. I feel like we are ragging on it a lot just because we played Thief back in the day and it was very fresh and new to have like a stealth game. This is the original stealth archer from Skyrim and it felt cool. It felt really fucking cool.
00:48:58
Speaker
There was my original experience with Thief was I tried one level and I was like sneaking around and then a guard snuck up behind me and clubbed me and I like peed myself and I stopped playing because I was sneaking around and he snuck up on me and clubbed me.
00:49:15
Speaker
I was like, I don't want to play game of this. This is what's going to happen. But yeah, I mean, like the original thief had a legacy. I remember literally playing Oblivion and there was a mod called Thieves Tools and it was just like rope arrows and like like oil slick like arrow. And they gave you a blackjack. You could knock guards out.
00:49:40
Speaker
instead of just killing them. And then they would wake up after predetermined time. You could move their bodies. They added a body moving system and stuff like this. And you could move things in oblivion, but I think bodies were usually really heavy. This made it so you could actually move bodies.
00:49:57
Speaker
And I loved that. I was like, holy crap, whatever game inspired this was probably really good. It was. It also made me pee myself. 2014 thief, not as much. You don't made me pee myself an old thief. Do you remember the fucking tarantula? No, but that sounds terrifying. You can put this over under for the wolf spider from Dark Souls for me to contextualize it.
00:50:20
Speaker
I don't think that's that bad. It's weird, but not that bad. So in an older thief edition, I want to say thief two, because nobody's going to look it up.
Stealth Game Comparisons
00:50:30
Speaker
There's like a greenhouse somewhere and in it is a spider. I'm like, Oh, okay.
00:50:38
Speaker
Uh, it kills you. It straight up murders you and it's, and it's low poly quick. And I freaked out cause I don't like spiders in general. This is a giant spider. No, it's, it's just a, well, I mean, in game it's probably as big as like two coffee cups together. Okay. That is pretty good. It's reasonably big for the game, but it wasn't like Skyrim spider big. Yes. Yeah. Huh.
00:51:06
Speaker
I don't know, it was just cool to have like other things in the world that could, that wasn't as dumb as a guard to be like, I'm gonna fucking kill you if you get nearby. All right. The spiders are bigger thoughts than the guards. I don't know. That's, uh, I had, I had some notes here. Um.
00:51:29
Speaker
Most of them don't matter. I wanted to note that Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation had listed this game as his worst game of 2014. So that's nice. He apparently completely tore into it. So if you want to hear people tear into the game even more, go back to his 2014 episode of Thief. And I'm sure it'll be an entertaining time.
00:51:52
Speaker
I'm going to have to go back and check that out so I can feel validated after this episode. Yeah. I mean, I already feel pretty validated.
00:52:01
Speaker
But the fact I keep referencing all these other games, like I actually kind of like stealth games. Our games that have stealth, we still haven't done an MGS5 episode, but that is that is a good stealth game. Yeah, there are other ones. Stealth espionage action. I've been trying to remember the name of it. I think I refunded it on Steam, but I think you play something about Goblin. Don't tell anybody.
00:52:29
Speaker
It feels so generic and like nothing about it feels fun and gets me engaged.
00:52:37
Speaker
Oh my gosh, I remember this. It's one word. It's like sticks. It sticks. Yeah. Before I even search it, it sticks. Yeah. But it fell under that triple A, like, this is stealth mechanics, right? And you're like, yeah. But it just, there was nothing there. It's like, oh, this guy will hide in the shadows, say witty things, and avoid guards. All right. But it's not worth $30, and I'm not going to play through however much content you've stuffed in there.
00:53:02
Speaker
Isn't that supposed to be? It's like it's kind of like a callback to that like N64 rare type character. There was a stealth. Crap, I can't remember the name of it. Oh, I'm not going to know. Jeez. Perfect dark if we're talking rare. No, it might not actually. Conker's was a stealth though.
00:53:24
Speaker
But I mean, he did have lots of quips. What am I thinking of? Why would I bring this up and not know? Now I'm looking through the full list. Sly Cooper. There you go. Sly Cooper style. Having a witty, like, smart spy espionage type character can be done in interesting ways. I thought Sly Cooper was a platformer. No, maybe I'd never played it at PlayStation many, many moons ago, but
00:53:52
Speaker
According to this stub, it's a series of platform stealth video games for the PlayStation 2, 3, and Vita. By Sucker Punch. Yeah. I don't know. There's better stealth games out there. Explain yourself. Really good. We'll have to play through Conviction Co-op someday. MGS 3. Son. Any game with Raiden. Girl. Pretty good. Or dudes. I guess that would have been two. Two was the one with Raiden, right?
00:54:19
Speaker
Yeah, wings of liberty, guns of liberty, guns of liberty. Sons of guns. I like the sons of liberty. As number three was Snake Eater, and that was my first entry, and I really enjoyed it. Just throw in some snakes, guns, and liberty, and you make an MGS title pretty quickly. Deus Ex, also pretty good. The new Deus Ex games, great stealth games, great immersive sims. Like, Hitman.
00:54:47
Speaker
Also pretty good hide-and-play site be awesome. There's so many examples of games that just do stealth in a more Even if they're not as developed as this and a more approachable fun cohesive way Where it doesn't feel like you're slowing yourself down
00:55:06
Speaker
Yeah, it should be either mechanically very tight and realistic, or maybe you lean into it's more humorous and fun. I've never played Hitman outside of 20 minutes because that's not for me. It's just really not. But they give you a lot of options and flexibility for how you want to approach a mission. Maybe you do something, Mimi. Maybe you do have a whole pile of bodies and kill everybody. It's up to you, right?
00:55:32
Speaker
There was a hitman level where it was like a suburban area with like government guards or something. And there was a garbage disposal or there's a garbage truck in front of the house. I think it was hitman blood money probably. And every time I took out a guard or something, I would like carry him back to the garbage truck, throw him in the back. It was just this again, the corpse pile.
00:55:57
Speaker
I didn't get a really high rating for that one, but as far as the level was concerned.
Recommendations and Conclusion
00:56:03
Speaker
Another good stealth game? Payday. The Last of Us. Good stuff. You're not going to even remark on Payday? Payday is a game. Someday we'll have an episode on it. Let's not do that again. I think Payday, like, yeah, Payday for the dedicated self missions. Really good. Actually, as a thief game,
00:56:28
Speaker
payday might just be better. And the engine was trash. Like the engine feels kind of bad, but like go back to our experiences playing through like Shadow Raid. No, not Shadow Raid. Shadow Raid Legends is a sponsor for someone else's thing. What was ours? It was Shadow something. Shadow Moses? It's been so long, I actually do not remember.
00:56:54
Speaker
It's it's something to raid. Yeah, anyways, or framing frame, spending hours doing that. It's there's so many good games out there that have stealth aspects and even like thievery aspects that combine these into a more playable fun experience. So and Payday 2 is one of them, even with how old it is.
00:57:20
Speaker
I feel like our long TLDR is do not get this game. Play Dishonored. Maybe watch a video on YouTube about it, watch Yahtzee's review. There's a lot of other things out there. He's spent the last 15 minutes talking about him, so pick something from that list. He'll probably be okay.
00:57:42
Speaker
Yeah. Um, I don't think they're going to be doing anything else in this. Hopefully I'd rather just let it die. Um, but maybe you could theoretically come back and be like, Oh, here's the thing that made it good. And it won't suck anymore. But we all remember that people made perfect art too. So that's true. That is true. Oof. What a sad note to go out on.
00:58:11
Speaker
Anyways, play the Sonic. I love the series. Talk to me about it. It'll be great. As always, if you guys have any recommendations for games we can tear apart, like we did Thief for this episode, we don't always talk about games that we love playing. Sometimes we love to hate.
00:58:30
Speaker
But love is a strong word. Lust. No. If you have recommendations for games, feel free to send them in. That's oatstonepodcast at gmail.com. Or you can join the discussion on Facebook. We have a Facebook page at facebook.com slash oatstonepodcast. And we're always happy to talk to people and drop likes on their messages. And as always, we'll see you next one.
00:58:58
Speaker
Good.