Of everything that came out of yesterdayâs PlayStation State of Play, the thing thatâs stuck with meâin all the worst waysâis the announcement of Thief VR. Thief is, on most days, my favorite gaming series (itâs Deus Ex on the others). The idea of getting a new game in the franchise, even after the woefully irrelevant Thief (2014), is thrilling. But god, no, not as some VR gimmick. But no, Iâm not going to wallow! Instead, Iâm going to take this opportunity to celebrate what we already have, and what we can still enjoy.
Look, Iâll be honest. I was about to go all-in with a furious rant about what a disgrace this is, before noticing that PC Gamerâs Fraser Brown has already done a splendid job of it. Covering the embarrassing awfulness of Embracer Groupâs handling of every property it mindlessly snaffled up, and indeed the mediocrity of 2014âs peculiarly missing-the-point Eidos-Montreal-made entry, Fraser articulates why this is the opposite of what anyone should want to do with the franchise. So kudos there, and go give it a read. Although I will repeat the vital point here: sure, Half-Life Alyx and Superhot VR are great, and maybe by some miracle Thief VR will be the third game worth owning the tech for, but if you donât own a PSVR2 hat, then this is a game thatâs going to cost you $400+ minimum!
(And can I make clear, this is no qualitative judgement on Thief VR which I obviously havenât played, nor is it one on the no doubt enormously talented, incredibly hard-working people who are making this game. I wish them the very best. I also wish theyâd been given the chance to make a full Thief game that everyone could play.)
But weâre here to be optimistic! Yes, itâs horrendous that the rights to one of gamingâs greatest franchisesâthe games that began the stealth genre, and indeed inspired everything from Deus Ex to Hitman to Dishonoredâare in the hands of a management so inept that the only ambition they have for it is to waste it on a VR game that only a handful of people will play. But that doesnât make the original games disappear. Theyâre still with us. And theyâre still utterly amazing.
Thief is about a guy named Garrett. Growing up as a homeless orphan, Garrett is now a master thief, living in The City, set in a fantasy version of the Middle Ages; part steampunk, part wizardry. There are three factions: The Keepers, the Pagans and the Hammerites, with Garrett assigned to none, and willing to steal from all. The games see Garrett reluctantly get involved in the complex storylines betwixt the trio of groups vying for power, doing his best to have nothing to do with any of them, but profiting from the mayhem.
1998âs Thief: The Dark Project is an astonishing creation. You might think, being 27 years old, that it has long since stopped being playable, but Iâm delighted to tell you that youâre wrong. Thanks to the wonderful work of modders, the definitive version of the original gameâThief Gold (which, by the way, is 97c on Steam at the time of writing)âplays in glorious widescreen and works on modern machines with projects like NewDark and OldDark. As with any classic game, itâs always worth checking the PCGamingWiki page for all the best patches and improvements before starting to play.
That done, believe me, the incredibly dated graphics matter for about 13 seconds. Heck, Thiefâs graphics were criticized for being dated when it was released in â98, and it didnât matter then any more than it does now. Because Thief is a game about atmosphere, and by âatmosphereâ I mean âdarkness,â and it has that by the metric ton. Seriously, the textures on the walls in the Hammerite temples matter very little when the first thing you do on entering any room or corridor is snuff out all the torches. Light is your enemy, shadows your only safety, and youâll immediately embrace the darkness.
Itâs incredible how quickly this draws you in, how soon youâre entirely in the role, scooping up every piece of loot as you nip from corner to corner, bonking an enemy on the back of the head to slip through to a passageway. Itâs totally absorbing, and absolutely compelling.
But what I think makes Thief such a stand-out game almost 30 years later is a philosophy that far too few games have had the courage to try: this is a game where the higher you make the difficulty, the fewer people youâre allowed to kill. Garrett absolutely can murder in these games, and should you choose to, you can go through a level killing each and every guard you encounter. But turn up the difficulty, and rather than the enemies getting stronger or more difficult to kill, youâre not allowed to hurt them at all! Thatâs revolutionary! Itâs still revolutionary 27 years on. Instead of demanding better twitch reflexes or greater amounts of durability, the harder the game, the better you had to be at being a thief.
Thief II: The Metal Age is very similar game, but in the best possible way. Itâs more! Itâs more of one of the best games ever! Where the first Thief rather over-relied on the presence of zombies (it was as if developers Looking Glass didnât quite dare not to include a traditional gaming enemy), here there are fewer monsters and instead more humans to avoid, set in larger, more sprawling levels with astonishing variety in how you can approach a challenge. It was, I would argue, the emergence of the immersive sim.
Thief II came out in 2000, when I was at university, and one of my most profound memories of the game took place outside of it. I had been playing it a great deal, just delighted to be back in The City, loving every second. On this particular evening, I was going to see a friend, and so I walked into town. As I went down the street, I found myself walking only in shadows, looking ahead to see where streetlights were shining, and calculating a path that would avoid them as best as possible. It was a concerningly long time before I realized what I was doing. (Another real-world symptom was starting to view the world by the potential of its rooftops, looking out windows to plan paths where I could get between buildings, before remembering that I probably ought not.)
2004âs Thief: The Dark Shadows was, on its release, embroiled in some woefully unnecessary complaining. At this point, with the voice of the internet becoming an unavoidable thing, people were determined to find everything they could to be pre-emptively cross about. Looking Glass Studios, the legendary development studio that gave us Ultima Underworld, System Shock and Thief, had tragically come to an end in 2000. Ion Storm Austin may have given us the extraordinary Deus Ex in 2000, but theyâd also given us follow-up Deus Ex: Invisible War just a year before Thief III, a game that had unquestionably been restricted in scope by 2003âs need to co-develop for the fledgling Xbox. (It remains massively underrated, but it also undeniably didnât match its predecessor due to the wild constraints and tiny levels imposed by the weakness of the Xbox as a machine.) So people were ready to absolutely unload on Deadly Shadows
Yes, the levels were smaller than in Thief II. Yesâand dear god, itâs incredible to remember just how much stupid asinine fuss was made about this some two decades onâthe loot did glint. But oh my goodness, this is an extraordinarily good game. Deadly Shadows may not have had the acres-wide playing areas, but instead it sported some of the finest level design in all of gaming, boosted by stunning storytelling, and one of the most memorable levels ever created in any game ever, The Cradle. It was, and is, one of the most all-consuming games youâll ever play, where youâll lose yourself into the character youâre playing like nothing else, fearing all forms of light for weeks after you play.
So yes, it sucks beyond all belief that Embracer has the rights to this greatest of series. The company could be offering established indie teams the opportunity to craft a new Thief game in the spirit of the original three, or even trying to get the band back together and offering Looking Glass/Ion Storm alumni the chance. It could be doing so much, and instead its decision is to make a VR game thatâs already buried under the logo of the unloved 2014 game that had so little to do with the games before it, for a format that most people are long over.
But it cannot take away what we already have, and that is something to be treasured. And right this moment, by sheer lovely coincidence, you can get all three games for less than a dollar each! Thatâs incredible! (You can even get the daft, goth-ridden, watched-The-Crow-too-much-as-a-kid 2014 Thief for $3.) Also, while youâre at it, play The Dark Mod too!
And you should. Youâll be so glad you did.
