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I just installed Thief: Gold for the first time

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I am also downloading the HD Texture pack which I guess was recently released? I was tempted to buy Thief 2 while it's on sale at GOG, how does it hold up? Will I get my $3.50 out of it?

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Thief II is my favorite game of all time.  The levels are much more confidently made than Thief and the high level difficulty goals are a bit more clever.

 

It's the more ambitious design that really made Thief II click for me.  Thief: Gold is great, and they just built upon what they already did.

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Don't let the Bonehoard level dishearten you and brace yourself for The Sword. The former I disliked quite much, the latter was... interesting, but taxing.

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Prepare to have the shit scared out of you at times.

For the longest time I only played the demo growing up and I finally played and finished it last year and holy fuck was it good.

The atmosphere and soundtrack work so harmoniously with each other it made my jaw drop.

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I am also downloading the HD Texture pack which I guess was recently released? I was tempted to buy Thief 2 while it's on sale at GOG, how does it hold up? Will I get my $3.50 out of it?

yes yes and yes.

I'd say it's better than the first and fixed all the things that didn't work with the first. It's even more atmospheric and suffocating than the first.

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I think it's hilarious when a bad guy turns on me during a slap-jacking, only for me to clobber him about a dozen times before he finally succumbs to my might.

 

I haven't completed the first mission yet, but I can imagine at least playing a couple of levels. It seems pretty advanced for its age.

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Have you played any of the other Looking Glass games?

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I looked up their gameography and surprisingly, I don't think I've played any of those games. I didn't have a so-called gaming PC until 2003, and by then I was too busy with the likes of Battlefield 1942 to step backward.

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Looking Glass's library of first-person games is well worth catching up on, as they're kind of PC gaming's secret most influential games. (If it's a first-person game that emphasizes exploration and emergent systems, it pretty much all traces back to Ultima Underworld.)

Anyways, play those Thief games, then play System Shock 2. Definitely play System Shock 2.

 

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I've always been interested to explore Ken Levine's early work. He seems like a gentleman with some interesting narrative ideas and a genuine desire to force games out of their adolescent years, but I get the impression that it all went horribly wrong somewhere down the line. I was actually impressed with the writing in the intro videos for each level in Thief thus far--not that it's Hemingway, but certainly better than most.

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Yeah, those videos are really great.

 

That being said, I don't believe Ken was involved with Thief from start to finish? He certainly had an important hand in shaping the game, but I believe that a lot of the writing came from other people at Looking Glass. He switched gears to make System Shock 2, which is where he really left his mark.

 

If you're curious, there are some really great podcasts with ex-Looking Glass folks, including Ken: http://gambit.mit.edu/updates/audio/looking_glass_studios_podcast/

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My impression was that most of the writing in Thief was Teri Brosius and another person who I can't recall right now but who is interviewed in those podcastrs sclpls linked, not Ken Levine. At least, I think that's how it was.

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I didn't mean to imply that Ken Levine was the driving force behind Thief, but I know it was his starting point in the games industry and that was reason enough to look back.

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Thief and Thief 2 are very complementary games.  I feel like the atmosphere and storyline of the first game is far superior, while the level design of the second one was much more impressive.

Definitely ahead of their time.

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Prepare to have the shit scared out of you at times.

This was going to be my tip. When talking about this series, people often seem to leave out the fact that they were largely horror games, especially the first. Creepy shit.

So good.

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I didn't mean to imply that Ken Levine was the driving force behind Thief, but I know it was his starting point in the games industry and that was reason enough to look back.

You're kind of making it sound like Ken was the only lasting product of Looking Glass, which sells the impact that company has had quite short.

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I didn't mean to imply that Ken Levine was the driving force behind Thief, but I know it was his starting point in the games industry and that was reason enough to look back.

 

Oh yeah, that's totally fair. He definitely had a huge impact in terms of establishing the unique atmosphere and setting of that game, and also just like figuring out what a stealth game would be, which is obviously a huge deal (he looked at submarine games as the closest analogy).

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So I finished the first level--what an abrupt ending! The second level is not fun to play, so I will probably be uninstalling this shortly. I have zero interest in wandering around an impossibly dark mine full of zombies.

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I have zero interest in wandering around an impossibly dark mine full of zombies.

 

For what it's worth, Thief II has very few zombies, and those that they do have are used well. ("I'm going to sneak through this crypt to get to the mansion; hope nobody's hanging around!")

 

Just watch out for steampunk robots!

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Also FWIW you can get out of the mines pretty quickly in the 2nd level and then there are no more zombies. If you hate zombies though, then you're really not gonna like the 3rd level.

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It's just a stupid conceit. Enemies are already hard enough to dispense with if you're discovered, and running to the blessed fountain over and over fucking sucks. Stealth games got so much better almost instantaneously so while I appreciate what Thief is responsible for bringing to the industry, I'd rather admire it from arms' length than up close.

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Sad to hear that Thief isn't holding up for you.

You should try System Shock 2 though, but keep in mind that game tends to be even more offputting at first. Respawning enemies, weapon degradation, labyrinthine and sometimes poorly explained systems. (There's a System Shock 2 thread somewhere in the forum history here that has lots of posts with good suggestions about getting started in SS2.)

If Bioshock is a first-person shooter, System Shock 2 was an RPG-meets-Survival Horror.

If you've never played Deus Ex, you might also find that worth a look, with it really being the hybridized offspring of both Thief and System Shock.

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It's just a stupid conceit. Enemies are already hard enough to dispense with if you're discovered, and running to the blessed fountain over and over fucking sucks. Stealth games got so much better almost instantaneously so while I appreciate what Thief is responsible for bringing to the industry, I'd rather admire it from arms' length than up close.

 

However you don't have to take them out, you can always just run away.

 

And please note I'm not trying to push you to continue on with something you're not enjoying. I'm a big advocate of just putting something away if it feels like a waste of time/isn't fun for you. I just bring that up because what I like so much about Thief and the Deus Ex games is how there are always multiple ways to handle a problem.

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