Let me start by saying that I gave this game a thumbs down, but if you can pick it up for like fifteen bucks or less and you're in desperate need of a stealth game, you could do worse. It's not an awful game. There are parts of it that I really enjoyed, but so much of the main story is just godawful.

And that's really the main problem with Thief, the reboot/revival of the classic Thief franchise. The story is just terrible. It's Mass Effect 3 ending bad, but the entire main plot is like that.

It starts out innocently enough. You and your friend/mentee Erin are tasked with breaking into the manor of Baron Northcrest and stealing something. The game isn't terribly specific, and it doesn't matter as things quickly go horribly wrong. Erin is presumably dead and Garrett shortly finds out that he was away for a year. This is the first sign that the writing in the game is both lazy and terrible. Garrett finds out that he was gone for a year and doesn't even act remotely surprised. He just kind of shrugs off what, in a well-written game, would be a major revelation. I'm also fairly certain I saw a newspaper that said the Northcrest manor breakin was a day earlier, which might mean that certain elements of the story were changed later and they were just too lazy to re-record dialogue. Who knows?

Regardless, the first few missions in the game are perfectly adequate, at least for the most part. Being a Thief game, what I want is to stealthily infiltrate places and loot them. The early missions generally provide you with an item you need to steal and a place to steal it from, and that's fine. Some of the side missions are actually really good. The highlight was a task to break into the home of a clockmaker who went crazy and turned his house into a giant puzzle. More of that, please. Perhaps ironically, the best level in the game was the DLC bank heist. That, my friends, is what a Thief game should be. Here's a heavily fortified building filled with swag. Loot the hell out of it. Why the game didn't feature more levels like that is just baffling.

Back to the story...it sucks. Not only does it suck, but it's totally nonsensical. The ending is godawful as well. As long as this game is and as much as it stresses its (awful) story, the final cut-scene is about ten seconds long and gives absolutely no sense of conclusion. It felt like they ran out of money and just didn't have time to do the final cut-scene. Had the game focused less on story, that would have been fine. But it doesn't.

The gameplay, though, is generally okay. It's not amazing, but it works well enough. You have an icon that tells you when you're visible or when you're exposed and there's another icon that appears over the heads of guards that lets you know when you're about to be seen. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it's functional. There are occasional frustrations with the AI (basically every time you try to distract a guard with a bottle a different guard goes to investigate it, which given that you can only hold one bottle a time is annoying as all hell), but overall the gameplay is fine. It's no Dishonored, but still fun enough at times.

Visually, the game has a nice atmosphere. Certain levels show it off better than others, but the game looks good for when it was released. The character models suck, though, and the animations don't do much for me either. Still, you spend most of your time hiding in the shadows and watching enemies from a distance, so the atmosphere tends to win out over the crappy models.

I was actually thinking about giving this the thumbs up after the fifth mission, but the sixth mission is about forty-three hours long and wears the hell out of its welcome, and the final two missions are just generally terrible, mostly because they are so intertwined with the story. For that, it gets the thumbs down. It's a game with some all right mecanics but just godawful writing and a nonsensical, lazy story.

Let me start by saying that I gave this game a thumbs down, but if you can pick it up for like fifteen bucks or less and you're in desperate need of a stealth game, you could do worse. It's not an awful game. There are parts of it that I really enjoyed, but so much of the main story is just godawful. And that's really the main problem with Thief, the reboot/revival of the classic Thief franchise. The story is just terrible. It's Mass Effect 3 ending bad, but the entire main plot is like that. It starts out innocently enough. You and your friend/mentee Erin are tasked with breaking into the manor of Baron Northcrest and stealing something. The game isn't terribly specific, and it doesn't matter as things quickly go horribly wrong. Erin is presumably dead and Garrett shortly finds out that he was away for a year. This is the first sign that the writing in the game is both lazy and terrible. Garrett finds out that he was gone for a year and doesn't even act remotely surprised. He just kind of shrugs off what, in a well-written game, would be a major revelation. I'm also fairly certain I saw a newspaper that said the Northcrest manor breakin was a day earlier, which might mean that certain elements of the story were changed later and they were just too lazy to re-record dialogue. Who knows? Regardless, the first few missions in the game are perfectly adequate, at least for the most part. Being a Thief game, what I want is to stealthily infiltrate places and loot them. The early missions generally provide you with an item you need to steal and a place to steal it from, and that's fine. Some of the side missions are actually really good. The highlight was a task to break into the home of a clockmaker who went crazy and turned his house into a giant puzzle. More of that, please. Perhaps ironically, the best level in the game was the DLC bank heist. That, my friends, is what a Thief game should be. Here's a heavily fortified building filled with swag. Loot the hell out of it. Why the game didn't feature more levels like that is just baffling. Back to the story...it sucks. Not only does it suck, but it's totally nonsensical. The ending is godawful as well. As long as this game is and as much as it stresses its (awful) story, the final cut-scene is about ten seconds long and gives absolutely no sense of conclusion. It felt like they ran out of money and just didn't have time to do the final cut-scene. Had the game focused less on story, that would have been fine. But it doesn't. The gameplay, though, is generally okay. It's not amazing, but it works well enough. You have an icon that tells you when you're visible or when you're exposed and there's another icon that appears over the heads of guards that lets you know when you're about to be seen. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it's functional. There are occasional frustrations with the AI (basically every time you try to distract a guard with a bottle a different guard goes to investigate it, which given that you can only hold one bottle a time is annoying as all hell), but overall the gameplay is fine. It's no Dishonored, but still fun enough at times. Visually, the game has a nice atmosphere. Certain levels show it off better than others, but the game looks good for when it was released. The character models suck, though, and the animations don't do much for me either. Still, you spend most of your time hiding in the shadows and watching enemies from a distance, so the atmosphere tends to win out over the crappy models. I was actually thinking about giving this the thumbs up after the fifth mission, but the sixth mission is about forty-three hours long and wears the hell out of its welcome, and the final two missions are just generally terrible, mostly because they are so intertwined with the story. For that, it gets the thumbs down. It's a game with some all right mecanics but just godawful writing and a nonsensical, lazy story.