Among other things, Stephen sucks because he thought "Thief: The Dark Project" was a crappy video game, even though every enlightened soul on the planet thought it was the most innovative game since Doom.

For those who don't know, Thief is a first-person 3D game in which you, well, play a thief in a medieval-esqe world. The genre of First Person Shooter, born with Wolfenstein 3D, brought to the mega-sales forefront by DOOM, and (some say) perfected with the Quake series, has long held little fascination for me. I liked Wolf 3D and it's clones, played DOOM a little, and loved Duke Nukem 3D mainly because Duke was such a great character. But I find most of them boring, because for the most part they're all the same basic game--walk around and shoot anything that moves.

But it finally came to pass that *enough* people were bored with the "if-it-moves-kill-it" games that gaming companies started coming out with first person 3D games that *weren't* based on that simple premise. And although I could name a bunch of these (Rainbow Six and Swat 3 come to mind as two of the best examples of this "new" genre), for my money Thief was and is the best of them.

First of all, Thief is best defined not as a "First Person Shooter" but a "First Person Sneaker". No, that doesn't mean you're a giant running shoe, it means that in order to get anything done in the game, you have to use stealth and cunning instead of guns and muscles. Like any "normal" RPG thief, you don't stand much of a chance in a stand-up fight with a big guy who knows how to use a sword. In fact, for the most part, once you find yourself in a sword battle, you've already lost something--generally, the element of surprise, as most sword fights don't go unnoticed in a sleeping manor house. So your objective is to move silently, hide in shadows, and accomplish your objective without ever letting the enemy know you were there. Often this involves standing in the shadows for several minutes, watching and listening to a guard's movements, and planning your best strategy. Is there a location you can stand that is in deep enough shadows that you can let the guard walk right by you so you can nail him in the back of the head with your sap and knock him out? Or is your best bet to draw your bow and try to get a clean headshot on him while he's walking away down the corridor? (shut up Stephen, it does too work.) Or can you manage to work your way by him without doing anything at all to him?

It may sound boring to play a game in which you spend a good portion of your time waiting and listening, but I can tell you, it's not. Think of it this way--have you ever been in a place where you shouldn't be, or at least a place you don't want to be 'caught' in? Someone almost catches you there, and you hide in a corner or behind a piece of furniture while your heart pounds and your palms sweat. You strain your ears, listening for the sound of retreating footsteps, hoping the person doesn't come too close to where you are or look in the wrong direction at the wrong time. Does that sound boring? Nerve-wracking, exhausting, and maybe, if you get away with it, a little thrilling, but certainly not *boring*. That is what playing Thief is like, for those of us who become immersed in the game. You might stand in the corner for a full five minutes, watching and listening, afraid to move because you haven't figured out if those footsteps are two guards around the corner or just one who is talking to himself--but you're not bored, because the level of immersion in the game becomes so great that you share the anxiety of your character. In fact, when I was playing the game, I'd often end my session for the night so keyed up I couldn't sleep. I'd also have a hard time seperating myself from the Thief reality for a few minutes after I finished playing--it took me a bit to convince myself that it was OK to walk directly through the middle of my well-lighted living room and not hug the shadows next to the walls and move silently.

So now that I've gushed over the game for a bit, I'll get to the point (if indeed I ever had one). Thief was a great game, but it was by no means perfect. Ask Stephen sometime, and he'll tell you all the reasons why he thought it totally sucked (reason number one: Stephen is a doody-head.) Stephen's main problem, from what I can gather (other than the doody-head thing), is that the guards were too hard to kill. My feeling on that is that I usually tried to get through an entire level without killing anyone anyway--part of the fun of the game was sneaking by a bored guard and making off down the corridor without him ever seeing or hearing you. In fact, the "difficulty" settings in the game didn't just add more enemies or more perrils, it put restrictions on your actions--on "expert" level, you weren't *allowed* to kill anyone in most of the missions--if you did, you failed your objectives.

Begrudingly, I will concede part of Stephen's point. It doesn't take long to realize that guards have three states--"Normal" or "patrolling" state, in which you can stand right next to them in the shadows and they'll probably never notice you. "Suspicious" or "Alerted" state, in which they're walking around cautiously, looking carefully--in this state, they can spot you in the deepest shadows from about a dozen feet away, if they look right at you. Finally, there's "Kill mode", or "Red alert". This is when they've spotted you, and they're either coming in for the kill or they're screaming for their buddies (or both!)

It makes sense that they can spot you more easily when they're alerted than when their just doing their routine patrol, but what doesn't make sense is that they inexplicably become harder to kill as they progress up the three levels of alertness. In normal mode, one good arrow shot will fell most any human guard (yes it *will*, Stephen, stop arguing with me. I've done it many times. All of your vaunted FPS reflexes just don't seem to get the job done in Thief.) It has to be a well-placed shot, generally in the neck, but it's more than just possible, it becomes fairly easy with practice. Long-range sniping is pretty hard with a medieval short bow, but it *is* possible--however, you're much better off getting as close as possible.

However, this is all for an un-alerted guard. Once you make the mistake of alerting them, they go into suspicious mode. Here. Although it *is* still possible to get a one-shot kill, it's *way* harder--and generally, it takes three or more arrows to drop a suspicious guard. And once they go to full-on attack mode, you might as well start running. You can take them out with some hacks from your sword, but they're going to close too quickly for your bow to be of any use--and anyway, at this stage, it takes about 5 shots to kill them.

For Stephen, this was an unforgiveable sin. I've learned that you don't *ever* want to make killing things harder for Stephen. For me, it was a conscesion for the sake of gameplay--ideally, you should make it through an entire mission without ever alerting anyone to your presence. So the fact that the guards become harder to kill after you alert them becomes moot if you're not alerting them anyway. But if it were *too* easy to just kill all the guards no matter what, then you'd just be right back to the old First Person Shooter mode--just with a bow instead of a RIAL GUN!

Have I drifted again? I think I have. Let me try to get back to the point. There *were* a few problems with Thief that I felt made it a lesser game than it could have been. One was a fairly poor AI for some of the guards. Take this scenario: You're hiding in the shadows, watching a guard patrol an area you need to get through. You finally decide that you can't get close enough to sap him without him seeing you, and you don't want to get into a stand-up sword fight with him. So you pull out your trusty bow and take careful aim at his unprotected neck as he walks away from you. Unfortunately, your aim isn't true, and you stick him in the shoulder instead of the neck. He goes from "patrolling mode" to "suspicious mode" and starts looking around for you. But you stand patiently in the shadows, and after a few minutes, he goes back to patrolling like nothing happened! I've seen that happen more than once in the game, and it irks me to no end. That was *not* a conscession for the sake of gameplay, it was just stupidity. Anybody who gets stuck with an arrow would not go back to patrolling normally under any circumstances. He'd raise an alarm and probably go to the infirmary to care for that gaping wound.

The second problem I had was with the game as a whole. When the game was in development, nobody knew if the sneaking and hiding parts of the game would be engaging enough to stand on its own. So the designers decided to mix in some action sequences which were more reminicent of traditional FPS games to make sure people stayed interested. However, once the game became a hit, the biggest complaint became "I love the sneaking and hiding bits, but those parts where you run around shooting demons with holy water arrows are tedious." It became readily apparent that the sneaking and hiding and generally being thief-like aspects of the game were more than engaging enough to keep people's interests--so much so, in fact, that the action sequences were distracting and destroyed the mood of the entire game in places.

So finally, to the point. Why the sequel, which is finally out, will ROCK! First, by all accounts they improved the AI by an order of magnitude. No more guards that go back to patrolling after you plunk an arrow into their hides. Now, they run for help, call in an archer, or just plain start screaming until someone else comes to help. Way cool. Second, the developers actually *listened* to the customers, and concentrated on the stealth aspects of the game and threw out nearly all of the cheap action parts that hindered the original so much. That should make 'Thief II: The Metal Age' the mostest bestest game ever.

So, Stephen sucks because he's a dweeb who thought Thief was a terrible game. I rule because I disagree with Stephen, and loved the game. And Thief II will rock because for once someone *listened* to the gamers, and developed the game according to what they heard. Whoohoo!!

-- Dave