Thief (2014): A Reboot That Can't Steal Back the Popularity of the Original

This last weekend I was able to finish playing 2014's Thief, and much to my surprise, I enjoyed playing it even though I'm not very much into stealth games (I personally prefer the loud approach). This was the first time playing any of the Thief games, mostly because stealth and that era of games seems to mix like mayonnaise and peanut butter. However, while at times I couldn't understand its lukewarm reception five years ago, other times it seemed very much understandable. On the whole though, Thief is an interesting and adequate game, one that utilized the strengths and atmosphere of its predecessors to craft a Thief game that feels less a gritty reboot and more a modern entry in the franchise, though the execution leaves much to be desired.

I really didn't like the trend of brooding, Batman-like protagonists, and unfortunately our master-thief is no different. At least he sounds the way he looks.

The story of Thief is, well it's bland and uninteresting, which does seem to me a hallmark of the stealth genre on the whole. Like in the other Thief games, you play as Garrett the master thief, he's a quiet, larcenous fellow without a funny bone in his body, he might as well have been a hardbitten soldier. Hell, his nemesis, the Thiefcatcher General has a more playful personality that actually fits a thief, but for some reason the their personalities are switched. The plot itself centers around Garrett and his fellow thief Erin, who both disappear in a magic explosion (after they interrupt a magic ritual) a year ago. When Garrett wakes up after a jarring transition (he literally wakes up in a cart, no, not that cart), he discovers that the city is currently suffering from some kind of epidemic that the steampunk technology of the day seems unable to stop.  Fortunately there's stuff to steal, and nobody seems very curious where Garrett has been for the past few years, and he's sent to steal a ring from the newly deceased body of one of the guys who were at the ritual a year ago. Can you see where this is going yet? It's quite possibly the most obvious setup that I've ever seen in my life, and I'm a sucker for plot twists like this. There was not a single story element that was unexpected, you can just look at anyone and judging by their introduction and degree of scoliosis you can easy ascertain their alignment to the hero throughout the game. Even beyond their likely back problems, there's really no depth to their characters, at least none that's meaningful anyway. Garrett has essentially no depth, and is a bland and uninteresting as they come, and doesn't learn anything from the events of the game other than, "I miss Erin", maybe. He does have a big no-kill rule, but doesn't mind if you shoot a man through the head with an arrow, so I don't know why they even had that in the story as an element.  The story also just ends with Garrett just standing and watching the sun rise, the only semblance of closure being the hint that Erin is still alive and that the bad guy got his life-force dusted by magic. In all honesty, the story is pretty poor, and the only way you could really enjoy it is if you did so ironically, and even then that would likely be giving it more credit than it's due.

I don't think I've ever encountered a character that screams 'recurring antagonist' more than the Thiefcatcher General. Seriously, how do you keep showing up where I'm at?

Gameplay is perhaps the strongest aspect of Thief, with a good amount of approaches to your thieving in addition to not treating the player like an idiot. You play as a master thief, so you're not treated like an idiot, you are as capable when you start the game as when you end it, and while upgrades do exist they offer more incremental bonuses as opposed to new aspects of gameplay. The only exception to this are the three tools you can purchase from merchants throughout the game, and only two of these (the screwdriver and clippers) are mandatory to have the most utility, though the clippers are probably the best bet for trap defusing. Each of the nine levels (yes that's literally how long the main story is, about seven hours in total) has a few paths to progress through them, and there's really no best way to get through levels. Each of them are also pretty distinct from each other, but some, like Bazzo's escape and the ubiquitous brothel level don't make a ton of sense from a scenario standpoint. Why is the tower exploding? I guess we shall never know. The stealth system is pretty alright, being simple to understand and not being forgiving for stupid maneuvers while also allowing for a margin of error. Enemies are on a tiered system of alert that gives them an element of predictability. If they have a yellow eye above their heads, they are pretty sure they saw someone, and if it's red then it's time to dance. Garrett, being a thief, really sucks in combat (it's also incredibly janky), and I think I've only ever engaged in combat without dying once, so in the words of the song, run. Speaking of running, it's similarly janky, and Garrett is surprisingly absolutely garbage at parkour. Most of the times I've died were actually due to Garrett being unable to jump farther than four feet with a running start. There's also the traditional plethora of collectables hidden around the levels and the segmented open world, but these don't have any impact on gameplay. The open world is probably the most interesting part, undergoing tonal and visual changes throughout the game, even from chapter to chapter. On top of this there's a million paths around in addition to all sorts of nooks and crannies. Before starting the game, in addition to the standard easy, medium, and hard difficulties, there is also the custom difficulty, which allows you to extensively tailor your licentious playthrough, which I didn't use for fear of making the game harder than I expected it would be. Your experience is going to vary greatly depending on how you play, and while there's a lot of ways and tools to achieve your goal, but you are by no means forced at any point (outside of a few times) to handle obstacles in a certain way. I personally found an empty glass bottle and blackjack to be my best friends, who needs all that fancy archery stuff?

Get ready to see a lot of button and control prompts, especially my favorites, wheels and windows.

In terms of appearance and atmosphere Thief feels like a direct continuation of its predecessors with the advantage of modern hardware to heighten the atmosphere, though it could be better. Much like other games of this era, the city of Thief is a dark, grimy, and gloomy place that has certainly seen better days. I will say that it can get a little repetitive by the seventh hour to be sneaking through these medieval steampunk environments, but at least the game has consistency. The enemy types are pretty limited, with only three kinds to evade, though there are more that are hinted at throughout the game, such as these massive knights that you see one of. The main melee guards do suspiciously look like the guards from Dishonored, though here they definitely look like they're really down on their luck. I did like the slightly exaggerated design of the characters, which generally look like a rogues gallery of Victorian-era Londoners. The cinematics really swing in terms of quality, with the pre-rendered ones aging like milk with blurry visuals and the in-engine ones having pretty poor continuity. It makes the game feel like it was rushed and just shipped out at the last minute. There isn't really much to say about the soundtrack, it's just there, and I hardly noticed it, it was essentially just background noise that adapts to the suspicion of your enemies. In truth, I didn't find anything in Thief's execution that I'd remember in a week or two, it's just forgettable, which could be in keeping with the title, but that's probably adhering to the bit too much.

Sure, each of the characters look like they have scoliosis, but there is a definite stylistic element to their design.

At the end of the day there's little reason to play 2014's Thief, a gritty reboot that tries to capture the feeling of the past entries. It did offer a nice change of pace and opened my mind to giving other stealth games a go, which is a positive. I said throughout this review that there were some areas that could have definitely been done better, but at the same time a lot of the elements were executed decently, so Thief isn't terrible, it's just mediocre. I'd argue that it's on the upper end of mediocre, but there's really nothing that's memorable about it, just another stealth title that will fade from memory faster than Garrett's no-killing rule.