The game is a quick eight chapters, some better than others. For example, one takes place in a brothel, and is so predictable with its silly attempts to be lurid that it's laughable. Another takes place in an abandoned asylum and is actually unnerving. The deeper into the game you go, though, the more pat the levels are, the less finished they feel, and the less engaging they are. And the less you care because the character development is so lackluster, and the dialog so poorly written, that you cannot get involved in the story, even if you want to.
Things I Liked
Smirky the Thief
Garrett still has some wry wit here and there, and a couple of his lines made me chuckle. Overall though, I liked old Garrett better. The new one just tries too hard to be Mr. Broody Man, and it's a bit disappointing.
There's also some wit sprinkled throughout the story. I particularly enjoyed a bit where Garrett needed to trail a drunk named Lenny on a side mission. I really wish the game had more of that.
Figuring It Out
There are a few puzzles to solve and, though most are far too easy, a couple are actually interesting and take some keen observation to work. They were very enjoyable.
Difficulty Customization
I was entertained with how hard I could make the game for myself - turning off options for take-downs and kills, and for upgrading Garrett's equipment, and the like. The game felt better once the difficulty was upped significantly. It is possible to play utterly stealthy, with no help, and still get through it all, which (to me) is the strongest point in its favor.
Graphics
The graphics look great and there's fantastic atmosphere in some of the levels. The graphics don't need to be as good as they are, but it makes some stuff interesting to look at and explore - but I'm afraid that the other side of that is that the great graphics might why the levels are so small and there are so many, many load screens. I'd take less great graphics over less time spent watching things load.
Stealing Everything
Yes, this is fun. I like looting and scavenging games, and perhaps that says something about me, but there's a lot of in here, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Things I Didn't
The Tiff-Taffing Language
Taff is gone, and that's incredibly sad. One character mentions it, wondering what the word means, but in general the NPCs use "adult" level language and like to drop the f-bomb. It feels unnecessary and gratuitous in a Thief title, and didn't lend anything to the game.
Besides that, they needed a good editor. There are grammatical mistakes in everything from the loading screen tips to the dialog, and sometimes they're weird and glaring (such as people asking a question in one tense, and being answered in another) and sometimes just distinctly non-native speaker in phrasing. I expect more from a company this large.
The Story
The story makes a kind of sense. Sort of. But what it feels like is five different people wrote five different stories with different subtext and meanings, then they cut the different stories into strips, put them into a hat, and drew parts out as they needed something else for Garrett to do with his time. There's no unifying voice at all, and there are some times you just go "That makes no sense whatsoever." The end is beyond unsatisfying, so don't look for any resolution or epiphanies there.
The Boss Fight
No one plays Thief for a boss fight, you taffing idiots.
The Sound
I don't know what they did with the sound for this game but it's an utter failure. Half the dialog is either very loud, or so muffled you can't hear it at all, and distance to the speaker doesn't seem to make any difference - subtitles are pretty much a necessity. Even then, the game is plagued with conversations amongst NPCs that repeat ad nauseam, often so quickly that the same NPCs are having the same conversation four times simultaneously. Even if whatever they're talking about is something you've already dealt with and you really want the game to stop telling you about it.
Be prepared to hear that "Jebediah Chokes is a right prick" so often that Garrett (that's you) may snap and kill every NPC in the zone just to MAKE IT STOP. Not that that's what I did, or anything. Nope.
E is for Everything
Playing Thief, I got incredibly sick of mashing the E key. E is, variously: open a chest; open an armoire; open a door; open a drawer; pick a lock; pick a pocket; read a document; pick stuff up; peer through a keyhole; open a window; pry with your crowbar; enter a zone transition; enter a "squeeze point"; move a beam; unscrew some bolts; open a grate; cut out a painting; disarm a trap; hide behind something; open a safe; set a pin while picking a lock; enter a cabinet; rappel - and likely about fifteen other things I've missed in this list.
About half the time, the pressing of the E key seems wholly unnecessary. For example, if you want to open a window, you long-press E. Then Garrett will look around the window and get out his crowbar (the same animation every time), and then it wants you to tap E to cause Garret to pry the window open. Except, why does it matter? There's no way to "fail" opening the window, no way to make noise while doing so, no way to jam it if you don't use the right rhythm or anything, you just tap E repeatedly and it opens. Why am I tapping E again? Is this some trick to make me think I'm doing something when really all I want is for the animation to end and let me move on already?
Beyond that, with E for everything, you will invariably encounter confusion. You wanted to snatch that silver flask off that crate quickly and step away? Sorry, we're going to make you crouch and peek around the crate it's sitting on instead. This kind of thing gets old really fast. I've been playing mouse-and-keyboard for a long time and would really like the single action button concession to console-based players to go die an ugly death now, thank-you.
Abandon All Hope
The levels are riddled with points of no return, with zero warning that's what they are. When this happens, it feels as though the game is punishing you for exploring, which is totally not what a Thief game should be doing.
Loading...
There are way too many load screens. How a game like GTA can go without them, and you can't get two streets over in Thief without a load screen I can't figure. The worst part is that you don't always know when you're going to trigger a load screen. Hey, that window - could be a flat to rob: you'll never know until you sit through the repetitive window-opening animation, and bam! Load screen. Sucker! Didn't mean to leave the zone and need to go back to the old one? How about you sit through that animation and load screen again. This is fun for you, right?
See Monkey Climb? Climb, Monkey, Climb!
There are points in this first-person game when suddenly the camera changes to third-person view, and you're forced to maneuver Garrett up some pipes and around some ledges in this third-person view as if you're suddenly playing a platformer. It's really disconcerting, and I was annoyed every time it happened. There really didn't appear to be any point to these - there were no enemies to avoid, no jump you could miss, and only one path to take. No idea what these sequences were about nor why anyone thought they were fun or a good idea.
My Recommendation
If you're looking for a game, well this is one, and if you can get it on sale, go for it. Play it as a stealth game, up the difficulty, and don't even try to get involved in the story. But if you're looking for Thief, this isn't it.
