The Making of Thief

The excellent Rock, Paper, Shotgun plays host to a behind-the-scenes piece into how Thief: Deadly Shadows was made. The interview, between Kieron Gillen and designer Jordan Thomas, features some very memorable quotes, and touches on the rough road that Looking Glass studios had to travel in order to get the game out the door. Thomas is also not shy about the success of the game from a design perspective, if not in other regards: "If you want to look at a good example - and the Ubi guys will admit this freely - the Splinter Cell series owes a lot to Looking Glass and Ion Storm games ... That's a great example of what you can do if you take that same sort of design philosophy, at its core, and apply it to a much better positioned franchise with a more mass-market core fantasy."

Goin' to the bear pits tomoroow

[Scoth]

You wanna come with?

Yeah, off-topic, but still the most memorable part of that game :)

Re:

[deftcoder]

There was a lot of great dialogue in the first two games.

What was the line from Thief 2 where two guards are arguing in a guard tower and one says something like "are you going to prick me with your sewing needle?"?

Now I want to install Thief 2 under Wine. Thanks a lot, Slashdot.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Now I want to install Thief 2 under Wine.

Don't waste your time. It's unplayable - it runs at literally 2 FPS on a PC that was state of the art about a year ago. :(

Sadly, while Wine runs World of Warcraft quite nicely, older games don't get much love. Thief and Thief 2 fall in the sad gap between what runs on Dosbox and what runs in Wine. There's no good way to play them.

(Even booting into Windows doesn't help if you have a recent NVidia, since they make Thief 2 look totally crap because they don't suppo

Re:

[deftcoder]

... damnit!

I'm on a 2ghz Core 2 Duo, 2gb ram, 256mb 7900GS system.

Have you tested it under Cedega or just vanilla wine?

It'd look like ass anyways, since this laptop uses 1440x900, and widescreen was unheard of back then. :/

Re:

[derfy]

That was from Thief 2 in the 'Life of the Party' mission. Probably the BEST voice acting in the series.

Here you go: http://www.omni-tech.org/temp/lotp.wav [omni-tech.org]

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[soup_laser]

Thanks for the link. What a hoot! Some of the best trash talk I've heard while maintaining a family safe rating. Makes me wish I'd played these games.

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[deftcoder]

Haha, yes!

I forgot how funny the dialogue at this part was...

eh

[nomadic]

Thief 3 was good, but Thief 2 was better. If they make another game in the series I hope they drop some of the overly simplistic console elements and return to the older interface.

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[cliffski]

It's easily worth double that. just buy it, you really will not regret it. Thief 2 is awesome 2, but to be honest I can't imagine missing out on either, they are both awesome games.

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[deftcoder]

No!

You have to play through 1, then 2, and THEN Deadly Shadows. Each one builds upon the story of the previous game.

You will be confused by the plot of DS if you never played either of the first two games.

Don't be put off by the graphics. You'll really get into the first two games after about 20 minutes.

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[Petrushka]

I loved the bits of Thief 3 that I played, but never finished it: the reason was the excruciatingly slow load times. I gave up after only a few missions because I was just getting so bored with looking at load screens. OK, so I get that if I make a mistake, then I'm penalised by having to wait about 30 seconds before I can have another go. But if have to sit around doing nothing for 30 seconds anyway, even watching Flash ads on a crummy website would be preferable. When hard drives get faster I'll give it a

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[fbjon]

Eh, I didn't find them too distraction, though I sometimes had to stop before crossing the "load line" to think whether I'd forgotten something. Anyway, the orphanage mission is worth all the pain.

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[Emetophobe]

Thief 3 was good, but Thief 2 was better. If they make another game in the series I hope they drop some of the overly simplistic console elements and return to the older interface.

I doubt "they" will make a Thief 4 anytime soon, unless a 3rd company decides to continue the series.

Looking Glass Studios made the original Thief 1 and 2, they went out of business in 2000.
Ion Storm Inc. then made Thief 3, they got bought out and basically went out of business in 2005.

In other game related news...

[mhazen]

...Developer Richard Garriott has announced the release of his new game: Ultima II.

C'mon, this game is what, four years old? Someone out there is a sadonecroequinophiliac.

still have it, still play it

[mugnyte]

  When someone not interesting in FPS games is around and I have a machine up, I fire up Thief and let them wander around a bit. It's still a great way to introduce someone to the concept of creating a sense of place within a game. Darkness, large screen and powerful box helps deliver a good immersion. The fan missions are interesting, but after the 3rd in the series, the setting becomes a bit tiresome.

Thief and thievery

[MrCopilot]

We had a bit of nostalgia around here last night and went through a Thievery Install fest. Rediscovering (And Discovery for the young one) of the joys of sneaking around in the dark brought us much joy. Think I'll fire it up again right now.

http://www.thieveryut.com/ [thieveryut.com] Runs great in wine. Total Conversion for Original Unreal Tournament, Give it a go if you haven't already. Thief multiplayer using UT = awesome.

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[Hijacked Public]

I'm not much of a gamer by Slashdot standard but the original Thief is one of the few games I found interesting all the way through.

Every once in a while, usually several Windows reinstalls apart, I'll get the urge to play it up to the cutscene where the main character hands over the eye. I've yet to be as impressed with the impact of a cutscene as I am by that one.

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[loudmax]

I'm the same way. I actually got into Thief after I read a review in The Economist, of all places. I used to be somewhat of a gamer, but it's been too much trouble since I dropped Windows. When I think of what I'm missing, Thief comes foremost.

I was somewhat disappointed by Thief 2 though. My favorite mission was the one where you sneak into the Police Station to frame one of the chiefs. The best thing about it was that you couldn't just blackjack everyone and disable the robots; you had to sneak throu

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[MrCopilot]

Looking Glass Studios made a fantastic game with Thief. If Thievery works well under Wine, I'm definitely interested.

So far, only issue we had was 1024x768 did not run right on the kubuntu box with a brand new install of wine, she was too impatient to play for me to fix it.

Windows and Linux playing together. May I just say, OpenGL I love ya.

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[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.thieveryut.com/

ThieveryUT is great. It's a little bit fast-paced to get the thief experience down, though. OTOH, I suppose it has to be, or else it would suck to be a guard. :)

On a related note:
Check out this work-in-progress: http://sourceforge.net/projects/opde [sourceforge.net] -- the OpenDarkEngine. It's currently pretty much a game framework and map viewer, but it's moving along handily since the new head dev took over and switched the system to use the Ogre rendering engine. Object rendering

Awesome, awesome game

[WidescreenFreak]

This game is one of the best PC games of its kind that was ever released. Splinter Cell, which is awesome in its own right, doesn't come close to the atmosphere and environment of the Thief series, especially Thief 2. And I defy anyone who loves these games to play the Sanitarium level of Thief 3 and not be freaked out. I wish that a Thief 4 would be in the works. :( Until then, I guess Assassin's Creed is the closest successor, although it's not quite the same thing.

Oh, speaking of Thief 2, I highly recommend the T2X: Shadows of the Metal Age [thief2x.com] fan-made expansion pack. It's the best Thief mod out there in my opinion. YMMV, of course.

Praise, Karras! :)

Re:

[derfy]

Praise, Karras! :)

...and the Builder...

Theif III was crap

[Schmapdi]

Ruined by its co-development for the Xbox (just like Deus Ex 2). Even on a system that doubles or triples its recommended specs it runs like trash and has a terrible UI and gameplay. I've tried playing it several times and with fan patches and everything it still sucks. Garret the master thief of the series moves with all the grace of a 400lb drunken linebacker in Thief III. Theif II is an amazing game; certainly the pinnacle of the series. I wish it had gotten a good sequel it deserved. Thief the ori

Wii

[dolson]

I think that any/all of the Thief games would be great on the Wii. Picking locks, knocking people out, aiming the bow, everything would be just great... I can dream.

Three great game series

[MemoryDragon]

Killed by the X-Box: Thief, Deus Ex, Shen Mue Funny how one idiotic console can kill three of the best game series ever made in one strike. Even worse, series like Turok still exist :-( Btw. Splinter Cell never will reach the quality of thief, the production value, the athmosphere, the settings, they were close to perfect.