The Pinnacle of Modern Gaming
I'll start by saying that there are many games that are fun, and that's all they are. Sometimes there are even games so good that while playing them you get the feeling that you might be getting a glimpse of another world or even universe. And then there's Thief, in which you get far more than a glimpse, you get a ticket, a pass to leave earth behind and enter and enter "The City" (the game's fictional setting) taking on the cloak of a master thief. It's a game where what's on the screen temporarily becomes your reality--you can see it, touch it, hear it. You can practically smell the place.
There are three powerful ingredients that make Thief simmer.
The first of these is exploration. Have you ever been playing a game and you wondered what was beyond a certain wall or behind a certain door, but then you realized there was nothing there at all, that you'd reached a dull boundary and you were then redirected to take the trail the designers had laid out for you? While Thief does have its boundaries, it also allows you to slip into the places in-between, to scale the rooftops & sneak through the sewers. The result is the near completion of the illusion that perhaps all games strive for, but many fail at--to simply convince the gamer that he or she is actually somewhere else.
And the setting begs to be explored. The sheer detail and variance of Thief's settings--the Renaissance style paintings, the contrast created by the different styles of architechture all add up to become a place at once familiar and strange--familiar enough to relate to, strange enough to invoke dread or unnerve you. In Thief you will sneak through city streets, medieval palaces, underworlds of all sorts & tread through ancient ruins--places made up of the exciting locales you've seen in books or movies but have never been to, until now.
The second ingredient of Thief is hard to pin down but perhaps may be described simply as "tension". The game is tense when you are hidden (because of the possibility of being seen) and yet more tense when you are sighted (because you have to either fight or run for your life!)
Your enemies will scare the hell out of you --they sound real, act real and unlike many other games you get the sense that you are vulnerable--clever and skilled, but also mortal. Although there are some AI glitches, the overall experience of the game is one in which you have reason to fear your enemies. As you progress through the levels you will be given some additional tools to make life easier for you in some regards, but Looking Glass "keeps it real", you are never transformed into an unstoppable gun-toting powerhouse, you remain a human, you face death constantly.
The last ingredient is storytelling. Thief weaves one of the best stories in gaming history. The cut scenes are outstanding and unique, but the real story takes place during the game, you read it in books, you overhear bits of conversation between guards working the graveyard shift. It is the great storytelling which will suddenly have you laughing out loud, or make you angry.
So there, that's my tribute to Thief, it took me six years to finally get around to paying my dues to the best game ever. That is if it is only a game.
R.I.P. Looking Glass.