"I've been a ghost all my life."
I want to preface this review by saying that the game is somewhat solid if it is your first (and preferably ONLY) Thief game you ever played. If you enjoyed it: good! But stay away from the rest of the series because I can guarantee you, you'll either A) won't find the earlier installments as captivating or B) they'll make you hate Thief 2014 retroactively.
If you don't like some old man's rambling about how everything used to be better, just skip to the second half of the review.
Now, I'm a huge fan of the stealth genre in both 2D and 3D, and I also played a lot of the major ones such as Hitman, Splinter Cell and of course, the Thief trilogy. With Thief especially I'd like to point out that I have played these recently for the first time ever, so there was no familiarity or nostalgia involved. Instead, it was an almost marvelous revelation of how a game can present itself with memorable and intricate level design while still giving the player the choice to rummage through the levels as he pleases. Sure, it can be overwhelming at first, even for their time they look ugly as sin, so I'll admit they aren't without faults.
There is however on thing they do right: they let you play the games however you want in whatever way you want. Thief - and by extension, any of the Immersive-Sim games - is something I'd like to compare to something like Pen&Paper or any other board game. You're given a place to play in, have to adhere to the rules the game has set for you and in between starting the level and finishing the objectives it's up to the player to figure out how to do it. There's no handholding or restrictions, other than, you know, a mission failure or death maybe.
Want to ghost the entire mission? You can do that. Knock out any guard and rob the place blind? You're a thief, so naturally you can. Fight every creature to death with your dinky-ass sword? Well good luck trying to evade death.
The beauty that sets the early Thief games apart from its modern successor is immersion. You're a thief, not a fighter. You have a few weapons and tools to dispatch enemies and make your adventure easier. There is an overarching, but negligible story. With every mission, you're given piece-meal information, just enough to know what to look out for. The maps are borderline useless but give enough context for navigation. And honestly, why would some random thief have the fully detailed map for some highly secured mansion or long forgotten dungeon? It all works, but it IMMERSES you into the game.
Onto the ACTUAL review now...
Thief 2014 has the same problems as, ironically, other titles that Square-Enix tried to modernize: Hitman Absolution, Tomb Raider 2013 (and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but I've not played it as of yet): They all fucking suck and have almost nothing in common with the series' roots anymore. This is absolutely hyperbole, but all these games, along with whatever shit comes from Ubisoft/EA, are very much everything what's wrong with TrIpLeAaA-Gaming.
The developers don't even let you properly play the game anymore. You're just being guided on a tour that's all flashy, without any substance to it. Look how great the game looks! Here, check out this cutscene! Whoa, did you absolutely, POSITIVLEY LOVE OUR QTEs WE PUT IN THE GAME? Huh? What's that? You don't?
Everything in Thi4f is a chore and simultaneously so dumbed down. Traversing the open world is no fun. You cannot jump whenever you want. You cannot climb up something whenever you want. You cannot place a rope arrow whenever you want. Actually, this is so terrible I have to mention it again: YOU CANNOT JUMP AT YOUR OWN LEISURE! As a thief! You know? When you need to blow the scene? Get everybody and the stuff together? What the fuck! It's all either scripted, automated nonsense when the game lets you perform a jump (think 3D Zelda for example) or scripted QTE nonsense every time you want to open a window, just to hide the fact the game needs to load the interior of the house or load up the next area of the game when each part barely qualifies as an alley. I think the worst part about it is this automatic, vomit-inducing camera movement every time you pick up some loot, open a closet or the six billion trays of a drawer. The camera goes whoosh and zooms in on the object, tilts and turns, then zooms out again as to simulate player movement, without actually being in control of it. You know how picking up loot worked in previous Thief? You just point the mouse somewhere, click and be done with it. But I digress ...
Besides all the restricting movement that only accentuate how barren and linear the levels are, the MC now sports some additional abilities. Remember, this is way past the prime PC Gaming era, so everything’s gotta get casualized because Stealth is haaaaaaard and I don't wanna put in the effort, dammit!
The first one is a dash, which lets you zip quickly in between hiding places. At first, I thought this ability nifty, to give the game a little more flow or give the player the chance to correct a mistake, as to not be spotted by a guard. However, since there is almost no cooldown on the dash, you can abuse it easily, because you're quicker and basically invisible while performing the dash.
The second one is ... Detective Mode from the Batman Arkham games or Eagle Vision from Assassin's Creed. Because why case the area yourself as a Master Thief when you can have the game highlight the loot and things you can interact with, show the guards patrol route and so on. It's an insult to anyone who went through the earlier games. But yet, here we are. And the most annoying thing? You WILL use it. The game is so chockfull with detailed environments you can't even tell what button you can press, which drawer you can open and so on. It's a necessary evil because the developers know you're an idiot.
My point is, the game doesn't make you think or figure out things on your own, there's no actual exploration, everything is just by the numbers and turned into a cinematic faux-Hollywood dark, brooding edgelord story which only shares the name of the game in similarity to its predecessor.
There are other minor things to gripe about in the game but were personally not huge dealbreakers. The higher focus on the story didn't do it for me. Garett's sidekick acted like a dumb cunt and I couldn't care less for her. The upgrade system had no purpose other than to have an upgrade system in it. Not reusing Garret's well-established voice actor was a bummer and the lack of any fantastical/steampunk elements that enriched previous games with some lore was disappointing but ultimately minor in comparison to what else the game did wrong.
So yeah, fuck this game, fuck the greedy AAA-industry behind it and play Dishonored/Prey instead.
I want to preface this review by saying that the game is somewhat solid if it is your first (and preferably ONLY) Thief game you ever played. If you enjoyed it: good! But stay away from the rest of the series because I can guarantee you, you'll either A) won't find the earlier installments as captivating or B) they'll make you hate Thief 2014 retroactively.
If you don't like some old man's rambling about how everything used to be better, just skip to the second half of the review.
Now, I'm a huge fan of the stealth genre in both 2D and 3D, and I also played a lot of the major ones such as Hitman, Splinter Cell and of course, the Thief trilogy. With Thief especially I'd like to point out that I have played these recently for the first time ever, so there was no familiarity or nostalgia involved. Instead, it was an almost marvelous revelation of how a game can present itself with memorable and intricate level design while still giving the player the choice to rummage through the levels as he pleases. Sure, it can be overwhelming at first, even for their time they look ugly as sin, so I'll admit they aren't without faults.
There is however on thing they do right: they let you play the games however you want in whatever way you want. Thief - and by extension, any of the Immersive-Sim games - is something I'd like to compare to something like Pen&Paper or any other board game. You're given a place to play in, have to adhere to the rules the game has set for you and in between starting the level and finishing the objectives it's up to the player to figure out how to do it. There's no handholding or restrictions, other than, you know, a mission failure or death maybe.
Want to ghost the entire mission? You can do that. Knock out any guard and rob the place blind? You're a thief, so naturally you can. Fight every creature to death with your dinky-ass sword? Well good luck trying to evade death.
The beauty that sets the early Thief games apart from its modern successor is immersion. You're a thief, not a fighter. You have a few weapons and tools to dispatch enemies and make your adventure easier. There is an overarching, but negligible story. With every mission, you're given piece-meal information, just enough to know what to look out for. The maps are borderline useless but give enough context for navigation. And honestly, why would some random thief have the fully detailed map for some highly secured mansion or long forgotten dungeon? It all works, but it IMMERSES you into the game.
Onto the ACTUAL review now...
Thief 2014 has the same problems as, ironically, other titles that Square-Enix tried to modernize: Hitman Absolution, Tomb Raider 2013 (and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but I've not played it as of yet): They all fucking suck and have almost nothing in common with the series' roots anymore. This is absolutely hyperbole, but all these games, along with whatever shit comes from Ubisoft/EA, are very much everything what's wrong with TrIpLeAaA-Gaming.
The developers don't even let you properly play the game anymore. You're just being guided on a tour that's all flashy, without any substance to it. Look how great the game looks! Here, check out this cutscene! Whoa, did you absolutely, POSITIVLEY LOVE OUR QTEs WE PUT IN THE GAME? Huh? What's that? You don't?
Everything in Thi4f is a chore and simultaneously so dumbed down. Traversing the open world is no fun. You cannot jump whenever you want. You cannot climb up something whenever you want. You cannot place a rope arrow whenever you want. Actually, this is so terrible I have to mention it again: YOU CANNOT JUMP AT YOUR OWN LEISURE! As a thief! You know? When you need to blow the scene? Get everybody and the stuff together? What the fuck! It's all either scripted, automated nonsense when the game lets you perform a jump (think 3D Zelda for example) or scripted QTE nonsense every time you want to open a window, just to hide the fact the game needs to load the interior of the house or load up the next area of the game when each part barely qualifies as an alley. I think the worst part about it is this automatic, vomit-inducing camera movement every time you pick up some loot, open a closet or the six billion trays of a drawer. The camera goes whoosh and zooms in on the object, tilts and turns, then zooms out again as to simulate player movement, without actually being in control of it. You know how picking up loot worked in previous Thief? You just point the mouse somewhere, click and be done with it. But I digress ...
Besides all the restricting movement that only accentuate how barren and linear the levels are, the MC now sports some additional abilities. Remember, this is way past the prime PC Gaming era, so everything’s gotta get casualized because Stealth is haaaaaaard and I don't wanna put in the effort, dammit!
The first one is a dash, which lets you zip quickly in between hiding places. At first, I thought this ability nifty, to give the game a little more flow or give the player the chance to correct a mistake, as to not be spotted by a guard. However, since there is almost no cooldown on the dash, you can abuse it easily, because you're quicker and basically invisible while performing the dash.
The second one is ... Detective Mode from the Batman Arkham games or Eagle Vision from Assassin's Creed. Because why case the area yourself as a Master Thief when you can have the game highlight the loot and things you can interact with, show the guards patrol route and so on. It's an insult to anyone who went through the earlier games. But yet, here we are. And the most annoying thing? You WILL use it. The game is so chockfull with detailed environments you can't even tell what button you can press, which drawer you can open and so on. It's a necessary evil because the developers know you're an idiot.
My point is, the game doesn't make you think or figure out things on your own, there's no actual exploration, everything is just by the numbers and turned into a cinematic faux-Hollywood dark, brooding edgelord story which only shares the name of the game in similarity to its predecessor.
There are other minor things to gripe about in the game but were personally not huge dealbreakers. The higher focus on the story didn't do it for me. Garett's sidekick acted like a dumb cunt and I couldn't care less for her. The upgrade system had no purpose other than to have an upgrade system in it. Not reusing Garret's well-established voice actor was a bummer and the lack of any fantastical/steampunk elements that enriched previous games with some lore was disappointing but ultimately minor in comparison to what else the game did wrong.
So yeah, fuck this game, fuck the greedy AAA-industry behind it and play Dishonored/Prey instead.