Thread 11907543

You guys always talk about Thief and how the level design is god-tier, but I think you're looking at it backwards. It's not that the levels are amazing on their own, it's that the player controller makes them come alive. Every little crevice, shadow, counter, or wooden beam matters because your body in that game actually interacts with shit.
You can lean. You can mantle. You can creep like an actual creature, adjusting your speed based on the surface just to stay quiet. The light meter isn't just a gimmick, it's your lifeline. Geometry isn’t decoration, it’s tactile. You start looking at the world like a paranoid raccoon: “Can I climb that? Can I hide there? Can I jump down without breaking my legs and alerting the guards?” It's not just movement, it's navigation with intent.
And because the devs knew you had all this control, they just built these big messy medieval spaces full of systems and said "go." The real magic isn't the layout, it's how the layout responds to you. Your movement is slow and deliberate, but that makes every footstep feel like a choice. That carpet and tile pattern in the hallway isn’t just flavor, it’s a trap, if you're not careful.

tl;dr: Thief is great because the player controller makes you feel like a physical presence in the world, not just a floating camera. Control is the gameplay, level design is overrated.

>>11907543 (OP)
I do love feeling like a Master Thief as I do a cheeky lean forward while pickpocketing some guard

>>11907543 (OP)
AI really loves to do punchy restatements.

>>11907543 (OP)
Another equally big reason Thief's level layout is so heavily praised is because of how it affects the guards too. A lot of stealth games have pre-planned encounters that are kind of like stealth puzzles with few guards that don't move around a lot. In Thief some of the guards are like that, but most of them are wandering around the massive levels taking random paths. There is less waiting because for most guards it isn't really a good idea to just wait there until they do their path 3 times to figure out when to go in. You're better off rolling with the punches. It also feels like actually breaking into a place and less like reverse engineering what the dev wanted you to do.

I think this is why ghosting is such a big thing in the stealth genre, because the scenarios are pretty much set up in a way where ghosting is like getting a S rank on the encounter/puzzle. In Thief the levels are so big that doing this will just turn the game into a slog, because it isn't as heavily designed around encounters.

>>11907543 (OP)
Nice blogpost, where do I subscribe?

I get what you're saying, but then I see shit like this and remember that it's all a meme

>>11907579
Tautological non sequiturs ftw. It's fascinating, in the way that a sarcoma is fascinating.

holy reddit

>>11907595
>Posts the level where you are disguised as a hammer novice so the NPCs don't attack you unless one of them gets alerted
>Doesn't hide the bodies
>Half the building is tile floor
Now show the rest of the playthrough.

>>11907594
Already did, chump.

>>11907606
The very last guard was stunned instead of knocked out, so he probably blew his cover when the guard yelled.

>>11907543 (OP)
Didn't read lol

>>11907595
*teleports behind you*

>>11907543 (OP)
go ahead and design a level and have people say it is god tier
they probably won't
it will probably suck ass
just like your stupid premise

>>11907543 (OP)
God level thif...chitting the guards

>>11908697
both thief and doom have a massive amount of fan maps that people love because the mechanics work with anything

>>11908705
there's also a lot of shit maps
you don't have a point

>>11907543 (OP)
>the player controller makes you feel like a physical presence in the world, not just a floating camera
In what games DO you "feel like a floating camera"?

>>11907543 (OP)
>You start looking at the world like a paranoid raccoon: “Can I climb that? Can I hide there? Can I jump down without breaking my legs and alerting the guards?” It's not just movement, it's navigation with intent
>they just built these big messy medieval spaces full of systems and said "go." The real magic isn't the layout, it's how the layout responds to you
You've just described level design. And then you say that it's not about level design...

Some recent ttlg Thief drama for those that care for such things.

ttlg forum
showthread.php?t=153043

>>11908885
qrd?

>>11908745
Gloomwood has extremely shitty feel especially that sewer platforming part.
Thief 1-2 have good gravity sense of main character.

>>11908917
TFix is le bad, because it changes some things compared to vanilla.
GOG installers include TFix, so it's not vanilla.
It's bad for preservation.
We need to do something.

I just read the OP. No idea if he's correct.

>>11908989
I saw that OP just looking into the new Roguepatcher (I have no idea what advantage there is to using this over older versions of TFix atm, all Gold missions + Escape either crash on startup or boot up in an unplayable state like Mage Towers). The OP position is just clinging onto this abstract idea of absolute vanilla purity that I'm not sure actually exists. If you want to play Thief 1/G like it's 1999, you totally can even on Windows 11 via the OldDark Legacy patch, but I really think the NewDark features, even JUST the reworked mantle mechanic, are just a straight enhancement. I think people can often get so caught up in vanilla purity they forget why so few play that.
And I don't get the concern over preservation. Yes the GOG release comes with TFix 1.26 pre-installed, but it also comes with the vanilla thief.exe in a separate folder for you to downgrade at your whim, which is often even a requirement for other mods/patches such as GoldtoDark.
It just seems like pointless alarmism imo.

>>11908885
Keepers squabbling amongst each other? Say it ain't so..

>>11909004
OP has a whole paragraph where he says hes fine with NewDark.

>>11909004
I read further and OP brought up the VtMB fixes as an example. I'm not fully versed in the stuff behind those fixes, all I know is that there is a dev who started adding stuff in game instead of just fixing bugs. Then a lighter version appeared, but it was also criticized for adding stuff that wasn't there? So it gets harder to play the game as it was without any additional content.
And OP fears that's what happened with Dark Engine games. Again, I don't know the details, I've just played both Thief games with TFixes, and SS2 with I don't remember what (probably SCP). So now my experience has been permanently tainted if OP is correct...

>>11907957
FUCK MAN DON'T POST THAT SHIT UNSPOILERED

>>11907543 (OP)
I think you're either ChatGPT (80% chance) or an idiot trying to get some kind of virtual /vr/ street cred for recontextualizing something that doesn't need to be recontextualized (20%). You're definitely using jeet quotes though. Hey rhajesh, can you type "''"?

i think thief is the only game in existence where leaning actually feels like leaning, garret's head really feels like it's a physical object in the world
not even the dark mod allows me to snake my head around a door like thief does (although i do admit it can get you stuck and leaning into doorways strangely pushes garret in that direction)
>>11911596
they mentioned that even the steam version of steam comes with some patch but does it really? it's been a few years but when i first installed thief I played it without any mods (i figured an old ugly-looking game like that had few to no fans and no patches) and it had a maximum resolution of 800x600, cutscenes couldn't play, i couldn't change the gamma and there is an actual hole in the map in "the cathedral", hardly feels like a patched game to me

>>11907543 (OP)
All of that is true, but the level design is also just good.
You could put most of the Thief 1 and 2 levels into Doom or Quake 1 and they'd still be good. Hell, some of the levels in Thief 1 with mediocre stealth that are too influenced by Tomb Raider would probably be better in Quake.
Thief 1 is late 98. The only good medieval castle and city environments before this were in heretic/hexen and '96/97 doom custom maps like Darkdome from Eternal Doom.
https://doomwiki.org/wiki/MAP12:_Darkdome_(Eternal_Doom)
Everyone in the mid to late 90s was trying to make these medieval environments and almost nobody did a good job. Even series that would later nail those environments like Elder Scrolls were floundering, Daggerfall's massive cities are extremely ugly in terms of geometry.

>>11907543 (OP)
I don't get it, isn't the whole point of level design to make levels that fit the other mechanics of the game? Why try to seperate those disciplines? A Quake level would never work in Doom, Halo level design wouldn't quite work in Half-Life etc

>>11911596
Just uncheck every box when you install TFix, same with T2. If FMs want to use custom textures and stuff that's totally fine but you don't need that shit in the vanilla games.