Disappointing installment
The third installment of Thief was a bit of a let down in both story and game play. All of the new features of the game play have both strong and weak points. For instance, the ability to switch from first person to third person perspective is welcome and sometimes necessary in some situations but at the same time it makes the game less immersing. In previous games, I found that I was paying much more attention to the environment by looking and listening whereas in this game you could simply walk through the levels and not have to worry about what was around you. This is also true in the case of walking down a populated street. Though it is a bit of a relief to be able to do this because the game requires that you move back through levels that you have already been through, it also detracts from the feeling of sneaking around. This is most evident when in two parts of the game you are sent back and forth on fruitless paper chases. In both of these instances I began to feel that I would much rather be playing in a new environment that had new challenges and would further enrich the story than to be going back through old territory.
The levels are smaller with more breaks in the game for downloads. The artwork that was once used in between levels is gone and some of the clips are so dark and tangled that you can’t really tell what you’re looking at. The game itself looks great and plays well but again there is something weak about the environments. The ability to improve your status with the Hammers and the Pagans is an interesting idea but at the same time it detracts from the game because now they are both just another group of people that fail to hold interest.
The concept of the story was good but it was not gripping. I felt as though there were missed opportunities to build on the previous story. For instance, one of the things I enjoyed in Thief 2 The Metal Age was that there were still some old Hammerites around and there was a conflict between them and the new Mechanists. I would have liked to have seen Garrett come across some underground Mechanists still troubled by the aftermath of losing Karras yet still toiling with some of the technology that he had taught them. The ending I didn’t care for at all. It would seem to suggest that this is last installment of the series, which makes no sense to me. After Thief 2 there is enough of a story here that has been established and can be built upon if only the right people could get a hold of it.