Thief: The Dark Project

Game of the Day series.

Close friends know I have an obsession with the original third-person sneaker by Looking Glass studios. Yahtzee's glowing retroactive review of it gave me a massive warm fuzzy and to this day I yearn for a remake in the original spirit but with updated rendering technology. Recent announcements about Thief 4 (Thiaf?) have made me leary of the future and overfond of the past.

I played Thief at 320x240 on my Packard Bell with its 75mhz Pentium processor and 8mb of RAM that I later upgraded myself to sixteen (replacing the original 8 due to the requirements of parity). And I played it soley with the keyboard, a skill I carried from days in Duke Nukem 3D. Yes, mouse chums, you read that right. I snuck amidst a true three-dimensonal game using the clickety-clack of a handful of on-off switches instead of the ball-sliding analog most serious gamers used. Then again, I've never considered myself hardcore.

Did I mention I only had the demo? From some CD, I can't remember where, I chewed through the trimmed-down version of Lord Bafford's castle countless times. Until I could do it in my sleep and until I found all sorts of wacky bugs and managed to pull myself out of the restricted area and into the unfinished (or purposely mangled) full level using the beloved rope arrows. After buying the game I beat it on normal, then hard, and never finished in very hard though I knew I could; I just didn't like the added requirement of not killing anyone.

The short videos between levels hinted at a deep mythology through quotes, passages, and deep ambient sound. You got peeks at man and magic and all the mental twisting within and without. Garret's own pragmatic outlaw sense became embedded in me by seeing the character yanked between factions. And his suave stealing and shadow skills became sealed by the isolated quip, "Well since I'm in here, I might as well pick up something for myself..."

Quotes and memories of the experience pulse in my veins and pop out at unexpected moments, usually around people ignorant of the entire thing. Thankfully my girlfriend is one who not only enjoyed the game, but watching me play it (no joke), which is a singular event not since repeated except for one level in Deadly Shadows. The charm of the computer-controlled people "foils" (as the designers named them) have made their mark on us "real" taffers. We'll never be the same.