[/caption]This is the twenty-fourth post in our Game of the Day series.
Rarely does the possibility of a sequel of anything entice me to madness, but there are some exceptions. Mostly we understand that a sequel cannot possibly live up to the original when compared against the same merits, so it must do something differently. It also seems typical for the success of an original to bloat the follow-up, e.g. the allowed sophomore release. Incredibly for me, Thief II shot out of nowhere and only increased the addiction Looking Glass Studios had lovingly crafted.
While you could say the graphics are moderately better, the fact that they kept on the same Dark Engine cannot be understated. I believe it helped them concentrate on the design of the plot, characters, levels, etc. to an equal or higher degree than the original. Can you imagine the pressure to "upgrade" to a better 3D system like Unreal, Quake II, etc.? And yet they resisted and turned out another gold brick to place on their grave. I simply cannot believe how quickly both this game appeared and the studio that made it disappeared.
It was the year 2000, or nearly there, and I had an office in a dot-bomb that the boss was slowly, but surely, strangling with his indecisiveness and obsession with "selling to Microsoft". The result is no product ever bore fruit because no product got past the internal demonstration phase. That's neither here nor there, but the point is that I was in sore need of distraction and had worn The Dark Project down to the bone, and still wearing it! Suddenly on a whim I decided to check when The Metal Age would be released and found that it already had. Ecstasy filled me even prior to picking it up from a massive retailer, Fred Meyer probably, and lasted a satisfying length of time while I sneaked around robots and uncovered the truth of Karas (sp?) and his betrayals.
Yes, robots. Now, I thought the idea of steam-powered robots to be perfectly acceptable and an even novel approach to the first one's more organic underpinnings. It also reasonably followed the title's implications of "metal age", but finally I do register some disappointment with the sheer weight of so much steel. Your blackjack becomes worthless, emitting a raw clang on your foes' body armor. Even your sword and arrows don't do much good, especially later on when the whirring beasts are even more indestructable. And then of course the levels are much more geared towards loud surfaces. I suppose the final result is something more difficult than before, and maybe that's what I take issue with. Let me be clear that I loved the game, these are just nagging feelings it left me with.
On the other hand there are glorious sojourns into the various sub-cultures of the Thief universe which I gloried in completely. Delving into the Hammers, Pagans, and Keepers to make and break alliances and finally stage your final victory was awesome. All the great story elements are here, tuned to a delicious degree. The city (cities?) is brought to life in a fairly breath-taking degree, especially for the time, and the expansiveness easily trumps the environments of the last installment.
I do remember, now, that I wasn't terribly thrilled with the mechanical eye Garrett has. It simply broke me out of character to see a very static model of myself standing with seemingly no cover while guards walked by. I think I would have preferred if they didn't render Garrett at all from that view, or if he was just some sort of dark smear. This and other items seemed over-powered against human foils, but once things got more mechanical they became your inch of leverage. I'm just glad they didn't do the awful third-person perspective that destroyed the immersion in Thief 3 (watching people pass you when you're half in the light was ridiculous).
Hmm ... kinda want to play this again now ...
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