Shawn
Jun 2nd, 2004, 03:39:18 AM
A little background (skip if you wish to get right to the review):
I still remember the first time I saw the demo for a little game by the name of "Thief: The Dark Project". Even then, the graphics didn't "wow" me. But by the time I was halfway through the tutorial, the amount of world interaction had me hooked; The way the NPCs responded to varying degrees of light and darkness, how they could hear you approach even when their backs were turned, the ability to "mantle" onto objects by pulling yourself up. And then came the heart of the gameplay: Thieving. Sneaking into people's homes, snatching their prized trinkets right off the shelf and making good your escape. I wasn't prepared for the vast, rich world which I was about to be thrust into.
I mention this because I feel it's important to establish that I've been a fan of the franchise for a long time. Like many fans, I was sorely disappointed when I heard that Looking Glass Studios - the developers of Thief: the Dark Project and Thief 2: The Metal Age - closed their doors. Worse, Thief 2 had ended on a heck of a cliffhanger. Then the word started coming in: Ion Storm Austin, the company responsible for the critically acclaimed Deus Ex, would be picking up the license and making the third game.
It was rough times for a fan: While ISA had several of the original developers on their team, there were many changes being made to the core Thief formula that had the long-time fans concerned. The decision to simultaneously develop for the PC and X-Box led to certain design concessions; Gone were the sprawling, city-wide levels of the previous games, to be replaced with something more akin to the shoebox sized levels of Deus Ex: Invisible War. Gone was the presence of water you could actually swim in, which led to many a creative entry points in the original games. While these are just a few highlights, suffice it to say that there was enough to have fans worried. The release of the lackluster Deus Ex sequel did not alleviate these concerns in the least.
I'm happy to say that, while the concerns were not entirely unfounded, they become almost trivial once you actually start playing the game.
(Begin Review Proper)
Thief: Deadly Shadows is a mixed bag. Thankfully, that mix consists of mostly good contents.
While many things have changed, the impeccable stealth gameplay has survived the years and change of engines intact. Those who think that Splinter Cell is the epitome of stealth gameplay will be in a world of shock if they've never picked up a Thief game before.
First and foremost, shadows are your friend; Trained as a child to disappear in the darkness, Garrett puts his skills to good use in his current profession of wealth relocation. While hidden in shadows, he is nearly invisible. In addition to the previous methods of sneaksie hiding, Garrett can now press his back up against a wall. In the previews I had seen, I had considered this only a gimmick, to be used by people playing third person to peak around corners. However, in practice, this technique makes Garrett all but undetectable. Thus, it's not only useful, but borderline overpowered. Use it sparingly, as it's basically your get-out-of-jail-free card.
There are plenty of elements in this new installment to make staying hidden more difficult, however. Guards are now able to carry torches around with them, illuminating their surroundings. You might feel safe pressed up in that dark corner but, when you see that torch bearing guard approach, you just know that you had better find some way to beat a hasty retreat before he gets too close.
<center>http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-01_thumb.jpg (http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-01.jpg)http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-02_thumb.jpg (http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-02.jpg)</center>
Which brings me to my next point: The Shadows. Thief 3 is one of the first games on the market to use completely dynamic shadows. Every single object in the game world interacts with light sources, realistically self-shadowing and casting shadows on their environments. Even the shadows in the recent graphical blockbuster, Far Cry, pale in comparison. I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I'd say the shadows in Thief 3 are far and away better than anything I've seen, including the upcoming Doom 3. They really add a whole new dynamic to the game: Open up a door to a well-lit room and light will spill into the room you're currently in, while the door itself will cast a shadow you can hide in. At one point, I even managed to hide in a patrolling guard's own shadow by staying cautiously close to him. At another point in the game, I needed to sneak by a stationary guard in a brightly lit area of the streets. To accomplish this, I managed to shove several crates in front of the light source, thus creating shadows for me to hide in as I crossed. The lighting in this game is truly one of those things that you have to see to believe.
The graphics are a large step forward from what fans of the first two games are used to. Powered by the latest version of the Unreal Warfare engine (which is so heavily tweaked out that it no longer truly resembles it's original codebase), the graphics can be quite stunning at times. Unfortunately, I said "at times"; While the PC version sports much higher res textures than its X-Box counterpart, it's easy to see where concessions were made to support both systems. Some textures will look incredibly detailed, while others look rather blurry up-close. Fortunately, the abundance of darkness in the game keeps the player from ever having to bother to pay too close attention to the uglier textures in the game. The character models look and are generally animated very well. Hand-animated death animations, however, were replaced with ragdoll physics, which can lead to some hilariously goofy death poses.
In general, though, the physics are vastly improved since Ion Storm's last outing: Bumping into objects no longer sends them flying across the room. Now, a player must actively walk into an object, "pushing" it. At first, the object will began to tilt, then eventually fall over. I had quite a bit of fun just playing around with the physics in the game, knocking over barrels and watching them roll off a ledge, blackjacking a guard at the top of a flight of stairs and watching his body tumble down, picking up objects and throwing them around the room. While the objects may not behave quite as realistically as what's promised with Half-Life 2, they don't seem very far off, either.
Now on to the gameplay.
This time, Garrett sports a somewhat shorter list of equipment. Gone are many of the gimmicky potions from the previous games, such as Speed, Slowfall and Invisibility. A welcome change, as it made the game more challenging. Rope arrows didn't make the cut for technical reasons, but were replaced by Garrett's new climbing gloves, which allow him to scale any stone or brick surface in the game. These gloves turned out to be quite fun in practice, if somewhat underused by the level designers. I would have liked some more areas to explore with them. Still, they worked well. Garrett's sword, which he's wielded since the first game, is now replaced with a dagger - far more Thief-life than a shortsword, and certainly more challenging to use. As if combat wasn't discouraged enough by the game's design, having the dagger as your primary offensive weapon will make you think twice before getting yourself into a fight.
Instead, you'll find yourself relying more on his bow, which can fire a variety of arrows with elemental crystals attached to the end; Water Arrows can be used to douse fires, creating precious darkness for you to hide in, as well as clean up any incriminating blood stains; Moss Arrows will create a patch of soft moss on the ground which will deaden your footfalls and make you much more difficult to hear; Fire Arrow unleash an explosive ball of flame which, while incredibly damaging, is also incredibly loud. These are best saved for extreme emergencies; Lastly are the gas arrows which create a cloud of gas that will render anyone within it unconscious when they hit.
<center>http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-03_thumb.jpg (http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-03.jpg)http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-04_thumb.jpg (http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-04.jpg)</center>
Movement is another thing that has been changed from the previous titles; Indeed, from most first person shooters. You are no longer simply a disembodied camera, floating along through the levels and occasionally seeing your hands. In T:DS, the first person camera is affixed to the character model's head. This means that you cannot just start and stop running at the drop of a hat - You'll find that you need a brief moment to break into a run or to come to a halt, just like in real life. When you turn your view, you'll find that it only turns the character's head at first, allowing you to look to the side without rotating your body. It's even possible to look down at your hands and see the weapon you're carrying. When you walk, there is a distinct view-bob as your head bounces ever so slightly up and down. It certainly takes some getting used to, but I find that it adds a degree of realism to the game.
The AI in the game is dynamic, adjusting itself to your chosen difficulty level for a mission. At its highest setting, it can be quite impressive at times. Now, guards are not merely alerted by hearing or seeing the player, but by the player's actions, as well. Stealing valuable items that were moments before in plain sight is a good way to get the nearby guard to start looking for you. Leaving a door open in a key part of the house will certainly raise suspicion, as well as knocking over items that are normally set in an orderly manner. And while a guard may become only a little suspicious if they happen across an extinguished torch, they will become flat-out alerted if that torch happens to go out right as they're standing by it! Likewise, don't expect to be able to put out the torch or candle that a guard is carrying without him deciding to come look for you.
Similarly, I was constantly surprised by the amount of non-scripted conversations and NPC interactions in the game. At once point, while sneaking through a wealthy widow's manor, one of her servants spotted me and ran off to fetch a guard. I, of course, had no intention of sitting put for the guard to arrive, so I ducked into some nearby shadows and listened to the following conversation:
"Help! Help! There's a guy over here!"
"Alright, alright. Show me where he is."
The servant drags the guard back to the spot where he saw me, only to find me gone.
"I could have sworn I saw somebody here..."
"Look, don't waste my time like this. I'm going back to my patrol."
The NPCs also each have a "memory", recalling spots where they heard or saw you before. Testing this out, I moved around a bit so that he'd see me again.
"There it is again.... I wonder what. Oh no, he's back! Guard! Guard! He's here in the Kitchen!"
Yes, that's right: He called out my exact location. When he confronted the guard, he was less than happy about being dragged back over to the kitchen after the last false alarm, and the servant chewed him out about not doing his job properly. Also, I've seen situations where a guard stumbles across a body I left out in the open and then proceeded to blame it on the first passerby he noticed. Things like that add a whole new level of immersion to the game.
<center>http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-05_thumb.jpg (http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-05.jpg)http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-06_thumb.jpg (http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-06.jpg)</center>
The story itself has always been as important to the Thief games as the stealth gameplay: It simply wouldn't be a Thief game if either one faltered. Thankfully, the story of Thief: Deadly Shadows is easily up to par with the previous two installments - even surpassing that of Thief 2, as far as I'm concerned. I'll of course refrain from spoiling anything, but the basics go like this: As the ending of Thief 2 implied, the Keepers had already known the outcomes of Garrett's previous two trials, and they were not greatly concerned as they knew he would succeed. However, they are now approaching what they call an "Age of Darkness", the time of unwritten words. The prophecies, which have been so clear up to this point as to what's to come, simply fall silent about the near future, warning only of great danger. And so the Keepers employ Garrett, the most promising acolyte who left them so long ago, to try and find out more about the coming reckoning. It has lots of twists and surprises, and kept me engaged all the way until the end.
The game has a distinct atmosphere and personality all of its own, in the same way that the previous two games did. Yet, much as the atmosphere in Thief 2: The Metal Age was vastly different from the atmosphere in Thief: the Dark Project, so, too, is the feel of the third game completely different. Where the first game contained heavy steampunk mechanics mixed with elements of magic, and the second game contained an abundance of Victorian architecture and relatively advanced technology, the third game has an almost medieval feel to it, that toes the line between "trite" and "unique". I have a feeling that the people who dislike this new theme will be about equal to the number that enjoyed it. I, for one, fall into the latter category.
The City portions of the game were touted as being a free-form environment in which the player could roam about freely, breaking into houses and shops as they please and robbing the owners blind. While this is present, it's a bit underwhelming. The City is moderately sized, with only a set number of places which the player can actually enter. It certainly was fun, and added a new dynamic to the game, but it ultimately failed to impress. It was neither good nor bad: Simply there.
Instead of having a menu screen in which the player buys their equipment with the loot they stole in the previous mission, the player is now required to find a "fence" in which they can sell their loot to, and then to find a shop where they can buy the items they need. Unfortunately, I found myself hardly ever visiting the shops, as all the items I could ever hope for were easy enough to find laying around the city and during missions. Perhaps it was due to the way I play the game, using only as few items as possible, but I never once had to purchase anything from a shop outside of the climbing gloves. I finished the game with enough leftover gold for Garrett to retire in style.
And now that I've talked about the gameplay at length and I'm winding down here, it's time to talk about the game's performance. I haven't upgraded my computer in about a year and a half, give or take, but I still consider it a fairly beefy box: Pentium 4 2.4b ghz, 1gb Corsair XMS2700 RAM, Radeon 9700 Pro. And Thief: Deadly Shadows demanded every last ounce of power out of this rig and then asked for more. Those dynamic shadows, while impressive, are graphically demanding. I played at 1024x768 with all of the details cranked up. My framerates averaged around 40fps, but sometimes dropped into the 20's during some particularly complicated scenarios. To its credit, however, these framerates remained playable given the game's slow-paced gameplay.
<center>http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-07_thumb.jpg (http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-07.jpg)</center>
Adjusting the detail sliders did not seem to have much of an affect on my performance, nor, surprisingly, did enabling fullscreen anti-aliasing. The only factor which significantly affected my performance was the resolution. I have a feeling that my CPU was very much my bottleneck in this game, and someone with a faster CPU may experience much higher framerates. To re-iterate, however, I found the framerate to always be playable, if not always silky smooth. A few tweaks to the game's ini files certainly helped out my performance.
Which I feel is worth mentioning: Even though no official editor has been released yet, the game is highly configurable. I've already altered many aspects of the game, including shrinking the HUD as well as eliminating several aspects of it that I found unnecessary; Editing the loading screens to replace some artwork which I didn't care for, as well as replacing useless gameplay tips with flavor text from the first two games; Completely changing the menu screen as well as lots, lots more. Almost every aspect of the game can be altered to the user's liking, with a little bit of work.
Overall, I can find precious little reason not to recommend Thief: Deadly Shadows to anyone even remotely interested in its premise. The only major barring factor here is performance: You will need a fairly capable PC in order to enjoy this game in its full glory. A GF3-level card or above is the bare minimum, and I recommend at least a Radeon 9500 or above. Still, if you can meet these requirements, and the idea of a slow-paced stealth game that's absolutely dripping with tension appeals to you, do yourself a favor and pick up the game as soon as you can.
I still remember the first time I saw the demo for a little game by the name of "Thief: The Dark Project". Even then, the graphics didn't "wow" me. But by the time I was halfway through the tutorial, the amount of world interaction had me hooked; The way the NPCs responded to varying degrees of light and darkness, how they could hear you approach even when their backs were turned, the ability to "mantle" onto objects by pulling yourself up. And then came the heart of the gameplay: Thieving. Sneaking into people's homes, snatching their prized trinkets right off the shelf and making good your escape. I wasn't prepared for the vast, rich world which I was about to be thrust into.
I mention this because I feel it's important to establish that I've been a fan of the franchise for a long time. Like many fans, I was sorely disappointed when I heard that Looking Glass Studios - the developers of Thief: the Dark Project and Thief 2: The Metal Age - closed their doors. Worse, Thief 2 had ended on a heck of a cliffhanger. Then the word started coming in: Ion Storm Austin, the company responsible for the critically acclaimed Deus Ex, would be picking up the license and making the third game.
It was rough times for a fan: While ISA had several of the original developers on their team, there were many changes being made to the core Thief formula that had the long-time fans concerned. The decision to simultaneously develop for the PC and X-Box led to certain design concessions; Gone were the sprawling, city-wide levels of the previous games, to be replaced with something more akin to the shoebox sized levels of Deus Ex: Invisible War. Gone was the presence of water you could actually swim in, which led to many a creative entry points in the original games. While these are just a few highlights, suffice it to say that there was enough to have fans worried. The release of the lackluster Deus Ex sequel did not alleviate these concerns in the least.
I'm happy to say that, while the concerns were not entirely unfounded, they become almost trivial once you actually start playing the game.
(Begin Review Proper)
Thief: Deadly Shadows is a mixed bag. Thankfully, that mix consists of mostly good contents.
While many things have changed, the impeccable stealth gameplay has survived the years and change of engines intact. Those who think that Splinter Cell is the epitome of stealth gameplay will be in a world of shock if they've never picked up a Thief game before.
First and foremost, shadows are your friend; Trained as a child to disappear in the darkness, Garrett puts his skills to good use in his current profession of wealth relocation. While hidden in shadows, he is nearly invisible. In addition to the previous methods of sneaksie hiding, Garrett can now press his back up against a wall. In the previews I had seen, I had considered this only a gimmick, to be used by people playing third person to peak around corners. However, in practice, this technique makes Garrett all but undetectable. Thus, it's not only useful, but borderline overpowered. Use it sparingly, as it's basically your get-out-of-jail-free card.
There are plenty of elements in this new installment to make staying hidden more difficult, however. Guards are now able to carry torches around with them, illuminating their surroundings. You might feel safe pressed up in that dark corner but, when you see that torch bearing guard approach, you just know that you had better find some way to beat a hasty retreat before he gets too close.
<center>http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-01_thumb.jpg (http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-01.jpg)http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-02_thumb.jpg (http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-02.jpg)</center>
Which brings me to my next point: The Shadows. Thief 3 is one of the first games on the market to use completely dynamic shadows. Every single object in the game world interacts with light sources, realistically self-shadowing and casting shadows on their environments. Even the shadows in the recent graphical blockbuster, Far Cry, pale in comparison. I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I'd say the shadows in Thief 3 are far and away better than anything I've seen, including the upcoming Doom 3. They really add a whole new dynamic to the game: Open up a door to a well-lit room and light will spill into the room you're currently in, while the door itself will cast a shadow you can hide in. At one point, I even managed to hide in a patrolling guard's own shadow by staying cautiously close to him. At another point in the game, I needed to sneak by a stationary guard in a brightly lit area of the streets. To accomplish this, I managed to shove several crates in front of the light source, thus creating shadows for me to hide in as I crossed. The lighting in this game is truly one of those things that you have to see to believe.
The graphics are a large step forward from what fans of the first two games are used to. Powered by the latest version of the Unreal Warfare engine (which is so heavily tweaked out that it no longer truly resembles it's original codebase), the graphics can be quite stunning at times. Unfortunately, I said "at times"; While the PC version sports much higher res textures than its X-Box counterpart, it's easy to see where concessions were made to support both systems. Some textures will look incredibly detailed, while others look rather blurry up-close. Fortunately, the abundance of darkness in the game keeps the player from ever having to bother to pay too close attention to the uglier textures in the game. The character models look and are generally animated very well. Hand-animated death animations, however, were replaced with ragdoll physics, which can lead to some hilariously goofy death poses.
In general, though, the physics are vastly improved since Ion Storm's last outing: Bumping into objects no longer sends them flying across the room. Now, a player must actively walk into an object, "pushing" it. At first, the object will began to tilt, then eventually fall over. I had quite a bit of fun just playing around with the physics in the game, knocking over barrels and watching them roll off a ledge, blackjacking a guard at the top of a flight of stairs and watching his body tumble down, picking up objects and throwing them around the room. While the objects may not behave quite as realistically as what's promised with Half-Life 2, they don't seem very far off, either.
Now on to the gameplay.
This time, Garrett sports a somewhat shorter list of equipment. Gone are many of the gimmicky potions from the previous games, such as Speed, Slowfall and Invisibility. A welcome change, as it made the game more challenging. Rope arrows didn't make the cut for technical reasons, but were replaced by Garrett's new climbing gloves, which allow him to scale any stone or brick surface in the game. These gloves turned out to be quite fun in practice, if somewhat underused by the level designers. I would have liked some more areas to explore with them. Still, they worked well. Garrett's sword, which he's wielded since the first game, is now replaced with a dagger - far more Thief-life than a shortsword, and certainly more challenging to use. As if combat wasn't discouraged enough by the game's design, having the dagger as your primary offensive weapon will make you think twice before getting yourself into a fight.
Instead, you'll find yourself relying more on his bow, which can fire a variety of arrows with elemental crystals attached to the end; Water Arrows can be used to douse fires, creating precious darkness for you to hide in, as well as clean up any incriminating blood stains; Moss Arrows will create a patch of soft moss on the ground which will deaden your footfalls and make you much more difficult to hear; Fire Arrow unleash an explosive ball of flame which, while incredibly damaging, is also incredibly loud. These are best saved for extreme emergencies; Lastly are the gas arrows which create a cloud of gas that will render anyone within it unconscious when they hit.
<center>http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-03_thumb.jpg (http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-03.jpg)http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-04_thumb.jpg (http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-04.jpg)</center>
Movement is another thing that has been changed from the previous titles; Indeed, from most first person shooters. You are no longer simply a disembodied camera, floating along through the levels and occasionally seeing your hands. In T:DS, the first person camera is affixed to the character model's head. This means that you cannot just start and stop running at the drop of a hat - You'll find that you need a brief moment to break into a run or to come to a halt, just like in real life. When you turn your view, you'll find that it only turns the character's head at first, allowing you to look to the side without rotating your body. It's even possible to look down at your hands and see the weapon you're carrying. When you walk, there is a distinct view-bob as your head bounces ever so slightly up and down. It certainly takes some getting used to, but I find that it adds a degree of realism to the game.
The AI in the game is dynamic, adjusting itself to your chosen difficulty level for a mission. At its highest setting, it can be quite impressive at times. Now, guards are not merely alerted by hearing or seeing the player, but by the player's actions, as well. Stealing valuable items that were moments before in plain sight is a good way to get the nearby guard to start looking for you. Leaving a door open in a key part of the house will certainly raise suspicion, as well as knocking over items that are normally set in an orderly manner. And while a guard may become only a little suspicious if they happen across an extinguished torch, they will become flat-out alerted if that torch happens to go out right as they're standing by it! Likewise, don't expect to be able to put out the torch or candle that a guard is carrying without him deciding to come look for you.
Similarly, I was constantly surprised by the amount of non-scripted conversations and NPC interactions in the game. At once point, while sneaking through a wealthy widow's manor, one of her servants spotted me and ran off to fetch a guard. I, of course, had no intention of sitting put for the guard to arrive, so I ducked into some nearby shadows and listened to the following conversation:
"Help! Help! There's a guy over here!"
"Alright, alright. Show me where he is."
The servant drags the guard back to the spot where he saw me, only to find me gone.
"I could have sworn I saw somebody here..."
"Look, don't waste my time like this. I'm going back to my patrol."
The NPCs also each have a "memory", recalling spots where they heard or saw you before. Testing this out, I moved around a bit so that he'd see me again.
"There it is again.... I wonder what. Oh no, he's back! Guard! Guard! He's here in the Kitchen!"
Yes, that's right: He called out my exact location. When he confronted the guard, he was less than happy about being dragged back over to the kitchen after the last false alarm, and the servant chewed him out about not doing his job properly. Also, I've seen situations where a guard stumbles across a body I left out in the open and then proceeded to blame it on the first passerby he noticed. Things like that add a whole new level of immersion to the game.
<center>http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-05_thumb.jpg (http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-05.jpg)http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-06_thumb.jpg (http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-06.jpg)</center>
The story itself has always been as important to the Thief games as the stealth gameplay: It simply wouldn't be a Thief game if either one faltered. Thankfully, the story of Thief: Deadly Shadows is easily up to par with the previous two installments - even surpassing that of Thief 2, as far as I'm concerned. I'll of course refrain from spoiling anything, but the basics go like this: As the ending of Thief 2 implied, the Keepers had already known the outcomes of Garrett's previous two trials, and they were not greatly concerned as they knew he would succeed. However, they are now approaching what they call an "Age of Darkness", the time of unwritten words. The prophecies, which have been so clear up to this point as to what's to come, simply fall silent about the near future, warning only of great danger. And so the Keepers employ Garrett, the most promising acolyte who left them so long ago, to try and find out more about the coming reckoning. It has lots of twists and surprises, and kept me engaged all the way until the end.
The game has a distinct atmosphere and personality all of its own, in the same way that the previous two games did. Yet, much as the atmosphere in Thief 2: The Metal Age was vastly different from the atmosphere in Thief: the Dark Project, so, too, is the feel of the third game completely different. Where the first game contained heavy steampunk mechanics mixed with elements of magic, and the second game contained an abundance of Victorian architecture and relatively advanced technology, the third game has an almost medieval feel to it, that toes the line between "trite" and "unique". I have a feeling that the people who dislike this new theme will be about equal to the number that enjoyed it. I, for one, fall into the latter category.
The City portions of the game were touted as being a free-form environment in which the player could roam about freely, breaking into houses and shops as they please and robbing the owners blind. While this is present, it's a bit underwhelming. The City is moderately sized, with only a set number of places which the player can actually enter. It certainly was fun, and added a new dynamic to the game, but it ultimately failed to impress. It was neither good nor bad: Simply there.
Instead of having a menu screen in which the player buys their equipment with the loot they stole in the previous mission, the player is now required to find a "fence" in which they can sell their loot to, and then to find a shop where they can buy the items they need. Unfortunately, I found myself hardly ever visiting the shops, as all the items I could ever hope for were easy enough to find laying around the city and during missions. Perhaps it was due to the way I play the game, using only as few items as possible, but I never once had to purchase anything from a shop outside of the climbing gloves. I finished the game with enough leftover gold for Garrett to retire in style.
And now that I've talked about the gameplay at length and I'm winding down here, it's time to talk about the game's performance. I haven't upgraded my computer in about a year and a half, give or take, but I still consider it a fairly beefy box: Pentium 4 2.4b ghz, 1gb Corsair XMS2700 RAM, Radeon 9700 Pro. And Thief: Deadly Shadows demanded every last ounce of power out of this rig and then asked for more. Those dynamic shadows, while impressive, are graphically demanding. I played at 1024x768 with all of the details cranked up. My framerates averaged around 40fps, but sometimes dropped into the 20's during some particularly complicated scenarios. To its credit, however, these framerates remained playable given the game's slow-paced gameplay.
<center>http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-07_thumb.jpg (http://dark_god7.home.mindspring.com/TDS-07.jpg)</center>
Adjusting the detail sliders did not seem to have much of an affect on my performance, nor, surprisingly, did enabling fullscreen anti-aliasing. The only factor which significantly affected my performance was the resolution. I have a feeling that my CPU was very much my bottleneck in this game, and someone with a faster CPU may experience much higher framerates. To re-iterate, however, I found the framerate to always be playable, if not always silky smooth. A few tweaks to the game's ini files certainly helped out my performance.
Which I feel is worth mentioning: Even though no official editor has been released yet, the game is highly configurable. I've already altered many aspects of the game, including shrinking the HUD as well as eliminating several aspects of it that I found unnecessary; Editing the loading screens to replace some artwork which I didn't care for, as well as replacing useless gameplay tips with flavor text from the first two games; Completely changing the menu screen as well as lots, lots more. Almost every aspect of the game can be altered to the user's liking, with a little bit of work.
Overall, I can find precious little reason not to recommend Thief: Deadly Shadows to anyone even remotely interested in its premise. The only major barring factor here is performance: You will need a fairly capable PC in order to enjoy this game in its full glory. A GF3-level card or above is the bare minimum, and I recommend at least a Radeon 9500 or above. Still, if you can meet these requirements, and the idea of a slow-paced stealth game that's absolutely dripping with tension appeals to you, do yourself a favor and pick up the game as soon as you can.