Thief for PC: Review, Gameplay & Benchmarks (2014)

Updated: March 10, 2014

Hello again techfans! Today we’re taking a look at Thief, the reboot and technically fourth installment of the Thief franchise. This is the first one coming from Square enix as a production company, and the series hasn’t seen a new entry since mid 2004, making this a decade long restart. The original games, especially number 2, were well known for their emphasis on stealth, planning, and non linear map design, heavily rewarding players that took their time exploring. Does this new one live up to it’s legacy? Let’s take a look.

To start off let’s look at the game’s visuals and performance. While everything is super dark and dreary, for the most part it’s visually pretty nice and there’s some good concept art that went into detailing the city. I especially like how there’s the occasional level that really highlights the difference between the common city you normally find yourself in, and the more posh higher class areas you’ll visit. Running on our system which includes an i7 4770k process and an Msi GTX 780 Twin Frozr, we got an average of about 42 FPS on 2560×1440, and around 62 FPS on 1920×1080 while running the games built in benchmark utility. Regular gameplay does usually run at least 10 fps smoother or even 20/30 thanks to the fact that usually you’re just dealing with being in doors and moving slowly and stealthily, but for those few action moments with weather effects you will see your frame rate take a nose dive. Now as for actual gameplay, Thief has been something of a mixed bag. There’s a lot of good groundwork that showed potential for a solid stealth game, but there’s just some key issues that end up causing it problems.

Starting with the good side, theres a number of flavorful mechanics, some old some new, for avoiding and distracting enemies, including using water arrows to put out torches, fire arrows to start fires as a distraction, avoiding stepping on broken glass, and the ever popular throw a glass bottle to make a sound. One of the newer mechanics is your focus powers, you can enter a focus mode that slowly drains a magic meter, and while active you receive a number of bonuses that you can unlock over time. Initially it just highlights things you can interact with whether its a hidden switch or something valuable to steal, but as you invest in it you can also perform special one hit K.O.’s in combat, steal and lock pick faster while focusing, and even have shadows stick with you while sneaking shortly after leaving them. It’s not too intrusive of a mechanic and you do have to spend money or find special items in order to expand its powers, and the game’s option menu even gives you the choice to just have it not be around if you want a more traditional thief experience. Overall i liked it, Honestly the only part of the game it diminished was making hidden passages way too easy to find, because even if you’re out of mp you can just do a focus blink that still reveals stuff like that.

All of the larceny side of things is really fun in this game as well. Searching rooms feels more thorough as you see yourself checking drawers, feeling for hidden switches on paintings, and overall the way you interact with the environment just feels nice. Some of the mechanics are a tad easy such as lockpicking, though the main reason for this is that failing picking isn’t so much an issue, as it is taking too long that you get caught, or rushing yourself and making a stupid mistake which makes noise and can attract attention. There’s plenty of loot to search for in every area, and often times fairly well hidden collectables that get added to your home base over time. Money isn’t purely for the sake of score, but goes into restocking useful equipment like arrows and flash bombs, or buying upgrades like better armor, decreased bow draw time, or more focus powers.

So just looking at the core gameplay alone, there’s actually a lot of good going on here. The problems start however when you look at three main things: How linear the game is, how flat the story is, and by far the biggest issue of the game, the fact that enemy AI has the equivalent intelligence of a sack of marbles. As far as linearity goes, the game is divided into two main pieces, the main chapters, and the central hub. The main story chapters are the missions you complete to move the plot forward, and for the most part these can get really linear. Sometimes they feature maybe one or two alternate paths as a reward for finding a hidden button or using an optional tool you purchased like a screwdriver, but there’s usually one obvious path to take and all routes work out as a straight way to get to the same location. The central hub town on the other hand offers numerous paths to get from point a to point b, this is where you’ll hang out between main missions and can do side jobs and purchase equipment. It’s much more non linear but it’s also just the one place that you’ll revisit often, so it gets old fairly fast.

Then there’s story, which isn’t horrible but at the same time isn’t great. Characters are 2 dimensional, dialogue offers nothing really memorable, and at the end of the day it’s mostly just one big excuse to get you from one side of the town to another, stealing to your hearts content along the way. Neither of these things completely break the game, and for some people might just be a matter of taste. Story alone might not matter to you at all, and maybe you’d prefer a linear straight forward experience to a more open one, though Series traditionalists definitely won’t like that fact.

In the end though the one thing that really does harm the game is Enemy AI. Guards are some of the most unaware, unthinking enemies I’ve ever seen, which might be bearable in an action game, but in a stealth title it’s one of the most key areas. The whole point of the game is to not get caught stealing things, which is easy to do with how often the guards fail to notice you simply because you’re crouching in a dark place 4 feet away from them, or decide not to be alerted for the dumbest of reasons. My favorite example has to be when a I slipped through a door that was closed, and a guard noticed it being left open so they become alarmed, which is a good thing, thats how stealth games should be. The problem is, all i had to do was shut the door he was directly staring at, and everyone decided that the problem worked itself out and didn’t need investigating. And even when you are caught the game’s combat system makes it so that one on one fights are super easy, thanks to a god mode dodge that nullifies any hit thrown at you, and then you just have to hit back till they fall down. The only time guards are ever an issue is if you do manage to aggro them somehow, and do it in bulk, since 3 at once can actually be an issue since they can instakill you from behind. Thing is, that almost never happens, and when it does, you should just run and hide somewhere till they completely forget you exist.

So, final thoughts, I’m a bit conflicted on this one. While it certainly isn’t the same experience as the original series, there were a lot of good ideas going into this one that I like, and I see this potential for a solid stealth game that just gets thrown out thanks to how little guards seem to care that you ransack the whole town. How linear it is on average plus the weak story line only help to solidify this sense of disappointment. The game can still be fun in short instances, and I don’t regret playing through it, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone as a full price purchase. If you want a stealth game that challenges you and gives you the thrill of avoiding and tricking enemies, this isn’t it. If you want a stealth game just to mess around in and try to get the highest score possible stealing everything not nailed to the ground, then this one can certainly be some fun, I’d just recommend caution and buy it some time later during a sale or after a price drop or two.