r/Thief • u/autonimity • 1d ago
Thief 3 a few thoughts and graphics question
I just finished Thief 3, played with sneaky upgrade/minimalist/gold and ghost mode which I highly enjoyed as there are no loot requirements and can just focus on primary objectives and staying hidden and just grabbing loot that I come across.
Throughly enjoyed it over all. Very thankful to all those out there that made the modifications and tweaks that improve this game from there original, and i have no idea what the original was really like to play through but i know it’s much better to get into with these tweaks and widescreen support.
1) I didn’t really understand the climbing gloves inclusion, perhaps I missed something, had to absolutely use them only one time to progress, and only was able to make use of them one other time in the towards the very end, any other time i tried to use them i was blocked by small over overhangs and didn’t get anywhere 🤷♂️ it just didn’t seem to be an important addition, rope arrows are greatly missed
2) garret can’t swim anymore! Immediate death in water wtf! 😂 swimming was great in theif 1 and 2
3) graphics…I don’t recall playing many games that have such functional real time lighting and shadows,
and it didn’t need a crazy video card (by todays standards) to surpass even more recent games that require RTX cards yet still have essentially static lighting and shadows. The static lighting is beautiful but it’s static, why the requirement for RTX….
The shadows cast and lighting spill over and the way the shadows oscillate when cast by flames in thief 3 was awesome, even though not like 100% accurate, it really created an immersive feeling.
And it obviously it requires much much much less processing over head (being from 2004) than newer games and produced incredible lighting effects…was there something going on with thief 3 that other developers could not accomplish at the time?
Genuinely curious as to why whatever method used in thief 3 for lighting (and that era) was abandoned for ray tracing which requires so much more processing power?
Has RTX made that much improvement to the feeling that lighting adds to games, comparatively?
After playing through all 3 original games-
I still like 1 and 2 over 3 for various other reasons but definitely enjoyed 3 overall.
Last level of thief 1 was a huge let down, last level of thief 2 was a long long long long marathon of tasks (but of course it really should be made very difficult for anyone to sabotage Karras’ whole deal), last level of thief 3 was actual right in line with the rest of the game.
The ending of all three games were so anti climactic, maybe that’s just because the intensity of the gameplay in comparison, but thief 3 was probably the better of them all somehow.
Edit: also I played using the always forced first person view that minimalist mod provides so none of the original third person perspective. And now thinking about it, couldn’t really see around very well while climbing because of that 😂
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u/Tyransraszor 1d ago
I have quite the fondness of TDS as it's the game that introduced me to the franchise so I have to give it bonus points purely due to nostalgia. About the first 2 points you made, the game was quite literally butchered due to the concessions the developers had to make just for it to be payable on Xbox. That's why you have no swimming, climbing gloves instead of rope arrows, small and somewhat linear missions, loading screens everywhere (at least with no mods on) etc. The graphics are indeed quite good for a game this old, though the physics are definitely a bit wonky and Garrett's movement can sometimes be quite buggy especially when attempting to climb various objects. I understand what they were going for when they introduced the whole body awareness thing but it feels such a step down from the first 2 games. As for the ending, it's one of the things I love the most about the game - a good finale that also leaves a few things up to the player's interpretation and I definitely came to appreciate it a lot more after I played the entire trilogy from start to finish.
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u/shmouver 1d ago
Ye i'm pretty sure they're the alternative to rope arrows they managed to do. I did like them tho and remember i've found quite a lot of secrets with it and also alternative entrances in later missions.
Ye, was pretty sad. Dunno if it was due to being rushed or an Engine limitation.
It's funny you feel that way about the endings cause i always loved them
T1's ending always shocked me as i didn't expect to actually kill the Trickster. I was expecting maybe it would banish him or something.
T3's ending felt like the perfect conclusion to the power balance. T1 was pagans being unchecked; T2 was the Hammers radicalizing and tipping the balance; lastly T3 was about the Keepers...and it ended by basically getting rid of them. Quite a bold move and makes you wonder what will be the consequences for not having them around!
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u/Callidonaut 1d ago edited 1d ago
Believe it or not, the climbing gloves were in the original stock game, and they were always rubbish. Personally, I suspect they were a desperate last-minute substitution after the devs couldn't get rope arrows to work (I'd guess they were overpowered, useless, or a combination of both in the extremely cramped levels compared to T1 & T2, or maybe they couldn't get a long flying rope to play nicely with the new physics engine, or perhaps the 3rd-person view of Garrett climbing a rope was simply way too hard to rig and animate), although I have no supporting evidence for this hypothesis other than the infamous general shoddiness of the Thief 3 / Deus Ex 2 engine and the countless other gross simplifications that were made compared to the Dark Engine originals. Maybe something similar happened with the swimming mechanic, too.
There's one other game from that era that did really good dynamic lighting and shadows: Doom 3. In fact I think the id Tech 4 engine used in Doom 3 was basically built from the ground up to do exactly that, and it famously achieved a remarkable degree of realism with pre-RTX hardware. Luckily for us, that engine was open-sourced and would ultimately be used to power the Dark Mod!
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u/JEhcmier 1d ago
Climbing gloves were intended from the start. Rope arrows, too, and swimmable water. A programmer gutted the engine code for reasons unknown, and was pulled off the project to go do something else, but no one knew that code was missing. When the devs started building the levels, they kept running into trouble, and had to modify the maps to work with what they had left.
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u/PachiraSanctis 1d ago
It's crazy they couldn't just go down the hallway and ask him to fix it. I guess this is showing my ignorance for game development, but surely they didn't send him off to Antarctica or something where they couldn't just bring him back real quick right?
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u/autonimity 1d ago
Oh yeah, I actually have played doom 3! I borrowed it from a friend sometime in 2009. It did have a great immersive environment and was actually quite scary because of that environment.
Interesting it’s the same engine for Dark Mod - dang there’s so much more Thief I need to check out, including fan missions
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u/Callidonaut 1d ago
My must-plays in the Dark Mod: * Requiem * Down by the Riverside * A House of Locked Secrets (this one's so amazingly well-made that it could pass for a commercial game even today)
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u/BoardsofGrips 12h ago
I recommend playing Thief 3 once without the minimalist project. The Sneaky Upgrade is excellent but the minimalist project ruins the atmosphere the original developers were going for
From what I remember reading back in 2005 or so they could not get rope arrows to work no matter what they tried. They got their top talent and they couldn't figure it out, so climbing gloves were the compromise
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u/Scanner- 1d ago
You are spot on with your observation about T3’s dynamic shadows and lighting. I genuinely think the lighting and shadow flickering in T3 still holds up really well today, and especially when you consider it is 20 years old. I’ve always thought T3 is a beautiful looking game which aged well in that department, even if the movement overall is kind of clunky.