In any RPG these days the theif doesn''t do theify things. I think it''s because of a lack of free ability in the RPG. I haven''t played Theif in particular, but in most RPGs I have played, whatever you decide to be: your goal is to kill the dragon. Why do I have to meet that goal if I want to be a dagger-toting low-life scum?!?? Unless of course...the dragon''s got a lot of gold...but then: why not be able to get a group of OTHER people to go get the gold and the steal from them if they succeed?

quote: Original post by Andrew Russell

There is one thing that realy annoys me about this game:

You are there to steel things, and sneek around. It''s a FPS (first person sneeker) isn''t it? Why are there so many parts of this game where you must do outright battle with undead things and those spiders and so on.

Sorry, but I have to totally disagree with you here. This has been discussed to death on the Through The Looking Glass forums, too.

Firstly, it is not a ''first person sneaker''. It is a game called Thief: The Dark Project. Don''t let some marketing term define the gameplay. Even so, just because there are monsters, doesn''t mean you can''t sneak.

Secondly, the "The Dark Project" part of the name is just as important, if not more so, than the "Thief" part. The game was originally called The Dark Project, and the Thief prefix was added later, presumably to give a more obvious clue as to what the gameplay involved - not to imply some sort of limitation upon it.

Thirdly, there are very very few parts of the game where you absolutely have to fight anything. Why on earth people get into the mindset of thinking you can''t use stealth to defeat monsters, I don''t know. Let''s look at this in a little more detail:

1) you can run faster than pretty much any monster. Since few of them have ranged attacks, you can lure them into a corner, and run past them, or lure them to one entrance before running off to enter via another entrance, or so on. This principle goes just as well for ''monsters'' as it does for guards.

2) You can hide in the shadows from any monster. Zombies, Burricks, Spiders, etc etc, are exactly the same as humans in that they can''t see you in the darkness. I used this to great effect in the level "Down In The Bonehoard". Instead of using my water arrows with holy water to kill zombies (as I assume you are doing), I used them to extinguish the torches in the areas I would have to ''work'' a lot, thus meaning I could easily slip by the odd zombie or 4.

3) Some monsters have other weaknesses. For example, the Burrick is deaf, so as long as you are careful to remain out of sight, there is little reason why you will end up in battle with one.

4) Enemies that don''t know you exist take much more damage from a weapon. So, if you were careful not to be spotted beforehand, you can kill most foes, human or otherwise, with a single arrow. This avoids "outright battle" in most cases.

5) You can physically evade many monsters. Spider troubles? Climb on a convenient crate or ledge and shoot arrows at it at your leisure. Whether you still consider this ''outright battle'' I don''t know. Personally I consider it to be just another application of the standard Thief concept: outhink and outmanouevre your opponents.

It is quite possible for a good player to complete Thief 1 fighting less than 10 battles toe-to-toe in total. Some have completed the game without dealing any damage whatsoever, excluding the single points of damage inflicted when knocking out foes for an objective. If you are finding yourself doing too much fighting, you''re just not good enough

And Wavinator: yes, LGS did recognise this "problem". And they addressed it in Thief 2, at the expense of making the game somewhat less interesting and varied. The monsters were largely replaced by mechanical robots in most levels. But as my points above should imply, generally the complaints about the presence of monsters were mainly from people who found the zombies too hard as they couldn''t kill them easily enough The ''original'' feel of the game couldn''t work without monsters, due to the plotline. I think the actual case was that many players felt that the monsters detracted from the feeling of being a Thief. Personally, I view the game as being more about ''stealth'' than about ''thieving'', and stealth is just as important on the monster levels as it is on the human ones.

Kylotan, who will defend Thief or Ultima 7 to the death

Remember kids if you have nothing to say but feel like correcting someone and being an ass. Then by all means you should go for it because god knows people might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel. Isn’t that right?



[Edit by Mad Keith: And HAH, I am the moderator here, so I do whatever I like. That includes modifying ANYONE's messages as you can see. I happen to know that really obvious spelling errors tend to lead to grammar-contests, and since I'm the one in charge, I responded to it. Nobody dares flame me back openly, so it simply brings out the error, before anyone else starts moaning about it. It just stops needless posting.

As for you, well, you're entitled to your opinion, and I'm entitled to completely ignore it if you want to be an arse about it.

I SAID in my post that I was nitpicking, and I doubt that anyone took that as a personal attack.
]

Edited by - MadKeithV on December 15, 2000 3:28:47 AM