For the very first game to feature Stealth in a First-Person perspective, it's a understatement how much of it holds up so, SO well despite it's age. (Played with Roguepatcher and a faux EAX Soundcard)
Thief: The Dark Project, or Thief: Gold is a First-Person Stealth game developed by Looking Glass Studios back in 1998/99. It follows Garrett who to some is a simple taffer thief but to the few, a masterclass example of stealth and thievery. As he does odd thieving jobs around the city and eventually catching the eye of a certain upper class figure who wishes to use his skills for a particularly big project. The game, despite being literally THE FIRST of it's kind, manages to still hold up decently well. Despite it's aged but charming early 3D aesthetic and general clunkiness with the controls.
Gameplay of Thief is split across 15 different missions. each one having a list of objectives that Garrett needs to complete in any which order. Who's amount also depend on the mission, as well as the difficulty. Where the harder difficulties alter and/or add more objectives to keep track of, rather than just only spawning in more enemies or making them hit harder. These are also not short levels either, par some of the early missions. As just a single mission could often can take over a hour to complete if you're being through on a first playthrough. Being a thief, most of the missions often involve you breaking into a place, sneakily, to then steal something, also sneakily. With the variety coming with the locations and stuff you need to steal. You start off with high-class mansions but easily get into more varied locations like a prison built on-top of a abandoned mine, or a crypt with undead roaming around. Even when you're just exploring just a normal place that's in the city there's often usually something notable about to make each missions feel completely different from the last. Now for the gameplay in the missions, Garrett has a decent amount of tools at his disposal. The most important of which is the darkness, in pitch black darkness he is practically invisible. Which thanks to a light gem you can keep track on how visible you are on the fly. Although it's not foolproof as you have to also take in account your footsteps' noise as they also make sound. Which depending on what surface you're standing on could be extremely loud even if you're slowly crouching around. Garrett thankfully does have a handful of tools to make his work easier. While he does have a sword to attack enemies, it's often more advantageous to knock them out with his blackjack. As not only is it typically quieter and still achieves the effect of eliminating a guard from the playing field. The actual sword combat is purposely fairly clunky so the more chances you can avoid needing to use it the better. Heck, even on harder skills you're often forced to not kill certain or anyone alive during missions so it's often the wisest decision if possible. Garrett also has a bow with a variety of arrow types to assist his thievery. You have water arrows that can extinguish torches, moss arrow to provide a soft floor, rope arrows to climb up to out of reach places, and more. There's even some inventory items like health, as well as more crafty equipment like flash bombs and mines. All of this stuff comes pre-chosen each mission but you're able to buy more from a selection with the money from the loot you collected from the last mission. As it doesn't carry over, you're encourage to find as much as possible and spend it all. Now since this is Thief: Gold, you're automatically given 3 extra missions, plus one blooper reel if you can access it. Instead of being mere extra missions, they are sprinkled into the pre-existing campaign. Each one has pretty fantastic ideas for level's setting but are often held back by extreme length, tedious level design, or a mixture of the two. It's kinda clear these levels needed another polish pass but as they stand, they're a solid inclusion if you can handle they're increased difficulty.
Style wise for Thief is interesting both in it's technical graphics as well as it's art direction. Starting with the former, the game very, VERY clearly looks like a 3D PC game that came out in 1998. Everything from the lowpoly models, the bit-crushed textures, and the architecture absolutely screams this. Although thanks to the sound card support, the game sounds superb with all the ambience sounds and echos from stuff like characters talking or just your footsteps making it amazingly immersive despite looking as it does. Now the art direction for Thief is easily the most unique part of it. As the game practically takes place in a medieval setting, but there's hints and pieces of electrical machinery sprinkled about. Somewhat like a lesser version of Steampunk, which the sequel absolutely leaned more into. It's great not only has a very interesting setting for a stealth game but also actively effects the gameplay too as it's impossible to put out electrical lights with water arrows for example. The story itself has a lot of lore and expressed fantastically with in-game text you can read. As well as the intermission cutscenes that feature a very distinct visual style and VAing is superb which is notable for the time. Both in these cutscenes and in the levels themselves.
Overall, Thief: The Dark Project/Gold is like a grimy wine bottle that contains fantastically aged wine. While it's visual graphics haven't aged as well as other 3D games of it's time, it's still contains absolutely superb gameplay and art direction that still make it such a treat. Which again is crazy for a game that's quite literally the first of it's kind. The way it has very easy to understand mechanics that are tested on with the sheer variety of mission scenarios, makes it such a no brainer why it's had a pretty sizeable fanbase that continues to make fan missions and patches to this day. Which of, the people at Nightdive Studios are, in fact, remastering this game. Somewhat in the vein of their System Shock 2 remaster. Which makes since as that game's original release was built off of Thief's engine. Where the entire game gets a major graphics overhaul that's seemingly still faithful to the artstyle as well as other features that Nightdive Remaster tend to have. As such, while I greatly enjoy Nightdive's work, I have a sneaky (heh) suspicion that the original release will get delisted here but included in the remaster, much like System Shock 2's. So if you wanted to try out Thief and want it for cheap as Nightdive remasters tend to be on the pricier side, getting it now on sale and sprucing it up with a few patches like I did is ideal.
