INTRODUCTION:
Thief, the Dark Project (hereby known as Thief), is a game developed by Looking Glass games, and published by Eidos Interactive in 1998.
Thief a first person stealth game, focused on the fantasy of emulating a thief in a gaslamp fantasy setting, called the City. You play as Garret, a master thief taught to sneak and steal by an elusive origanisation of thieves called the Keepers. With an arsenal of various arrows (noise, water, fire, rope, moss, etc), a blackjack to knock out enemies, a sword to kill or defend yourself, health potions, holy water for undead, and so on.
Disclaimer! Much of the following is from my own personal experience, and analysis during gameplay.
THE TOOLS FOR THE TRADE:
As a master thief, Garrett’s goal is to simply pay rent. He needs cash, so any kind of thief’s job is no trouble for him, and the more he can acquire the happier he is. However things get complicated over the course of the story, when he gets roped up into pagan cults and zealous crusaders wanting to skin him alive. As Garrett isn’t the best fighter, he’ll have to skulk around the various levels of the game to avoid getting caught. To do this, Thief makes effective use of three factors: movement, sound and light.
LIGHT: The game has a light meter (known as the Light Gem) that scales between full and empty depending where the player is standing. Shadows obstruct a guard’s field of view, and thus make the player’s shape difficul to spot, whilst light will make the player’s form obvious. These areas are visibly obvious, if an area is darker than another, then the light there is dimmer. In Thief, you are advised to stay in the shadows, and avoid the light.
The player can use the light gem to determine if they are in any light source, or in complete shadows. If they are in an area of pitch darkness, moving will cause the light meter to increase a bit. Certain objects emit light, such as torches, fireplaces and lanterns. The two former can be extinguished using water arrows in Garrett’s quiver.
SOUND: Certain surfaces produce sound when walked upon, such as solid iron floors, or tiling. The sound is produced at regular intervals, and will attract guards even if cloaked in shadows. Consequentially, the player must seek out surfaces such as wood, stone floors, or even carpet to muffle their steps (dirt works as well, but gravel is the bane of any thief).
This works both ways! Guards whistle or mumble to themselves when bored, making it easy to gauge their distance from you if unseen. Their footsteps carry sound as well, allowing you to figure out when to come out of hiding, or when to strike; if multiple guards are in a same room, the game’s sound design is clear enough to determine an approximate amount. Finally if other louder noises are blaring through the game, such as a forge or an alarm of some kind, then they can be used to drown out your own movement and footsteps.
MOVEMENT: How Garrett moves is important, as it becomes a synergy between both factors. Walking quickly will make noise, sneaking and crouching around will make you too slow to catch up to guards or (later on) run away from undead & monsters. Furthermore, what you move on, or past whom, will factor into your stealth to ensure you don’t get caught. Movement in Thief is slow and methodical, even whilst running, and helps emphasise the thief like fantasy.
As a player, you are undetectable if you are: not moving, in complete shadow, and making no sound. Anything short of that risks detection, and to further the gameplay and risks induced Garrett isn’t a great fighter. Most guards will slay him in two hits, but it takes five or six to kill a single guard, four to kill priests and civilians.
Regardless, by making use of these elements, Thief creates a tense gameplay that emphasises the necessity of stealth. The health imbalance, the importance of sound and light mechanics help the player get into Garrett’s skin, and think like him. At first the movement and attempts are clunky, with missed blackjack strikes or mis steps into the light, but eventually you grow to master the game. When to save your arrows? Which guards should you avoid, and which should you take down? Where should you hide, and where is it safe to run?
What’s important is that Thief is considered a pioneer of stealth/action games, who makes use of light & sound mechanics in addition to the typical line-of-sight detection mechanics other stealth games already possessed at the time. Metal Gear Solid (1998) comes to mind. Its sound system revolutionised the method stealth games were played, as it brought a new auditive dimension to gameplay. Audio was even central to the game’s design! (Gamasutra – Postmortem: Thief: The Dark Project, pg. 2)
So the question is, why am I making a case about this? Simple: for my final major project I plan on building a stealth game myself.