[suspenseful music theme] Oh… Looks like Wells Fargo really stepped up security. I’ll try another door. [energetic music and heavy stomping] Well, things have changed… “Thief 2: The Metal Age” came out not even a year and a half after “Thief 1”. This kind of sequel was not uncommon in the era. If the first game was solid enough, just build onto it. So, with that in mind, I’m going to assume you saw my “Thief 1” video. “The Dark Project” has a tutorial and “The Metal Age” does not. So I also don’t want to be repeating myself. For now, I’ll say that, as good as “Thief 1” was, “2” does some things even better. So let’s get started. Sadly, the Steam version of “Thief 2” is just as bad as “Thief 1’s”. It’s better on GOG, you know what NewDark is. (caw) However, at the time of this video, I believe their build is based off of Taffer Patcher. It’s better than vanilla, but also outdated now. So, instead of using TFix Lite, I’ll be using… T2Fix Lite. Getting the sound is the same deal as before, so no big changes here. The one thing it does alter is actually immediate – it’s the first screen you see when you’re playing the game. There is a fence you can’t climb, but a good friend unlocked a side door for you. But now… [*huff-puff*] [*clonk*] It doesn’t matter too much (it’s still a pretty bad way in), and he never did say that you couldn’t jump the fence – just that his way was better. BASSO: “It’s the only good way in.” So it doesn’t break canon – it’s still good for Wookiepedia or whatever the “Thief” wiki is called. It probably doesn’t matter. Okay, now I can pull up the new intro. [distant sounds of machinery] [chirping of night insects and birds] [mechanical clanking, hissing of emissions] [rad rocking tune] It’s another cool, dark and stylish opening, but it conveys a lot to you as well. There is a new Builder Scripture, and it looks like technology is being pushed massively forward. There are some dramatic changes happening in the city, but Garrett – he’s still doing his thing. The story takes place roughly a year after the events of the first game. This time, only the first mission is really standalone, and the story kicks off in a second. Your first job is to help your old friend Basso (who you might remember being unconscious in “Thief 1”), and once again, he needs you to do all the work and help him elope. Not too much going on over there, so I’ll say a bit more about what’s happening in the world. The city only had bits and pieces of technology before, but things have come a long way. Electricity is much more available now, so the whole city is undergoing a kind of industrial revolution. The poor can have a garage door now, and the rich are becoming unfathomably fancy. It’s surreal to see an office layout that looks pretty modern. For all I know, they might already have Twitch streamers. You would think The Hammers would be behind this, but not exactly. They’ve gone through a religious schism. Not the “we’re gonna kill each other nonstop for 2000 years” kind – more the “I don’t wanna play with you anymore” kind. The Hammers are now completely outclassed by The Mechanist order. The old guard were already pretty fanatic, but these guys are something else. [awe-inspiring chorus] The revolution is all thanks to them, and their technology has spread into crime stopping. Combined with a City Watch crackdown, crime is almost completely eliminated. HUTAMA: “For a price…” It is becoming a horrible surveillance state dystopia, and you don’t want that – you never want that. There are tons of cameras, swarms of robots, traps… Which all sounds bad, but Garrett has a new innate power – his brand new mechanical eye. Can he see through walls or tag enemies? No. You can now zoom in on stuff. That’s all you need. ROBOT: “Praise Karras.” To make matters even worse, it seems that all plant life is dying out. So the Metal Age is looking to be apocalyptic. Things are strange once again, but you should have expected that. I mean, “Thief 2” also came I a trapezoid, but I didn’t have that one, since I had that shape covered already. I never keep it too far away from the GameSphere. Graphically, “Thief 2” looks a lot like “Thief 1”, but there have been some key improvements. For one, the character models are significantly more detailed now, but they could still add in more characters per map. The new levels can sometimes be insanely ambitious in size. As in “this one could be two different missions big”, but they went there. They’ve really mastered the use of lighting and shadow, too, since they’ve now had years to work on the Dark Engine. After all, “Thief 1” wasn’t initially going to be a stealth game, while the sequel knew EXACTLY what it was going to be. The environments are so rich and detailed, and there is a good variety of settings you actually play in. What happened was, this time around, they designed all the maps first, and then later made the story to accommodate them, which is why you can go from spooky cyber-church to pirate ship adventure. The word that keeps coming to mind is “refinement”. They know what works visually, and they were really pushing what they can do. No longer is the Chaos Realm just inside of a tunnel. I’m not saying every mission plays better, but, visually, you don’t get puked on, like the Thieves’ Guild ever again. As for the sound, it’s as atmospheric as ever. [guards' chatter in the distance, quiet crackling of a stove] [hasty yoinking] [a guard whistling a tune] [peculiar sounds of enchanted forest] [ghastly murmurs] [ghastly murmurs]
DISEMBODIED VOICE: "Terrible secrets, terrible secrets..." [ghastly murmurs] [sounds of alarm siren and security update through loudspeaker] The music is again tied with the ambience. There is nothing quite so burned into my brain, like Viktoria’s theme, but there’s good stuff here. It’s become more pronounced and creepy. [tense, drawn-out tune] [resonant, otherworldly tune] My favorite has to be the Nightmare Siren. [echoing tune that comes and goes in dizzying waves] Once again, they can play to their strength, because they actually know what they’re making this time. It really hammers the “don’t get caught” feeling into you. On the voice acting side, Stephen Russel is killing it once again. He’s playing, both, Garrett and the main villain this time. When I first played the game, I had no clue. As for the regular NPCs, once again, they bounce around a bit. It ranges from “who do we have in the office?” to “this guy is performing his heart out”. [school play level performance]
CITIZEN: “It’s as if all the plant life in the city up and died. Have you noticed that all the trees in Eastport are wilted and dead?” [respectable performance]
GUARD 1: “How come we gotta pull guard duty? Couldn’t the Mechanists just put more of those mekana… meka… makanical eyes around the place?” GUARD 2: “Because we can’t be shut off as easily, you taffer.” GUARD 1: “OHH!” [Monty Python skit level performance]
ARCHER 1: “You gotta prick us with your sewing needles? On this side of the street, we shoot like soldiers, so don’t make promises your arrows can’t keep!” ARCHER 2: “You gone-! You gone too far this time you camel-mannered, tunic-wearing mollycoddle! An arrow in the throat ought to shut you up!” Overall, it’s great presentation. It keeps the tone and look of the first game, adds a bunch of new stuff, but doesn’t twist it too far. The gameplay is similar, and yet, there are some changes. Unfortunately for speedrunners, bunny-hopping is gone. Your jumping movement is slightly slower, but more deliberate. Knocking out lights and masking your sound – that’s all the same. What might change is how enemies react to it. The enemy AI is supposed to be smarter, and sometimes it is. They’re more prone to noticing environmental changes, like open doors, but at the same time, I find it less predictable, and not in a good way. In fact, a lot of the human AI seemed a lot dumber than “Thief 1”. GUARD: “Thought I saw something.” GUARD: “Just the wind, I guess…” I’m not saying “Dark Project” enemies were geniuses or anything, but it kept feeling like I was getting away with things that I really shouldn’t have. Then, sometimes, the opposite would happen, and a guard across the map would have ESP. I even experimented with this a bit, to make sure I wasn’t going crazy, and, yeah… Here a guy is turned a hundred feet away, and I set down moss, but… “Fucking slaves!” …he bolts right at me. Both extremes weren’t a constant case, but it was definitely noticeable. This could all just be a weird, subjective thing that happened to me – I don’t know. They mostly do just fine. As for the player, you do have some new tools, besides the eye. Flares finally give you a cheap, expendable way to have some better light on you, slow fall potions let you make sick jumps, without sending your kneecaps across the street, invisibility potions sound game-breaking, but they’re rare and expensive – more of a “get out of jail free” card. There’s some other stuff… Oh! The tactical frog grenade! [*boosh*] But all the old stuff still works fine. GUARD 1: “Nay, not a single beast.” GUARD 2: “Good riddance then. Obnoxious things…” [*puff*] There are quality of life changes here and there, like showing where you’ve been on your map, and saying when you’ve found a secret, but the main appeal is all the new missions. Whether it’s breaking into a police station, or a bank heist, or escaping a city – it’s all about stealth. There are no curveball adventure or combat maps – sneaking is the name of the game. The strength in that is that you don’t have the abrupt shift in a level’s pacing, because it’s trying to be a different genre. The maze factor is pretty low this round, and your maps are frequently filled out. There are some incredibly engaging missions in this, and they typically don’t require as much hunting for petty loot. For example, in the bank heist mission, you’re there for evidence. The idea is that you wanna be in and out, because the place is swarming with security. But if you want to, you can still rob the place blind. There is an entire upper floor that you don’t have to go to, but it’s your freedom to try and do the Peter Panda dance to break into more stuff. It’s fun, because you’re CHOOSING to get more money for the next mission, instead of being forced to. Life of the Party is the gigantic mission I mentioned earlier. In this one, you climb across the city’s rooftops to try and break into a skyscraper. And you could beeline right for it – there’s plenty of loot inside. I mean, good God, it’s huge! This could easily be its own mission. Still, you shouldn’t wanna rush to it, because the city is full of cool stuff. There are tons of side stories and Easter Eggs and treasures. The exploration is so rewarding. My favorite is when you stumble upon a little greenhouse garden. There is a spider in there, and they’re always a problem. So, naturally, you go “Ha-ha!”, and then it dies. Then you read a journal that someone’s beloved pet named Longdaddy… If you load a save from before that – yeah, he’s harmless. So that made me feel like a dick the first time. There are so many great moments like that. Unfortunately, not every mission is a winner. The worst part is, it’s not like a “Thief Gold” issue, where I just don’t like the map – this time around, it feels like padding. And it probably was. “Thief 2” is a very rushed game. As in “employees weren’t bathing or sleeping for days on end” rushed. They likely wanted to have the same number of missions that “Thief Gold” had, but they didn’t have time for that. So, here are some examples. Ambush is a map set in the city streets, and I don’t like it that much. It’s a good premise, a cool idea for a map, but they don’t do much with it. It’s not a grand caper across the streets or anything. That said, they bring the map back to have you do a trailing mission. It’s not like Assassins, where it’s leading you to a cool place. This is nothing but following. You could take the last minute of this mission and put it in the next map, and it would be a lot better. This whole thing could have been condensed into a cutscene, and you wouldn’t miss out. Later, they straight up bring back the Lost City map from “Thief”, but now it’s being excavated. The goal is finding and kidnapping someone, but it has some annoying mechanics attached to that. I wouldn’t mind some Lost City “Indiana Jones”, but it’s the same map from “1”! In fact, in a change I didn’t like, Gold edition already added human enemies into that level, which makes the idea here feel even more “we did this already”. That’s still has nothing on this. Casing the Joint is the ghosting scouting mission. You go into a large mansion to hunt for secret passages and fill your map out. It’s an intricate map, and I do like it. The issue is: you’re preparing for your next mission, which is the exact same map. There’s proper security now, and treasures to steal that have unique challenges to them. It makes me wonder what the point of the previous map was. Ghosting it could have just been an Expert difficulty option. It’s not very tense, because you’ve been all over the place by now, and you know where the secret passages are. Also, in the vanilla game, there are unaligned objects and lights facing the wrong way. And these are the last two missions before the finale. It’s disappointing. Despite all that, the rest is fantastic. Every single mission is geared for sneaking. So I would say that “Thief 2” is a better stealth game than “Thief 1”, and for some people, it’s the ULTIMATE stealth game. The experience is so much more focused. That said, I do miss the horror elements, since “Thief 1” had a lot more of that. I would have liked another Bonehoard or haunted cathedral kind of adventuring map. “The Metal Age” doesn’t have anything like that, and the real tragedy is that it was going to. “Thief 2 Gold” had started development. There were going to be several new missions, including a horror necromancer themed one, and some existing stuff would have been retooled as well. Sadly, the studio died before all that happened. Looking Glass really was a lot like Jesus: they weren’t around long, but they pulled off some genuine miracles, before being killed off way too soon. It just sucks, and it makes the game’s shortcomings hurt even more. If only they had some more time… But most of what they did make plays great. As for the story, it still has the same great environmental storytelling. Like the Mechanist faction still claims to revere The Builder, but then you go to their sites, and The Builder is in darkness. He’s gone from revered to being in a storage unit. There are good, strong moments like that, but a lot more is told to you directly. There is a lot more intricacy to the plot this time, so, it’s understandable. They don’t dump too much at you that you couldn’t put together yourself. You’re still expected to have a functioning frontal lobe. There isn’t more reading because it’s dumbed down. The story kicking off sooner means there’s more events and characters to develop. I’m not gonna go play-by-play or anything, but there is one character I wanna focus on. So, if you don’t want spoilers, go to here: How could I NOT talk about Karras? KARRAS: “Pray for thy very soooul…” Our Mechanist messiah has so much going on. He’s an amazingly well done villain. Karras is the founder of a new religion, and a certified genius. He’s responsible for inventing the cameras, robots and other wonders. He’s shaping an entire golden race to be in his image. His power and influence in the city is massive. He’s been growing a god complex, and it’s not too crazy with his resume. What’s the personality of a mastermind inventor like that? Well… He’s a massive dweeb. KARRAS: (tap-tap-tap) “Is this functioning?” (blows into microphone) KARRAS: “Oh… Ahem, my good guests-” He’s talented, but not portrayed as being suave. He’s writing a new religious scripture, but parts of it are him complaining in his diary about the nobles making fun of him behind his back. They want favor to get to his inventions, and they don’t really care what he has to say. Karras now hates organic life and wants it destroyed completely. And his whole plan starts by giving the nobles golden slaves that he’s made. He’s turned innocent people into these things. And, unfortunately for the nobility, they’re Trojan Horses… Instead of having, like, some kind of shooting, he’s filled them all with a corrosive gas. It reacts violently to organic matter. Most of the plants that are in the city, are in the curated gardens of the nobles, so that will amplify the effect. He genuinely thinks he’s in the right to do this, too. He’s so narcissistic that he’s made all of his robots sound like him, and calls them his children. Even his own followers can get creeped out by them. GUARD 1: “Thou not the first to be afraid of them, for their visage is wrought to strike terror into the enemies of Karras.” GUARD 1: “OR those who might consider becoming enemies.” GUARD 2: “Well, and it might, for it near strikes terror into mine own heart.” But he doesn’t care what they think anyway – he already sees himself as above The Builder. KARRAS: “Who is Karras but the hand of The Builder? What the Builder wills, Karras does. What The Builder wants, Karras makes.” KARRAS: “PRAISE TO KARRAS!” KARRAS: “And The Builder…” He’s fun, but there’s still an underlying tragedy to him. I always wondered what happened to him to make him hate life that much. He probably got made fun of for his voice. I can get that – I had to take speech classes as a kid. But, statistically, I shouldn’t have been born, so I’m not complaining. Maybe he was so smart, he couldn’t relate to anybody. Or some combination of stuff. Whatever it is, he’s a huge asshole now. Garrett ends up teaming up with Viktoria to stop him. She’s taken over from the Woodsie Lord, since he got tricked to death. While The Hammers disliked Pagans, The Mechanists are outright genocidal towards them. An old enemy is a new ally once again. This adds onto the mythos of the series, too. Last time, the Pagan ways were destabilizing things, but this time, it’s The Builder’s. When it comes to “nature vs civilization”, you can’t just wipe one out and let the other one go unchecked. Garrett has been keeping the balance, whether he really wants to or not. The final mission is a trial of endurance. It’s a large map, and really feels like a test of your skills. What I hate is the beginning part, where you have to do Ikea shit – which means gathering some parts up and assembling them into what you need. I hate doing this every single time. But then you have the real challenge. Jesust Christ, it’s such a death maze! The Keepers didn’t prepare me for this! Oh, that’s right… It’s a satisfying ending, and it teases another game to come. That did happen, but it would be under a new studio. Some of the old guard would return, but it’s a very different game, compared to “2” and “1”. Still, “Thief 2” is an excellent game that’s well worth your time. It’s easy to see why people swear the sequel is the better game. Even with its focus tightened in, and some vastly better levels, I still personally prefer “Thief 1”. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why. There’s something about its atmosphere and supernatural story that, I guess, I find more appealing. Which is saying a lot, because I like “Thief 2’s” elements so much. Even if you don’t like the base game much, it’s worth it for the fan missions. I feel a similar way about “Doom 1” and “2”. The game will be 69 cents for the next few days, as the whole trilogy is still on sale. Next time, I’ll finish up the trilogy. This will take me a little longer – I have some sneaky upgrading to do and… Wait, what’s ha- I’ve gotta be careful. Next thing I know, I’ll be doing fan mission videos. Aaron: “Which ending do you prefer in “Deus Ex”?” Oh, that’s Helios. Like, easily. The Illuminati plan doesn’t make anything better, and Tong’s logic is very flawed. A new Dark Age won’t stop powerful people from just doing the same thing again, eventually. SeanLaundryMan: “Which wasteland is better – “Fallout 3” Capital or “New Vegas” Mojave?” If you mean, like, sight exploring – that definitely goes to “Fallout 3”, because it’s Washington DC, compared to a desert. That’s, like, the one big thing “Fallout 3” has over “New Vegas”. The setting of “New Vegas” has a hell of a lot more interesting things going on, so… there it is. Logan: “Excited about the upcoming “Factorio” expansion?” Oh, God, give me strength… David Wolynski: “Do you think “Thief” games could benefit from the RTX treatment?” Yeah, I’m sure they could. As long as they didn’t do what they did for “Quake 2” RTX. The weapon and level and item reflections are cool, but they really changed the mood of some of the areas in it. If “Thief 2” had whatever that was done to it, it would probably be pretty bad. Maybe NewBlood or Nightdive will buy it off of Square Enix one day, but I don’t think so. We’ll see. FLOORMAN: “Strange breaths of air…”
