Ghosts prowl the flooded wine cellars of the ruined Hamarite Cathedral, speaking backwards and spitting out skulls. Ghosts patrol the altar above, rattling chains. When they chase, they chase at breakneck speed, as if on VHS he plays at double speed. Swing your sword two or three times in a second, and you’ll hear a strange laugh through your whitened teeth.
So in addition to being the first PC stealth game, Thief: The Dark Project is a surprisingly effective horror experience. But more terrifying than the restless undead are the hard floors. It’s not the Clément singing in the caverns under the Opera House that keeps me up late. A marble hallway connecting the auditorium’s balconies and a steel walkway suspended above the stage. The sound of Garrett’s shoes hitting metal unconsciously triggers a Pavlov-like tingle, coupled with memories of running guards and sounding alarms.
“One thing we were very conscious of was that this would be the first stealth game that actually relied on audio cues,” said Looking Glass sound designer Eric Brosius in a 2011 presentation with MIT’s GAMBIT Game Lab. remembered in an interview.
Modeled after the submarine simulator of Ken Levine’s time as lead designer, Thief is a game about covert intelligence gathering. And it’s hard to get visual information. You are never given a convenient opportunity to hang out on a hillside and mark your target in the valley below. Instead, the many guards who threaten to bring blades to your squatting ass are mostly forced into the labyrinthine monk-punk world around you: tight Italian-style streets and sewers. hidden by a U-bend. Closed walls of the boudoir and pantry. And the ever-present blanket of darkness.
Your best bet, therefore, is to listen to the sound of Sellsword clearing his throat, or the pious Hamlight humming hymns as he potters around the temple. For example, you can create a mental map of patrols to avoid or break with a blackjack to the back of the head. Just as we collect visual and auditory information about our environment, so do our enemies. They are submarine killers trying to sink your vulnerable ship.
noisy person
Brosius created Thief’s soundtrack from simple drone loops, sometimes just four seconds long, to help the player. “We wanted to make sure there was enough space in the game so we could hear what was going on,” he said. “It made you very aware of things around you, and it worked in your favor to hear the footsteps of the guards. We kept it simple and hypnotic. We didn’t try to scare it.” That wasn’t our goal. We knew it had to be really immersive.”
Sound is, of course, the first tool a thief player must master, and may be his opponent, but it can be altered by noisemakers and moss arrows to keep pesky marbles wet underfoot. but its importance is matched by light. All the shadows in this medieval noir tale serve much more than a stylistic purpose, providing a dark path to safety or an invisible vantage point to watch over your enemies.
Project leader Greg LoPiccolo told MIT GAMBIT in 2011: Can’t we make a game that can be enjoyed just by standing around doing nothing? Just watching a man walk around the corner, [wondering] How long will it take for him to come back in reverse? When we started, there was no foregone conclusion that it would work. ”
Thief’s formula was put together late after a “massive personnel change.” The Dark Project’s lead artist and lead programmer resigned during production, as did Levine, who left to co-found Irrational Games. But then someone as talented as Tom Leonard popped up to fill that slot. Tom Leonard developed and tuned the Thief’s stealth AI and later shaped the behavior of the Combine soldiers in Half-Life 2. appeared just a few months ago in 1998, pioneering a new genre of 3D games.
dying light
This is strange when you think about it. Because these systems that I’ve spent hundreds of words on (unparalleled sound design, light and dark) have been largely left behind by modern game design. Certainly, partial compliments abound. As a mood piece, Dishonored is almost a spitting image of Thief, weaving noise into its stealth. Irrational’s swan song, Bioshock Infinite DLC Burial at Sea Part 2, weaved its levels with broken glass and puddles to make you think about surfaces. Led by thief veteran Emil Pagliarulo, Fallout 3 introduced the multi-stage enemy detection now standard in Bethesda RPGs. Then there’s Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon game. At the moment, it’s the closest game to Splinter Cell, simulating hiding in the shadows. And this year’s Modern Warfare 2 offers a huge advantage to players who stop and listen to their enemies’ footsteps in multiplayer.
But these are outliers. As a rule, line of sight is now a critical consideration for stealth sequences.Fellow frequent PC gamer as a freelancer Rick Lane points out, sneaks are now almost always an ancillary mechanic in games that also include all-out actions. can do. As a result, stealth will soon be everywhere and not as advanced as it was 24 years ago.
Perhaps it’s best that today’s AAA games cater to the needs of the majority, allowing them to slip through patrols or cause takedowns on clueless guards, and not having to master multiple cumbersome systems. Thief has always been a niche hit, and indie successors like Gloomwood exist to satisfy older audiences. Still, coming back to The Dark Project is still a great and inspiring experience. A lifelike cold shower or a freezing bath in a wine cellar.
