Absolutely agree concerning the graphics. I think the graphics of games from the late 90s especially were largely impressionist in nature and function. Designers and artists often used an excellent blend of texture work, lighting, color and shape to give an impression of the artists vision rather than a 1:1 rendering. This allowed to the player to not only get the gist or "impression" of the artists vision or intent (with limited graphics technology), but also encouraged the player to extrapolate mentally upon the elements of the games aesthetics present, to build a mental picture of the space as well, thereby pushing the players imagination and contributing to overall worldbuilding. For example, rather than trying to make a texture look as real as possible, the texture would use varied strokes of color, shape and shading to give an impression of the real-world material attempting to be conveyed. Thus, I feel that, until recently, we've been going through an uncanny valley where its harder to see the artist's intent in games due to the abandonment of impressionist techniques in games, in favor of "better" graphics tech. Only recently are we able to render a seeming 1:1 recreation of concept art into fully realized levels, the problem of course is that what you see is what you get, little if anything is left to the imagination in modern game art.
I still remember playing Thief II way back in my junior year of high school in the mid-2000's. I only played on Normal difficulty but I felt thrilled when sneaking past armed resistance throughout restricted areas and haunted ruins just to get at loot and perhaps even tiny tidbits about the world that Garrett lived in. Shame that I never got past the bank, though. While the Thief games had a dark and sinister atmosphere, there was much room for comic relief here and there like the occasional drunk guard Benny and those bickering guards on the rooftop in the level "The Life of the Party." Fun times.
The voice acting in theif 2 is just perfect. "The transformation is spectacular!" "And neither want nor worry has he..." "Lucky fellow! Ha ha, strange you should mention worries Karras, because I do have one. It's not that the money's not right, no...it's just that I need to be convinced you've taken the proper precautions." Those clowns deserved to be taken down a peg
@@Leadhead Speaking of the Masked Servants, some of us were left wondering how the transformation took place. Our imaginations went to work, which was a point that you stated earlier in the vid.
Mhm, just like with the graphics, the world seems so much bigger and more detailed than it really is because it asks us to imagine things for ourselves. Subtlety is key!
"Don't play bioshock with the quest arrow" Legitimately, between the kind of "hub-spoke" design of a lot of the levels, and the literal signs that would in universe be used to help citizens get to where they wanna go, it feels like the quest arrow was a thing they added in at the last minute because they were forced to. I was never lost once.
Some Dev could craft a sublime Thief with today's game lighting tech, considering what was possible back in the day. Gotta get a good story writer too, don't want another Thief 4
@@slugworth3111 Thief 4 or Teef as the Rageaholic calls it, is a shadow of even Thief 3. Some of the video looks nice with the visual niceties of Unreal Engine 3, but the gameplay repetition and voice acting and NPC dullness and characters and story, UGH! I'll stop before I go off on a rant. Properly crafted games are few and far between. It's a real treat when they come along, like T2X (drools)
Yo mate. A protip: play Thief fan missions. You can start with Ominous Bequest, The Seven Sisters, Disorientation, and The Sound of a Burrick in a Room. You can thank me later.
another pro tip: buy an IPS display, lower monitor brightness below 40% and play in a completely dark room. This will allow for the best, darkest black color and will let you experience much more of the dark environments and contrast the game has. Any ambient light ruins this game so does the ugly washed out brown color TN panels dare to call black...
I couldn't agree more. None of my friends know anything about this masterpiece, and they dismiss it as a lame, old, and boring game. But they don't understand how psychologically complex and thrilling thief really is. Perfect art indeed. It's a rabbit hole of it's own, unlike any other.
For the uninitiated reading this now, most (if not all) of the footage is using the original textures. No modding. You can easily notice how low-resolution or blurry a lot of surfaces look [when close to them] in the video. Been playing Thief 2 recently on a Pentium II 400Mhz and 3dfx Voodoo2 (i.e. a typical mid-1998) computer and it looks pretty much the same.
I think's it's worth a mention that the noisemaker arrow is a practically useless item. A regular broadhead on any surface except wood, grass, carpet or soil which are soft enough for the arrow to pierce, produces enough noise to draw away any threats, and this also gives more incentive to use the broadheads since they're not only a lot more common than noisemakers but if you're playing on Expert you can't use your broadheads for their intended purpose of killing guards at all.
It's not worth mentioning because the noisemaker arrow works 100% of the time (except when the AI pisses itself in that Monty Python conversation in Life of the Party) on any surface and can be retrieved
@@ULTRAOutdoorsman I have never once needed that extra utility or found myself deprived of a surface for the broadhead arrows to bounce off of in my dozens of playthroughs of this series, and once again it's the only use you can really get out of them playing on expert minus stuff like hitting switches or killing nonhuman enemies.
Because it's basically the same game as the first one but with different levels, and the first one was in development for almost 3 years itself, but yes, there are dozens of examples of games taking over 10 years to make and being awful
your videos always make me appreciate certain games more. there were lots of games that I played and just thought, eh. but then I see a video you or other similar channels made on the video, and you reveal a whole other side to it that I never noticed
Good evening leadhead, I'm in the process of watching all your videos from first to current. I've seen a bunch of your most recent videos and think your analyses and opinions are super interesting! Big ups on the MF DOOM beats too! RIP villain
My first Thief game was Thief 3 Deadly Shadows. While a decent game by itself (and it introduced me to the Thief franchise), it is nowhere as brilliant as Thief II and Thief. I enjoyed playing those games so much, I did double run on both, the first in normal to get my bearings in the level and rough layout of the places, the second one to find out every single little secret and thing about those games. I had so much fun finding the extra objectives and extra lore.
What are your thoughts on Thief 1? How does it compare art wise? I’m enjoying Thief 1 for the first time right now, but I’m also excited to get through it so I can start on this!
Oh it's awesome, a bit more cryptic with some mazes. Personally, I never actually finished it, but I'm sure I will some day. It's not nearly as subtle, but it's the same amazing thief gameplay as two for most of the levels
@@Leadhead Interesting, any reason why you played Thief 2 before 1? Wouldn't there be story elements missing, or is it still relatively self contained? Either way, it's a really unique and atmospheric series. I've been putting off completing it for a while (I took a break to play through all the halflifes) but I think i'll get back into it after seeing this video.
Well, those games are old, and sort of clunky to control, and if I remember right, my younger self assumed that thief 2 would be a huge leap ahead of thief 1 technologically, like the two system shock games. As it turns out, I was wrong, and they share an engine. But the stories are almost completely self contained. A couple of returning characters, but that's it.
Thief 1 has a more surreal, almost dream like aesthetic. If anything, I would argue it’s more artistic than Thief 2 and has better level design overall. But both are great.
Thief evokes good memories but at the same time makes me a little sad. I mourn that such games belong to the past. You put into words a lot of what I liked about the game. I really liked searching for valuables in the first Thief games! The satisfaction of finding a tiny little ring on a shelf would sound excessive if I tried to communicate it. I remember how I marked the rooms I searched thoroughly with an "X" on the map to keep track. And yet I rarely, if ever, reached 100% loots because the environments were so extensive and loots could be just as insignificantly small as in reality. Think it was in Thief 3 that all loots started shone !! Immediately when you overviewed a room, you became aware of every little coin. All the satisfaction of looking for and finding valuables was consequently dead. When I failed to turn off this feature I uninstalled the entire game. Another aspect I remember was the feeling of freedom that perhaps above all the rope arrows created! It gave the feeling that you managed to "defeat the system" or something by getting to places you were not supposed to (which of course you were). I missed this revolutionary feeling in Thief 4 (I think) when rope arrows were suddenly only allowed to take hold in dedicated places. What a huge difference! Another delight eliminated ...
Why is it every time I see this classic game on TH-cam the brightness level is too low? I know its meant to be set at night but when I played Thief 2 back in 2000 I could see a lot more detail than I generally see in YT videos! The games illumination was never meant to be as dark as its presented here!
It's one of these old games that just tells your monitor driver to boost gamma instead of just rendering everything more brightly, so every time someone takes a picture or does a direct capture, no one can see anything. Everquest did the same thing.
just some loving criticism here, but if this game is so much about subtlety, don't bash us over the head with this boombap with heavy organ loop on repeat, pick something with some subtle layering pads and minimal drums, less rhythm and melodies etc. 2cents
I gotta be real, this vid is pretty weak- your narration sounds like you’re half asleep and your description of games and their visuals suffices only if you’ve never seen a video game before
The bank is home to one of the most obscure secrets in the game; if you wait for eight hours, the vault door will unlock by itself.
Absolutely agree concerning the graphics. I think the graphics of games from the late 90s especially were largely impressionist in nature and function. Designers and artists often used an excellent blend of texture work, lighting, color and shape to give an impression of the artists vision rather than a 1:1 rendering. This allowed to the player to not only get the gist or "impression" of the artists vision or intent (with limited graphics technology), but also encouraged the player to extrapolate mentally upon the elements of the games aesthetics present, to build a mental picture of the space as well, thereby pushing the players imagination and contributing to overall worldbuilding. For example, rather than trying to make a texture look as real as possible, the texture would use varied strokes of color, shape and shading to give an impression of the real-world material attempting to be conveyed. Thus, I feel that, until recently, we've been going through an uncanny valley where its harder to see the artist's intent in games due to the abandonment of impressionist techniques in games, in favor of "better" graphics tech. Only recently are we able to render a seeming 1:1 recreation of concept art into fully realized levels, the problem of course is that what you see is what you get, little if anything is left to the imagination in modern game art.
Working hard on the Thief 2 video I see...I'm kidding of course fancy seeing you here almost a year after you posted this lol
I still remember playing Thief II way back in my junior year of high school in the mid-2000's. I only played on Normal difficulty but I felt thrilled when sneaking past armed resistance throughout restricted areas and haunted ruins just to get at loot and perhaps even tiny tidbits about the world that Garrett lived in. Shame that I never got past the bank, though.
While the Thief games had a dark and sinister atmosphere, there was much room for comic relief here and there like the occasional drunk guard Benny and those bickering guards on the rooftop in the level "The Life of the Party." Fun times.
The voice acting in theif 2 is just perfect.
"The transformation is spectacular!"
"And neither want nor worry has he..."
"Lucky fellow! Ha ha, strange you should mention worries Karras, because I do have one. It's not that the money's not right, no...it's just that I need to be convinced you've taken the proper precautions."
Those clowns deserved to be taken down a peg
@@Leadhead Speaking of the Masked Servants, some of us were left wondering how the transformation took place. Our imaginations went to work, which was a point that you stated earlier in the vid.
Mhm, just like with the graphics, the world seems so much bigger and more detailed than it really is because it asks us to imagine things for ourselves. Subtlety is key!
@@Leadhead There's also that subtlety in Thief: Deadly Shadows, but that's another story.
I'm definitely gonna check out deadly shadows one of these days, thief 2 is just such a perfect game for me that it's almost hard for me to move on
"Don't play bioshock with the quest arrow"
Legitimately, between the kind of "hub-spoke" design of a lot of the levels, and the literal signs that would in universe be used to help citizens get to where they wanna go, it feels like the quest arrow was a thing they added in at the last minute because they were forced to. I was never lost once.
Some Dev could craft a sublime Thief with today's game lighting tech, considering what was possible back in the day. Gotta get a good story writer too, don't want another Thief 4
I honestly didn't even know there was a Thief 4. Part 3 was alright, had some good missions, but had nothing on the first two or T2X.
@@slugworth3111 Thief 4 or Teef as the Rageaholic calls it, is a shadow of even Thief 3. Some of the video looks nice with the visual niceties of Unreal Engine 3, but the gameplay repetition and voice acting and NPC dullness and characters and story, UGH! I'll stop before I go off on a rant.
Properly crafted games are few and far between. It's a real treat when they come along, like T2X (drools)
I would like to introduce you to Gloomwood
Considering the writer of Starfield wrote Thief 2, it's probably not necessary to get a good writer, just someone who can be reined in
What makes good art? You do !! Your beautiful contribution to the world helps a stranger forget about his troubles
Yo mate. A protip: play Thief fan missions. You can start with Ominous Bequest, The Seven Sisters, Disorientation, and The Sound of a Burrick in a Room. You can thank me later.
another pro tip: buy an IPS display, lower monitor brightness below 40% and play in a completely dark room. This will allow for the best, darkest black color and will let you experience much more of the dark environments and contrast the game has. Any ambient light ruins this game so does the ugly washed out brown color TN panels dare to call black...
You express your toughts very well and your videos are very organized! You deserve more views.
This true.
"Don't play Bioshock games with the quest arrow"
...okay. Is there any mod that removes Elizabeth from Infinite, then? =D
What's wrong with Elizabeth?
@@Torgo1969 Nothing at all actually. I am fairly certain they're joking.
@@Torgo1969 Yet again, why bother with such a mediocre game as Infinite.
I couldn't agree more. None of my friends know anything about this masterpiece, and they dismiss it as a lame, old, and boring game. But they don't understand how psychologically complex and thrilling thief really is. Perfect art indeed. It's a rabbit hole of it's own, unlike any other.
Have you modded this? The textures look better than I remember.
I think he is using Enhancement Pack 2.0, it's a HD texture pack that aims to be *extremely* faithful to the original textures
@@rudolph2937 Thanks for the tip. I will try this forthwith!
For the uninitiated reading this now, most (if not all) of the footage is using the original textures. No modding. You can easily notice how low-resolution or blurry a lot of surfaces look [when close to them] in the video. Been playing Thief 2 recently on a Pentium II 400Mhz and 3dfx Voodoo2 (i.e. a typical mid-1998) computer and it looks pretty much the same.
I think's it's worth a mention that the noisemaker arrow is a practically useless item. A regular broadhead on any surface except wood, grass, carpet or soil which are soft enough for the arrow to pierce, produces enough noise to draw away any threats, and this also gives more incentive to use the broadheads since they're not only a lot more common than noisemakers but if you're playing on Expert you can't use your broadheads for their intended purpose of killing guards at all.
It's not worth mentioning because the noisemaker arrow works 100% of the time (except when the AI pisses itself in that Monty Python conversation in Life of the Party) on any surface and can be retrieved
@@ULTRAOutdoorsman I have never once needed that extra utility or found myself deprived of a surface for the broadhead arrows to bounce off of in my dozens of playthroughs of this series, and once again it's the only use you can really get out of them playing on expert minus stuff like hitting switches or killing nonhuman enemies.
i like how this game is made within 2 years and is still one of the the greatest game ive played
Because it's basically the same game as the first one but with different levels, and the first one was in development for almost 3 years itself, but yes, there are dozens of examples of games taking over 10 years to make and being awful
your videos always make me appreciate certain games more. there were lots of games that I played and just thought, eh. but then I see a video you or other similar channels made on the video, and you reveal a whole other side to it that I never noticed
the MF DOOM instrumentals in leadhead vids are always appreciated
Good evening leadhead, I'm in the process of watching all your videos from first to current. I've seen a bunch of your most recent videos and think your analyses and opinions are super interesting! Big ups on the MF DOOM beats too! RIP villain
My first Thief game was Thief 3 Deadly Shadows. While a decent game by itself (and it introduced me to the Thief franchise), it is nowhere as brilliant as Thief II and Thief. I enjoyed playing those games so much, I did double run on both, the first in normal to get my bearings in the level and rough layout of the places, the second one to find out every single little secret and thing about those games. I had so much fun finding the extra objectives and extra lore.
I just discovered your channel from the half life videos. Thief gold is brutal! I’ll check out the dishonored videos next
What are your thoughts on Thief 1? How does it compare art wise? I’m enjoying Thief 1 for the first time right now, but I’m also excited to get through it so I can start on this!
Oh it's awesome, a bit more cryptic with some mazes. Personally, I never actually finished it, but I'm sure I will some day. It's not nearly as subtle, but it's the same amazing thief gameplay as two for most of the levels
@@Leadhead Interesting, any reason why you played Thief 2 before 1? Wouldn't there be story elements missing, or is it still relatively self contained? Either way, it's a really unique and atmospheric series. I've been putting off completing it for a while (I took a break to play through all the halflifes) but I think i'll get back into it after seeing this video.
Well, those games are old, and sort of clunky to control, and if I remember right, my younger self assumed that thief 2 would be a huge leap ahead of thief 1 technologically, like the two system shock games. As it turns out, I was wrong, and they share an engine. But the stories are almost completely self contained. A couple of returning characters, but that's it.
Thief 1 has a more surreal, almost dream like aesthetic. If anything, I would argue it’s more artistic than Thief 2 and has better level design overall. But both are great.
Thief evokes good memories but at the same time makes me a little sad. I mourn that such games belong to the past.
You put into words a lot of what I liked about the game.
I really liked searching for valuables in the first Thief games! The satisfaction of finding a tiny little ring on a shelf would sound excessive if I tried to communicate it. I remember how I marked the rooms I searched thoroughly with an "X" on the map to keep track. And yet I rarely, if ever, reached 100% loots because the environments were so extensive and loots could be just as insignificantly small as in reality.
Think it was in Thief 3 that all loots started shone !! Immediately when you overviewed a room, you became aware of every little coin. All the satisfaction of looking for and finding valuables was consequently dead. When I failed to turn off this feature I uninstalled the entire game.
Another aspect I remember was the feeling of freedom that perhaps above all the rope arrows created! It gave the feeling that you managed to "defeat the system" or something by getting to places you were not supposed to (which of course you were).
I missed this revolutionary feeling in Thief 4 (I think) when rope arrows were suddenly only allowed to take hold in dedicated places. What a huge difference! Another delight eliminated ...
The Devs wanted to make a paladin MC game, but couldn't make the story straight until it was suggested to make a thief the MC.
Such a great, great video! Instant fan
Thief 1 2 3 has yet to be topped
Sabotage at Soulforge is more like shart than art
very interesting, Thief 2 hmm what a game, my favourite mission was ... 'casing the joint' like any good thief would
I was totally fine with Casing the Joint until I got to the next mission, like 90% of everyone else
Love your videos. Could you do something about The Dark Mod?
I love this video
We need a Thief and Thief 2 remake.
Why is it every time I see this classic game on TH-cam the brightness level is too low? I know its meant to be set at night but when I played Thief 2 back in 2000 I could see a lot more detail than I generally see in YT videos! The games illumination was never meant to be as dark as its presented here!
It's one of these old games that just tells your monitor driver to boost gamma instead of just rendering everything more brightly, so every time someone takes a picture or does a direct capture, no one can see anything. Everquest did the same thing.
That beat tho 😋
What I'm really curious about is, do you need to play Thief 1 to play the second game? Do they share a consistent story?
You're gonna be saying "who the hell is Viktoria" if you don't play the first game at the very least
just some loving criticism here, but if this game is so much about subtlety, don't bash us over the head with this boombap with heavy organ loop on repeat, pick something with some subtle layering pads and minimal drums, less rhythm and melodies etc.
2cents
idk what you mean, I'm depressed and drink coffee all the time
He didn't say depressed people don't drink coffee, he said they drink dark coffee
The REAL stealth game that Metal Gear Solid fans don't know about.
I liked the first game better.
I gotta be real, this vid is pretty weak- your narration sounds like you’re half asleep and your description of games and their visuals suffices only if you’ve never seen a video game before
it was his first script that he wrote be a bit lenient