It’s back to Thief 2 again – I just managed a single level again tonight but at least I’m making progress. I find myself out on the city streets with the watch in every direction.

I manage to blackjack a few of them and hoist myself onto a roof garden to get onto an adjoining street to escape from the rest.

The streets are just crawling with guards and I end up being spotted. I decide to just make a run for it and see what happens. The guards can’t catch up with me although I’m unable to lose them for a while. There is a canal passing through the town which I manage to jump across when I run into it and due to the games guards not being able to jump themselves I’m safe again and probably just saved myself 10 minutes of sneaking. A look back reveals a lot of guards on the far side.

My house isn’t far away. I’m thinking that it was a very easy level but I’m not done yet and get a whole new set of objectives.

My house is very well protected with 3 guards on the front door + a couple more inside. I manage to draw the guards away from the front door by making a bit of noise and take them out one at a time. This isn’t easy but I have plenty of dark areas to work with. The guards inside the house are much easier once I’ve doused the lights. I have a secret closet upstairs full of goodies + the key I need to open the gate out of the city.

I did notice an alternative route into my house at the back by moving a box and climbing onto the balcony but I always got spotted when I tried this one so I stuck to taking all the guards out.

I have to go right the way back to the far side of the city and there are probably a couple of dozen watch guards in the way. Most of these are near the gate itself. I don’t worry about knocking them all out but just sneak past where I can. I take a short cut through the sewer at one point which is a lot easier than dodging guards.

Getting to the gate isn’t easy and takes a good few attempts but I get there in the end and make my escape to my safe house.

While I’m there I’m summoned by the keepers and reluctantly agree to go along. There is a creepy child reciting a prophecy which I don’t take too seriously.

I learn that the metal age is beginning and the keepers want me to help them out.  Garret is less than interested in this and just wants to look out for his own interests so I don’t stay long enough to learn any details. Something is clearly wrong in the city but for now I’m more interested in sorting out my problems with the watch. One of the keepers hands me a letter on the way out.

The letter tells me that where to go to eavesdrop on the sheriff that has been hired to kill me. I need to know who could have hired him so I can do something about the situation.

This has been a decent mission with a myriad of choices on how to play it. I get the feeling I never even saw half the level as I stuck to the quickest routes I could find. I’m certain there were alternative routes through the city such as crawling through the canals as I kept spotting them on my way through. The plot is just starting to get going although I still have little idea what is going on thanks to Garret’s unwillingness to listen to the keepers. I get the feeling my problems are linked to theirs or they wouldn’t be helping me out.

I start level 3 on the streets near the watch station. I have to figure out how to get in.

The first building I come across has a sewer grate I open and jump down. I then have a short swim straight into the watch’s basement.

The mission goals weren’t kidding about no violence and I can’t even knock anyone out. I have to sneak right up to this guard to grab a key off his belt.

I don’t have any goals about finding treasure this time around although I explore all the rooms I come across anyway. This shooting range has a secret door into the armory which opens when I hit all four targets. I grab a load of arrows from the armoury while I’m here.

I continue to make my way through various rooms you would associate with a police station such as these interrogation cells. The guards are less than attentive and as long as I don’t stand right in front of them they don’t notice me. While I’m passing I take the chance to turn off the alarm system when I run into its control panel.

I soon find a block of offices, including the office of the man I’m framing. While I’m here I grab his handkerchief to plant it in the vault. I also find the key to the vault in another office. There are a few more guards up here, they aren’t a major problem as long as I wait for them to pass by before moving.

The top floor of the building, houses the vault and has a security system with more of those cameras. I douse the lights to get through the first one. The vault itself needs a code which I found downstairs earlier. I head in, grab the strongbox and drop my hankerchief. I now just need to go back to the office downstairs, drop the strongbox then make my way back out.

Once the strongbox has been dropped off, I head back out the way I came and straight through the front entrance to complete the mission.

After the mission, I head to meet a friend in a bar only to find he has betrayed me to the watch. I manage to escape but still have to get home in the next mission.

Mission 3 was much easier than the first 2 despite not being able to knock anyone out. It really didn’t take long to play at all and has hardly left me anything to write about. I prefer getting to knock the guards out but this mission would have been ludicrously easy if I’d been able to do that. It’s strange how every mission so far has been easier than the one before it. I’m sure this isn’t going to continue for much longer.

Level 2 starts out with me on top of a pile of crates at one corner of the warehouse area. There are plenty of guards but lots of dark areas to hide in and a lot more room to move than the previous level.

The map for this level consists of 2 giant warehouses + the streets around them. The first warehouse is divided into loads of shops/storage areas. At the moment I can’t get into any of them and I just concentrate on knocking out all the guards around the outside of the building. Once again I can’t kill any guards on this level and I expect this will continue throughout the game as it appears to be a staple in expert mode. Some of the guards carry keys which will no doubt let me into the warehouses.

I make my way to the extreme south of the level and there is a dock here complete with a boat.

There is a guard on the boat so I dive into the water looking for an alternative route and discover a rope ladder hanging off the side of the ship which I use to climb aboard. From here it is simple to sneak up on the boats solitary guard.

There isn’t much on the ship but I do find a book that mentions a cargo of spice being stored in building B. One of my mission requirements is to find 5 lots of spice so I’ll need to search building B for this.

I manage to find an door into building B and start to look around. I’ve been hearing a lot about a group called the Mechanist’s while I’ve been exploring. They are an offshoot from the builders and appear to have some serious technology including surveillance cameras. I use water arrows to douse the lights here which stops it from seeing me. I find a bit of money in Building B but nothing much of any significance at the moment.

Back in building A, I find a control room with instructions on how to use it.

There is a keypad on the wall. If I enter the number of a shop into here then the large green door at the front of the shop opens and I can get in and steal everything. I now have to enter each shop one by one, grabbing all the valuables. I don’t always have to walk right back to this control room however as there is a key in the control room which lets me into similar rooms dotted around the outside of building A. I’ve got my lockpicks back for this level and can use them to pick the locks from inside the shops to allow permanent access to each area without entering the code if I want to go back.

I won’t mention all of the stores here as there are quite a few of them. One of them is an art gallery. There is a not very subtle clue on a plaque below the painting to let mine arrow fly into its crystal eye so I shoot the crystal ball in the picture.

The painting swings open like a door revealing a statue.

Another area has a giant crate which I need to reroute by swapping it’s packing label to fulfil one of my mission requirements. The label comes from a small office that I have to open with its number just like all the other areas. The shops usually have a little puzzle to solve which might just be climbing around a 3d maze of crates or shooting a button with an arrow. There is enough there for it not to get dull.

After going through every shop, I manage to get the required gold to finish the level but I still need the spice from building B. I find one lot among a load of crates which I have to climb around on to discover the one crate in the middle that has the spice. Another locked crate with spice is in one of the offices. This completes the objective so I must have found some earlier and not noticed. I now just have to make my way back to the start to complete the level. There are no guards left on the level by this time so this is a formality.

For the next level I’m contacted by someone who wants me to frame the second in command at the City Watch. This is going to mean breaking into the watch building and planting some evidence against him. I’m not sure from the requirements but they talk about not using any violence or raising any alarms. If I can’t even knock people out this is going to be difficult.

The second level was large and took some playing through but I found it easier than the first level. I’m probably just getting the hang of Thief again. The technique for blackjacking is a little odd in that sneaking up on someone from behind never seems to work. Instead I have to get close and then run at them flat out before they can react. Now I’ve figured that out I’m knocking out all the guards with ease. It looks like the plot for the game is going to center around the Mechanist’s. If nothing else they should give me some new technology to pit my skills against.

I decided to go for Thief 2 in the end as I’ve not played a first person game in ages. Before I can start playing this I had to apply the same patches as for Thief 1 (namely ddfix and then the widescreen patch). Between them these fix any problems running the game and I get to play it in 1920×1080 widescreen. It’s been 100% stable in Win7 64 bit for me since but there were a load of problems before this with strange graphics and cutscenes not playing. After patching the videos aren’t getting stretched to fill the screen which is an improvement over Thief 1 where they ended up distorted.

The games intro doesn’t really tell me anything. I get a quote about pouring children’s eyes from glass and see a few scenes but it’s clearly not going to make any sense until I get a bit further into the game.

There is a second intro before the games first mission. One of my friends called Basso (I have no idea how to spell this), wants to marry a serving maid. The maid’s employer/owner won’t allow this to happen which is where I come in. I have to go into the mansion and clear a path for him to come in and rescue her.

I’m going to be playing this game on expert level. It added to the game in Thief 1 and made beating each level feel like a major accomplishment. This adds a few extra goals to my mission including getting 600 gold and not killing anyone.

My friend waits at the entrance and tells me to go through the side door to get into the house. I have a map with the route he is going to take but for now I’ll just worry about exploring. The hardest part of all these missions is always getting the required gold on expert level so I’m sure I’ll need to explore every room.

The door gets me into the butlers quarters. It takes me a while to spot it but there is a key in here which I need to take to progress into the mansion.

The mansion itself is the usual collection of bedrooms, dining rooms and this great hall. It isn’t teaming with guards but the ones there are appear to be extremely alert and I find it difficult to make progress at first.

I don’t know if it’s just lack of practice but it takes me numerous attempts to deal with a lot of these guards. They are now impossible to knock out if they are alerted to my presence which makes it very hard when they are in a corner looking out and I have to approach them head on. I have to attempt to lure them out with some noise then dash up behind when they give up looking.

Other guards prove to be ridiculously easy. I find the front door for the mansion and I can just stroll through here and bash each guard stood either side of it without the other batting an eyelid.

There are surprisingly few guards in the upper part of the mansion but I don’t find a lot of treasure on my first look through. I re-explore and just about notice these two rings on the side of the fireplace in the great hall. They aren’t exactly easy to spot but it does get a bonus goal on my task list of finding rings for the wedding so they count as a secret.

I also find this lever behind a plant in the top floor west wing of the house. Pulling this opens up a safe nearby getting me an amulet. This is enough for me to complete my required booty for the mission although I did a lot of wandering around before I found it.

I then start exploring the basement of the house. This is better guarded than the living areas above although there is also more shade for me to hide in. One guard is particularly annoying. He is stood in a lighted area facing outwards and never moves for anything. In the end I discover that I can approach him from one side of the house and rush straight at him quickly enough to knock him but this takes a lot of trial and error before I figure it out. I take a few screenshots down here but due to the dark nature of the game every one of them turns out pitch black so I won’t include them here.

I’ve cleared the way by now so I head outside and blow the whistle to call Basso. He charges off into the mansion and I just have to follow him and wait for him to open the door to his fiancees cell. We all then run back outside completing the mission.

This has been a tough start to the game although I guess I should expect it playing on expert. I’ve not had any real options on how to play the level as I’ve started out the game with no equipment to speak of. My lockpicks are gone, I’ve no arrows or bombs and any of them could have helped at times. It’s a solid enough first level if uninspired. The assumption seems to be being made that you’ve played Thief 1 before you start the game as the difficulty level was well up there and there was no introduction like in Thief 1.

For mission 2, there isn’t an obvious continuation in plot from the 1st mission. I’m short on money to pay my rent so I’m going to a local shipping yard/warehouse to steal the money I need + a bit more if possible. I get to buy some equipment before the mission this time and I can select from all the old favourites from Thief 1 like moss arrows and flash bombs.

Playing the first level felt like a straight continuation of Thief 1. The format, engine and graphics are not noticeably any different. I don’t have a problem with that actually, the thief gameplay formula is unique enough for it not to get stale and 15 levels like this wouldn’t be a problem. It’s looking mercifully zombie free so far which is the main thing.