At first my thoughts were filled with comparisons with quake, and half life and the myriad of other games that make up the first person shooter genre. Is that Thief? Is it "like Quake with sneaking" or "Heretic with a different character class"; or is it something deeper?
Thief's main beauty lies within the professionalism its construction. It is an entity in its own right, but what makes that entity what it is?
The answer lies within a game older than Quake, or Doom, or Wolfenstein. A game older than pong, or tennis or possible even chess.
Thief is "Hide and go seek"
Once you understand this then most of the pieces come together. In hide and go seek one player searches while the others hide ( Why do most of the kids hide? Because hiding is the fun part ). You race into the bushes or the cupboard or under the stairs. You hide in the dark and you wait…
The seeker comes looking. All that you can see is the sliver of the door that you have left ajar. All you can hear is yourself, breathing slowly and as quietly as possible, and your heart racing. What if the seeker finds me?
Presently you hear footsteps, the seeker is searching for you , and any others who hide. They get close, and you can hear their footsteps outside, becoming louder. They've found you!
But they haven't. The footsteps die away. Have they gone far enough? Perhaps.
You sneak out from behind your stair, or your bushes or wherever, and you make your way back towards home base. If they hear you then they will come back, so you sneak as silently as you can…
They've spotted you, and stealth is over! You run - can you make it ?
This dynamic is what makes Thief: the Dark Project. This dramatic tension created by the need for stealth.
So how did the game designers of thief create that tension?
By taking the elements of Hide and Go Seek, and amplifying them with story and characterisation. Within Hide and Seek there are certain goals: To reach home base and to not be caught - hopefully not even to be seen. These can be seen within Thief as level goals, and the need not to be killed. However these goals are uninteresting if the thief character is the only one.
To make both of these goals interesting, then there must be a seeker, or a set of seekers, and they must have the ability to find you. Within the game universe that can be done using the seekers 'senses', 'sight' and 'hearing', as well as logic to make the search seem intelligent, and thus interesting.
So multi-layered AI is drastically important. Any enemy must be able to 'hear' motion. The thief must make 'noise' to hear, and the enemy must be able to react to hearing a noise; at first curious, then suspicious, and then actively searching. The noise must give clues to the seeker - especially directional.
Similarly an enemy must be able to 'see' the thief if he is seeable, and be able to take appropriate action. Finally the seeker should be able to 'feel' the thief if he stumbles over him in the dark.
But it is not really enough for a seeker to do these things. It hardly makes full use of the dramatic tension of Hide and Seek. Remember the footsteps? The sound of your own heartbeat?
So the seeker must also make noise and be seen. It must seem real, and frightening to the avatar within the thief. So as you hide in the darkness you can hear the "clump, clump of the guards footsteps coming closer. You can hear his whistling or his angered mutters, and if he hears you… You freeze! … "Come out where I can find you!" yells out the enraged hammerite guard, with that menacing war hammer held high and at the ready. Its scenes like this that make the core of the thief experience.
So now there are two major interactions - The thief senses the seeker and the seeker is able to sense the thief. But there is two more interactions that are needed.
The thief must be able to sense himself, hearing his own footsteps, and his light gem. This is vital so that the thief knows whether he is visible or audible.
Finally the seeker must be able to sense himself and other seekers - So that an alarm can be raised for instance, and other seekers will come. I must admit that I wished that this interaction was a little more complex in thief. I wanted to be able to clop around like the guard who I'd just knocked out, and have my footsteps mistaken for his - but I only managed to bring every guard in the place down around my head. Ah well you can't have everything.
So now there are four major interactions:
| Sensor | Senses |
| Seeker | Thief |
| Thief | Seeker |
| Seeker | Other Seekers |
| Thief | Thief |