Thief Metal Age
Timmy Tatel
Thief II: The Metal Age is a 2000 stealth video game developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. Like its predecessor Thief: The Dark Project, the game follows Garrett, a master thief who works in and around a steampunk metropolis called the City. The player assumes the role of Garrett as he unravels a conspiracy related to a new religious sect. Garrett takes on missions such as burglaries and frameups, while trying to avoid detection by guards and automated security.
Thief II was designed to build on the foundation of its predecessor. In response to feedback from players of Thief, the team placed a heavy focus on urban stealth in the sequel, and they minimized the use of monsters and maze-like levels. The game was made with the third iteration of the Dark Engine, which had been used previously to develop Thief and System Shock 2. Thief II was announced at the 1999 Electronic Entertainment Expo, as part of an extended contract between Looking Glass and Eidos to release games in the Thief series. Looking Glass neared bankruptcy as the game was developed, and the company was kept running by advances from Eidos.
Thief II received positive reviews from critics, and its initial sales were stronger than those of its predecessor. However, the game's royalties were processed slowly, which compounded Looking Glass's financial troubles. As a result, the company closed in May 2000, with plans for Thief III cancelled. The third game in the series, entitled Thief: Deadly Shadows, was developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos in 2004. Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age, a widely praised expansion mod for Thief II, was released in 2005. In 2014, Square Enix published a reboot of the series, developed by Eidos Montral.
Thief II is a stealth game that takes place from a first-person perspective in a three-dimensional (3D) graphical environment.[1] The player seeks to complete mission objectives and to evade the notice of opponents such as guards.[2][3] The player must minimize the visibility and audibility of the player character, Garrett, to escape detection. Players try to avoid lit areas and loud flooring in favor of shadows and quiet flooring. A light monitor on the heads-up display (HUD) indicates the player character's visibility.[4] While it is possible for the player character to engage in direct combat, he is easily defeated.[3]
The game's 15 missions take place in large levels that can be confronted in multiple ways.[1][5] Guards may be knocked out with a blackjack or killed with a bow or sword, and their fallen bodies may be picked up and hidden.[4] In addition to human enemies, the game features security automatons and surveillance cameras.[6] While completing objectives such as frameups and blackmail, the player steals valuables that may be used to purchase thieving gear between missions.[3][4][5] The player's main tools are specialized arrows, including water arrows to douse lights, moss arrows to dampen the player character's footsteps and rope arrows to reach higher ground.[1]
Thief II is designed to be played methodically,[1] and the player plans ahead by scouting, reading the game's map and observing patrol patterns.[4] The player character has a zooming mechanical eye, which connects to throwable "Scouting Orb" cameras.[2][6] One Scouting Orb may be deployed at a time; when it lands, the player views the game world from its perspective until normal play is resumed.[4] The player can listen for noises, such as footsteps and humming, to determine the locations of enemies.[2][4] On the highest of the game's three difficulty levels, killing humans results in a game over,[4] and in certain missions the player must not knock out any guards.[3]
The game continues the story of Garrett (voiced by Stephen Russell), the cynical master thief who defeated the Trickster.[1][2][4] Pursuing Garrett is the new sheriff, Gorman Truart (voiced by Sam Babbitt), who has imposed a zero tolerance policy on crime.[4][13] Viktoria (voiced by Terri Brosius), the former ally of the Trickster, eventually joins with Garrett to combat the Mechanists.[5][16] The game's primary antagonist is the founder of the Mechanists, Father Karras (also voiced by Russell), a mentally unstable inventor who despises the natural world.[5][15]
The game begins as Garrett continues his life as a thief. However, he is betrayed by his fence and ambushed after an early mission, and he determines that Truart, the local sheriff, is hunting him.[1] Keepers take Garrett to hear a prophecy about the "Metal Age",[17] which he ignores.[18] As Garrett leaves, Artemus, the Keeper who brought him into the order, informs him that Truart had been hired to kill him,[19] and he gives Garrett a letter that directs him to eavesdrop on a Mechanist meeting.[20] There, Garrett overhears Truart and Father Karras discussing the conversion of street people into mindless "Servants",[21] who wear masks that emit a red vapor capable of reducing themselves and any nearby organic material to rust.[22] Truart promises to provide Karras with twenty victims for the Servant project,[23] not realizing that Karras is recording his words for use in blackmail.[24] Garrett steals the recording from a safe deposit box, in order to coerce Truart into revealing his employer.[25]
However, Garrett finds Truart murdered at his estate.[26] Evidence at the crime scene leads him to spy on the police officer Lt. Mosley. Garrett sees Mosley deliver a suspicious letter, which is carried through a portal by a wounded pagan. Garrett enters the portal and finds himself outside the City,[27][28] and he follows the pagan's trail of blood to Viktoria, who persuades Garrett to join her against the Mechanists.[29][30] On a lead from Viktoria, he infiltrates Karras' office to learn about the "Cetus Project",[31] and inadvertently discovers that Karras is giving Servants to the City's nobles.[32] Garrett travels to a Mechanist base to find out more about the Cetus Project,[33] which is revealed to be a submarine. In order to locate and kidnap a high-ranking Mechanist named Brother Cavador, Garrett stows away in the vehicle.[34]
After delivering Cavador to Viktoria, Garrett steals a Servant mask to learn about a Mechanist technology called a "Cultivator". Meanwhile, Karras hides inside the Mechanist cathedral in preparation for his plan.[35] Garrett and Viktoria learn that it is the Cultivators inside Servant masks which emit red vapor, or "rust gas". Karras had provided Servants to nobles with gardens in order to set off an apocalyptic chain reaction.[36] Viktoria plans to lure the Servants into the hermetically sealed Mechanist cathedral before Karras activates their masks, but Garrett believes this to be too dangerous and leaves.[37] Viktoria goes to the cathedral alone and dies while filling it with plants,[38] and Garrett completes her plan, killing Karras in the rust gas. Afterward, Garrett is approached by Artemus, who explains that Karras' scheme and Viktoria's death had been prophesied. Garrett demands to know the rest of the Keepers' prophecies as the game ends.[39]
Looking Glass Studios began designing Thief II in January 1999.[40] The team's goal was to build on the foundation of Thief: The Dark Project,[41] a game that Thief II project director Steve Pearsall later said was an experiment.[9] He explained that the team had played it safe by including certain "exploration ... or adventure oriented" missions with "jumping and climbing puzzles" in Thief,[11][42] and that the new game was significantly more focused on stealth.[9][13] Combat was given less prominence than in the original.[8][13] Based on feedback from players and reviewers of Thief,[8][13] the team decided to scale back the use of maze-like levels and monsters such as zombies in favor of urban environments and human enemies.[8][41][43] Pearsall stated that Thief's monsters were negatively received because, unlike the game's human enemies, they did not clearly indicate when they noticed the player. The team sought to remedy this problem by improving the audio cues given by non-human enemies in the sequel.[40]
Production of Thief II commenced in February.[44] Looking Glass chose to compose the game's team of "half the original designers and half new blood", according to executive producer James Poole.[43] The company tried to select people who meshed well both personally and creatively, in an attempt to guarantee a smooth development cycle.[42] Adrenaline Vault editor-in-chief Emil Pagliarulo was hired as a junior designer, in part because of his positive review of Thief.[45] Rich "zdim" Carlson and Iikka Kernen joined from Ion Storm's Daikatana team, and Looking Glass contractor Terri Brosius was hired as a full-time designer.[9][46] One-third of the team was female, which Pearsall believed contributed to a strong group dynamic. As was typical at Looking Glass, the Thief II team worked in a wall-less space called a "pit", which allowed them to converse easily.[42] Describing the work environment at the time, writer Laura Baldwin noted that "conversations dash madly about the room, [and] when someone is demonstrating something interesting everyone gravitates over to look."[47]
During the first months of development, the team regularly gathered to watch films pertinent to Garrett's character and to the game's visual design, such as The Third Man, The Castle of Cagliostro, M and Metropolis.[8][44][47] Pearsall said that the latter two films were Thief II's "biggest aesthetic influences", while the main inspiration for its plot was Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose.[47] The team also drew influence from Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.[9] The game's story was written in the three-act structure: Garrett was intended to transition from his "cynical self" in the first act to a private investigator in the second, and to a character similar to James Bond in the third.[8][10] The City's technology and architecture were influenced by the appearance of Victorian London, and certain areas were given an Art Deco theme to provide "sort of a 'Batman' feel", in reference to the 1989 film.[8] Lead artist Mark Lizotte captured over two-thousand photographs during his vacation in Europe,[11][46] and these were the basis for many of the game's textures.[10]
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