Product Description

In Thief 3 you once again take on the role of Garrett, a master thief who is rarely seen, never caught and capable of breaking into the most ingeniously secured places. Garrett steals from the wealthy and gives to himself, making his living in the dark and foreboding City. Although Garrett would prefer to be left alone to ply his trade, the prophecies of an impending Dark Age dictate a different plan for the thief. In his efforts to prevent the Dark Age, Garrett has inadvertently roused an ancient, hidden evil. He finds himself without allies, standing alone between the City and the forces that would crush it.

Playing as Garrett, you must use your skills to sneak throughout the City into castles, mansions, prisons, cathedrals, dungeons and museums, past armed guards, hired muscle, angry thugs, hideous monsters, and much worse. Garrett must steal the City's oldest treasures in order to stop the darkness foretold in the prophecies. You will have a wealth of thieves' tools at your disposal, including lock picks, a variety of special arrows, wall climbing gloves and flash bombs.

An innovative new key feature in Thief is "body awareness", which gives you the ability to see your hands and feet while climbing walls, leaning over ledges, and picking locks. Working hand-in-hand with body awareness is Ion Storm's dynamic lighting system, Garrett can manipulate the light and shadows in real-time to his own advantage, creating entirely new stealth opportunities.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5194 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Eidos
• Released on: 2004-06-11
• Platform: Xbox

Amazon.co.uk Review
The third entry in arguably the most under-appreciated series of stealth games on the market, Thief: Deadly Shadows maintains the high standards of its predecessors, and offers some extremely tense gaming in the process. The concept is pretty much the same as usual. You take on the role of a master thief in medieval times, who must pull off a series of missions--covering thefts, the odd assassination and combat--while gradually uncovering a darker, overriding secret. This all underpins a game structure that sees you taking on tasks of gradually increasing difficulty, as you seek to evade guards, sneak through the shadows and pick a few locks for good measure. Along the way, you'll also find yourself making use of your arsenal of tools, be it to create a distraction to get a guard out of the way, or to extinguish some of the lights that would otherwise give away your presence.

All of this takes place in one of the most atmospheric game worlds out there, and, mixed with some terrific work on the audio side, it's utterly engrossing stuff. Few games get anywhere near the tension levels that Thief: Deadly Shadows attains, and few will have you holding your breath quite so often.

And there are more ticks in the plus column, too. The game is a lot longer than gamers would have expected before its release, and some of the missions are genuinely exceptional. The only slight downers are that there aren't too many new ideas this time round, and the third-person camera doesn't always work smoothly, which means you're best sticking to a first-person viewpoint.

Nonetheless, this doesn't detract from the fact that Thief: Deadly Shadows is an excellent game, and one of the very best stealth titles around. It's easy to get into, packed with surprises, and is pretty much guaranteed to bring you out in a cold sweat when it ratchets up those tension levels. It deserves to be a big hit. --Simon Brew

Customer Reviews

The final thief game... AND WHAT A GAME!!!
Word on the web is that this is the final thief game there will be. BUT BABY WHAT A GAME THIS IS!!!
Ahem... sorry 'bout that.

Anyway, Garret the master thief returns for his third and (apparantley) final outing in Thief: Deadly Shadows. For those who have never played any Thief games yet me enlighten you.

In Thief: Deadly Shadows you play a street born thief named Garret. You steal from the rich and give it all to your poor poor self.
Thief has always been about stealth. The revouloutionary Dark Engine allows players to hide in shadows and sneak past enemies rather than just run blindly into the fray. Only armed with a blackjack, dagger and anything else you find, players are forced to use thier heads to get around obsticles.

Thief: Deadly shadows has a vast amount of improvements. First of all, for the first time ever on a thief game, you can actually go into a third person mode and see Garret in full. But for all those who like the first person mode, with a simple click of a button you can revert to the orignial view mode.

Lockpicking has changed as well. Rather than holding down a button and waiting, you have to find the 'hotspot' of the lock by wiggling the control stick. This is quite entertaining and it makes a nice change.

A.I has improved as enemies now search everywhere and I mean everywhere if there is so much as a teeny thing out of place. Graphics have vastly improved and you get new equipment such as wall climbing gloves.

Thief: Deadly Shadows may be the last game in the series but it is also the best. Buy it now... you won't regret it.

Close to perfection
I return around 80% of games I buy within a week: I am hyper-sensitive to irritations and imperfections that other gamers don't seem to mind that much. I guess I have very high standards, which means I get rid of many games. But I'll be keeping this one forever. I love it.

The graphics are beautiful, but also completely functional. Everything can be used, altered, examined etc.

It's the same for the sound: voices, footsteps, the noise made by dropping a candlestick on a wooden floor - all are brilliantly convincing, but they all also mean something within the game.

For example, you may have just shimmied up a wall, silently opened a window, and slipped into a candlelit room in search of things to steal, but if you bump into a chair in the dark, someone's likely to hear you and come and investigate.

It is this perfect integration of state of the art effects with gameplay which makes this game so very, very impressive.

The AI can be stunning. If, for example, you're careless, and someone sees you in their house, they may well go and get a guard, who'll come and investigate. If you've managed to hide in the meantime, and if he doesn't stumble into you in the dark, he'll search around for a while and then mutter something like "Well, whoever it was is clearly long gone" and go away.

The story is compelling: you really do want to find out what happens next - and it's always interesting and unexpected. The characterisation is especially good: Garret, the hero, is amusing and intriguing, and his voice actor is spot on.

There is a large element of freedom in the game. Whilst you're guided along various 'main quest' tasks, you can often decide which order you're going to do them in, and you can spend hours doing the many side-quests if you like.

The game is centered on a city, and if you really wanted to, you could just wander around the city burgling, robbing and pickpocketing. There are fences who will buy what you steal, and you then spend your ill-gotten gains on equipment and weapons.

The controls are almost perfectly intuitive. Never have I picked up such a detailed game and been so confident with the controls so quickly.

So, Thief: Deadly Shadows has beauty, comedy, depth, excitement, variety. I love it.

Fun and Pleasing
This game provides hours upon days of fun gameplay. BUT, be warned, if you in the market for a more serious stealth game, splinter cell is certainly a better choice. Thief 3 allows you to roam around the city, break into houses, pickpocket, sell your loot, buy stuff, and do missions. The AI is very human like, they sneeze and talk and actually do stuff instead of just standing there. BUT they are also really stupid, which may seem like a bad thing but it actullay makes this game quite fun. Also, the inventory is entertaining and creative. For exmple, you can use a moss arrow to walk on metal without making noise, you can use a water arrow to make the moss grow or to clean up blood, and so on. The amount of detail thought into the game is evident too because of certain things like: certain surfaces make more noise, if doors are left open then someone will notice, and the ever entertaining fact that if two people fight, they wont notice you. The game has an enticing story line that really grips you and through the path of the game you can find notes that will lead you all over the city in search of loot. At the moment, i love thief 3 and i think it'll stay that way for a very long time.