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: #13368 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Eidos
• Released on: 2004-06-11
• Platform: Windows XP

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

Fantastic - with a couple of minor drawbacks
For £10 this is a right steal (pun not intended!) and I strongly urge you to buy it now unless you really really don't like the idea of not being able to kill lots of people. Oh and a half-decent PC would probably be needed.

I won't go on about the storyline or anything, but certainly if you like the idea of being a cynical antihero in a medieval-meets-victorian-meets-fantasy world, go for it!

For the full experience, play it at night, alone, lights off! Although for one particular level you may find yourself forced to play it during the day, with company, and the lights on ;-) Yes, it is that atmospheric and... intense! Hopefully this isn't too much of a spoiler but let's put it this way - in the first part of the level there isn't a single enemy! I knew this BEFORE playing it and I was still pretty tense!

Anyway the storyline IS good, especially if you played (or at least read about) the two previous games so you have a good idea of who's who and what's going on in The City.

It's even tremendous fun just going around stealing, or knocking random people out and hiding them, or just staying in the shadows and listening to people! Between missions there are also mini-missions from which you can make quite a big profit if you're good enough to complete them. Your loot can be sold for cash, with which you can buy lots of new toys and gadgets to help you in your quest to defeat the evilness.

The graphics are pretty good, though nothing particularly special (although the lighting is fantastic). The sound is brilliant and the AI is usually great.

Like I said, unless you really want a game where you can kill a lot, definitely consider Thief: Deadly Shadows. Also worth looking at are the other two thief games.

Review of finished UK version...
I juat want to clarify a few things before I get started:

1 - I'm reviewing the finished item, not a demo, beta-test or a cracked version :)
2 - I've completed Thief and Thief 2 on both the easy and expert levels: I'm a big fan of the Thief series!

For those in the dark, the Thief series of games are well known for being broody and atmospheric. As Garrett, you play a master thief, sneaking around in the shadows of a mediaeval-steampunk city, nicking stuff and trying not to get caught. A really good player can nstick to the shadows, never alert any guards, steal everything, complete the mission, and never have to kill anyone... These games are intense, and Thief 1 *still* gives me the creeps.

There have been a couple of well-publicised changes to the game in this latest installment.

The new third-person view was greeted by a bit of trepidation from the Thief-purists on the Eidos forums. When I first started playing I thought 'ah, never mind. It's there but I'll never use it. It's for console-lamers...' Out of curiosity I used it a couple of times, and I'm happy to report it works really well, and I never thought I'd say this, but I really like it! The PC game defaults to first person though, and if you are really anti, you'll be fine providing you never press 'v' during gameplay. I guarantee you will though, if only to find out what Garrett actually looks like :)

No rope arrows - this is *very* bad. I loved these in T1 and T2.

Level size: levels are 'zoned' by your PC into 'manageable' sized chunks. The load times on my 512k Athlon 1800+ are about 10s between level sections, which really breaks the 'immersion' of the game, but you can spend a fair while on each section before having to move on to the next, which is a hell of an improvement on Deus Ex 2's 'matchbox' gameplay.

'Loot glint' is a feature that makes loot momentarily 'shine' if you look in it's direction, regardless of how far away it is. This makes it easier to find things, so if you struggled with that in T1 and T2, you'll find it a welcome relief. If this was part of the fun of T1 and T2 for you, you'll find it annoying and curse Ion Storm for not allowing you to switch it off :P I'm not sure if I like this feature or not.

There are some new weapons/equipment though, and with a bit of lateral thinking you can have great fun with these :)

You can also wander around the city in between missions to sell your loot to fences, and buy more equipment (though sadly, not rope arrows :P)

The graphics are beautiful... :) The dynamic lighting means that as torch-carrying guards move, so do the shadows they cast...

The sound is fantastic. The game supports EAX, which means that effects such as reverb and echo are applied (where your soundcard allows it) to footsteps etc., and this will change depnding on your environment. When you're cleaning out a large cathedral there will be echoes everywhere, and woe betide the careless thief that accidentally knocks a candlestick to the stone floor...

Which brings me to the physics engine.... I was quite impressed by this. I was haring around carelessly trying to get out of one level, when I turned a corner and knocked a whole load of (heavy) stuff over. The sudden load noises didn't just make me jump, they also alerted two guards who eventually cornered me and that was the end of Garrett for that game.

If you're looking for a combat game with loads of action and shooting, then you may struggle with this. Thief 3 requires a little patience (a bit like Jet Set Willy) in that sometimes you have to wait for the guards to turn away, so you can douse a distant torch with a water arrow and creep past in the darkness.

There is a bug in these early releases which affects the guards' AI. If you play on expert, save the game and reload it, the AI returns to 'normal' mode. This has now been patched, so if you buy this, make sure you visit the Eidos website.

[Hopefully they'll've added a 'loot glint' toggle to the patch too, or even better: customisable difficulty settings.]

If they'd kept the rope-arrows and not had zoned levels, this would have been 5 stars. I do sometimes miss the large sprawling levels of T2, but am still quite happy as the existing ones do give you enough to be getting on with...

Rope arrows, bugs and zoned levels aside, this is still a fantastic game, which oozes atmosphere and gives you all the thrills of breaking and entering without risking a prison sentence...

A True Masterpiece
As a fan of the Thief series, I had high expectations of Thief: Deadly Shadows. Some had alleged that supporting XBox might dumb it down and lose that unique feel that had propelled the first two Thief games to the status of utter classics. Well, they were wrong. Very wrong.

Thief: Deadly Shadows takes (almost all of) the best of Thief: Dark Project and Thief: The Metal Age and then adds some really good touches. No longer does one simply move from mission to mission; the City that forms the new hub of your adventures is detailed, rich with life, and superbly done. Missions are nicely varied beyond just stealing stuff and some are downright scary.

From a technical perspective, the graphics are pretty intensive but a delight to behold. The sound is excellent, all the classic voice actors are back from the older games, and some of the new ones are spine-chillingly good. The AI is good, although the AI in the City doesn't seem as intelligent as in missions. As a fan I had two annoyances with the game; the absence of rope arrows and swimming. The game is still a joy to play without them, but I felt they ought to have been in there for old times sake and for added flexibility.

This game is intricate; anyone with knowledge of the first two games will realise just how well this installment brings together the numerous plot developments over the series. Even if you haven't played the first two, this is truly a joy to play; rarely so difficult as to frustrate, but never easy enough to bore.

Tiny touches make the difference between a bunch of fancy graphics, and what is truly an immersive experience. An example: help someone, and later they send a letter and money as a thank-you; don't help them and they send a thug to exact revenge. Garrett actually has a life now, rather than just a sequence of missions, and life as a thief has consequences...