~Thief II Fan-mission: “Broken
Triad”, by ‘Eshaktaar’
Any superlative I use in these
write-ups could be used on any of the missions I cover, but some of them are
most appropriate at describing one specific mission, with the goal of making it
stand out from the others. The most appropriate term for Eshaktaar’s “Broken
Triad” is ‘genius’. Its design is like some intricate, complex puzzle, or some
small, detailed carving, that one loves to hold in the hand and admire.
The characteristic that most stood
out to me as I replayed this mission for this project was its use of items.
Like a classic adventure game, “Broken Triad” has many items—and I mean
non-standard Thief items, that you
don’t usually see in missions—that each have some specific use somewhere in the
mission, but where and how you don’t usually know when you first pick up the
item. You put the pieces together as you go, everything falling into place as
you progress through the mission, as you find out where all the items are used.
“Broken Triad” is like a small, weighty,
intricate puzzle box you’d buy at a curio shop. The genius behind it is
thrilling. I can’t think of other circumstances where I’d squeal with
excitement when I found a sewer-grate key, or put a tree-root through a
wood-chipper. It’s all part of the puzzle-solving and the satisfaction that
comes with putting the items to their proper uses, and then figuring out where
to go next based on that.
But the genius doesn’t stop with the
items. They’re just a part of a grander magnum opus. The atmosphere, visuals,
and ambiance in “Broken Triad” meet the high standard set by great Thief fan-missions. The story is very
well-done and well-integrated into the mission, continuing on plot points from
Eshaktaar’s first mission “Ominous Bequest” (also excellent, though a much
earlier fan-mission). I don’t think you need to have played the first one to
follow the story, but the author does encourage it in his readme file. Either
way, the story in “Triad” is a treat, with a few twists near the end. It starts
out well enough: Garrett, staying in a town called Arkford, plans to steal a sculpture
called “The Sleeper” from a local museum. The sculptor of this is rumored to
have died of fright when he saw his finished creation; Garrett’s replica of it
certainly looks creepy. And, the town’s been having trouble with a serial
killer, the “mad beheader”, who leaves his victims headless. All that, and the
mission takes place on a cold, snowy night; and Garrett gets a surprise as soon
as he opens his door. Between all this and the piano ambiance that begins as
you first start exploring the town, when I first played “Broken Triad”, I knew
I was in for a great mission.
This mission is also a
“multi-mission” campaign, kind of like “The Seventh Crystal”, and is composed
of two missions. I cover both here.
And if you don’t commit the time to
watching all of my playthrough, I encourage you to watch at least the first few
minutes of the first video, and to scan through the rest.
-Broken Triad, Part 1: The City of
Arkford-
Part 1 takes place in the
aforementioned city, or town, of Arkford. What is so well done by designer
Eshaktaar is what any of the great “city” missions do: create a feeling of ‘interconnectedness’,
or a sense of ‘looping’, throughout the city. This means that the player
incrementally opens up new areas to explore (usually via the acquisition of
items) and reconnects them with places-already-explored, usually by opening up
previously closed gates. To use an analogy I used above again: it’s like
putting all the pieces of a puzzle into place, and experiencing the joy of
seeing the picture gradually complete, while more and more puzzle pieces are
eliminated.
(An aside: I think a great
comparison to make to great city missions like this is to the Nintendo classic Super Metroid. This isn’t one out of
left-field; core to Metroid’s
gameplay is opening new areas using items one acquires, backtracking and ‘looping’
all the way. It’s the same sort of incremental exploration of a large area.)
There’s a lot of fun side-stories
going on in Arkford, too. This is Thief,
so on top of the addictive puzzle aspect Triad
has, there are readables, conversations, and plenty of other, clever narrative
caches. One of these side-stories involves the dear old ghost of Brother
Reginald.
After getting a key for the
sewer-grates in the city, players can enter into an old, crumbled catacomb by way
of one of the sewer passages. From this, players come up into a crypt of a Lord
Raglan. In here, players can pull a rope to ring a bell. The bell awakens the
ghost of Brother Reginald, who had been trapped in the cemetery this crypt is
in, waiting to see if Lord Raglan had really died, or had been buried alive.
So Reginald opens the crypt door and
explains, in a great old-Hammerite-ghost voice (better than Brother Murus’, I
say) the reason for his waiting, and that he’s thankful he can leave now. Of
course, Garrett isn’t really the Lord Raglan calling to be let out; but no
matter. Now players have access to the cemetery, which is at the back of the
museum, which gives them access to a back door of the museum. The player can
also flip a switch to open the gate to the cemetery that connects it to the rest
of the town, so the player can go between the cemetery and the town easily now.
So we see here the fun connection of a side story with a gameplay purpose:
getting access to the museum gives players a new place to explore, and opening
the gate allows players to ‘loop’ back into the town and have a new shortcut
open.
But why would a cemetery be at the
back of the museum, you ask? That’s another fun story bit. The museum was
converted out of an old Hammerite temple. So in the museum you see Hammer
glyphs, stained-glass windows, and the such. The player may also come across
readables that reveal a letter of the museum’s director demanding that a
Hammerite priest bless the spirit of Brother Reginald. Reginald haunts the museum
by night, and the director would rather this not come up in inspections. There’s
also correspondence between two of the secretaries, one of them noting that now
the director wants to get rid of Reginald. (So apparently the museum staff are
used to the old priest and his hauntings!)
One of the secretaries is Sheila, a
woman the player is tasked to meet so they can a key to the museum from her. A
correspondence between two of the staff notes that Sheila had looked frightened
lately, and wonders what might be scaring her. This is after the player has
discovered Sheila, in her apartment, with her…well, there is a “mad beheader”
on the run, remember!
Another great looping moment comes
with a warehouse for a ‘Hewitt and Sons Transports’ company. The player can see
the sign for this building through an iron gate—but it’s impassable. Turns out
that the player can get into the yard just outside the warehouse from the
sewers, and from the warehouse yard open this gate up to connect a path back to
the city. As for the warehouse building itself, here the player discovers a ‘wood
chipper’ machine. In this, the player can place a tree root, which they nabbed
from some roots growing into the local tavern’s basement. This root can be
turned into sawdust. Where will this be used? Later in the mission! For now, it’s
just another cool item.
One of the funnier moments occurs in
this warehouse. To get the key for the wood-chipper, players need to climb up
some boxes, and open the window into one of the offices, where the key is. But,
there’s someone in this office, looking at a bulletin board. His back is to the
window, though. I thought I might knock him out with Garrett’s blackjack once I
opened the window (this is a tactic I try to avoid. As you may see from my
videos, I tend not to use the blackjack to knock guards out). But no need! When
I opened the window, it opened into the office, and *bonk*! Down the guy fell.
Things like this never happened in the official Thief missions, and it’s one of the charming things that can
surprise one in the midst of a fan-mission.
(Turns out this guy was “Friend
Turbine”. A readable indicates he’s part of a new up-and-coming religious order.
Another readable describes Arkford as being a perfect ground for spreading a
new religion. Sounds like references to the Mechanists!)
In the course of the mission,
players can get into the museum director’s house, and in here discover a secret
area, and in this, a viktrola. It plays a nice little tune. But what’s it for?
When the player is exploring the museum, they discover that the museum director’s
office is locked with on ‘audio’ lock. It’s a panel of buttons, each with a
note (six of them), and a certain sequence unlocks his office door. Of course,
this sequence is what the viktrola plays. A careful listening and reproduction
of the tune will open the director’s office.
Inside his office, the player
notices a series of books, that highlight when looked at—meaning they can be ‘used’
by the player—and that on each of these books is a big letter. The player may
also have read a note written by the museum director where he writes that he
must memorize his wife’s name. The player also picked up a ‘flower-card’ from
the museum director’s house, addressed to his wife. The letters necessary to
spell the name on this flower-card are each on the books. And so the pieces
fall together, and the player can open up a hidden room, in which a switch to
deactivate the museum’s security system lies. Once again, a couple seemingly
useless items—a viktrola and a flower-card—are both used in fun, unexpected
ways, in order to satisfy an objective.
One more neat sequence I want to
highlight here—all of them being in my videos, if you wish to see them all—involves
a bottle of lamp oil and a lantern. Sheila had set up a signal for a guard in
the city-watch station. She would light up a lantern, and the guard would then
go open the door to the city watch, so Garrett could get in. Well, Sheila being…disabled,
Garrett must make this signal. While in the museum, near Sheila’s desk, the
player sees a lantern. The player may have the oil flask, and may think to pour
this oil flask in the lantern—after all, the lantern highlights, so it can be
used, and oil and a lantern go together. So players pour the oil in, light the
lantern, and then—in one of the coolest moments of detail in any Thief mission—a guard may be seen, in a
window across the street, stand up, with a start, and head away somewhere. Sure
enough, when players go down to the side of the city-watch station…the side
door is open now!
The player can then go into the station,
go to the cells, go into one of the cells, find and hit a hidden switch, go
into a secret passage that leads to a catacomb area, from here go up into a
locksmith’s office, and in here get a “green skeleton key.” The player now leaps
for joy, knowing that all the green-handled doors, that so far had denied any
lockpicking, can now be opened! It’s all addictive looping, and part of the
theme of ‘pieces-falling-together’, so key in this mission.
Now I’ll highlight a few more story
bits. One is seeing the ‘Sleeper’ sculpture for the first time, in the museum.
The player has a replica of it in their inventory, so they know what it looks
like. But seeing it up on the pedestal, with the hum of the security machine’s
rays around it, is an example of a great use of a visual and an ambiance to
create atmosphere.
In the museum galleries are many
interesting things to look at, with references to other Thief missions. One item on display is the good ol’ Horn of
Quintus.
There are also a few foreshadows of
the second mission in Broken Triad.
In the museum the player may see a painting of ‘Tempest Isle’, and also come
across an old book that journals the voyages of a sea-captain who came upon
Tempest Isle.
My ‘Part 5’ video shows the story as
it takes a few twists near the end of the mission. There’s more going on in
Arkford than originally seemed to be, especially for poor Garrett. The story
twists lead to a new gameplay segment, which includes exploration of previously
inaccessible areas: the White Cathedral and the Crematorium. The town takes a
slight change as well, and in the Crematorium the player may encounter one of
the most unique enemies in a Thief mission.
“Broken Triad” is a very complex
mission, with lots of items, puzzles, and story bits and twists. But at its
base level its operating on the same Thief
design principles as all the other missions looked at here are. There are
story caches—readables—, there’s non-linear exploration, there’s thick
atmosphere, there’s a well-done story that gradually emerges, and, despite all
the complexity, there’s still the basic ‘sneak and don’t get caught’ gameplay
that most Thief missions must have.
“Broken Triad”, then, is a
complicated representation, or an advanced execution, of Thief design. It’s like “Bonehoard” or “Life of the Party”,
squared. Or, maybe even cubed.
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