Let's take a look at the
games that had design elements that Thief
picked up and continued. Looking Glass Studios, or Looking Glass
Technology as they were called when initially founded, operated on a vision to
make games that emphasized exploring immersive worlds. The company’s founder,
Paul Neurath, had been inspired by the 1987 release Dungeon Master. This was a computer role-playing game set in the
first-person perspective. While not the first of its kind, it was the most
visually advanced of its kind, and the immersive experience inspired Neurath.
Looking Glass Studios’ first title
was Ultima Underworld, a game based
on the first-person computer role-playing game design of Dungeon Master. The game, released in 1992, had incredibly advanced
graphics for its time. The gameworld was a large, underground labyrinth to
explore, and while it did not have the accessible gameplay that Thief would have, its role-playing
gameplay was simpler than that of most of the CRPGs of the 80s.
Looking Glass Studios followed Ultima Underworld with a sequel, and
soon after created System Shock (1994).
System Shock was a stepping stone
more towards Thief’s style of design,
as it shook off most of the CRPG elements Underworld
had had, and was much more of an ‘immersive simulation’ like Thief. System Shock, like Ultima
Underworld, was a masterpiece in its own right.
Looking Glass made several other
games, but these are their most well-known, along with Thief, and are the design steps the company took towards Thief. I don’t mean at all to give short
shrift to their other games—do look those up. But for the purposes of this brief
post, Ultima Underworld and System Shock were Thief’s most direct spiritual predecessors.
Since Thief, a few notable games have imitated some of its design
elements. There was Looking Glass’ own, co-developed with Irrational Games, System Shock 2 (1999), an excellent game
that contained non-linear exploration and narrative caches. In its case, the
narrative caches were PDA audio logs rather than journals and books.
Irrational Games, without Looking
Glass as co-developer now, followed System
Shock 2 with Bioshock (2007).
Though much more streamlined and more first-person shooter than anything else, Bioshock featured a highly immersive
environment and audio logs that served as narrative caches.
In 2012, Arkane Studios released Dishonored, a title which, the
developers themselves admitting, was influenced partly by Thief. Playing it took me back to Thief quite a lot. It’s a first-person stealth game, and while it
doesn’t have the complex level design of Thief,
it’s still pretty good, and features mumbling guards to boot.
I would be remiss not to mention Deus Ex. It was released in 2000, and
allowed the player many gameplay styles to adopt, one of them being stealth. It
was made by Ion Storm, which included some former Looking Glass devs, and would
be the company that made Thief III.
There are also some indie games that
imitate Thief’s design, made by fans
of the game, no doubt: see Neon Struct and Tangiers.
So the design of Thief came from games before it that it
built on and borrowed from, and it continued to be emulated in games since its
release. It’s a great tradition—I only wish there were more games like it.
-Sources
for the history stuff: Replay:
A History of Video Games, by Tristan Donovan,
and Dungeons
and Desktops: A History of the Computer Role-Playing Game, by Matt Barton.
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