Dishonored at home. Seems cool at first, sneaking into homes and pilfering their valuables. But that illusion quickly falls apart. Other than buying the three tools and some rope arrows there doesn't feel to be much value in the continued stealing throughout the game. The lockpicking is probably the most unappealing iteration of lockpicking seen in a game. Only aspect that holds up is peeking through keyholes. Peeking around corners however can be pretty annoying sometimes because it'll often happen while you try to loot an item since they use the same keybind, particularly chests. Which by the way are very strange to look at in this game because chests usually just open up to a 3 inch deep flat wooden indent that just contain two loot items while still having like another 12 inches until the chest meets the floor.

The parkour is very stiff, there's no jump button or climbing allowed except for at specifically designated areas. The claw tool exists purely to limit the player's ability in this manner, most of the time the claw is used for something an expert thief should just be able to do with their hands. There is a point where the metal grate for the claw is found on the floor of a home that gets turned on its side thus now making it a wall climb, and that was just silly. The character does do some real sort of climbing however when they climb the metal pipe sections and it does it in a 3rd person camera that just makes you wish you were playing Assassin's Creed instead.

Speaking of getting around, the world navigation is horrendous. The city is divided into 3 sections and each of those sections divided into another 2 or 3 smaller sections. In which they expect you to navigate through random windows that go into an apartment and then leave through another window that goes into the desired area. None of that is communicated to the player with the map menu either. It's even more painful if you accidentally run into these traversal loading screens as you have no option but to load into the new map and then turn around and load back. On top of that all the window and shimmy pathways have an annoying button mash event to get through the animation. And the player does this obnoxious appreciation of the framing of each and every window before trying to open it that gets old very fast.

At last there's the story which could be worse but it's not particularly captivating at least in the way that they tell it. There are some odd plot jumps and motivations behind some characters don't make sense. The interest dwindles pretty early on around chapter 2, but then spikes at 5 because suddenly you're playing an indie horror game??? In the later levels they start making the common merchant follow you around everywhere to give you opportunities to restock ammo, and it just feels like Resident Evil 4's merchant but awkward and without any personality. A lot of this game is just very reminiscent of Dishonored but worse. Those flashback/hallucination segments remind me of meeting with the Outsider in Dishonored, but less interesting. The setting for the game is basically exactly the same as Dishonored as well, a Victorian era city with a bridge on the waterfront with steampunk elements. The first thing you see in the game is that bridge and it looks very similar to the one in Dishonored you see a lot of. Well Thief did come out 2 years after. Also must say worst load menu? When you go to load save data it asks you to pick a second time like it didn't hear you the first time or the choice didn't matter. Much like replaying the game, there's no point in it since the story turns out the exact same and the world isn't any different for it. Whereas in Dishonored the people see you differently based on your actions, you get rewarding dialogue and story developments for being murderous or merciful. Checks all the boxes Thief wished it could.

Dishonored at home. Seems cool at first, sneaking into homes and pilfering their valuables. But that illusion quickly falls apart. Other than buying the three tools and some rope arrows there doesn't feel to be much value in the continued stealing throughout the game. The lockpicking is probably the most unappealing iteration of lockpicking seen in a game. Only aspect that holds up is peeking through keyholes. Peeking around corners however can be pretty annoying sometimes because it'll often happen while you try to loot an item since they use the same keybind, particularly chests. Which by the way are very strange to look at in this game because chests usually just open up to a 3 inch deep flat wooden indent that just contain two loot items while still having like another 12 inches until the chest meets the floor. The parkour is very stiff, there's no jump button or climbing allowed except for at specifically designated areas. The claw tool exists purely to limit the player's ability in this manner, most of the time the claw is used for something an expert thief should just be able to do with their hands. There is a point where the metal grate for the claw is found on the floor of a home that gets turned on its side thus now making it a wall climb, and that was just silly. The character does do some real sort of climbing however when they climb the metal pipe sections and it does it in a 3rd person camera that just makes you wish you were playing Assassin's Creed instead. Speaking of getting around, the world navigation is horrendous. The city is divided into 3 sections and each of those sections divided into another 2 or 3 smaller sections. In which they expect you to navigate through random windows that go into an apartment and then leave through another window that goes into the desired area. None of that is communicated to the player with the map menu either. It's even more painful if you accidentally run into these traversal loading screens as you have no option but to load into the new map and then turn around and load back. On top of that all the window and shimmy pathways have an annoying button mash event to get through the animation. And the player does this obnoxious appreciation of the framing of each and every window before trying to open it that gets old very fast. At last there's the story which could be worse but it's not particularly captivating at least in the way that they tell it. There are some odd plot jumps and motivations behind some characters don't make sense. The interest dwindles pretty early on around chapter 2, but then spikes at 5 because suddenly you're playing an indie horror game??? In the later levels they start making the common merchant follow you around everywhere to give you opportunities to restock ammo, and it just feels like Resident Evil 4's merchant but awkward and without any personality. A lot of this game is just very reminiscent of Dishonored but worse. Those flashback/hallucination segments remind me of meeting with the Outsider in Dishonored, but less interesting. The setting for the game is basically exactly the same as Dishonored as well, a Victorian era city with a bridge on the waterfront with steampunk elements. The first thing you see in the game is that bridge and it looks very similar to the one in Dishonored you see a lot of. Well Thief did come out 2 years after. Also must say worst load menu? When you go to load save data it asks you to pick a second time like it didn't hear you the first time or the choice didn't matter. Much like replaying the game, there's no point in it since the story turns out the exact same and the world isn't any different for it. Whereas in Dishonored the people see you differently based on your actions, you get rewarding dialogue and story developments for being murderous or merciful. Checks all the boxes Thief wished it could.