Reviews Thief Fan Missions [T2] A night In Rocksbourg (Part 1 and 2)
| [T2] A night In Rocksbourg (Part 1 and 2) |
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| Written by Starfox | ||||||||||||||||
| Thursday, 12 January 2006 18:00 | ||||||||||||||||
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Author: DrK Release date: December 2005 Language: French and English New Textures: Yes, obviously New Sounds: Yes (more about that later) Download Links (Thiefmissions.com): A night in Rocksbourg: A new beginning A Night in Rocksbourg: Discovery Ah, nothing better than a good little Thief FM to begin the new year. So what's about A Night In Rocksbourg? As its title suggests it, this is a campaign and we are reviewing its two first missions. Other will follow. The campaign itself is set between Thief 2 and 3, after the unfortunate dismiss of Karras. Once again you put on Garrett's socks for a little ride in the city, hoping to grab some loot because, you know, the rent is due, your illegitimate children will soon be after you asking for change, you have a dentist appointment and your dentist is awfully expensive plus you need a little something for your retirement which will happen God only knows when but you know that you can't count on the Thieves Retirement Fund because you have forgotten to pay your monthly subscription for the last 6 years. So you grab your stuff and off you go. Your target for tonight is the little town of Rocksbourg. What you don't know yet is that your presence here is not unexpected by some and that the Hell is on the verge of getting loose. Oh, what the Hell. You're Garrett, the master thief... Problems are following you like a little puppy. You should know that.
Great design First thing that can be noticed about A Night In Rocksbourg is its architecture. We have some quality work here which remember me the time of Calendra's Legacy. Not that the maps are big but they are really full of stuff and details. Details are good... Details are awesome... Details KILL. As a matter of fact, the very first mission A new beginning may be confounding at times. The map is small, the ways are numerous and after a short while you realize that it's some sort of little maze. Some people like me will love that but some others won't. The map itself requires a lot of exploration just to figure out where are located the important spots. Nothing is clearly mentioned and there's no map for this mission. So you may often find yourself scratching your head just thinking what will be your next stop. But like I said for me exploration in Thief is half the fun so I won't be bitching about the particular layout of A New Beginning. Not to mention that such a layout may be occasionally encountered in real life where I live. There is also a great advantage, if a guard spots you you can easily retreat and lose him in the mess. By comparison, the second mission Discovery is much less cluttered. There is a little bit more space in the layout but the mission still retains the overall feeling of a small compact city.
Gameplay Your ever present need for loot aside, A new beginning features what I would call a rather basic gameplay when it comes to Thief FMs, mainly finding keys to open doors. There is a set of a few doors that you absolutely need to open in order to accomplish your objectives and being the Master Thief you are you have no idea on how using lockpicks to open these doors (cough - cough... Tell me again: why do we call Garrett the Master Thief?). OK to be frank finding keys is not my favourite part. In some FMs you just have that: locked doors and keys to find. I don't mind when you have to recover one or two keys in a mission but past that point I begin to seriously wonder if Garrett shouldn't get a new job or take some courses with Basso because it always seems that he's not too brilliant in the lockpicking area. What really hurts are the locations of the keys you have to recover in this mission. The location of the very first key in particular is completely illogical. Now, I know that DrK intended this because the guy to whom the keys belong is crazy. He knows you're coming so he decided to render things more difficult for you. Ok, this part of the story holds itself together and you can read it in a servant's book BUT just a little clue about the location of the first key would have been nice just so -- you know -- you don't spend 3 hours just running around the town. Not to mention that only one third of the key is visible, so even knowing where it is retrieving it can be difficult. Other keys are found more easily but that damn first one is a mess.
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