Especially when the citizens get stuck in an annoying conversation loop. Even with the minimap, getting from point A to point B is a huge pain. Worse, it robs The City of a sense of continuity and makes it hard to get around. And I hate the way The City’s map is broken up with frequent loading screens, which can last upwards of 20 seconds on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The City, as it’s simply known, is a maze-like jumble of dark, narrow streets and narrow passages over rooftops that mostly look alike. That’s part of what makes moving around the main hub map constantly frustrating.
Sometimes you can just walk off the edge, other times you have to push a button to drop, and others you can’t drop down at all. For example, if the level designers didn’t specifically say “Yes, you can climb this,” then you can’t, even if it looks like you should be able to. But most of his other movements feel clumsy, awkward, and inconsistent. It’s extremely handy for crossing gaps in the shadows where guards would spot you, and for quickly backpedaling out of danger when you round a corner and nearly bump into a guard. Play The swoop ability, where you dash about 15 feet ahead almost invisibly, is what makes Garrett feel like a badass ninja, and one of the best things about Thief. Because you’re only allowed to use them in specific spots, I never felt clever for using them in a way the developers might not have foreseen. If the level design were more open more often, those limited uses would have many more possibilities, but with these often-tight corridors they’re one-trick ponies. Most of those arrows, though, are extremely limited in where they can be used - particularly the fire, water, and rope arrows that only work on very specific objects like open-flame lights and leaking oil barrels. Their AI isn’t fantastic and will occasionally get stuck on walls, but it’s good enough that guards will notice unconscious or dead bodies and open safes, and they react as I expected them to when lured around with Garrett’s selection of trick arrows. The impressive lighting makes it almost believable that sometimes you can get close enough to a guard to steal the boogers from his nose undetected. It’s tough but fair, and gives you breathing room to avoid detection when you keep to the shadows. But that’s okay, because a good stealth game does everything it can to convince us to avoid direct confrontation. It’s easy against one enemy, but really tough against two or more, especially when there’s a guard with a crossbow involved. You can’t really simply overpower any enemies unlucky enough to catch a glimpse of you, because melee combat is a dumb and repetitive dance of dodging an enemy’s obvious incoming attack and countering. Going for a true stealth playthrough is a game of patience waiting for the right moment to either slip through a hole in the guards’ patrol pattern undetected or take out targets one at a time. He’s also wearing a corset for some reason. And he doesn’t have the charm, either in his flat voice acting or his lame, poorly lip-synced dialogue to make him a loveable Robin Hood rogue rather than some jerk who goes around swiping utensils off innocent people’s tables. His indiscriminate kleptomania makes him seem more like a petty thief than a master, though. Play As his title would imply, main character Garrett steals pretty much anything that isn’t nailed down, including junk like forks, pens, cups - you name it.
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