Thief 2, the sequel to Thief 1 was released by now defunct Looking Glass Studios in 2000, features the same keyboard commands and mouse controls as the first one, making it easy to pick up the fine art of "taffing" once again, after a year between playing the 2 games.
The game reccommends 64 RAM and 16 Mb video, easily handled by most systems now. Works fine on WIN XP. I didn't download any patches. There was one annoying glitch: sometimes Garrett would get "stuck" and not able to move anywhere if you got in too close to a wall.this is where saving often came in handy. I don't know if a patch would have fixed this.
Our hero, of course is still Garrett, the Taffer, who now finds himself in a different world that is now menaced by the Mechanists instead of the Hammerites. The city is now completely dominated by machines and you overhear hints of the ominus new forces controlling the land when guards are talking together. There are no trees left anywhere,one says for example.
There are a few new gadgets for Garrett to use: The invisibility potion-comes in real handy if you have to get past several enemies in a long hallway.And the slow fall, and speed potions. You have a vine arrow instead of a rope arrow, but it works the same. But you don't have the holy water, probably because there are no zombies in this one. You have the same arrows and because there is so much more sneaking here, your water arrows(for dousing gas lights) and moss arrows(for sneaking quietly) will become your most used and of course your trusty blackjack.
Garrett has to face(or rather sneak around or bonk with blackjack) several types of human guards, male and female, with wicked and lethal cudgels, arrows and swords. He has to outwit or run away from two kinds of mechanical robot type guards-a small one that is a scout and a huge one with an eye and a metal scissorlike hand that can hurl bombs at him. Both of these machines are powered by fire boilers that emit puffs of steam as they clunk around. Three guesses as to how you can put them out of commission?
Sound plays an important role-you are always on the alert for guards talking with each other or grumbling to themselves, complaining about poor working conditions, tight shoes,being sick of the boredom, or being drunk. Or for the loud clanking and banal robotic rantings of the mechanical guards: "Praise be to Karras, Praise be to Karras", ect. ect. Just don't let them see you-or hear you!
Thhe story opens when Garrett gets involved in a simple operation to rescue a damsel in destress. His friend Basso wants to marry Jenny, but she is trapped in the attic of Lord Rumford's manor house. Marriage would break her indentured servant status. As you discover letters scattered around the manor, they reveal the fear that the common people have of a "Sheriff Truart" and all his thugs.
In the next mission, you have to break into some warehouses to get rent money, and in the process learn about "the Forge of Karras".
From here, Garrett gets more and more drawn in to a conspiracy to overthrow the Mechanists. He will be persuaded to help the "Keepers": those mysterious ones that said at the end of Thief 1, "Beware the Metal Age." He will have to follow a pagan "woodsie" through the dark streets of the city and into their wierd green land with talking trees. He'll need to break into the First City Bank and Trust and get into a vault, then stay on the rooftops in order to break into Karras' towerlike fortress. From here you will find plans for the "Cetus Project", which will take you to Markham's Isle where you'll find and talk to "Lotus" a friend of the pagans. He'll tell you about Bro. Cavador, who you have to find and kidnap by going deep into a maze of Mechanist installations.
And from there you find out about the "percursor masks" and the "cultivator which you now have to steal from a collector named Gervasius. of course this involves breaking into his castle.
All these places are heavily guarded by the human and machanical guards, which makes an already challenging job more complicated.
In the process of listening to conversations, you'll discover that all the upper classes have these mechanical servants installed in their houses and that somehow the villain, Karras, has developed a way of transforming street people into robotic guards, trapping them in machine-bodies.(creepy, or what?)
Your job as Garrett, should you accept it, is to stop Karras from using these robots to ensure his absolute dictatorship and control over the world. Once again Garrett has become involved by the Keepers in their plan to bring about "balance" and keep evil from taking over.
As in the first Thief game, I found this one to be totally addicting and it held my interest to the very end. Of course I'm looking forward to another treat-Thief 3!
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