Comprised of two missions, The Scarlet Cascabel is a tremendous achievement and most likely the mission that will win the contest (at least, I think so!) (NOTE: I was right!). These two missions are quite amazing and Tannar and Pukey pulled off a Herculean feat with it.

The first mission takes place in a remote little town in the woods, mostly populated by rogues and other criminals. The visuals are absolutely fantastic here, with some amazing use of stock-derived content I did not think was possible. Everything feels perfect here. You can break into various houses and shops and hang around the very well designed inn where you have to meet your contact. My main issue with this mission is that roombrushing is very sloppy overall, with sound leaking quite a lot. This can be a problem at times.

The second mission takes place in a hotel overlooking a chasm, and this mission is definitely of the same calibre as, say, Rowena's Curse or Ominous Bequest. Yes, it is THAT good. The atmosphere is stellar, the layout is amazing and the mission just keeps piling on the mysteries. This mission will take you hours to finish and it is never boring. Every single room in the hotel is unique and you can tell incredible care was put to make it look like a real place. You can even collect optional items to uncover even more stuff! The biggest problem with this mission, for me, is the no alert objective that can fail the mission. AIs don't actually run to ring the gongs, but do it telepathically. This can result in frustration if you somehow saved when that happens (as I did).

The story is very well written overall and all the side-plots are quite well fleshed out. The second mission in particular is full of little readables about the hotel itself, which has a very sinister story. I'll say overall that The Scarlet Cascabel is an incredible mission that does feel like it belongs in Thief 2 more than 1 at times, and that everybody should stop what they're doing and play it if they haven't already. Again, this is easily on the same level as classics like Rowena's Curse.

(this review was originally written for the TDP 20th Anniversary Contest voting form on TTLG)