A brass and steel nightmare that emerged from Karras’ mind; a catastrophe unaverted; and a desperate bid to rid the world of Karras before Karras can rid the world of, well, everyone else – this is a hell of an alternate reality mission that asks the question “what if Garrett could not win at Soulforge”, and goes from there, taking us to the grandest, biggest, and most terrible skyscraper super-fortress the Mechanists have constructed. Except it is on figurative fire, everyone is (mostly) dead, and the whole thing is slowly falling apart in frantic, maniac activity.

Yeah, this mission is obviously hyperbolic – if you frequently have thoughts like “Angelwatch looks way too large and advanced for something built two years after the events of Thief 2”, well, this FM squares that and then some. This is the sleekest castle of the future the Mechs built. It has enormous halls filled with thundering machinery and creepy statues and Mechanist iconography (including several loving renditions of Karras, including some really bizarre kargoyles). The place has a very specifix architectural style – futuristic expressionism, not just because it uses the art deco texture families a lot, but because spaces in the mission look like something out of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, or Aelita, or a 1920s abstract painter’s sketchbook, on the scale of the Empire State Building. It is all bold lines and a vision of the future… a thoroughly sterile, unforgiving, and inhuman one.

The gameplay in the mission is basically a Soulforge-style sabotage – but better realised, and certainly much more polished. Except for one objective, which can get somewhat wonky, it is smart ideas meeting smart solutions. There is a lot of repurposing of odd objects for new uses, or using them as a base for reskinned or touched-up variants. There are new AI built from stock Thief 2 scraps to strike terror into the heart of any weed who would defy the might of Karras. The mission’s sheer size does mean there are empty stretches where you don’t do much beyond admiring the scenery while passing through, or dodge a token AI or two… but these problems are kept to a reasonable level.

So we have a mission that’s all very creative, and unites the best aspects of Sabotage from Soulforge, System Shock 2, and Bioshock. It is unique, high-concept, high-production values, and a lot of fun – long, too. It feels like an accomplishment when we win and save the day. Or… did we?