WungusDasPungus public   https://linktr.ee/wungusdaspungus

Oct. 22, 2024, 6:12 a.m.  

When playing fan missions for an extended period of time, I end up suffering from a disorder I like to call "brain melting." It's when you're forced to do something incredibly tedious an excessive amount of times (yes, I know this is part of the appeal of playing Thief in the first place) that it literally feels like you would do just about anything to get to the end of the mission as soon as possible to end the monotony. The Awakening achieves this state in record time.

To start, there was a trend at the time with FMs typically making you steal a special item, usually from the OMs like the Horn of Quintus or Bafford's Scepter. The Awakening cannot make a decision and makes you steal 7 of them. One of the items is a copy of the Eye that the Hammers made for...some reason, even though its evil. It's not actually a problem, I just think it's funny.

The real problem starts in it's structure. This is a mansion mission, but you wouldn't really be able to tell because it's a mostly linear path through the entire level and the house's layout is absolutely nonsensical. There's a bank a little later into the mission that you have to break into, but by the level's logic, it is completely encased by the house and therefore cut off from the outside world. There are hallways with two doors at either end that lead to the same room, but one door opens and the other does not.

Oh yeah, speaking of that, every single thing that you could possibly ever think to be locked is, in fact, locked. Doors, chests, jewelry boxes, you name it, it is fucking locked. They can be picked, and it will take about 30 seconds each time, and since guards are actually kind of sparse and easy to avoid if they're even around, this makes moving through the level incredibly boring and repetitive. There are parts where you will pick a lock and not even make it 3 steps before you have to pick open something else. If it can't be picked, you need a key, and all of them are simply named "Key." There's also an abundance of doors that don't open at all but can be frobbed.

And look, I know a lot of these recent reviews have been quite negative, but it's usually the charmingly or frustratingly bad missions that kind of stick out to me as being fun to talk about, and The Awakening rests firmly in the latter category. It's clunky, it's tedious, and overall not good, and you should absolutely play it so I don't have to be as lonely in this experience.

Konrad   kondz.io public   https://thiefguild.com

Oct. 22, 2024, 12:12 p.m.  

Thanks for the recommendation, hahaha!

Brain melting - lol. I was sorry reading this ;)

The urge to finish the mission - the urge to finish them all ;)

Cheers