Completed Deadly Shadows for the first time

[<Username>]

I bought Deadly Shadows in 2005. My laptop at that time was so underpowered I had to play in 800x600 resolution with most of the visual effects turned off. I stopped after the first minutes in the Shalebridge Cradle because I did not want to experience this level like this. The game then sat on my shelf for 15 years. It took until August 2021 until I felt like finally completing the game.

Whereas I had played vanilla in 2005, I installed Sneaky Upgrade 1.1.10 for my second attempt. Thanks to everyone who worked on it! Major improvements I noticed were the merging of previously separate parts of missions, removal of the ugly blue foot and hand markers in some areas, and the addition of mission briefings.

Overall, I enjoyed Deadly Shadows. The game didn’t turn out as well as the creators at Ion Storm or we as fans hoped it would, but despite its many shortcomings, I was constantly engaged and wanted to progress to the next area or plot point of the story. I’d give it a 7/10 or 8/10.

While playing, I wrote down short sentences with observations. I will post them here:


Things I liked in Deadly Shadows:

• The ambient music is excellent and on par with the previous two games.
• Steven Russell as Garrett is great.
• Blue Heron Inn, Rutherford Castle and St. Edgar's Cathedral are all grey stone buildings. The Pagan Sanctuary is the first colorful level. I like its mix of green overgrowth, ruins and rotting machines.
• The sequence in which Garrett is hunted by Keeper Enforcers while you are in the unfamiliar territory of Old Quarter was exciting.
• The Abysmal Gale oozes with atmosphere. Pity it is only a small side-area and not a full-fledged mission.
• Overlook Mansion with the sad piano music in the background is also great.
• The Fort Ironwood catacombs are a fun, spooky area. Its ambient music and the new Haunts and Zombies are great.
• The well-spoken Keeper guards are an interesting enemy.
• There was an intense feeling of dread as I walked through the Hall of Statues in the Keeper Compound. I knew they would come to life eventually, but not when. This was a great sequence.
• The beginning of the Shalebridge Cradle is scary. When the former inmates appear, you know what the threat it and it becomes manageable. But the mission retains its creepy atmosphere. Not as mind-blowing as the hype led me to believe, but well done.
• Wieldstrom Museum is a great final mission. With its lavish interiors, it felt like a very good mission from The Metal Age.

Things I felt were better than in the previous two games:

• The manual lockpicking here is much better than right-clicking and waiting like in the previous games. There were some tense moments when I was picking a lock while I heard footsteps approaching.
• Dynamic shadows are nice addition to the game.
• I liked stepping out into the City hub and getting to explore the City without having to avoid every AI. I wish I had been able to do that more often in previous games.
• Being able to see your hands and feet is neat.
• The light gem and compass combination is very useful. Not having to switch to the compass constantly was a surprisingly big quality of life improvement.
• Sometimes AI notice when other guards disappeared from their patrol. This is something I always missed in previous games.
• Elemental crystals emit a faint ambient sound. This makes finding them much easier.
• Loot items have names and are often a little more unique than a generic coin stack.
• Haunts and Undead have improved looks and sounds compared to their old counterparts. Undead movements don’t look as cheesy as in the previous games anymore.

Things I feel are worse than in the previous two games:

• The controls are stiff. Blackjacking is awkward. This is the game’s main flaw.
• Crouchwalking is always silent, regardless of the surface. I don't like this. It was handled better in the previous games, where you still had to go slowly on certain surfaces even when crouchwalking.
• Combat is MUCH worse than in the Dark Engine games, and it wasn't very good in those games to begin with.
• The ingame engine cutscenes look horrible. They must have run out of time or budget to create real cutscenes. The cutscenes that are not created with the ingame engine look better but are also not always on the level of quality of the first two games.
• The way AI go down like a wet sack of rice and then twitch on the ground is inacceptable. (Though I had the impression this was less pronounced with the Sneaky Upgrade installed).
• The flash bombs are less usable than previously. You cannot use them to stun and then blackjack a crowd of enemies anymore.
• The newly added oil flask is not useful: I think I used it only once, to create a fire in the Shalebridge Cradle’s morgue.
• The texture quality is lower than in modern fan missions for The Metal Age. Missions in the much older Dark Engine still can look better.
• The “atomic” blue object highlight does not look good, worse than the simple highlight of the previous games.
• Many AI all look badly modelled: bulging eyes, odd body shapes. The proportions of all women look especially weird: They are all rail thin. AI in the previous games had lower polygons counts but their proportions looked more realistic.
• The City feels very different in The Dark Project, The Metal Age and Deadly Shadows. I like the dark and grimy version of The Dark Project the best. My least favorite version is the Victorian look in The Metal Age. The somewhat generic look of Deadly Shadows sits somewhere in the middle for me.
• The new faction system is underdeveloped. After stealing The Builder’s Chalice and The Jacknall’s Paw, all I had to do to turn the now hostile factions into allies was to blow up some rust mites and to fire a couple of elemental arrows into the Pagan Cocoons in the Docks. Afterwards, both Hammerites and Pagans always fought on my side.
• I dislike the depiction of the Pagans in this game. They sound like dunces. I prefer the Pagans as a terrifying cult in league with a literal demon, as they are depicted in The Dark Project and in certain fan mission.
• The Keeper Compound is the first majorly disappointing area in Deadly Shadows: It looks small, too well lit, uninspired. It also feels like three rooms. Keeper areas looks a lot more mysterious and impressive in The Dark Project and in fan missions. Orland's room is even shocking: I expected to see a room like in the cutscene, with a balcony and a view towards the collapsed Clocktower. Instead, it is this small, ugly box of a room, decorated with two standard portraits of random people, standard furniture, no balcony, and this ugly grate in the corner. The whole room looks like it was slapped together at the last minute.
• Deadly Shadows somehow has the least compelling plot and the weakest antagonist in the series.
• The Keepers look like fools in the end. The mystery surrounding them is gone. This was disappointing.

Bugs:

• I frequently encountered a bug that caused Garret to float with his arms outstretched. Loading a previous save always fixed it, but it was still annoying because it happened so often.
• Seated AI cannot be knocked out. Either you gas them or alert them to get them to stand up.
• The third person view in which Garrett's weirdly bent hand is hovering over a body as he is carrying it: That is very bad. I can’t believe the game shipped like this.
• During the first few hours in the game, I had infrequent, but reoccurring crashes to the desktop. That didn’t happen in the later parts of the game.
• There is a super weird glitch in both a cutscene and in the game: After the Hag murders some keepers, Orland's eyeballs are placed into his glasses, not into his skull.
• There was a Keeper guard with a lit torch who died when I blackjacked him because he kept falling onto his burning torch.
• Being chased by Keeper Enforcers from Old Quarter back to your apartment in South Quarter could have been great, but they kept being killed by City Watch and Hammerites without my involvement. This ruined the otherwise exciting sequence.
• The respawning in the City areas is out of control: Sometimes I would move a few steps away, turn around, and five AI I had blackjacked in the minutes before now had all respawned at the same location, coming towards me as a crowd. It felt very gamey and something that wasn't properly finetuned before release.
• The old gear in the Pagan Sanctuary mission is emblematic of the game: I reloaded several times to push it onto the enemies below, but it always tumbled down awkwardly, often not killing anyone.

Points in the game where I needed hints from a walkthrough to complete a mission on expert:

• Into the Pagan Sanctuary: Could not find the special loot item "Precious Comb".
• Into the Pagan Sanctuary: Found only 88% of the 90% loot goal.
• The House of Widow Moira: Found only 86% of the 90% loot goal.
• Robbing the Cradle: Found only 64% of the loot. Had missed the 30% in the observatory in the present time.

[intruder]

Being chased by Keeper Enforcers from Old Quarter back to your apartment in South Quarter could have been great, but they kept being killed by City Watch and Hammerites without my involvement. This ruined the otherwise exciting sequence.

That sequence completely broke the immersion for me.
While chasing me, the enforcers slaughtered every civilian and guard in their way.
To me this was unacceptable as Keepers would never commit such crimes nor would the willingly attract that much attention.

[Azaran]

[*]I dislike the depiction of the Pagans in this game. They sound like dunces. I prefer the Pagans as a terrifying cult in league with a literal demon, as they are depicted in The Dark Project and in certain fan mission.

Yep

[*]The well-spoken Keeper guards are an interesting enemy.

The Enforcers? Their voices ruined it for me

[<Username>]

That sequence completely broke the immersion for me.
While chasing me, the enforcers slaughtered every civilian and guard in their way.
To me this was unacceptable as Keepers would never commit such crimes nor would the willingly attract that much attention.

Keeper Enforcers killing everyone on the streets happened during my first attempt in 2005. During my playthrough in 2021, the opposite happened: The Keeper Enforcers got slaughtered. Both times, it was clear the sequence did not work as the creators had envisioned it.

The Enforcers? Their voices ruined it for me

I meant the guards inside Keeper Compound. They wear no mask and speak in a calm, deliberate manner.

[Estel Randir]

"The way AI go down like a wet sack of rice and then twitch on the ground is inacceptable. (Though I had the impression this was less pronounced with the Sneaky Upgrade installed)." This is a very common issue with the corpse models even in many modern games. I hate it.

Without sneaky upgrade, I really do not think I would have had the stomach to replay the game again. It basically saved it for me.

I have played T3 many many times and have customized the UI so much to my preferences that it does not even look the same. But, overall the game is a very mixed bag of utter joy and utter blandness. The mechanics are basically shit compared to previous games. The npc models are creepy & twtichy. While the graphics are much more modern looking, they felt very bland in many areas. The climbing gloves were a huge disappointment. There were very few areas in which they actually added content to the game. There were what 2 places that could only be accessed with them? Actually, I feel they have no place at all in Thief. They just don't fit to me. They have the potential to be very overpowered. Might as well put in grappling hooks and let Garret be able to climb anything with ease.

On the good side: Instead of rehashing The Lost City, it introduced the Kurshok. One of my favorite additions to the lore. I loved that mission.

[<Username>]

I would appreciate the Kurshok Citadel more if the Lost City hadn't already existed. Now there are two lost civilisations under the City. In my opinion, adding another one was one of the weirder creative decisions in Deadly Shadows.

Rope arrows add another fun dimension to explore a 3D environment. Their absence in Deadly Shadows is very noticeable. I have a feeling Ion Storm couldn't get rope arrows to work properly in the new engine, scrapped them, and later added in a few areas where you can climb walls as a half-hearted replacement.

[intruder]

I would appreciate the Kurshok Citadel more if the Lost City hadn't already existed. Now there are two lost civilisations under the City. In my opinion, adding another one was one of the weirder creative decisions in Deadly Shadows.

Yet real settlements have been built over by different cultures in different times, so I think this is actually a pretty convincing idea of having two (or even more) "layers" of a lost city right underneath the City.

Rope arrows add another fun dimension to explore a 3D environment. Their absence in Deadly Shadows is very noticeable. I have a feeling Ion Storm couldn't get rope arrows to work properly in the new engine, scrapped them, and later added in a few areas where you can climb walls as a half-hearted replacement.

I would assume that it just looked silly in third-person perspective (and in first-person perspective as well, since you could see your hands and feet).
Getting those animations right maybe wasn't possible for the developers (or the engine, or both...).

[ZylonBane]

IIRC the developers have admitted that both rope arrows and swimming were removed because they couldn't get them working with Havok and/or third-person mode.

[Estel Randir]

Yet real settlements have been built over by different cultures in different times, so I think this is actually a pretty convincing idea of having two (or even more) "layers" of a lost city right underneath the City.

Yes, I agree.

The Lost City & The Kurshok area have little to nothing in common other than they were underground areas of The City. The construction, etc is not similar, but rather unique, imo. The City is vast. It has been stated in game lore that no one even knows anymore what all is in it. Lost areas walled off and forgotten, flooded or collapsed cellars that were built over, etc. I never see people comment that it is weird when an above ground forgotten area of The City is re-opened for Garret to explore. For example, The Old Quarter (pretty sure that was the name) in T2 that was walled off due to being overrun with zombies. Walled off, forgotten, and people moved on building & ever building onward. But Garret gets dragged off to face the spitting zombies, etc.

[Estel Randir]

Yet real settlements have been built over by different cultures in different times, so I think this is actually a pretty convincing idea of having two (or even more) "layers" of a lost city right underneath the City.


I would assume that it just looked silly in third-person perspective (and in first-person perspective as well, since you could see your hands and feet).
Getting those animations right maybe wasn't possible for the developers (or the engine, or both...).

IIRC the developers have admitted that both rope arrows and swimming were removed because they couldn't get them working with Havok and/or third-person mode.

I forgot about swimming - duh! There is another big complaint.

[Grandmauden]

The climbing gloves were a huge disappointment. There were very few areas in which they actually added content to the game. There were what 2 places that could only be accessed with them?

Let's see...
- A hidden attic in South Quarter between Garrett's place and Black Alley.
- A fisherman's apartment near the Keeper door in the Docks.
- A balcony with a rust mite on the roof of Fort Ironwood.
- A gargoyle with gems for eyes above the street outside Fort Ironwood.
- A loot cache above the north entrance of the Auldale Public Gardens.
- The pipe that triggers the "Killing Time" mission.
- The special loot in the pendulum room atop the clocktower in "Killing Time."
- Various air crystals scattered around the City hub.

And that's just off the top of my head, nor does that include the various shortcuts that the climbing gloves open up. While I agree that climbing glove-related secrets and shortcuts weren't as plentiful as rope/vine arrow-related secrets and shortcuts, I think that's more the fault of the smaller levels rather than the gloves themselves. And Ion Storm was careful to design the environments with the climbing gloves in mind, not allowing you to climb around sharp corners and using architectural barriers like beams and ledges to limit how far you can climb.

Just sayin'.

[Estel Randir]

Let's see...
- A hidden attic in South Quarter between Garrett's place and Black Alley.
- A fisherman's apartment near the Keeper door in the Docks.
- A balcony with a rust mite on the roof of Fort Ironwood.
- A gargoyle with gems for eyes above the street outside Fort Ironwood.
- A loot cache above the north entrance of the Auldale Public Gardens.
- The pipe that triggers the "Killing Time" mission.
- The special loot in the pendulum room atop the clocktower in "Killing Time."
- Various air crystals scattered around the City hub.

And that's just off the top of my head, nor does that include the various shortcuts that the climbing gloves open up. While I agree that climbing glove-related secrets and shortcuts weren't as plentiful as rope/vine arrow-related secrets and shortcuts, I think that's more the fault of the smaller levels rather than the gloves themselves. And Ion Storm was careful to design the environments with the climbing gloves in mind, not allowing you to climb around sharp corners and using architectural barriers like beams and ledges to limit how far you can climb.

Just sayin'.

Places like the hidden attic in South Quarter are good extra content. The rest are just "stuff" they added to justify the gloves (like the various air crystals, the rust mite). I wished they would have added a dozen or so unique locations like the hidden attic or plot progression points. That would have been much more interesting. Overall I am not a fan of the gloves at all they way they were implemented.

[New Horizon]

IIRC the developers have admitted that both rope arrows and swimming were removed because they couldn't get them working with Havok and/or third-person mode.

Yeah, both of those things contributed to the loss of rope arrows. Not sure why they couldn't switch the view to 1st person for rope climbing and disable havok on the rope while climbing. They were certainly able to switch to 3rd person view on the fly...such as when the player died.

[hard thief kyd]

I dislike the depiction of the Pagans in this game. They sound like dunces. I prefer the Pagans as a terrifying cult in league with a literal demon, as they are depicted in The Dark Project

Well "the demon" is dead long ago, so it's rather a dumb cult of homeless loafers. It's funny how they're calling everybody "manfool" while the biggest manfools are Pagans themselves.

[Jashin]

Well "the demon" is dead long ago, so it's rather a dumb cult of homeless loafers. It's funny how they're calling everybody "manfool" while the biggest manfools are Pagans themselves.

Funny how to me it's the opposite. The dumb hammers worship a god that is made up by their ruling elites and dare to call pagans, whose god is actually real, a demon.

Also there was never a definitive answer on whether he was killed, if it's even possible to "kill" trickster, or perhaps he was just banished for a time.

[ZylonBane]

The dumb hammers worship a god that is made up by their ruling elites

Citation needed. If the Trickster actually exists, there's no reason to assume the Master Builder doesn't also exist. Do note that holy water and holy magic seem to work quite well.

[hard thief kyd]

The dumb hammers worship a god that is made up by their ruling elites and dare to call pagans, whose god is actually real, a demon.

Also there was never a definitive answer on whether he was killed, if it's even possible to "kill" trickster, or perhaps he was just banished for a time.

What's this?! Ah, 'tis just a Pagans' heresy. I hath let myself jump at naught.

Mine brethren, set thy bricks with the bones of heathens, and mix thy mortar with their blood.

[demagogue]

My little confession, I picked up TDS from the game store the day it was released (way back when we actually bought games from brick & mortar shops), but I've never played it past the first level. Maybe it's hard to say why not. I don't have any prejudice against it per se. But I think not having much of an FM scene swayed me off of it, and after enough time I never got that motivated to come back to it. All that said, I do want to finish it someday.

To put things in perspective, I got Thief 4 for free directly from Square Enix North America for "helping out" with the ill-fated TDM/Thief 4 fan content contest, and I've yet to even install it and don't think I will any time soon.

[<Username>]

My little confession, I picked up TDS from the game store the day it was released (way back when we actually bought games from brick & mortar shops), but I've never played it past the first level. Maybe it's hard to say why not. I don't have any prejudice against it per se. But I think not having much of an FM scene swayed me off of it, and after enough time I never got that motivated to come back to it. All that said, I do want to finish it someday.

I had similar feelings during the past 15 years. I finally started playing TDS again because it was one of the last three boxed games on my shelf that I had never completed.

Thief Guild lists 49 fan missions for TDS. I originally planned to give away my copy, but after completing the main game, I liked it enough to set myself a new goal to complete all the fan missions first.

[phobos2077]

Unpopular opinion: I used to love Deadly Shadows. Maybe because it was the first game in the series I completed. I tried to play The Dark Project way back, but I guess I was just too young to appreciate it at that point. DS has this very thick foggy atmopshere. Very satisfying to just explore, listen to AI. Voice acting and sound design were amazing. Much later I played through The Metal Age, and then finally The Dark Project (yes, in reverse order). I find charm in each game, but gameplay-wise TMA was more compelling (I just recently re-played it for the third or fourth time). TMA has it's own atmosphere but it's nowhere near as dense as DS. Locations are huge, lots of open areas, lots of running and jumping. Whereas in DS it's very close and personal. Good thing they added this wall bracing mechanic. Can't compare story much, as it never felt as a strong focus in any of the games for me.

I think gameplay-oriented people tend to like the first two games more. Also they enjoy the benefit of being "the first", so people who become fans back in the day, for them DS was a departure from what they expected. I can see the same trend from an opposite position with Fallout series. For me Fallout 3 was an abomination and I literally felt betrayed and insulted with the product they've made. But now most people will say that Fallout: NV is the best game in the series, despite it being basically an expansion for Fallout 3...

Nowadays I tend to get back to TMA and TDM more often simply because they enjoy the support and game engine improvements, unlike DS which got "stuck" with buggy and outdated engine.

My dream Thief game is basically Deadly Shadows with bigger levels, fully-realized semi-open-world and faction systems, minus all the quirkiness and bugs.

[downwinder]

scariest part of thief 3 was trying to get away from enemy npc's with clunky movement=get your hip stuck on a corner in the cradle ,your feet stuck on a floor edge/lip,its a wrap/reload save

here is a funny story end f cradle you go up elevator and decide to just rush window and use table to exit,so you start your run of course being smart i go the same way as enemy npc's so they always behind me as i run past them,then i see table and window to exit,i decide to jump onto table,got to be sure i dont jump to early or to late or you know what happens ,so i jump and i was a bit to early and nick the table edge with feet and drop like a ton of bricks,then all the npc's on sides of table ofcourse are not going to just sit there and let you rejump table so running on sides of table are now a no good,so i decide to take a lap lol i was like jesse ownes playing chariots of fire as i went around and you know right behind me is about 6+ pissed off shadow npc's and i get back to table and make jump then a short jump from table to window,before i fall i turn around to look at them all and walk backward to exit cussing to them all as i leave this mission

i also like planting the pagan tree

and how big was that abysmal gale ship suppose to be?,seems like 2 levels and a couple hallways in game play? but i learned how to use oil and fire in those hallways

over all loved the game besides the clunky movement and hammers were way watered down,but the chalice was nice,keepers were impressive on there growth,pagan poor pagans,they scraping a barrel with a jacknals paw,how sad

and we needed way more merlocks one level only ,i bet there lore is deep,yes i freed the merlock in game me and him are good friends

[<Username>]

Forgot one element I really liked in Deadly Shadows: The ending. It brings Garrett's arc over the course of the three games to a closure and perfectly connects with the beginning of The Dark Project.

[PJMaybe]

The atomic blue highlight was my biggest bugbear of T3. Everything you look at turns to blue

The other one was that Garrett had gone from being a selfish, money minded thief who was only interested in what he could make from a job or saving his own skin, to someone who wanted to be a hero and save the City.... Unless I misunderstood the story. It was a long time ago and I was already very unhappy with the game by the time he decided to blow up the clock tower.

[reoscachazos]

That sequence completely broke the immersion for me.
While chasing me, the enforcers slaughtered every civilian and guard in their way.
To me this was unacceptable as Keepers would never commit such crimes nor would the willingly attract that much attention.

To us all, that and the constant purple 'transition zones' killed immersion on the spot.


The interaction with the 3 factions was much more involved IMHO, i wish previous titles could have explored them a bit more, specially the pagans.

Mantle and overall movement was quirky, sometimes i would auto-mantle a ledge and others i couldn't even achieve it or got stuck. The flatten-to-a-wall, as well as the lock-picking mechanics were pretty good though, i wish they were available on previous titles as mods for NewDark, could open many new opportunities and increased difficulty to ghosting or supreme ghosting some missions.

The lack of rope arrows (although developers mentioned they didn't include them due to engine limitations if i recall) was also a deal breaker, removed an entire dimension to explore, they tried to replace it with the climbing gauntlets, however its mechanic didn't make much sense in the first place. Missions felt linear-er in terms of how to approach them, the city exploration was was a nice but dull addition.

SneakyUpgrade and Thief3Gold make DS much more bearable, but still retains its flaws that prevent it to feel like a real thief sequel, kind off what Thief 4 feels, and much more like a (bad) mainstream steampunk thieving arena.

I wish someone would remake thief 3 missions in NewDark or TDM, would be an interesting project.

[<Username>]

The other one was that Garrett had gone from being a selfish, money minded thief who was only interested in what he could make from a job or saving his own skin, to someone who wanted to be a hero and save the City...

If I remember developer interviews correctly, that was his intended arc: He starts out completely selfish, then learns to care about other people and the fate of the City. They already tried to incorporate this character arc in The Metal Age, in which he starts working with his former enemies the Pagans to thwart a larger threat to the City in Karras and at the end is even motivated by his desire to avenge the death of Victoria.