YMMV / Thief: The Dark Project

• Best Level Ever:
  • "The Sword" i.e. Constantine's mansion is mainly seen as one of the best levels in the game. In spite of its difficulty, many fans were won over by the sheer surreal, unnerving nature of the level with its rampant Bizarrchitecture. Special mention goes to the secret Macro Zone area.
  • The new level from Gold, "Song of the Caverns", is also seen as the best of three additional levels. While the previous two are rather divisive due to being labyrinth-like marathon levels; this one is loved for its varied nature, the opera house setting, and its humorous Bait-and-Switch at the start making the player think it's another cave exploration level.
• Breather Level:
  • Especially in Thief Gold where you're coming from a number of rather long and tricky missions, "Undercover" is a simple and short level which not only gives you a perfectly accurate map for most of the level, but also starts you in a disguise that causes most enemies to ignore you unless you do something suspicious.
  • Oddly, the final level is fairly easy, only requiring Garrett to remain hidden and swap the eyes.
• Broken Base:
  • To this very day, fans still argue whether or not the more Tomb Raider like cave exploring levels are a good fit for this game. Some enjoy them for the atmosphere and allowing the game to have more diverse missions while others deride them because they stray too far away from what a Thief game should be about.
  • The two missions from Gold, "Thieves' Guild" and "Mage Towers", divide the fanbase. Some fans love them for being extremely large, varied, and unique levels while other fans deride them for being way too long, confusing, and outright boring at times.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Hammer Haunts from "Return to the Cathedral" move and attack absurdly fast if they spot you. No wonder they're considered one of the scariest video game enemies of all time.
  • The red spiders (AKA "Spiderbeasts") are a literal example: they have twice the hp of the green spiders and spit purple orb things as well as engulfing Garrett in webs that slow him down until he clicks enough times to remove them.
• Disappointing Last Level: The last few levels (specifically right after "Return to the Cathedral") tend to be this in the eyes of many fans as they drop stealth and strategy gameplay in favor of more Action-Based Mission(s).
• Fetish Retardant: Given the circumstances of the specific scene, Viktoria's brief nudity in Thief: The Dark Project is anything but sexy.
• Fridge Horror: In "Return to the Cathedral," higher difficulties require you to retrieve a corpse from a dark, damp cellar. A little creepy on its own, but it gets a whole lot worse when you realize that corpse has been rotting down there over half a century.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Based on the names you see, the Hand Brotherhood of mages originates from Fantasy Counterpart Arabic Culture. The word "mage" itself originates from "magus", which was used to refer to Zoroastrian priests, a religion which also originates from the Middle East.
  • One of the items in Constantine/The Trickster's room in the cutscene is a taxidermied raven. Several real world Native American tribes have a trickster deity who looks like a crow or raven.
• Goddamn Bats:
  • Zombies. They're one of the few humanoid enemies that can't be knocked out, and defeating them permanantly requires Holy Water and Water Arrows. On top of that, their grunts and groans are completely interchangeable, make it hard to tell when one of them is on to you by audio cues alone, and some of them like to just lie around disguised as normal corpses until they groan and spring to life when you come near.
  • Burricks and their poisonous, flammable breath. Is it any wonder they were hunted down to extinction by the time of Thief II: The Metal Age?
  • The Frogbeasts hop around a lot and explode in your face. It's extremely hard to hit them with your sword, let alone without being hit by their explosion. It doesn't help that "Escape!" has a lot of them and gives you a very limited supply of arrows.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The Craymen in the Lost City are replaced with an expedition of Hand Brotherhood mages in Thief Gold. However, the Thou Shalt Not Kill objective that is implemented in every mission with human NPCs on Expert difficulty was never implemented here, meaning this is the one mission in the game where Garrett can kill humans on Expert difficulty with impunity.
  • In the original release, it was possible to skip 95% of "Return to the Cathedral" by keeping the front doors from closing by sticking a skull in the doorway and then just leaving the way you came in after the doors get stuck trying to close on it. Thief Gold fixed this, however.
  • Footsteps make noise at set intervals while walking, but stopping resets that interval, so it's possible to move silently by repeatedly tapping the movement keys instead of holding them down.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: No, despite what you might think, the Hand Brotherhood has nothing to do with certain other element-benders.
  • While the books existed decades beforehand, it's jarring to hear The Trickster, Viktoria and The Ape Men speaking in the same manner as Gollum, knowing it predates his cinematic debut by several years.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The Keeper instructors in the tutorial.
  • The Horn of Quintus in the Bonehoard level. No wonder the burricks were content to just ignore Garrett and listen to it until he grabs it.
• Narm: The infamous eye-ripping scene is utterly terrifying. Still, there are a couple of things that could take the impact away a bit, mostly involving the ways Constantine and Viktoria speak after they drop their charades. Not only is the Trickster a ham-and-a-half, but no matter how horrifying a monster he is, it's a little hard to take someone seriously when his aliases include "Honeymaker", "Jacksberry", and "Woodsie" Lord. The two of them refer to Garrett as "Manfool", and have a rather odd syntax on top of it all, pluralizing words that honestly don't "needs" it.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • The Hand Brotherhood was a pretty popular mini faction among the series' fandom, even though its elemental mages only appeared in one mission based on their faction. The only other mission they appeared in was a few minor cameos in "The Lost City".
  • Raoul is one of the fan favourites among one-off side characters.
• Signature Scene: The Bear pits conversation in the first level.
• That One Level: While the other new levels added in Thief Gold are generally well regarded, Thieves' Guild falls firmly into this. It's easy to lose track of where you are due to its large scale and maze-like design, particularly in the sewers that connect the two parts of the level. Some important loot is also hidden without any clues to their whereabouts, with a few of them behind banners that must be cut down with the sword. The fact that Gold places this mission fairly early in the story (being the sixth out of sixteen missions) can make it a roadblock, especially for newer players.
• Viewer Species Confusion: The Apebeasts are sometimes called Ratmen by fans due to their hairless tails. Thief II gives them a completely different appearance to make them look more like actual apes.
• The Woobie: In Thief Gold, Raoul is a nice fellow who lost his livelihood and accommodation due to corrupt schemers in the opera house's management, Lady Valerius included. Given how well he's taking his predicament, he's quite the Iron Woobie. His mild insanity probably helps...

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