Thief II: The Metal Age is a stealth video game released in March 2000. It was created by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. Like its first game, Thief: The Dark Project, this game follows Garrett, a skilled thief who works in a steampunk city called the City. Players control Garrett as he solves a mystery involving a secret plan by a new religious group. Garrett completes tasks such as stealing items and setting up others to take blame, while avoiding being caught by guards and machines.
The game was designed to improve on the first Thief game. Based on player feedback, the team focused more on sneaking through city environments and used fewer monsters or confusing maze-like areas. The game used the third version of the Dark Engine, a tool previously used for Thief and System Shock 2. Thief II was announced in 1999 during the Electronic Entertainment Expo as part of a deal between Looking Glass and Eidos to make more Thief games. During development, Looking Glass faced financial problems and relied on money from Eidos to stay open.
Critics praised Thief II, and it sold better than the first game. However, delays in receiving money from sales worsened Looking Glass’s financial issues. The company closed in May 2000, and plans for Thief III were canceled. A later game in the series, Thief: Deadly Shadows, was made by Ion Storm and released in 2004. In 2005, a popular expansion called Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age was added to Thief II. In 2014, Square Enix released a new version of the series, developed by Eidos-Montréal.
Gameplay
Thief II is a stealth game played from a first-person view in a 3D environment. The player, named Garrett, must complete missions while avoiding detection by enemies such as guards. To stay hidden, the player must reduce how visible and audible Garrett is. Players avoid bright areas and noisy floors, choosing instead to move through shadows and quiet surfaces. A light monitor on the heads-up display (HUD) shows how visible the player is. Although Garrett can fight enemies directly, he is likely to lose in combat.
The game includes 15 missions set in large levels that can be approached in different ways. Guards can be knocked unconscious with a blackjack or killed with a bow or sword. Their bodies can then be hidden. In addition to human enemies, the game includes security robots and cameras. While completing tasks like framing others or stealing items, players gather valuables to buy tools between missions. Garrett’s main tools are special arrows, such as water arrows to turn off lights, moss arrows to reduce footstep noise, and rope arrows to climb high places.
The game is designed to be played carefully. Players plan ahead by exploring, studying maps, and observing guard movements. Garrett has a zooming mechanical eye that connects to a throwable "Scouting Orb" camera. Only one Scouting Orb can be used at a time. When it lands, the player sees the game world from the orb’s perspective until normal play resumes. Players can listen for sounds like footsteps or humming to locate enemies. On the highest difficulty level, killing human enemies causes the game to end. In some missions, players must avoid knocking out guards entirely.
Plot
Thief II takes place in a steampunk city named the City, which looks like a mix of medieval and Victorian-style buildings. Magic and steam-powered technology coexist in this world. Three groups control the city: the mysterious Keepers, the Hammerites who focus on technology, and the pagans who worship a Trickster god similar to the Roman god Pan. The game happens one year after the first game. After the Trickster's defeat and the failure of his plan to return the world to a wild state, a split in the Hammerite religion creates the Mechanists, a group that strongly supports technological progress. The Mechanists' new inventions help the police fight crime more effectively. The pagans are confused and have been forced out of the city, where they now fight the Mechanists using guerrilla tactics. The Keepers are not active at the start of the game.
The story follows Garrett, a thief who defeated the Trickster. He is now being hunted by Gorman Truart, the new sheriff, who enforces strict rules against crime. Viktoria, a former friend of the Trickster, later joins Garrett to fight the Mechanists. The main enemy is Father Karras, the Mechanists' leader, who is mentally unstable and hates nature.
At the beginning of the game, Garrett continues his life as a thief but is betrayed by his contact and attacked after a mission. He realizes Truart is hunting him. The Keepers take Garrett to hear a prophecy about the "Metal Age," which he ignores. Artemus, a Keeper, tells Garrett that Truart was hired to kill him and gives him a letter to spy on a Mechanist meeting. There, Garrett overhears Truart and Karras discussing a plan to turn homeless people into mindless "Servants" who wear masks that release red vapor that causes rust. Truart promises to provide Karras with twenty victims, unaware that Karras is recording the conversation for blackmail. Garrett steals the recording to force Truart to reveal his employer.
When Garrett confronts Truart at his home, he finds Truart murdered. Clues lead Garrett to investigate Lt. Mosley, a police officer who receives a suspicious letter from a wounded pagan. Garrett follows the pagan through a portal outside the city and meets Viktoria, who convinces him to join her against the Mechanists. Viktoria leads Garrett to Karras' office, where he learns about the "Cetus Project," a submarine. Garrett travels to a Mechanist base and discovers that Karras is giving Servants to the city's nobles. To find a high-ranking Mechanist named Brother Cavador, Garrett hides in a vehicle.
After delivering Cavador to Viktoria, Garrett steals a Servant mask to study a Mechanist invention called a "Cultivator." Meanwhile, Karras prepares in the Mechanist cathedral for his plan. Garrett and Viktoria learn that the Cultivators inside Servant masks release red vapor, or "rust gas." Karras plans to use the Servants to start a disaster by releasing the gas in noble gardens. Viktoria tries to lure the Servants into the sealed cathedral before Karras activates their masks, but Garrett thinks the plan is too risky and leaves. Viktoria enters the cathedral alone, sacrifices herself by filling it with plants, and Garrett finishes her plan, killing Karras in the rust gas. At the end, Artemus explains that Karras' plan and Viktoria's death were predicted by the Keepers. Garrett asks for the rest of the prophecies as the game ends.
Development
Looking Glass Studios started working on Thief II in January 1999. The team wanted to improve upon Thief: The Dark Project, a game that project director Steve Pearsall later called an experiment. He explained that the original game included some "exploration or adventure" missions with "jumping and climbing puzzles," but Thief II focused more on stealth. Combat was less important in the new game than in the original. After listening to player and reviewer feedback, the team decided to use fewer maze-like levels and monsters like zombies. Instead, they created urban settings with human enemies. Pearsall said the original game's monsters were not well-received because they did not clearly signal when they noticed the player. To fix this, the team improved the audio cues from non-human enemies in Thief II.
Production of Thief II began in February. Looking Glass formed a team with "half the original designers and half new members," according to executive producer James Poole. The company aimed to choose people who worked well together personally and creatively to ensure smooth development. Adrenaline Vault editor-in-chief Emil Pagliarulo was hired as a junior designer partly because of his positive review of Thief. Rich "zdim" Carlson and Iikka Keränen joined from Ion Storm's Daikatana team, and Looking Glass contractor Terri Brosius became a full-time designer. One-third of the team was female, which Pearsall believed helped create a strong group dynamic. As was common at Looking Glass, the Thief II team worked in a wall-less space called a "pit," which made communication easier. Writer Laura Baldwin described the environment as one where "conversations dash madly about the room, [and] when someone is demonstrating something interesting, everyone gravitates over to look."
During the early months of development, the team watched films related to Garrett's character and the game's visual style, such as The Third Man, The Castle of Cagliostro, M, and Metropolis. Pearsall said the last two films were Thief II's "biggest aesthetic influences," while the plot was inspired by Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose. The team also took ideas from Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The game's story followed a three-act structure: Garrett was meant to change from a "cynical self" in the first act to a private investigator in the second, and to a character similar to James Bond in the third. The city's technology and architecture were based on Victorian London, with some areas having an Art Deco theme to give a "Batman" feel, referencing the 1989 film. Lead artist Mark Lizotte took over 2,000 photos during a European vacation, which became the basis for many of the game's textures.
Thief II was built using the third version of the Dark Engine, which had previously been used for Thief and System Shock 2. Pearsall said the Dark Engine had become "a very well understood development environment," making production easier. Updates from System Shock 2, such as support for 16-bit color, were included in Thief II. The average character model in Thief II had nearly double the polygons of the original game, with more detail focused on characters' heads to give them a "more organic" look. Some artificial intelligence (AI) routines from the Dark Engine, which allowed enemies to notice changes like open doors, were added to Thief II but not used in previous games. Weather effects like fog and rain were included, and technology from Flight Unlimited III was used to create the sky and clouds.
Thief II was announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo on May 13, 1999, as part of a contract between Looking Glass and Eidos Interactive to release four new Thief games, starting with Thief Gold. The deal was signed on May 7, about three months after production began. A tech demo, described by Bruce Geryk of Games Domain as "about three rooms with some Mages," was shown on the expo floor. The demo highlighted the updated Dark Engine, which supported colored lighting, higher polygon models, and larger environments. The team revealed plans to include more levels with human enemies and set a projected release date of spring 2000. They also mentioned plans for a cooperative multiplayer mode. IGN's Jason Bates noted that the Thief II display attracted "a bit of a buzz and a small crowd of dedicated onlookers."
By July, the team had started building the game's levels. Thief II's focus on stealth required new level design ideas: while Thief's stealth missions centered on urban burglary, Pearsall said repeating this would become boring. The team added missions with goals like kidnapping, blackmail, and eavesdropping. The first two levels were designed to teach new players the game's mechanics without using a tutorial mission that might lose experienced players' interest. When creating a mission, the team first decided on the player's objective, then created a rough level design. Each mission was reviewed by peers to determine if it should be included in the game. Every level was a team effort, not the work of a single designer. Designer Randy Smith explained that while Thief's levels fit a pre-existing story, Thief II's team "tried to think of really good missions first" and then adjusted the plot to match them. He noted that aligning missions and story was very challenging.
The game's sound team included Kemal Amarasingham, Ramin Djawadi, and audio director Eric Brosius. Brosius said each team member did "everything," with no clear role divisions. Like Thief, Thief II used a sound engine that simulated real-time sound propagation. To achieve this, each level's geometry was input into both the level editor and a "separate [sound] database," which mapped how sound would realistically travel based on "the physical room characteristics [… and] how all the different rooms and areas are connected together." For example, noise travels freely through an open door but is blocked when the door is closed. The team used the new "occlusion" feature in EAX 2.0 to make Thief II's sound environment more realistic and allow players to listen through doors. Thief II featured more sound effects, music, and speech than the original. Like its predecessor, the game's score blended ambient sound and music. Brosius later said that while Thief's soundtrack had "simple and hypnotic" loops lasting only a few seconds, Thief II had longer, "more thoughtfully" constructed pieces. He believed this had benefits but resulted in a less immersive audio experience.
Reception
Thief 2 appeared at the top of the bestsellers list for computer games and sold more copies than its earlier, commercially successful version. By November 2000, it had sold over 220,000 copies worldwide. PC Zone called these numbers "commercial acclaim." In the United States alone, it sold 67,084 copies by the end of 2000, which generated $2.37 million in revenue. The game later earned a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), showing it sold at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom. Thief II also received positive reviews from critics, with an average score of 87 out of 100 on Metacritic.
Computer Gaming World’s Thomas L. McDonald wrote that everything in Thief II was "bigger, sharper, better, and more effective" than in its earlier version. He enjoyed the story and called the game levels "very large and complex," with "very complex and often beautiful" architecture. However, he said the graphics were "not very impressive." McDonald called Thief II a unique "gamer's game." Jim Preston of PC Gamer US said the game was "more focused and polished than the original" and praised the removal of "zombie battles." While he said the graphics were not very good, he called it "one hell of a good game."
Jasen Torres of GameFan wrote: "If you liked Thief, you'll love Thief 2: The Metal Age; it's more of the stuff that made Thief great, with less of the annoying stuff." He praised the removal of "zombie killer" missions and said the game's sound was "better than other games." He called the story "good" but "not very impressive" and the graphics "acceptable." However, he said the game was "really all about the gameplay," which he called "compelling and fun." Benjamin E. Sones of Computer Games Magazine said the story was "quite good" but criticized Looking Glass for not explaining the first game’s events for new players. He said the graphics were "acceptable" but the sound design was "excellent." He praised the missions as "very well crafted" and said they made the world feel "like a living, breathing place." He summarized: "It may not be perfect, but Thief 2 has got it where it counts."
Charles Harold of The New York Times called the game a "refreshing alternative to games that glorify violence." He said the story was "simple" but praised the world as "amazingly alive" and the AI as a "very realistic imitation of real intelligence." Barry Brenesal of GamePro said Thief II "provides a solid gaming experience" but "doesn't surprise like its predecessor." He said the missions had "a great deal of variety" and praised their ability to suggest a "much larger world," but said they were "straightforward or not very varied." He said the writing was "among the best in the business." While he enjoyed the textures and lighting, he noted the low detail of the game's human models, whose animations he called "stiff." Paul Presley of PC Zone said the game's levels were larger but easier than those of Thief, and he said their objectives were somewhat "straightforward." He said the graphics were outdated and that the lack of real-time lighting "gives each environment a sort of 'false' quality." However, he said the game "still has enough atmosphere to immerse you" and praised its sound design. Presley called the game a "straightforward rehash of its predecessor" and wrote: "A more clear-cut case of sequel-itis there has never been."
Jim Preston reviewed the PC version of the game for Next Generation, rating it four stars out of five, and said, "Great, stealth gameplay, useful new tools, and clever level design make Thief II an excellent first-person 'sneaker' game."
Post-release
Looking Glass faced financial challenges after the poor sales of its self-published games, Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri and British Open Championship Golf. The company also struggled with the failure of Flight Unlimited III and delays in the development of Jane's Attack Squadron, which went over budget and missed deadlines. A partnership to create the stealth game Deep Cover with Irrational Games ended recently. Looking Glass's Tim Stellmach said the delay in receiving money from Thief II sales made it "possible we might run out of money." Looking Glass signed a deal for Eidos Interactive to buy the company, but Eidos faced financial problems due to the failure of Ion Storm's game Daikatana, which cost $40 million. These issues led to Looking Glass closing on May 24, 2000, and the cancellation of planned Thief II successors, Thief II Gold and Thief III.
The Thief series was originally planned as a trilogy. Work on Thief III had advanced significantly when Looking Glass closed, according to PC Zone’s Keith Pullin. Randy Smith and Terri Brosius were chosen as lead designers, and they spent months developing the game’s concept. In a letter after Looking Glass’s bankruptcy, Smith said Thief III would have taken place in a city where players could explore freely, with a story centered on the Keepers. Brosius suggested Thief III would have shown Garrett learning to accept the consequences of his actions and becoming more willing to give than take. Players would uncover the story while exploring the environment. Plans included cooperative multiplayer and a new game engine called Siege. When Looking Glass closed, its assets were sold, and the Thief intellectual property was auctioned. This raised concerns that the trilogy would not be completed, a situation compared by Salon.com writer Wagner James Au to Lucasfilm closing after The Empire Strikes Back. However, Eidos announced on August 9, 2000, that it had purchased the Thief rights.
Development of Thief III was assigned to Ion Storm, which had recently finished Deus Ex. Warren Spector, who oversaw the project, said the game would have been given to Core Design or Crystal Dynamics if he had not accepted it. The game was planned for Windows and the PlayStation 2. Spector said Ion Storm’s first goal was to assemble a team, including former Looking Glass employees, to design the game. Members of the Thief II team, including Randy Smith, Lulu Lamer, Emil Pagliarulo, and Terri Brosius, were hired. Ion Storm announced its team on August 16, 2000, and said concept work on Thief III would begin in September. The team aimed to complete the series’ story and built on the Thief III ideas developed at Looking Glass. The game was later renamed Thief: Deadly Shadows and released for Windows and the Xbox on May 25, 2004.
In May 2009, Eidos-Montréal, the developer of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, announced a fourth Thief game after months of rumors. The game, titled Thief, was revealed in the April 2013 issue of Game Informer. It is a reboot of the series and does not include the Hammerites, pagans, or Keepers. The story follows Garrett (voiced by Romano Orzari instead of Stephen Russell) after an accident leaves his protégé, Erin, missing. Garrett suffers from amnesia, and the City is affected by a plague called the Gloom. The game was released for Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 in February 2014.
After Looking Glass’s bankruptcy, a fan group called the Dark Engineering Guild created an expansion mod for Thief II called Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age. Initially, the group aimed to replace the canceled Thief III, but they continued working on the mod after Thief: Deadly Shadows was released. Released in 2005 after five years of development, the mod follows Zaya, a young woman who seeks revenge after being robbed in the City. She is trained by a pagan hermit named Malak, who has hidden motives. The team designed Zaya to be physically strong and to have a look inspired by the Middle East and North Africa, avoiding similarities to Mulan. The story begins near the end of Thief and ends in the middle of Thief II, showing the rise of Gorman Truart and the early days of the Mechanists. Thief 2X includes 13 missions, new animated cutscenes, and about 3,000 lines of recorded dialogue.
Critics and fans praised Thief 2X. Brett Todd of PC Gamer US called it "Mod of the Month" and said it was "awfully close" to the original games’ mysterious feel. A writer for Jolt Online Gaming praised the mod’s visuals and mission design, though they noted the tone and voice acting were not perfect. They concluded that fans "had no excuse not to play T2X." Kieron Gillen of PC Gamer UK initially expected the mod to fail but later called it the best fan work for the Thief series and "one of the most impressive achievements of any fan community for any game."