Things Thief games do better

[Arcturus]

They make two steps, pause, turn around, two steps, pause... Shouldn't they be playing "looking around" animations like they do in Thief? And I feel like they are focused on the same couple of square meters a bit too much.

Thief 2 has two variations of the "stop and look around" animation. They also alternate between alerted walk and normal walk.

[I.C.H.I.]

IMO NPCs in Thief have personality no other game ever tried to replicate. Mostly thanks to the fantastic voice acting but animation is important no less. A game can have primitive AI but very good animation and NPCs won't look too dumb thanks that, or a game can have terrible animation and very smart AI and it creates the uncanny valley.

[Arcturus]

@I.C.H.I. Quality of animations is one thing. That one "search" anim where feet are sliding is bad. Alerted turning animation seems to suffer from the same problem as the base turn anim did (mismatch between turn speed and the animation).

But there also seems to be a lack of variety of animation types.

Another example:

 

2 hours ago, I.C.H.I. said:

IMO NPCs in Thief have personality no other game ever tried to replicate.

I like how gangsters in "Arkham" series behave. They react to player's actions and act increasingly frightened as Batman keeps eliminating their friends stealthily.

[I.C.H.I.]

3 hours ago, Arcturus said:

Quality of animations is one thing

In this case not the quality I'm talking about, but the artistic side, how the animation itself adds to the character. Like how different types of NPCs should act differently according to their role. For example having different walking animations or the way they fight according to their rank. An officer that graduated from military academy shouldn't act the same way as a low rank soldier that was drafted from a village.

[nbohr1more]

10 hours ago, Arcturus said:

They make two steps, pause, turn around, two steps, pause... Shouldn't they be playing "looking around" animations like they do in Thief? And I feel like they are focused on the same couple of square meters a bit too much.

Thief 2 has two variations of the "stop and look around" animation. They also alternate between alerted walk and normal walk.

How does that area play if you set:

tdm_ai_search_type 1

?

[chakkman]

I recently learned that they actually used motion capturing for the animations in the original Thiefs. Didn't know that that already was a thing back then.

I agree with @I.C.H.I. that there was real character about the NPCs in the original Thiefs. A lot of what made the games great was about atmosphere, and how coherent everything worked together. Not to forget the absolutely insanely good lore, of course, which still baffles me after decades of playing the games. Game developers just knew their stuff back then. A lot of talent involved in these games.

I know that it's hard to do, but, one thing I find TDM pretty rudimentary compared to the original Thiefs is the voice acting, and the voice lines. Don't want to step on anyone's foot, but, those are much better in the original Thiefs. 

Edited March 25 by chakkman

[Arcturus]

11 hours ago, I.C.H.I. said:

Like how different types of NPCs should act differently according to their role. For example having different walking animations or the way they fight according to their rank.

That's something Thief didn't do.

10 hours ago, chakkman said:

I recently learned that they actually used motion capturing for the animations in the original Thiefs. Didn't know that that already was a thing back then.

You wouldn't be able to get the same realism animating by hand. Half-life came out a month earlier and its animations are very robotic. HL has things Thief doesn't, like mouth movement, or weapons that are separate from the character.

10 hours ago, chakkman said:

absolutely insanely good lore

As I understand that was largely Ken Levine's contribution.

10 hours ago, chakkman said:

A lot of talent involved in these games.

Looking Glass was based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and they had a lot of people from MIT.

10 hours ago, chakkman said:

one thing I find TDM pretty rudimentary compared to the original Thiefs is the voice acting

Some voices in TDM I think are quite good. There are some that are very bad.

10 hours ago, chakkman said:

and the voice lines

Some sentences are repeated between different actors, so you have different voices repeating the same lines.

10 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

How does that area play if you set:
tdm_ai_search_type 1

I don't have the same quicksave anymore, but I don't think I see a difference.

[I.C.H.I.]

1 hour ago, Arcturus said:

That's something Thief didn't do.

I didn't say that it did, I made an example how can this work in general. Wolfenstein had officers that were made like that, you could tell from a distance that those guys are so full of themselves that they just ask for a bullet in their head.

[chakkman]

2 hours ago, Arcturus said:

As I understand that was largely Ken Levine's contribution.

I always thought that his work was great. I also like System Shock 2 and Bioshock a lot. 

[mute_machine]

On 3/25/2026 at 11:10 AM, Arcturus said:

They make two steps, pause, turn around, two steps, pause... Shouldn't they be playing "looking around" animations like they do in Thief? And I feel like they are focused on the same couple of square meters a bit too much.

Thief 2 has two variations of the "stop and look around" animation. They also alternate between alerted walk and normal walk.

Fair point ... about animations ...  but I think the the Thief 2 was similar when it comes to search radius 

... and every AI have to get stuck on a door from time to time ...  

... much more in Thief DS 

 

[thebigh]

Is it just my imagination, or did searching AI in the original duology cheat a little? They always seemed to converge on my actual position, even if that was far from where they'd last detected me.

It makes for a more tense game, that's for sure.

[JackFarmer]

On 3/25/2026 at 11:10 AM, Arcturus said:

 And I feel like they are focused on the same couple of square meters a bit too much.

 

In fact, the player often gains an extra advantage when triggering an alarm, because the AI frequently starts searching in completely the wrong places (and stays there), which allows the player to slip through previously guarded gates, doors, corridors, etc. That's certainly not the intended behavior.

I don't know if I just didn't notice this before, or if the AI has gotten dumber over the years. Either way, to me this has become one of the biggest flaws in TDM, and it's been brought up here by others quite a few times.

Unfortunately, I don't have the skills to contribute here and help improve it.

[Arcturus]

I just would like NPCs to behave less like Roombas. Adding more variety of animations and behaviors, like the "surprised" animation from Thief, would help. Right now when AI bumps into player they just keep walking in place for two seconds, after which they immediately draw a weapon.

@I.C.H.I. Unique animations for each character type, e.g. builder priest, builder guard, etc. would be nice.

EDIT: I operned a separate thread about the "surprised" animation.

[datiswous]

4 hours ago, JackFarmer said:

I don't know if I just didn't notice this before, or if the AI has gotten dumber over the years. Either way, to me this has become one of the biggest flaws in TDM, and it's been brought up here by others quite a few times.

The following is something (I think) most players do not do:

• Checking out ai behavior when alerted (even during beta testing)

If nobody does that, mappers aren't going to fix/workaround issues with the ai in the map. So maybe this is part of the problem.

If maps are simple (older missions), you focus more on ai. If a map is complex in other ways, the ai is less important to the player.

 

[JackFarmer]

2 hours ago, datiswous said:

The following is something (I think) most players do not do:

• Checking out ai behavior when alerted (even during beta testing)

If nobody does that, mappers aren't going to fix/workaround issues with the ai in the map. So maybe this is part of the problem.

If maps are simple (older missions), you focus more on ai. If a map is complex in other ways, the ai is less important to the player.

 

Correct. And if checked during beta, it leads often to unsolvable problems for the mission maker.

[chakkman]

16 hours ago, mute_machine said:

 

That's why I love the voice lines in the original Thiefs.  

[Arcturus]

Here's another special animation, this time from Thief: Deadly Shadows. NPC being startled by an arrow: