Sniper Monkey

Thief: The Black Parade

Or: If I had a nickel for every time fans created a mod better than the original games, I'd have two nickels -- which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice

Thief: The Black Parade (TBP for short) is a fan-made campaign for Thief: The Dark Project, a gaming masterpiece from 1998, and a game which was one of the progenitors of the stealth and immersive sim genres.

TBP comes as a surprising second case of fans create a bona-fide sequel to an old cult-classic game, with the fan-made Gothic 2 campaign Chronicles of Myrtana published in 2021 being the first one. I should write about it as well, because while TBP is an incredibly impressive effort, Chronicles of Myrtana is a whole other level.

Review originally written for thiefguild.com.

Review

A campaign which in many aspects overshadows the original games deserves nothing less than a perfect score.

Between the custom assets that fit the original art direction and the fully-realised mission briefings, TBP’s production value exceeds the original games.

Almost all missions are thematically fresh and interesting, and the 2-3 missions that are more familiar (mansion heists, Hammerite break-in, etc.) are still great takes on the classic mission themes. Many missions are wonderfully creepy, and every one is huge, highly detailed and open.

This ties into one of my few actual criticisms of this campaign; some do go on for way too long for their own good. On average, each level took me around 3 hours to finish.

Sound

The sound design in TBP is fantastic, although I did scratch my head upon seeing the credits list around 20 big-name games (such as Dark Souls or Silent Hill) as sources of new sounds. Fortunately, I did not notice any blatant re-use.

One real complaint about the sound though is that many times during missions and cutscenes I could not hear what characters were saying because they were too quiet. The soundtrack was awesome, quite a few times I had to pause and marvel at it and its pairing with an area.

I might be mistaken but I think almost all NPCs have new voices, which does a lot to keep things fresh. The voice cast was pretty much professional, there were very few lines (mostly in cutscenes) that sounded fan-made. My only nitpick with the voiceovers is that Hume sounds a bit too much like an impression of Solid Snake.

Story

The story is the only part of the mod that’s not super strong. The plot gets pretty convenient at times and doesn’t really start until mission 5. It feels a bit like the first 4 missions (and mission 6) were retrofitted into the story. This is something that the original games did too however, so I can’t really complain about it.

TBP seems to have a ton of tasteful fan service and lore-patching (like bridging Thief 2 and 3 or explaining plotholes), a lot of which I probably missed because it’s been years since I played the original games.

I also wanted to discuss the main character. I like the concept behind Hume a lot and I wish the campaign leaned more into his rogue identity, like a kidnapping or an assassination mission. Especially given how little other characterization we get for him. Interestingly, Hume’s feats seem to surpass Garrett’s: he achieves a series of rather insane heists without Keeper training. I’m not sure if that was intentional or a byproduct of the campaigns increased difficulty, but a fun thing to think about.

Missions

Here’s some thoughts on each mission. As I mentioned earlier, all of them are great for similar reasons which I will try not to repeat, so this part might sound a bit nitpicky.

Mission 1: Return to the City

While fairly straightforward, this mission is a nice warm-up for people who haven’t played Thief in a long while (like me). My only real complaint is that it goes on a bit too long, but there’s many fun secrets to find.

Mission 2: Where Old Faces Fade

This mansion heist is the first of many navigation challenges in TBP and has several great twists in the second half. My favorite one was reaching the secret passages in the second section and seeing all the rooms I previously went through below me; I don’t remember the last time a game blew my mind like that. Amazing mission and one of the best of the campaign, although the last parts got too convoluted.

Mission 3: Trial of Iron

“Trial of Iron” might pale in comparison to the other levels, but it’s a solid and fun heist mission with a classic theme. This mission features one of my favorite mission structures; unexpected roadblocks which create a chain of smaller objectives placed across the whole level.

My only nitpick is the rather superfluous exterior section, which has many buildings that don’t need to be visited at all and don’t seem like an entrance point either.

Mission 4: Death’s Dominion

An amazing necropolis raid which unfortunately exhausted me with its length, complexity and constant zombie presence. This mission is easily the most complex level I have seen in a video game and even figuring out the map was a huge challenge in itself.

Upon reaching the first chokepoint in the level, you enter a second section which is great, but it felt like the mission should have ended at that point. And then after beating another large and complex area, as you emerge to the surface, there’s a yet another area to go through. It’s a fun one, but by this point I was really out of patience.

Still, somehow, one of my favorite missions of the campaign.

Mission 5: The Brand

Placing The Brand right after Death’s Dominion is relentless. Once again this mission is difficult to navigate because of its verticality, branching and monster presence. The overexposure to zombies also means that the last part of the mission doesn’t have the impact it could have had, although the story aspect is very intriguing here. The brief city section at the start was not enough of a break from those aspects.

I definitely didn’t appreciate this mission properly because of fatigue, so I’d recommend to take a solid break before starting it.

Sidenote: the placement of a ghost with pin drop hearing right outside the door in a tiny, marble area (after the “cutscene”) was very frustrating.

Mission 6: Kept Away From View

A rad mission that’s a nice break of pace, a challenge, and fantastic fanservice (especially a certain cameo at the end!).

I enjoyed the theme of scouring the place for clues, as it closely matches the base gameplay loop of Thief. Although there should have been at least some hints on where to go, because it’s easy to miss the way of getting into the room which starts the new objectives.

My only complaint here is that the reason Hume visits this place is very contrived.

Mission 7: The Long Shadow Falls

Really solid mansion heist. The main trinket you steal here has a security set-up that will make you feel like in Mission Impossible. Great stuff. I also really enjoyed finding the secret backstory about the minor antagonist from the first half of the mod. Nicely recontextualizes his actions.

I have to say though that the secret room you’re expected to enter at the start of the level is too hard to find. As far as I can tell, there are no hints for it. I basically beat half the level while looking for clues about it and had to backtrack after I gave up and looked up a hint on the forums.

Mission 8: Jaws of Darkness

Fantastic mission full of surprises. Including how linear it is; this is an enjoyable change of pace, but I missed the intended progress once which made me waste a bunch of time backtracking.

The first part of the level is a masterfully crafted horror set-up. Real kudos there. The first part of the tomb is also very creepy, and the last 60% of the map takes a bit of a step back in this regard, which was actually a relief because how tense I got. After sleeping on this, I think it’s also one of my favorites of the campaign.

Mission 9: Arcane Sanctum

It’s really nice to see more attention and care put into one of the most random and undeveloped pieces of the original games: the mages. The Four Towers in Thief Gold felt somewhat generic and even a bit ill-fitting. This level makes them fit right in with the wider world, which is great.

The level offers some of the most realistic medieval architecture in any Thief map I’ve seen. It has a cool set-up and twist that kicks off the level proper, but other that is a pretty standard mission.

Mission 10: The Black Parade

Thematically really cool level, reminds me of Berserk’s Eclipse and Dishonored’s Void. Unfortunately as far as the gameplay is concerned, it’s quite a letdown.

You’re told to look around for clues, but there was barely anything to find. I just ended up being confused if I’m playing the level correctly until I reached the very top of the tower. There should have been an early clue which would have given the objective to reach the top of the tower, because at the moment the objective makes the level more confusing than it is. And then the final confrontation was really easy and didn’t require much effort or thought.

While visually striking (the eye chamber was amazing in particular), this mission is a bit of a weak ending considering how good all the previous ones were.

The story ending was quite bitter and sad, which is okay on it own, but in combination with this level it really ends the campaign on a low note. I think some more credit should have been given to the protagonist to not make the ending such a bummer.

Summary

As usual with my reviews, I focus too much on nitpicks. However, the bottom line is that this campaign is an amazing achievement and probably the truest continuation (technically a prequel) to the Thief trilogy we will ever get.