The Affairs of Wizards

The Affairs of Wizards is a small mission done by Nameless Voice, especially for the Thief 10th Anniversary Contest. It won 4^th place out of 13 based on the community’s voting. Although it didn’t qualify at the top 3, I will try to do it justice and explain why it is a great piece of work in my opinion. Plus I haven’t seen a review on a mission from the contest.

Background

At the end of September 2008, a mission making contest in honor of the upcoming 10th anniversary of the release of Thief: The Dark Project was announced. The two major fan mission sites The Keep of Metal and Gold and Southquarter teamed up to present this event to the community. The mission authors had two months to produce their projects based on the theme of classical Thief gameplay. But there was one specific rule – every mission must be completely contained within an area in Dromed no larger than a “64 cube” (64 x 64 x 64). I have not created a single mission (yet), but I have used DromEd for various projects and tasks and believe me a “64 cube” is not a large area. The idea was to copy the same rule of The Keep of Metal and Gold’s first map contest. All of the missions were released on the 30th of November. I personally was surprised how all 13 of them showed that a lot of content can be introduced in such small dimensions. After that community voting took place, based on the categories Design, Story and Gameplay and by the 8^th of January 2009 the results were in. The winner was “The Tower” – a fine mission done by Lady Rowena. The Affairs of Wizards placed 4^th overall, but it was 2^nd place considering the Design rating category.

The Mission

The story behind the mission seems simple based on the “read me” file. In a few words Garrett is contacted by someone who represents someone who wants a rare collection of unusual keys owned by mages of the Hand Brotherhood. The actual employer for the mission prefers to stay anonymous, but Garrett is tempted by the pay in advance if he accepts. The mysterious man doesn’t know where the keys actually are, but he tells Garrett where he can find out – in the mansion of a member of the Brotherhood, Lord Velleme. So far the back-story seems standard, but I like the deviation from the traditional objectives like “go inside and steal the thing”, which is replaced with the rather interesting objective of “go inside and find out what is going on”. The basic goal is to find the map of the key inside the mansion, copy it so the mage that owns it doesn’t suspect anything, don’t kill anybody on the way and get back to the start once completed. The only thing that changes between difficulty settings is the loot objective

The mission starts right from the action. At the beginning Garrett finds himself at the mansion’s kitchen – no infiltration required. And from this first room one can see how much effort Nameless Voice putted in the details. You get this nice fade-in like effect where at the very beginning the screen is black for a moment and the image comes afterwards. All the mansions rooms feel well furnished and complete – with lots of both interactive and background objects. The ambient music made by MAYAR grabs the player and is very well suited for a thief mission – short and atmospheric. The mansion itself is filled with guards wearing the Water Element symbols on their uniforms, suggesting that it is in fact a Water Mage that owns this house. So you spend your time exploring the mansion, stalking guards and gathering valuable items and when you go to the top floors where the actual owner of the house dwells, you would expect for the mission to be near its end. But that is the point where the plot turns and Garrett gets an interesting surprise. I dare not spoil the story for those who hadn’t played the mission, but it involves going trough portals and entering 3 separate remote areas. Yes, the “64 cube” is well used here as there are actually 3 new areas, separated from the mansion where Garrett completes his goals. This again shows just how much content one can insert in such a small map.

The map design, or architecture as some call it, is magnificent. The whole mission is done quite compactly. The rooms are not any wider than they are supposed to be. The extra remote places make you feel like the map is a lot bigger than the other missions that entered the contest. All the rooms are well completed, with furniture, lamps, paintings, books, carpets and more. The custom objects, textures, unique feel to every separate area plus a nice lava effect in one of the areas are all worth playing the mission just to view them. There are lots of places to explore and even the extra areas have more than one floor. There is hardly a place not worthy of a screenshot. Still, there are some problems concerning the graphics. There are lots of books which look like they can be read but in fact can’t. I was also surprised by the number of doors that look like all the others, but can’t be interacted with and are just a part of the background. Still those things are not very annoying and should be passed by. There are also reports of some bugs, like guards walking trough walls, and events triggering before they are supposed to, but I personally don’t experience any of those. Besides, the author stated the he didn’t have the time to polish things around the map the first time, but he released a patch later on. The frame rate gets lower near the end of the mission. The areas there just seem to give even high-end machines a struggle. But this is not the only mission that experiences the same problem (e.g. Mission X of the CoSaS project). The only thing that bothers me is the possibility to get stuck or die near the dumb waiter.

The atmosphere and mission presentation is also up there with the high level of the design. Anybody who loves the “Mages theme” from Thief Gold will enjoy its return to this Thief 2 mission. Both the sound and custom graphics make you feel that there is magic floating in the air. Each one of the map areas has its own unique sound and feel. It’s like they don’t even belong to the same mission. There are lots of atmospheric custom paintings on the walls, plus lots of unique loot items that appeal to the gamer’s taffing tastes. You can also enjoy the return of some classical Thief Dark Project enemies. The storyline takes more than one twist which keeps the player surprised till the end. All of the Books available to read are fun and in particular the diary of one of the guards which is written in a well placed Benny-style. Some of the books offer background information, but some are crucial in order to understand what you’re supposed to do. Add some very well done custom voice acting to all of that and you’ll get the nice atmospheric experience that is The Affairs of Wizards.

In the terms of gameplay, this mission is fun and yet surprisingly difficult to complete. Nameless Voice has done his best to set up the Guards in a tactical manner and some are particularly difficult to avoid. And even if you don’t consider the guards, most objects that you need to complete the mission (keys, loot, objective items) are well hidden or are so small they are hard to spot. Also some areas are very tough to pass trough. Everybody that likes puzzle solving gameplay will be nicely surprised. It turns out that Garrett has to solve some very original puzzles along his path and the way most of them are solved surpasses even the original Thief missions. What really surprised me however were not one but two boss fights. Yes, you get to battle (not sneak by) powerful characters in order to complete your objectives. That plus some little gameplay elements, like a Fire Mage lighting a torch after Garrett has putted it out with a Water Arrow, give the mission a very unique gameplay feeling.

It turns out however, that it was the gameplay difficulty that hurt the Anniversary Contest score of this mission. You might get a headache trying to figure out where some of the items you need are and how to pass some of the areas. Some people report having to restart the whole mission in order to make the ending work properly and most that have played it have different objective problems. In response the author released a patch that solved a lot of these issues. I downloaded version 1.1 and was able to complete the game from the first try. However I still had to spend a lot of time looking for some of the items and secrets.

Conclusion

On the plus side you get a well designed mission, with custom textures, models, sounds, challenging gameplay and for a 64×64x64 dimension mission you get a ton of areas to explore. The Mage and Puzzle loving taffers will enjoy the mission a lot. But I definitely recommend it to any fan of the series as it achieves a Thiefy experience.

On the minus side you get some bugs here and there, really slow frame rate at some areas and sometimes one can experience a dead-end. It takes a lot of time to figure out where some of the items are and some of the puzzles are a bit overdone considering difficulty.

At the end I can say that if you feel like playing a fun Fan Mission and you have the time to play The Affairs of Wizards, definitely do it. It shows some of the most interesting gameplay, beautify areas and twisting story found in a fan-made mission.