I have the sense that I'm supposed to dislike this game more than I actually do. The story is underwhelming, the lockpick minigame gets more annoying as the game progresses, AI is straight up confusing at times... there are lot of things you can point out that work against the experience. But I still found it to be oddly enjoyable. Part of it, I assume, is because I've not played any of the other Thief games. In a bubble it is not the type of experience I'd ever recommend anyone at any point to come back to or even consider going through for the first time, but it's not like I felt miserable playing this. So maybe that counts for something.

A more damning way to view Thief 2014 other than just a shitty Thief game is that it's an accumulation of every single bad stealth game mechanic/trend that got popular from the 7th console generation. Levels needing to be split up by segmented loading areas because of the prioritization for graphical fidelity over gameplay, "Bamham Arkham" detective vision and UI elements like waypoints being mandatory to use because the levels would be incomprehensible otherwise, audio design is woefully underutilized so it's near impossible to hear enemies walking right towards you (apparently the late 90s stealth game doesn't have this issue), the use of repetitive animations that eats up the player's time, QTEs, bad action setpieces, shitty boss fights (or in this case, the only boss fight), it's all here in it's awful glory.

At it's best, it made me feel like I'm playing a mediocre level from Thief 3. At its worst, it reminds me that The Black Parade and The Dark Mod are FREE, yet this is a retail product for over a decade now.

People will remember Eidos Montreal for making okay-ish Deus Ex sequels and lament the fact they aren't making a new one. I'll always remember these people made one of the worst stealth games in existence and will probably be indifferent when they become another Embracer victim.

Rather than the large and elaborate maps that characterized the earlier Thief titles, the reboot is little more than a linear series of rooms and hallways where you have to sneak past 1-2 guards in order to make it to the next 1-2 guards. Rinse and repeat until the game is done.

Thief (2014) is painfully simple. There are no longer any macro-level challenges related to exploration or puzzle solving. Everything you do revolves around finding a way past the micro-level challenge the game puts right in front of you. But with how oblivious the guards are and how basic the map is, there's little real challenge for anybody who has ever played a stealth game before.

Throw in a mess of technical issues and out of place action sequences and this game just fails at providing anything close to a satisfying experience. The underlying gameplay lacks everything that made the previous games enjoyable and replaces it with content that seems a better fit for Uncharted or some other 'cinematic' game. The final product is muddled, confusing, and boring. I really can't recommend playing this for anything other than morbid curiosity.

This game has quite the reputation, though playing it a decade later it didn't seem as disastrous to me as people made out. It definitely feels like a product of its time (2014) but I encountered no bugs or stupid design choices.

Instead, the reason I ended up dropping it 4 hours in, was that I got fatigued by how unbelievably dreary and dull the world was. The visual palette and aesthetics were just relentlessly grim. Like, imagine Dishonored but without that game's stunning art direction, if it were just a dark shade of blue and black the entire time.

Also the character designs, particularly the protagonist himself, weirdly felt like they were a decade older than 2014, I'm not sure what happened there. Regardless the whole narrative and dialogue was very bland and I found myself zoning out with each scene.

I have to give credit to this game though, it lived up to its name. It stole 4 hours of my life. Kudos.