Aesthetically perfect, mechanically solid, occasionally janky as hell - it's a 90s classic, all right. The world of Thief is such a fascinating one, with its unique balance of pagan occultism and nascent industrialization being in constant conflict, sometimes even in the scope of a single level.

Old ways are eroding in the face of societal advancement, and the powers that be are willing to go to extreme lengths to balance the scales in their favor - enter Garrett, a charismatic and talented thief at the top of his game. At first, he's simply the best of the best, pulling heists on the City's wealthy to mostly pay his debts and not much else. Suddenly, he's offered a job so good it could let him retire for good if he does it right, with the mysterious patron promising riches beyond his wildest dreams. Little does he know that his efforts are aiding in the completion of the titular 'Dark Project' - a plan so diabolical that even selfish old Garrett feels obliged to help put a stop to it.

While the story isn't anything fresh, the levels themselves are often mini-plots of their own, and the highlights are so bright they stand tall even today in the annals of stealth games. Lord Bafford's Manor, The Sword, Song of the Caverns, Return to the Cathedral - the best ones are treats I could return to anytime, they're so good.

The bad levels, on the other hand, regularly kill the momentum and take so much time they manage to kill entire playthroughs. For my money, the worst ones are the Lost City and the Mage's Tower, the latter being so bad as to kill my playthrough of the game for nearly a year. Nothing so bad as to be insurmountable, but there's nothing more painful than starting a level thinking it'll be 30 minutes at most and realizing it'll actually be 2 hours because of the terrible layouts and frustrating objectives.

That said, I loved this so much I'd gladly start another playthrough this Halloween for the top-tier spooky vibes and shadowy aesthetics. Definitely near the peak of stealth games I've played and a new favorite for sure. Now, on to Thief 2!

So much of the Fallout world and atmosphere stems from the understood falseness of the Vault system and its messaging - that the Vaults were a gilded lie sold to pre-bomb Americans to trick in them into various dangerous experiments under the guise of safety and security as the world fell apart. Even excluding the old isometric games, Fallout 3 and New Vegas made it very plain to the player that Vault-Tec was a psychotic and cruel organization that turned survivors into guinea pigs in the name of profit and scientific advancement. Sometimes the results of those experiments have a macabre humor to them - Vault 11 from New Vegas - or can even be openly silly - the Gary clones from 3 - but Vault-Tec is never given a comedic cop-out; they're a critique of unrestricted corporate interests exploiting and dehumanizing the propagandized American people for profit, and thus the player learns to recognize that Vault-Tec's actions are almost always intrinsically negative in a moral sense.

To trivialize that core piece of the fiction and warp it into a goofy lil "would you like to play Overseer and 'test' some NPCs in a vault of your own?" DLC is the final proof for me that Bethesda, despite their few brilliant moments, will fundamentally never truly understand the politics of Fallout nor the artistic intentions of the folks who created its world, and thus will never be the stewards this franchise deserves. A true "emperor has no clothes" moment for me.