It is finally here! After 7-ish years of development, The Black Parade is finally released.
So, what awaits you in this campaign?
- 10 huge, open-ended and meticulously crafted missions with varied themes packed with content.
- A brand new protagonist thrown into a dark, intricately woven story of crime and conspiracies.
- 4 new tools happily supplied by the undermarket, at a price.
- Many tweaks to the AI to make the game a bit more challenging but still fair.
- A brand new "banter" system where AIs greet each other during their rounds and nightly life.
- 28 voiced characters totaling roughly 1,800 new lines of dialogue.
- 30 minutes of gorgeous hand-drawn briefings and cutscenes.
- Brand new AI motions making the denizens of The City look more alive.
- Full English subtitles.
In The Black Parade you play the character of Hume, a hardened criminal who was sent into exile as a punishment for his crimes. The year is 833, you are now back in The City, a sprawling metropolis of soot-caked brick, greasy fumes and noisy machinery, with many a sinister conspiracy whispered behind closed doors. Lost and without a penny to your name, you are back to your life of thievery and must find your old associate Dahlquist. Shadows and silence are your allies. Light is your enemy. Stealth and cunning are your tools. And the riches of others are yours for the taking.
The Black Parade aims at being a love letter to Thief: The Dark Project, and we hope we succeeded! It is recommended to have played through Thief: The Dark Project and/or Thief 2: The Metal Age at least once beforehand, since these missions are overall tougher than the base game.
The Black Parade also comes with a few tweaks to the classic Thief gameplay formula:
- Hume is not a Keeper and thus never received Garrett’s training: AIs will now notice you if they bump into you or vice versa, sometimes even in a perfect shadow. Be careful!
- Hume can move banners aside instead of having to slash them.
- Hume has additional footstep sounds for chains and pipes; these are metal sounds that aren’t as noisy as regular metal (about as noisy as stone/wood).
- Water arrows can now be used to expand moss patches.
- Servants will re-light extinguished torches on higher difficulty levels.
- Servants may clean moss on the floor if they notice it on higher difficulty levels.
- Zombies now smash wooden doors open instead of simply opening them.
- Electric lanterns carried by guards can be turned off.
- A few guards in the campaign are outfitted with heavy armor and helms so they cannot be knocked out using the Blackjack.
- Hume can pick up small creature corpses such as spiders or sweels.
HOW TO PLAY
The file provided is an archive that cannot be read by the game as is. Here is a very handy guide penned by nicked, another Thief Fan Mission author, that explains everything you need to know: Nickdablin.wordpress.com
It is HIGHLY recommended you read this guide if you have no experience playing Thief missions.
IMPORTANT NOTES
The Black Parade requires NewDark 1.26 or above! Make sure you use the latest version of TFix/TFix Lite before playing!
The Black Parade should be launched with FMSel, NewDarkLoader or AngelLoader. It is not recommended to launch this campaign with DarkLoader or GarrettLoader. Note that mods such as Thief Gold HD Mod, NecroAge or Enhancement Pack are not compatible with this campaign. Remember that this is a campaign for THIEF GOLD, not Thief 2!
KNOWN ISSUES
- Due to the complexity of the missions, there can be cases where some NPCs might get stuck walking against walls. There is unfortunately not much that can be done about this.
For all additional questions, you can reach us on the TTLG forums. Here is a link to the campaign's release thread: Ttlg.com
When you say the AI is challenging, what do they do?
They generally behave the same as in the original game, the biggest difference here is that they can notice you if you touch them which was not the case in Thief 1 and 2. They also notice a few more things, such as extinguished lights or moss on the floor, and servants will actively re-light torches and clean moss if they see them.
Congrats on the team for this amazing love letter to Thief 1!!!
Any chance for a standalone release on steam like the Deus Ex Revision?
Like Half-Life, Like Quake 2, like so many others in this golden 1998 year,
I'm glad no one forgot about this wonderful game (and its sequel Thief 2 the metal age).
And people will still be there for the 30th anniversary, because we never found that feeling elsewhere after all these years, did we?
Aw yeah, more Thief!