[ronjouch]

To Thief heads who played I and II and want more of it: play The Black Parade, an enormous mod 7 years in the making that is actually an entire new game.

New gigantic maps full of secrets, style faithful to the original, weird universe, new story with cutscenes and voice acting. https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152429

I am not affiliated, just a fan.

[rimunroe]

From what I've heard The Black Parade mission style hews close to the style of Thief: The Dark Project. If your tastes are closer to Thief II: The Metal Age (or you'd just like more taffing about), I enjoyed T2X: Shadows of the Metal Age[1] quite a bit. The voice acting was pretty rough in places, but I found that kinda charming. I've also heard good things about Death's Cold Embrace[2].

[1] https://www.thief2x.com/

[2] https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148371

[ronjouch]

Agreed, thx for the additions :) . While we’re here sharing Thief goodies:

1. The essentials: TFix (https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134733) and T2Fix (https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149669)

2. The best place to find Fan Missions (FMs) is https://www.thiefguild.com/fanmissions/ , and the best GUI to manage & play them is https://github.com/FenPhoenix/AngelLoader .

3. For a good “enhanced, yet true to the original” visual textures + models pack, grab https://github.com/NamelessVoice/Thief-Enhancement-Pack

4. These days even Thief III is enjoyable, thanks to the https://www.moddb.com/mods/thief-3-sneaky-upgrade megapatch doing crazy things like stapling back together maps that had to be cut-with-loading-screen due to Xbox limitations!

[pawelduda]

How would you compare The Black Parade to The Dark Project?

[ronjouch]

Both are fabulous community efforts, and I agree with the sister comment by HN user klaussilveira. Now, they are very different things:

- The Black Parade is a single experience: one campaign with a beginning and end, on the oldschool Thief I foundations. Nothing more, nothing less.

- The Dark Project as of today is more of a “platform”: a modern base engine for creators and players who want a shinier Thief, and who acknowledge that with today’s graphical standards comes extra effort to create a satisfying map/campaign (need bigger assets, less “blunt” architecture, etc). To add to the “platform-ness”: as of today, out-of the box TDP has only a couple built-in missions and no meaty story arc. There are many excellent 3rd-party Fan Missions (maps in Thief lingo, go visit https://www.thiefguild.com/fanmissions/ ) for TDP, but it’s not “a game” the way Black Parade is clearly a game. This is not a judgement call and I had an excellent time with many TDP maps, and community members do discuss expanding the campaign & story... but for now it’s more of a technical foundation to download maps and tinker with, than “a game” :) . You can do some spelunking on the TDP forums if you want more details, the maintainers make no mystery of this.

[pera]

I think you are confusing The Dark Project, which is the first game of the Thief series from 1998, with some mod or maybe The Dark Mod? :)

[ronjouch]

Gaaaah, words. Yes thank you ! Coz in another thread I was mentioning both.

The above post -which I can no longer edit- compares The Black Parade / TBP (a mod for Thief I / The Dark Project / TDP) to The Dark Mod (TDM, a mod for the doom3 engine). Phew :D

As for the original question of comparing TBP to TDP: I’m personally not fond of Thief I and prefer Thief II, as it focuses on what works: stealth! Thief I is wildly creative, but also full of muddy combat with unconvincing monsters & zombies, and annoying maps / missions. So, to me, TBP (which is pleasingly weird and avoids TDP gameplay pitfalls) kinda beats its parent game TDP at its own game.