Well this mission took forever...and not because it's long, but because the design is borderline criminal. It's a tiny mansion mission with a weird kill objective, but let's take it from the top:

The story is that Garrett has apparently stopped being a thief and has instead decided to become an assassin working for a guy named Alvarez. He's tasked with killing a Real Criminal Boss called LaFrenier in front of all his guests. Simple enough...and it is. Except the mission is basically a forced ghost, no matter which difficulty you choose. You'll have a no kill and no knockout requirement until LaFrenier is dead. You have to sneak into the mansion, find clues around the place, rob LaFrenier's jewel box and then...wait.

You have to wait for about 30 real world fucking minutes for all the guests to arrive at the meeting place so you can off the bastard. So for anyone wanting to play this one, I HEAVILY recommend that you start the mission and set a timer for 30 minutes until the mission is actually ready to be played. It's the safest thing to do in order to avoid the guest AI flipping out and softlocking the mission. It turns about a 5 minute mission into a 40 minute chore with that alone. The other baffling design decision is that you're not allowed to steal anything. Why? Couldn't tell ya. Alvarez said not to and Garrett obeys, I guess. Not that any of it matters in the end since Alvarez betrays Garrett in order to get rid of witnesses...by leaving a note on the ground that states his name and intention, confirming that he ordered the killing. Yeah, whatever. Too many things in this mission don't make any damn sense for me to focus on the nonsensical story. Visually the mission actually looks decent, but you'll struggle to see most of it since you're not allowed to do anything other than wait for the guests to arrive anyway.

Just avoid this one. Or start playing it while waiting out the timer with a nap, lunch or youtube video if you're really that dedicated. Boring and frustrating to play. Moving on...

The sequence of guests arriving, though easily breakable and deconstructable, combined with the scenario, was a unique idea that still deserves notice. Not everything needs to be a dumb thieving simulator, this is an engine with myriads of possibilities.

Hey there. Maybe everyone is looking for something different in FMs, and then we shouldn't outright fight over having different taste.

Seeing that you've given it a 7/10 I decided to give the mission another gander since I felt like I missed something. Unfortunately...it's still a big no from me. The way to make this sort of mission work is to have other things the player can do while they wait for the guests to arrive. This mission does not have anything like that. In fact the 'no stealing' objective directly detracts you from exploring and killing time. So you're left to literally just sit and wait in a corner for about 80% of the mission's runtime.

Sorry, I guess we have to agree to disagree on this one.

Yeah, a good idea alone won't do it. Fulfillment of possibilities doesn't always translate to a fun or thought-provoking experience.

The no steal goal (btw goes for valuables only, which tells you something) I already completely forgot about but I agree it can be an argument (though not to the point of dissing the whole mission, it's not that u can't use your time to know your surroundings), I remembered it on the merit of an interesting problem to solve. As I understand you need to scour the mansion for another item anyway but by the scenario it only shows after the main objective is done, so there's maybe the gist of not ideal scenario progression to some (my instinct though is always to explore all first even if not explicitly required and I suppose all players would want to do so, and the author apparently meant the same as that way you will long know where those items are when you get the task), oth it adds a bit more drama and realism (you can "cheat"/blow that (ehm) btw too). Anyway, it's 2001 (the era of (what today counts as) atypical/novelty missions and approaches) , and I personally value a good idea and unexpected turns above a few other imperfections so I agree to disagree on this one.

I've just played this FM and it was an interesting and original experience. As a matter of fact, the waiting time is minimally above 20 minutes, so it's not that terribly long. I think this got framed a bit more dramatically than the actual experience warranted, and it's a shame to see consumerist-style metrics creep into how FMs get judged. Early Thief maps were often experimental in nature, authors cared more about exploring interesting ideas than smoothing every edge for the player.

Still, given the small scale of the map, I think the timer could have been easily decreased to 10-15 minutes without any detriment to the gameplay. I really liked the idea of getting everyone together in one room and then assassinating the main guy - this is all done with conversations (pseudo-scripts, which tell AI to do certain things). There is also some decent ghosting involved and the overall visual design is not terrible for a 2001 mission.

Also, I wish we had more assassination FMs these days.

Yep it seems about 20 minutes no more. This seems the case of cars who seemingly drive fast for some and not fast enough for others :-)

"Early Thief maps were often experimental in nature, authors cared more about exploring interesting ideas than smoothing every edge for the player."

And thus a "I didn't like this mission"-based score holds value. It's not like this mission has suddenly lost all value due to an online review score. People judge a mission based on their own preference. This is always the case.

And the "oh, you don't do nothing for 30 minutes, but for 20" remark is a fun comedic moment.

I also think it's possible to appreciate an novel idea for a map while also finding the mission itself to be too janky and long-winded to actually enjoy in play. That was my experience with it, anyway.

@Thirteen I think I said clearly that exploring and the time it gives you to know the surroundings and understand what's the matter makes sense as it saves you time later on (at least if playing blindly as informed knowledge from online philosophing destroys the surprise value of the mission anyway). I also sometimes wonder if you actually have played some of the missions you so combatively comment on.

Nanao, I'm not commenting on the specific contents of the mission, I'm commenting about the idea that someone might not necessarily appreciate a mission just because there's a unique idea at play.

And no. Had I played this mission, I would have reviewed it myself. But I assumed this discussion isn't a "mission good or mission bad" one. The point of my comment is "what use criticizing a review when the player simply noticed an idea didn't work to them due to its execution?" I don't need to have played any mission to be able to comment on that. It happens outside of Thief as well.

Personally, not entirely sure what's combatative about it. I just like taking a few minutes to distract myself from daily life sometimes. What better use of that time than to argue review principles on an obscure game fansite? I guess you could call it white knighting or something.

@Thirteen As you see eg by the time indications the original review isn't entirely accurate, also maybe somewhat expressive which is their full right but isn't it better instead of taking one opinion by face value to go and see and make your own judgment of the subject matter before stepping in and taking sides?

But what if I end up detesting the mission and giving it a 1? I think we'd have an even bigger thread on here.

Face it, this is just a variant of the average "You dislike the mission? That's unfair!" And I find that stupid and can easily take five seconds to comment on that.