Anyone play this game? I got it when it went on sale on steam over the holidays. I was reading some of the designers of the game had previous experience with Looking Glass Studios, and also went on to make Dishonored.

I went through playing primarily as a sneaky thief/archer with some "fighter"-style combat traits toward the end (although I still mostly avoided sword combat whenever possible). The stealth is is pretty thief like, especially if you put points towards stealth early into the game (the game even has a dark/shadows and light interface). Also about 1/3 the way through you even get rope arrows.

The only issue is its a bit more violent than Thief, and there is no way to 'knock' enemies out (though you an move bodies and hide them). The levels are a bit too linear, and not appropriate for 'ghosting'.

There is at least one Thief Easter Egg, in that you can find Master Thief's Armor in the levels that is marked with a Scarlett G.

As far as level design, the inspiration of the levels reminded me of something between The City, and later levels closer the Bonehoard, and Lost City levels.

The story isn't particurarly all that interesting. But a couple of things made me think of Thief 2, and the Necromancer's Tower, and the Book of Ash....

One of the main antagonists in the game is a empire/guild of Necromancers. The game is set in a world called Ashen (or something similar), one of the Dragon gods is called Asha, one of the levels is called the House of Ashes (set in the Necromancer's citadel). Some of the zombies, particuarly the fresher ones, the Necromancers summon look alot like the zombies from Thief 2.

Thief 2 Gold had it been made was supposed to have had a level that expanded upon the Book of Ash, and the necromancers mentioned in Life of the Party level. I have to wonder, if some of the Necromancer stuff in Dark Messiah might have been loosly inspired by those ideas.

One of the developers of the game was a guy called Purah (to parrot someone else on the forum), who designed some really well made fan missions for Thief and Thief 2. Calendra's Cistern and Calendra's Legacy.

I personally loved Dark Messiah because the play style was fantastic.

This is a really good article about the developers of Dishonored, and their work on previous games like Dark Messiah, Thief, etc.

http://www.polygon.com/2012/9/28/3425300/the-mirror-men-of-arkane

It is very interesting. You are right, Dark Messiah game often have looks and athmosphere very similiar to Thief but in an original way, like an earlier game of the same authors, Arx Fatalis. The settings of Thief and Dark Messiah have many similiar points, the latter one is just more high fantasy.

It's a shame that there is no level editor for Dark Messiah. If there was it might make for some very compelling Thief fan levels. Just need to incorporate some water arrows into the game somehow.

Arx Fatalis, after playing some of the other Arcane Studios games, I'm going to try pick up a copy of that when I get a chance. Too bad I missed getting it during the holiday sale. I want to see how the "thief" abilities work in that game as well.

According to the article I linked to above, Dark Messiah was originally intended to be Arx Fatalis 2, but they had change things and make it into a "Might & Magic" game (although it really has very little to do with Might and Magic) to get funding, and Ubisoft's support to publish it.

There is level editor for Dark Messiah, but fandom is small so there are no missions made. It would be interesting to see some non linear levels made for this game.

I can already tell you, being a thief in Arx Fatalis and hiding with a bow in the shadows is incredibly fun and Thief like. Add to this strangely similiar sights and style, but in freshly different setting of an RPG game and you have really neat Thief RPG.

Ok, decided to pick it up. Any suggestions on starting point loadout for thief? How many points to be invisible in the shadows? I understand I need 50 for pick pocketing? Do I want some into lock picking at the start?

I don't remember, I think it isn't that important. You do mainly sneak attacks with a bow. I can give you advice though. Thief can be weak in combat with knights, and because of that I was unable to finish the game. The last area was too hard. It would be possible if I got the best bow in the game, but it was not only a secret quest, but also accessible for limited period of time! So search carefully.

Well, I think I plan to go down the route I did with Dark Messiah, thief/archer with combat abilities. That way I can mostly sneak, but if something goes wrong, I have alternative way to fight. It's just not as easy to see how points improve things, and how many points are needed to unlock abilities like it was in Dark Messiah.

I'll do something different in a different play through. Next time I do dark messiah it will probably be spell caster, mage/cleric paths.

Well, I've tried to play the game. It was working fine the first couple of days. But now the game won't load on my system at all. It just seems to crash to desktop. Or, look like its loading, but nothing happens.

At worst it brings up a 'ARX.exe has stopped working" error.

I guess sometimes it loads 'once' in a blue moon, maybe after I mess around with the compatiblity settings. But most of the time that seems to have little affect.

I'm not sure if it likes the 'nvidia' card, it keeps wanting to default to Intel integrated. I can force it to Nvida through the Nvida Control Panel, but i'm not sure it likes that.

Did you install new unofficial patches?

The Arx Libertatis thing? Does that work well, I was having some keyboard binding issues, it wouldn't let me lean for some reason?

Or something else?

Yes, this. I didn't try it though.

I did enjoy Arx. The thief/warrior combo worked out pretty well. Last area I did have to go more warrior though for the last boss. No way to fight it thief like as far as I could tell.