Judging from your elaborate former description, the latter appears to be false. 

Is it as substantial as the Painkiller Demo? Can you save?

I have both Thief 1 and 2 and although what I played was interesting (Thief 1 missions 1 & 2), I got frustrated that it took me so long to get not very far. Deus-Ex appealed more to me as a sneaker since you could progress through more of the game in a sitting.

I wonder if Thief 3 moves at a better pace? 

Pacing in series, esp. the first Thief was quite slow. One of my favorite games because of the exploration and atmosphere but Deus Ex had a better narrative drive.

Incidently, I liked it so much I made a few maps for it, and wrote a bloody 90 page screen play for the cut scenes planned for an episode that never came to fruition. 

...so far. Although I'm not so sure I'm going to be saying that after a few more levels.

It does seem to take a while to get anywhere in the game, since you are pretty much forced to sneak around (that is the objective of the game, after all.) You can use flashbombs and run from people to some extent, but it's more satisfying to sneak past unnoticed, which is where the satisfaction of the game lies for me.

The problem is that when you do arouse suspision and get into a fight, the combat is thoroughly crap. I've only been fighting with a dagger so far, so perhaps that's the reason, but the enemies take ages to go down. If an enemy is alert, a dagger in the face somehow does only 1/4 of the damage that it would do if I stabbed them in the face whilt they were unaware of my presense. This is what put me off the first two Thief games, and I was a bit annoyed to discover that it still happens.

However, if you do need to kill someone (I've heard that you don't NEED to kill anyone to complete the game) you can always flashbomb them and stab them to death whilst they are blinded.

Also, I had heard there was a custom difficulty setting that allowed you to set the amount of treasure, maximum number of kills etc. required to complete a mission. This feature doesn't appear to be in the version I have - unless it's an unlockable extra or something. This is a shame, because whilst I might want the enemies to be more alert than a rock, I might not want to have to find all the treasure.

Still, creeping around does feel quite good, and lock picking is very well implemented. It's very satisfying to sneak through unnoticed, unlocking doors right next to a guard, who hasn't even noticed I'm about to make away with the family jewels. 

is quite substantial. It has a decent sized training mission as well as quite a large castle mission (the first mission in the game.) 

. 

And thus is revealed the joys of second guessing someone - your guess is, so far, wrong.

Will play more tonight I expect. 

And we are the mappers, nane.

Deliciously tantalizing head copy worthy of the New York Post (which you can't stop yourself from reading even as you are whispering, 'Murdoch Tools!' underneath your breath). 

I played thief 3 for about 4 hours as I started it up for the first time, I really like the freeform gameplay, to go around and break into peoples houses and take their stuff as I like. Good game, but not excellent, will finish it with pleasure. 

Mon verdict:

I like it, I enjoyed playing it, the stealth aspect is very satisfying and it's well atmospheric too. Reminds me a lot of playing Deus Ex but in a medieval setting which can't be a bad thing. I might well get the game.

A few prominent aspects that struck me:

+ Sneaking around and stuff is fun. In short it plays well. Does what it says on the tin really.

+ The mission and map were pretty nice, lots to explore. It often feels like the whole thing is like finding a lot of secrets.

+ The real-time lighting is very nice. Dust motes are cute.

+ Almost fully functional including much needed saving.

- Other graphical aspects are weak, textures are crudish (no detail textures) as are the character and object models. A pity as the Unreal engines can do that stuff well.

- Guard awareness could be better and their persistence is very poor i.e. they will forget about stuff far too quickly. Not exactly the alert AI that's really needed in such a game.

- Blue effect around important objects a bit naff. 

Pros:

-Sneaking around is fun
-Maps are big, lots to explore
-real time lighting gives an added element in gameplay
-back stabbing people is very satisfying
-fairly intelligent AI (theyll notice if things have gone missing, track evidence such as pools of blood etc)
-amazing atmosphere
-overall a very fun game to play

cons

-Graphics, although not horrible, could use work
-enemys forget about your presence too quickly
-once an enemy is aware of you you cannot sneak behind and stab him or shoot him in the head for a 1 shot kill
-sometimes the ragdoll physics can be silly 

Seriously, htf do threads like this keep getting resurrected? Do people just find them through google and decide to contribute? 

sdsdsdsds 

would it make sense to automatically close non-permanent threads after, say, 30 days of inactivity?

Or is it useful to be able to post stuff in the "right" thread even if it's a really old thread? 

a few months then? 

Auto-closing isn't a good idea. Sometimes resurrecting old threads is justified, be it for a news or fun value.
Just lock the Rasterwerk's Phosphor thread for a start, that would get rid of 75% of the spam already. 

I've actually been meaning to play through thief 3 because even to this day I keep hearing things about this "cradle" level (????!!?!?).

Is it really that good? Is it worth trudging through the rest of the game for? 

Keep all threads alive. The "Teaching old Progs" thread comes back every now and again because something useful is posted.

Maybe just close posting on threads that are completely without merit. Typically the'yre the ones in the history with Ignore or whatever as a title.

This one got me thinking again that I really should get around to playing the Thief series - never did. 

Evidently, I tried the Thief3 demo. I also appear to have bought and installed the game, and still haven't started playing it after 4 years. 0wnage! 

is impressive, I mean I would have been tempted to double click that icon at least once in that time! :) 

I don't even know what the icon does! It might be installbsodviruswareomg.exe, or it might be a shortcut to My Documents/Shambler/g0atpr0n ...

Scared now.

Actually I should try it soon shouldn't I.