Like several works of entertainment in the “steampunk”
genre, Thief is a cacophonous combination
of medieval and Victorian—or even, possibly, Victorian ideas of the medieval
combined with 21st century ideas of the Victorian and Victorian
ideas of the medieval…or something. From
the technologies, art design, cityscape, to the characters and their
lifestyles. Another recent title also emphasizes this blend of the medieval,
Victorian, and modern technology (see The Order 1886). Of course, the Final Fantasy
series blazed trails in this regard, with Final
Fantasy VI (FF3 for SNES owners in the US) even featuring an epic storyline
that pitted magic (the medieval) versus technology (the modern). You can guess
which force was labeled most dangerous and untrustworthy. Why these two periods, of all periods, should
go together is an interesting question, and one that, among other authors and
texts, takes us back to the Victorian poet who revived the Arthurian saga. Lord
Alfred Tennyson sought a return of a chivalric ideal, not unlike Malory did in
his own time. But Tennyson had his own intents and purposes, and wasn’t merely
resurrecting the medieval.
Thief itself is
scarcely medieval. As you move through the levels, only the mood evokes a vague
sense of the Middle Ages. For everywhere there is technology—electricity is
evident even in the alleys—that breaks the fantasy one is inclined to have of
navigating medieval streets. In some places, the streets are lit by electric
powered streetlights. In others, there are torches. Still sometimes you find
the two sources of light in the same space—this is a world in transition or
stuck between two eras.
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| Electricity in Thief's otherwise medieval streets |
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| The torch-lit (medieval-powered) alleyways combined with electricity. |
Yet there’s a kind of darkness that is also pervasive and
that calls to mind the biased pejoratives associated with the West’s repressed
era. In a sense, this is very much the dark ages, despite the advancements in
technology. Indeed, the technology itself has been put to use by a criminal
mastermind in order to engineer a new kind of plague – the medieval returns,
bolstered, rather than tamped down, by technological futurism (a theme found in
Final Fantasy VI as well).
Thief presents a hodgepodge
of contemporary ideas about Victorian and Medieval England. The player-avatar
navigates a Dickensian London with medieval elements and gameplay. At a
critical stage in the story, the player descends underneath this city into the
ruins of a scriptorium the architecture of which is clearly inspired by that of
the Anglo-Saxons. It is as though the makers of the game are conscious of the
historical layering they are performing: they make it clear that they are
building their steampunk world atop the medieval.
You come to discover that these ancient ruins (replete with
runic inscriptions in the Anglo Saxon mode) underlying the city structure the
central narrative of the game. Your avatar, the master thief Garrett, is first
sent there to recover a book. What he finds is a medieval scriptorium and tons of books, even remarking in
monoloque on how his work is cut out for him because he only needs one—but
which one? Bibliophobia in an age that has moved beyond the book? This quip by
the avatar would certainly appeal to many of my undergraduate students, who, in
the required lit class all liberal arts students must take, usually let me know
that they don’t like to read (excepting facebook, twitter, and whatever other
fangled social media sites they frequent; “reading” for some reason is only
associated in their minds with that very ancient medium of the book). Reading,
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| At the entrance to the ruins/medieval scriptorium. |
however, becomes important in many games, and Thief is no exception: it is a combination of hermeneutics and map
tracing that pulls Garrett through to finish the job. For instance, you must decode the significance of rune-like graphemes in order to
progress through, and solve the primary puzzle of, this ancient space. This ties together with the spatial layering
of the game insofar as it suggests a palimpsest: the game’s designers have
included this relatively authentic
medieval space as the substrate to their steampunk
neomedieval city—explicitly acknowledging the palimpsest-like nature of
their work, and allowing the player to explore the layers beneath to find a
less mixed presentation, and even going so far as to include in the gameplay
the need to translate an ancient writing system. Mastering what is written and
in place beneath Thief is the key to
successfully navigating the surface world.
Just some brief thoughts on this game.
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