Thief Re-Dubbed

For this project, me and my partner David chose to re-dub Thief 2: The Metal Age, a stealth game. We chose Thief 2 because of its focus on sound and the impact that sound has on game-play, namely with situational awareness and detection. Thief was one of the first games to bring stealth to the mainstream, and it did so with an emphasis on sound design. We figured that tackling Thief 2 would make for an interesting project, and we wanted to push the sound design that Thief pioneered. We figured that a naturalistic approach would be true to the spirit of Thief 2’s moody and atmospheric world. While the original game did have its fair share of abstractions and cartoony sound effects, we believe that the tone of the game already suits a more grounded approach to sound design. Many of the game’s sound effects already have that quality, so we wanted to see if we could lean further into that direction. We also recorded all sounds using the Zoom H1n Handy Recorder.

We had a lot of difficulty with the bowstring sound effect. We only had a rubber band on hand, so we had to make do, and even the rubber band betrayed us when it snapped in half several times (it wasn’t that good of a rubber band, it wont be missed.)

Breakdown of tasks:

Note: The video rendered darker than how the original footage was. This doesn’t affect the video too much, but during the last 10-15 seconds the player character is plunged into darkness. In context, the player character is indeed hiding in the shadows, but it was much more visible originally.