The Dark Project Fan Mission Iron Mode - Skull of Lysander
1We reach the final mission in June of 1999 and have Vorknkx check out the playthrough, even though he knows nothing about Thief beyond one or two of my videos! As for the answer to the mysterious button that appeared to do nothing on the control panel, the answer is that it does absolutely nothing!
This level sets up quite a promising storyline involving the conflicting battle between two mages. Personally I am not too big on mage-centric storylines, feeling Thief is more grounded in the general limitations of magic than the common usage of it. Plus, with the logic of the Hand Brotherhood, I do not exactly see how this plotline would fit into Thief Gold. Yes, a Necromancer is segregated from the order, but a large number of mages separate from the order just doesn't make sense to me.
The actual mission revolves around carrying a skull and replacing it with a floating golden skull. The only problem with this is that carrying the skull is entirely pointless as the objective only requires the theft of the gold skull, making the skull you carry at the beginning worthless.
The beginning area has two patrolling archers which will annoy you for most of the mission due to being in an area that you will most likely alert at some point. If you don't alert them initially going down, you are bound to anger them when climbing a rope or walking across tile into Lysander's private quarters. A door exists that appears to lead to them, but said door can never be opened, meaning you basically will have angry guards yelling at you for most of the mission that you cannot deal with.
Texture alignment is somewhat of an issue, being visible on certain walls and floors. In particular, the tile next to the wood floor in the bunk bed room is highly noticeable. Furthermore, there is a locked door that can be picked that leads to a wall.
Guards in this level are quite akin to stuff you find in Cragscleft, which of course means it isn't much fun for me. Most of the challenge will be failing to mantle a surface properly, which results in alerting a bunch of guards, or having to walk past a patch of light which appears to randomly alert or not alert a certain guard. We even have a guard that needs to be rushed in the darkness between the inner tower and control panel. Overall, the gameplay in this level just feels less than ideal to me.
This level also revolves around a bunch of unlabeled buttons that you must open and figure out what they do. This isn't exactly challenging, it is just a tedious tactic to increase the length of this level, which means it is another annoyance. A better designed control panel, perhaps with some form of organization, would have been more welcome.
Ignoring all the flaws of the level, the problem exists that this level is not completable due to the objective about returning to the gate not checking off (there is no way to open the gate, nor does standing in the area near it check it off). While it was annoying with demo levels and DromEd missions, something that has been polished enough to be made into a fan mission should be actually completable, meaning this becomes even more annoying. Luckily, unlike some examples, it is pretty clear that the objective just is not checking off and therefore you can easily declare the mission complete, but it still is a problem that should be nonexistent. A level is less forgivable to me if it is not completable than if it is the most frustrating disaster but is possible to finish.
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