Mid-Level Loading Be Gone! Thief 3 Gold Mod Leaves Beta

A mod removing the mid-level loading from Thief: Deadly Shadows is a good thing. We cooed a bit at the Thief 3 Gold mod before in May when the first beta version arrived--coo!--so now that Version 1.0 is here we're duty-bound to coo longer, more intensely. CoooOOo! Along with smooshing mission segments into single load-free levels, Gold makes a few other tweaks, including adjusting wonky guard paths and positions.

V1.0 brings bug fixes, of course, and one notable new change: an option to make it so Garrett needn't steal the Widow Moira's inheritance to complete that mission on Expert difficulty, as nabbing that has consequences later in the game. Head over to its thread on the Through the Looking Glass forums to download the mod and see what's what.

In time, Thief 3 Gold will be integrated with the Sneaky Upgrade mod/unofficial patch, which you really should be playing with anyway. It brings oodles of improvements, like faster loading, adjustable field of view, better resolution support, a framerate limiter to stop things like lockpicking and ladder-climbing from wonking out. Sneaky will envelop a few other key mods too.

The Gold gang aren't done yet, mind. Beyond fixing bugs, they plan to create Thief 1-style intro videos for missions, turn the tutorial into a proper mission on higher difficulties, tweak Garrett's movement, and more. It is lovely how a community's still supporting and updating a game almost a decade after its creator shut down (it is and all--February 2005), isn't it?