"The stone cannot know why the chisel cleaves it. The iron cannot know why the fire scorches it."

To make up for not posting anything particularly long or interesting for a while, I'm gonna do a pimp post in the grand tradition of thebaconfat and memlu. I miss babbling about things that I love, which is what this journal is for in the first place, so this post will be a return to form, I hope. It will be, essentially, about how you as a person are not complete until you have played a little old game called Thief.

I started with the third game in July last year, then annoyed my brother into letting me install and play the first two, because by that point, I had fallen in love. The achingly tense gameplay, the strange and beautiful cutscenes, the whimsical details, the anti-heroic main character,the frequently hilarious writing and the magic-and-machinery visual theme all combined to hit me straight in the heart. It's remarkable how obsessed I've managed to become with this series, which has ended up influencing my storytelling and my conception of what makes a great game a whole lot more than I ever would have expected (most notably causing my obsession with light, one of the things it is famous for).

Now, seriously, these games are classics of the medium and still contain an extraordinary amount of impact and charm nine years after the fact, not to mention some truly kickass writing. But if you aren't convinced, well, click the cut and follow me.

( And so our most promising acolyte left us...(no spoilers) )