/vr/ - Retro Games

rent free.

>>5864407
MGS is an interactive experience. It's unique in its own right, but gameplay is not the highlight. Neither are story or something. The highlight is Kojimbo's shenanigans.
Thief is a great stealth game, though. It's very gameplay-first but also has very nice aesthetics. It's so unlike MGS that there can be no meaningful comparison at all.

I hijack your bait thread to talk about Thief Fan missions.

I like Melan's missions, they are HUEG and have a freeroam feel to them, what do you recommend me anons?

>>5864410
wouldn't have it any other way

>>5864431
- Making a Profit
- Events In Highrock, but it has several bits that can hold you up (the map not telling you the Keeper can only be accessed by the window near the fountain, for which you need to steal some rope arrows from a shed, standing in the corner of the shop to trigger a conversation and the window that needs to be smashed to access the Hammerite compound).
- Information by Goit is an early attempt by a player to create a city mission. Interesting if you want to look at the beginning of FMs.

I just started a new playthrough a few days ago with the ESRGAN upscaled texture pack, it's just a much crisper vanilla and looks incredible
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149825

Since we have a theif thread started, I want to play theif 2 and i got an image from here saying ton install tafferpatcher but a forum said that its outdated and to get t2fix. Which one should i go with?

>>5867586
I doubt it matters. There can't be that many major changes in the newer fix. I use Tafferpatcher and everything works perfectly, even with huge fan mission campaigns like T2X.

Thoughts on this? A while back there was a debate as to which game has better missions and I tried pitting each game's mission against its equivalent. I compared the final missions against one another due to the uneven amount of missions.

>>5867536
disgusting

>>5867536
why are all graphic mods so awful? you'd think there'd be at least one modder out there with a functioning visual cortex but i've never seen an attempt to improve an old game visually that wasn't revolting.

>>5867641
thanks anon! can you play 1 and 2 vanilla or are they really so bad you need the fixes?

>>5867536
"incredible" is right. The modder lacks all credibility. Not only do esrgan textures look like someone smeared buckets of oil paint on gravel, but apparently the algoritm just invents unnecessary details out of thin air. These dark parts are nowhere on the original texture. The algorithm literally split one of those stone bricks in half for no reason.

>>5868635
From my experience at least on Windows 7 you can play them vanilla. The only problem is that when you install a game you need to do it from the Windows run menu. Type in the path of the setup executable and change it so that it reads:
:\setup.exe -lgntforce
This apparently removes some unnecessary protection that the original setup has against installing the game on unsupported operating systems. Little did they know that the games install just fine on Windows versions newer than 98 all the way until 7 at least.

>>5867806
I agree with most of these (except the second paragraph, I thought Shipping and Receiving was a boring and aimless mission), but overall I still prefer the first game, the world feels more mysterious and dark.
That's what makes me appreciate Deadly Shadows too, it focuses on the keepers, the mystery and the supernatural, and those were kinda missing from TMA.

ive never seen anyone talk about the third thief here is that because its bad or not retro

>>5868884
its shit. xbox killed computer gaming.

>>5868656
>apparently
You really don't have any idea how any of this works, at all, do you?

>>5868936
It extracts clues from the surrounding image in order to determine what it's looking at and then increases the detail of what it thinks it's looking at in low resolution. The things indicated by the arrows in that image are parts where original detail is actually lost or completely unrelated new detail is added because the retarded AI didn't pay attention and just pulled something out of its database ass. There should always be a human telling the machine that it's misinterpreting the low resolution image. Isn't that how those things learn as well? Making a mistake and a human correcting them on it?

>>5868931>>5868884
I liked that game quite a ways

>>5864407
Stop comparing them. They are different, and I enjoy both. So, all of you, go suck a dick.

>>5868884
It isn't bad, it has some flaws like loading screens and no rope arrows, but it makes up for them with improvements (better AI, better soundtrack, best story in the trilogy, better pacing than TMA, better shadows, nice art direction and atmosphere, etc).
It isn't as consistently good as the previous games, but it's a worthy closure to the series.

>>5864407
24/7 rent free dead franchise.

>>5870514
>Implying MGS is alive in any way shape or form

>>5870514
I think the wishful thinking of the concept of stealth lives rent free inside the heads of the MGS fanbase. The games are always conveniently stealth when making shitty Snake references in YT videos related to sneaking around, but they're always Tactical Espionage Action whenever someone brings up the boss fights and turret segments.

>>5870540
>>5870529
imagine being this mad 20 years later. Pathetic.

>>5870557
imagine being a kojima fanboy and seething whenever somebody sheds truth on how garbage mgs is

>>5870561
yep still obsessed.

>>5864418
>but gameplay is not the highlight
If a game's gameplay is "not the hightlight" then the game sucks bro.

>>5867806
this whole list is awful and you should feel awful

>>5867806
What the fuck? How can the order of missions be a basis for their comparison? Assassins should be compared to Trace The Courier and Ambush! since both are ad nauseam exploiting the mechanics of the former, The Maw should be compared to Trail of Blood, The Lost City to Kidnap and the Soulforge to Bonehoard. The only thing you unintentionally got right is Cragscleft vs Framed. Of course I don't agree with any of your marks, since I don't like Thief 2 at all.

>>5867806
>I tried pitting each game's mission against its equivalent
You fucked up completely by comparing the missions based on the order that they come in (instead of the themes, as >>5872395 said; Lord Bafford's Manor should obviously be compared to Running Iterference etc), not sure how you could make such a retarded move. There's so much things wrong with your image that I don't want to analyze all of it.
I do want to say a few words about the T1 vs T2 debate, though: what stands out as a clear fact is that Thief 2's first half is extremely strong, but the second one is so shit that Gold is the superior experience overall even if it deteriorates near the end with "Escape" and "Strange Bedfellows".

>>5872395
>>5872447
How can there possibly be a more fair direct comparison than actual order of missions? I'm massively biased towards Thief 2 and I specifically took the actual order so I couldn't choose which missions to compare. The only arbitrary decision was to compare the final missions against one another and evaluate the one extra TG mission by itself. I dare you to formulate a fucking "objectively correct" list of comparable missions then if the play order just isn't fair. Protip: You can't, and you'd just end up biasing it towards whichever game you happen to support, eg. "Lost City vs Kidnap lol Kidnap loses by default because it has recycled geometry" or "Thieves' Guild vs Shipping & Receiving lol Guild loses by default because the Guild is literally the worst mission in the franchise". Why not add Deadly Shadows to the list as well, and arbitrarily distribute its vastly smaller mission pool among the others?
>>5872447 And how the fuck is comparing the training missions against one another incorrect? Similarly, why should a >>5872395 half-trailing half-mansion mission be compared to a full trailing mission? Coincidentally, Eavesdropping is basically the T2 equivalent of Assassins anyway because of the mandatory initial stalking objective and the subsequent exploration of a building, complete with a basement with the main objective and monsters.

>>5872552
>Protip: You can't
Except it's possible, you absolute retard. You can easily spot the thematics in certain missions if you aren't stupid. Not all missions can be compared, but some can, for example Bafford's Manor and Running Interference since both have you robbing a mansion. As for those that can't be compared, we just look at the value of the missions in general.
>comparing the training missions
Running Interference is nowhere near the same as A Keeper's Training. The former is a tutorial when it comes to the basement part of the mansion, but once you pass a certain point you have the rest of the mansion to explore if you want to, and the latter is a complete tutorial where you go from one segment to the next doing tasks that are required of you - the mission is almost completely linear and you're basically always observed, tutored and guided.
You're either baiting or extremely stupid, and I'm hoping it's the former. Refrain from trying to make any serious analyzes when it comes to video games, at least for some time.
>half-trailing half-mansion mission be compared to a full trailing mission
It's not completely correct, but it's the closest comparison there is, since there's no other mission more adequate for comparison in Thief II.
>Eavesdropping is basically the T2 equivalent of Assassins anyway because of the mandatory initial stalking objective and the subsequent exploration of a building, complete with a basement with the main objective and monsters.
Wrong, a good amount of Thief missions have a "mandatory initial objective" and "subsequent exploration of a build". The mission can't be compared to basically anything in Thief Gold. The missions shouldn't be compared to each other at all, instead the quality of the missions overall should be gauged. No sane person thinks Thief 2's second half is good, outside of "Life of the Party" and "Masks", and maybe "Precious Cargo". The game was rushed and shits the bed in the second half.

>>5872552
Wasn't talking about "objectively fair/unfair", the idea of comparing individual missions without a point of reference is just plain retarded. You could just shuffle the order randomly and get a different total result, while preserving your opinion of all the missions. What are you even trying to achieve with this comparison?

>>5872573
>Running Interference is nowhere near the same as A Keeper's Training. The former is a tutorial when it comes to the basement part of the mansion, but once you pass a certain point you have the rest of the mansion to explore if you want to, and the latter is a complete tutorial where you go from one segment to the next doing tasks that are required of you - the mission is almost completely linear and you're basically always observed, tutored and guided.
You just expressed in a verbose fashion how one is a bad training level and the other is a good training level. On the lowest difficulty Garrett even guides the player in RI and those hints are turned off if you wish to play on harder difficulties, something that the first game doesn't even give as an option for anything other than an easter egg.
Also I'd advise against accusing anyone of extreme stupidity when you can be quoted as having defended the notion of formulating an objective system of measurement regarding matters of literally subjective measurements. You are by definition stupid by having done this.
>>5872576
That's a fair criticism. You could just randomize the order and happen to randomly get a result where best missions of one game in the order of greatness get pitted against the worst missions of the other in inverse order of greatness and get a landslide victory for one. I suppose a better way to compare missions would be just to list every mission in order from best to worst.

>>5872590
>You just expressed in a verbose fashion how one is a bad training level and the other is a good training level.
Just because "Running Interference" has a tutorial in the very beginning (before you reach a certain part of the basement) doesn't make it a tutorial mission. There's a good reason why literally no one mentions "A Keeper's Training" when discussing these games because it's a complete tutorial which railroads you and lasts 8 minutes. It's a prologue of a sorts that familiarizes you with the game. My guess is that the tutorial of the second game was greatly reduced in size and incorporated into a normal mission (one that doesn't railroad you to teach you stuff) so that time could be saved. It's better and more practical to have a bite-sized tutorial (as opposed to a big one in the previous game) contained in a normal mission of the game.
>when you can be quoted as having defended the notion of formulating an objective system of measurement regarding matters of literally subjective measurements. You are by definition stupid by having done this.
Cancerous relativists like you are embarrassing. This is the last response you'll get from me, brainlet.

And thus the pigeon knocked over the pieces, shat on the board and left to gloat to its flock about its victory.

>>5867806
I don't particularly care how you evaluated the missions (though fucking comparing RI and AKT is extremely fucking dumb), I get the "mission by mission" comparison idea and basing them just on their general gameplay design/layout/memorability or whatever the fuck, I'm just shocked at some of your choices.

Like Ambush over fucking Bonehoard? Ambush as a mission is the biggest waste of time in the entire series.

get your own general faggots.

>>5872620
I can't believe it's been less than 2 years since I had to say that. Can't remember what it was about.

Here's something to spice up your current playthrough. Play the whole game as a briefing cutscene.

>>5864410
>>5872964
Seethe harder, schizo.

>>5873053
says the one who made this bait thread.

God damn, I love MGS. Thanks for the laugh, OP. Keep seething.

>>5873062
if by bait you mean truth then yeah.

>>5873104
whatever helps you sleep at night.

>>5873109
i'm not the one in denial over mgs being a shitty "game".

contrarians should be gassed.

>>5873114
are you ok retard?

>s-s-stop disliking what i like
lmao.

>s-s-stop liking what i dislike.
sad

>>5873117
still crying bitch nigger?

5873124
last one (you) will get.

>>5873115
I don't think there's ever been contrarians on a Thief general. The universal acceptance of Thief II as the pinnacle of the trilogy was abandoned before there were Thief generals. Before that there were still contrarians because implying that you prefer TDP to TMA was a contrarian stance, and nobody has tried to bait by saying that TDS is superior.

>>5873047
I can't play thief without colour!

>>5873703
It has color. Just the one though.

Whats the best way to play this?

>>5874868
Install TFix. Rebind all your keys before you start as if you're a reasonable PC player or something. Play through the entire game on Normal. Skip Hard difficulty and replay on Expert for extra objectives, alternate routes and more enemies. Use any tactic on your first playthrough so you can have freedom to learn the levels. Restrain yourself when playing again. For additional challenges you can play without saving mid-mission or without any alerts or knockouts.

>>5874868
>>5874961
Playing on expert the first time is fine as long as you dont want to sword fight. The extra objctives, and loot requirements force you to explore the maps more. Also, the difficulty doesnt change the ai but it does determine the number of gaurds so there is a benifit to playing on higher difficulty for challage. i enjoyed playing through expert my first time. Excpet for some of the non mansion levels with loot requirements because i hated having to try to scrap for radom loop laying around. If you want to be a bitch like me you can use a guide to find it tho.

>>5875032
What I meant was that while Expert does give you a challenge, one that you've never seen before, playing on Normal first means that on your second playthrough all those changes mess with your expectations and you get more out of the game. If you start on Normal you have more difficult variants to try afterwards. If you start on Expert you've spoiled the rest of the modes for yourself and have less replayability, with the singular exception of Bonehoard which is Tomb Raider on Expert and a scavenger hunt on Normal.

>>5875049
>playing on Normal first means that on your second playthrough all those changes mess with your expectations and you get more out of the game

100% correct and its pretty cool. If replay value is something you want in a game then definitly thats the route to go.

>>5874868

the virgin snake
vs
the chad thief

>>5864407
We told you

>>5875593
>>>/v/

Thief sucks.
Baldurs Gate, Starcraft, MGS, OOT,Unreal, Resident Evil 2, Half Life were better.

>>5864410
>>5870514
>>5870557

just a friendly reminder
there was an EMGEES thread not long ago, which I checked out since I had fuck to do
there was not a single Thief fan in there.
There is always an abundance of emgees fags in thief threads

24/7 inside EMGEES fans heads, yeah baby ;^) y u still mad

>>5868931
fuck off
TDS is a perfectly good Thief game
it had to work around hardware limitations, true
though it still plays like a thief game

>>5875814
The worst aspect of TDS isn't even the console limitations. It's the third person mode. All player movement is filtered through the character's animations which makes every action clunky as shit. Also the only reason why the game has no swimming or rope arrows is that they would have needed whole new sets of movement animations. There are other compromises too, like the inability to jump off of ladders mid-climb because that would also require special animation.
But thank goodness they weren't completely insane with the animation and left basic interaction alone, unlike a certain other barely-qualifies-as-a-game.

>>5864407
Metal Gear Solid is Tarantino and Lynch; Thief is a sunday afternoon revue at the local renaissance fair.

>>5875862
the epic showdown of film & gays versus fun & games

>>5875862
Thief is Passolini without the sodomy.

>>5875871
Some people would rather watch Hamlet performed at the renaissance fair than Blue Velvet. That's fine, no reason to be offended.

stop arguing with thiefcucks.

>>5875070
By the way, you can thank GoldenEye 007 for that neat feature

>>5875903
His hammer is longer than their maces

>>5875937
ah im a fruad i never played anything but golden eye multiplayer once i think.

I just started theif 2 (on the second mission) and really digging it so far but have two questions. Firstly it feels like you move slower than the first one is it just me? Bunny hopping certainly feels slower and the normal walking speed feels slower. Im not sure if the running is faster. Secondly, do the guards here less than the first game? It seems like I can just run up behind them no problem and knock them out.

>>5876626
The single player was Golden!

Life of the Party is overrated.

>>5875937
Which feature? Having differences between difficulties that are more than just "players takes more damage"?

The Sword is overrated.

>>5875937
System Shock 1 did that before Goldeneye007

>>5876797
Yes
>>5876951
No

>>5876797
Yes
>>5877595
No

I am looking for FMs (preferably GOLD) that feature:
- slides
- a break box that turns off all the lights in a place and renders levers useless
- custom potions

>>5876951
i dont think its overated but it might be hurt by how much its talked about. The best part of the mission is non sensical it is out of nowhere but with how much its mentioned people might be looking for it and expect more than it is

FUCK casing the joint, i wanna kill some niggas.

>>5879006
Ctrl Alt Shift End

>>5864410
>>5870514
>>5870557
>>5873083
>>5875616
>>5875862

>>5879230
rent free.

>>5879914
metal gear shitters can only talk in memes, lmao. go back to /v/ kid.

>>5880017
ok thief redditor.

>>5864407
Quit Taffin' around!

>>5878303
By slide do you mean like a slide that you'd slide down?

>>5880027
>muh reddit boogeyman
COPE

>>5880542
Ok tranny.

>>5880589
>muh tranny boogeyman
COPE

>>5880529
Yes, I was thinking of the ice in the Maw of Chaos and the shortcut in Cragsleft.

>>5881580
There's sort of one in Tuttocomb's Tomb.

>>5864418
>MGS is an interactive experience
Enjoy watching 45 minute cutscenes after 5 minutes of gameplay.

Guys I'm trying to play the anniversary fanmissions, but they register as Thief 2 missions not Gold missions in Darkloader. What do?

>>5864407
I like both, but Thief is far and away a better game.
Two different types of stealth games though.

>>5868656
>but apparently the algoritm just invents unnecessary details out of thin air.
That's literally how an AI upscaler works. It HAS to do that or you get a pointless giant smudge instead. They're not great yet, but they're definitely on the right track.
A hand painted upscale will probably always look better, or at least more purposeful. Takes a shitload of time though.

I love how the Thief vs MGS fights only really exist on this site. Seriously I did a quick check of the old TTLG forums and there were barely any arguments about Metal Gear because it and Thief are just too different to compare. The most they ever talked about it was in reference to some weird metalhead fag on Youtube who kept making the comparison in between making political videos and bad video game reviews.

>>5868547
This was my attempt to bring the Thief textures more in-line with the intermission art stills.
I was doing one texture a day for a while, but got burned out. Maybe I'll see if I can plug away at it again during breaks at work or something.

>>5883542
Another goal was to replace the textures taken from real-world cultures and lore with in-game cultures and lore.

>>5883020
>>5883020
Don't use Darkloader. I prefer to use the FMSelector. As for the problem with Darkloader:
- Load the Thief Gold fan mission into darkloader.
- Quit darkloader.
- Go into the darkloader folder and open the darkloader.ini,
- Change Type=2 to Type=1 under the name of the fm.
- Save.
- Go back and start darkloader again, and press play.

>>5883020
Darkloader is outdated.

>>5883534
The metalhead fag is OG TTLG. Daniel Harris is xAcerbusx and Captain Spandex on TTLG and Razörfist on Youtube. He's been on TTLG since at least 2004 and I don't recall him ever bringing up MGS there, and any comparisons to Thief have probably been responses to people implying MGS is a stealth game or something.

>>5864407
24/7 rent free for 20 years. Sleep tight dead franchise, the Japs own you now, like Wizardry and have rightfully buried this turd of a series. Your meme game isn't even worthy of a Pachinko machine.

>>5864407
Tenchu was better than both and did it first.

why in the absolute name of fuck are these /vr/ thief threads just petty lame thief vs metal gear dick measuring contests that nobody gives a shit about. i adore thief and i dont care for mgs but theyre pretty radically different games besides sharing the singular common trait of "stealth :333"
also nobody gives a shit about the thirtieth uncreative basedboy wojak edit youve made in the last week. jesus fucking christ this site
>>5883542
>>5883553
thank you anon for posting actual content. i dont personally use custom texture replacers in thief but i like the overall style these have, you should keep working on them

>>5884051
but anon most of the people itt are ignoring the shitposters

>>5883994
>Japs own you now
Japs own shit, and are a dying race who are starting to have to import superior whites to keep their nation from collapsing.
If anything, it'll be the Chinks who end up owning the world.

Does anyone know where to find the FUCKING Bear Pits conversation that has the cockrings with the underslung dick-spikes?

>>5884389
>thinking nips are going to import another dying race
theyre importing koreans and african bvlls.

I'm watching the Hitman speedrunner Kotti's vods of his casual Thief playthroughs. Back when you first played the games, how long did it take for you to figure out that once a guard has chased you or found a body, they are at maximum alertness, their cone of vision is extremely wide and they will detect and attack you even if you're almost invisible quite a distance away? Or that it's almost impossible to knock out a searching guard in a well lit room? Or that maximum alertness guards take several minutes to calm down and you can recognize more alert than normal guards by the way they do not whistle or hum? Because I figured that shit out between playing the TDP demo and getting the full game and I was ten years old then. This guy is at Trace the Courier and struggling to grasp the concept of tiled floors being noisy.

>>5886713
Probably my second time through the demo.
The games rules are super intuitive.

>plays Trace The Courier for the first time
>Doesn't understand the difference between tracing a message and tracing a person, follows Mosely
>Knocks out random guards for no reason and leaves them lying around Wayside
>Mosely drops off her note
>Garrett says "Somehow I doubt-
>*interrupts the line by reading the note*
>Finishes reading the note, has already forgotten that Garrett said something
>Garrett continues "-she dropped her note by accident."
>Keeps following Mosely instead of dropping the note and waiting for it to get picked up
>Several minutes later Mosely comes across a random unconscious guard exactly at the timing when the mission fails due to the player never having dropped the note
>Thinks that her seeing the body triggers the game over. Doesn't understand that they did the mission entirely wrong
>Desperately tries to clean up the bodies without being seen and still keeps failing the mission because the pagan can't pick up the note on the other side of the level

>>5888049
game aged badly

>>5888094
Sounds more like player didn't age enough

>>5886713
>>5888049
Kotti isn't a clever man.

I just finished playing framed, and out of most of theif gold and what ive played of theif 2 its my favorite. LGS is really good at building atmosphere with bakground music its tense as fuck. Also, thyere really good at world building through their journal entreries and stuff.

>>5888049
Yeah, Trace is a shit level. T2 has a lot of bad levels actually.

Playing Trace the Courier on normal and killing moseley after she drops the note is the canon way

>>5888636
Everything you think is shit in a T2 level becomes better the next time you play but when you play a shit level in T1 it will always be shit no matter how many times you repeat. At first you hate Casing and then you realize that you're just a shitter who can't ghost and then you find that the level is filled to the brim with optional hidden loot. At first you hate Kidnap and then you realize you were just a brainlet and failed to to learn the layout. At first you hate Sabotage because it doesn't give you enough resources but then you realize that by the literal final mission of this stealth game you might want to actually start sneaking around instead of trying to eliminate every threat so you could wander around with zero challenge.
But the Thieves Guild will always have its unreasonable loot requirements and a linear sequence of mandatory secrets. THC and Escape will always have the worst AI placement in the franchise. The Maw will continue to be a hallway that ends with a wait.

>>5888680
Still would rather play Escape and Maw instead of Kidnap, CtJ, Masks and Soulforge which are just tedious slogs. You're right about Thieves Guild though, the only objectively shi T1 mission.

>>5888743
I suppose there has to be that one objectively bad mission among a collection of subjectively good missions. Just like the opposite is true with T2. The one subjectively bad mission among objectively good ones.

bump.

>>5888049
Yes, this level was probably only pkay tested by people who knew the level details in and out

>>5890764

>>5864407
At this point I'm skeptical of anyone who considers Thief and MGS to be in the same genre. Oh you can sneak in both games? Cool story bro.

FMs like this?

>>5892704
Midnight in Murkbell starts off as a normal stealth mission but later it turns into a zombie apocalypse. Also Inverted Manse gives you a blessed sword that makes undead explode.

>>5892704
Any mission by Cardia.

Thief Gold was a mistake.

>>5895242
But when you add inferiority, mediocrity and superiority you end up with neutrality in total.

>>5895284
Ruining the Lost City was unforgivable.

>>5895525
I suppose you're right about that. As much as the craymen don't belong in a place filled with lava, the mages definitely shouldn't have been there since the place is sealed from the outside world.
To be honest I'm not a big fan of Little Big World either.

Were talking about a post 2000 PC game and people aren't bitching about it not being retro. When did this change?

>>5895242
not really, Song of the Caverns is great, the Mage Towers is good too, and while the sewer section of Guild is too long and boring, it's still nowhere as bad as Escape!, or Undercover

Does anyone know where to find the video about Thief 2 where the player has a mic plugged in and what he's saying is actually processed through the game's audio engine so it realistically echoes and muffles in different environments?

>>5896675
not that anon, but i agree with some of what you said. Song of the caverns really was great. Mage tower was ok, but it was to long because you had to visit every tower. I really liked undercover i thought it was a fun idea for a level plus i liked the world building part of it. What didnt you like anon? Theives guild sucks and i stopped playing at escape for now because i got to the end and realized i had to go back down to get something and lost all motivation The worst levels in gold are the non masion ones (boneyard, cathedrial, lost city, escsape) plus thieves guild.

I think Bonehoard and Undercover are both great maps but they both also have a fatally serious flaw in stealth. Unavoidable detections. Undercover has an unreasonably high loot requirement that forces you to at some point steal valuables who's absence will eventually be discovered and the hammerites will sound the alarm. That's only a problem for ghosters though. But not to worry, even the normal stealth players will not be spared as automatic alarms will ring as soon as you remove the talisman-protecting curse. And they just had to make the level design so that you cannot possibly escape via a route that doesn't intersect with aggroed hammers.
And Bonehoard has a part where you are forced to use explosives right next to 6 enemies.