The Cradle doesn't have a history. It has a scream, stretched out through time.
We're digging into the PC Gamer magazine archives to publish pieces from years gone by. This article was originally published in PC Gamer issue 146, March 2005.The following forms a journey into one of the most brilliant and disturbing levels ever committed to PC. If you've played The Cradle—Thief: Deadly Shadows' centrepiece level— then don't hang back.
The Shalebridge Cradle. An ornate gothic façade on a dilapidated mansion. The starting view is angled so that you're looking up and it's looming over you like a furious parent about to discipline a child. In this first moment, The Cradle's themes are set—the relationship between those with power and those without, authority and the oppressed.The level's genius is that it never explicitly states its purpose.
It's this manner of mind game that forms the foundation on which the whole Cradle is built. Insecurity is reinstated by changing the rules just as you've grown familiar with them. As you explore the Outer Cradle, it is only your own fear that twists the knife. By the time you realise you're being manipulated, you've entered the Inner Cradle. Here the corkscrewing of your guts has been externalised in the form of the inmates' impossibly convulsing bodies.
The centre of the Inner Cradle, most important for its listing of the patients, their treatments and their privileges. Especially relevant is the patient in room 9, who was allowed to light the fire in the lounge if she continued to behave. For this purpose, she was allowed to keep her tinderbox.Here you'll find an inmate, presumably the one from Cell 5. The room is full of portraits, each defaced with a bloody smear over the face. Jewels are positioned where their eyes should be.
Despite Drept's testimony that some hag-like creature butchered his little friend, the material evidence pointed at the man locked in cell 5. Extreme measures were called for: lobotomy. Or rather, all too common measures. The staff of Shalebridge—when not experimenting with their weirder theories such as applying red hot bars to bare skin or testing the outer limits of electrocution—turned to Dr Ranker's custom silver knives that could transmute a pest into a vegetable.
Flames swept up. The Nursery tower joined its sister in misery. The voices of boys and girls merged in an unholy choir, a shriek to empty skies. The smoke arose to the heavens, blacking them out, forming a cloud of the remains of authority. Anything elevated was destroyed. All that remained was the base material.
Even in the City, no-one loiters too long in the shadow of one particular building, which hangs off the east side of the Old Quarter like some facial canker. Shalebridge Cradle."If there's a way to cram more misery into one building's history," Master Thief Garrett once said,"I can't think of it."The Cradle designer Jordan Thomas speaks candidly about the making of fear.
Our reptile brains instantly respond, ready to brandish the adrenals at the drop of a hat. But will the memories last? Typically, no. They are warning signs, written in a very basic language. As the mind rights itself, these messages fade away, leaving it largely unblemished.PCG Well, there's the pull-out quote. So how do you think of The Cradle?
I attempted to effectively answer dozens of queries along these lines with The Cradle. In hindsight, I can see plenty of room for improvement, but that’s exactly how a developer expands the list. The expected reward for this series of trials can be summed up by one word:"resonance". All of The Cradle's actors, from the malfunctioning lights to the shambling undead themselves are tied into a central choreographer object.
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