 By July , the team had begun initial construction of the game 's levels . Thief II 's increased focus on stealth necessitated new level design concepts : the most stealth @-@ based missions in Thief had centered on urban burglary , but Pearsall explained that this " would get tired pretty fast " if repeated in every level . The team diversified Thief II by designing missions with such objectives as kidnapping , blackmail and eavesdropping . The first two levels were designed to seamlessly introduce new players to the core game mechanics , without a tutorial mission that might lose the interest of experienced players . When creating a mission , the team would often begin by deciding on the player 's objective , after which they would produce a rough level design . The mission would then undergo a peer review to determine if it should be added to the game . Each of the game 's levels was a team effort rather than the work of a single designer . Designer Randy Smith explained that , while Thief 's levels had been designed to fit a pre @-@ existing story , the Thief II team " tried to think of really good missions first " and then adjusted the plot to suit them . He noted that it was highly difficult to harmonize the two . 
