Too bad the third one was such ass. And it was made by?

Warren Spector, who also made the shitty Deus Ex.

While clearly the first two were beyond excellence, the third one isn't bad. I thought it would suck, but then I played it, like a year ago, and it's actually really fun, like an expansion with better graphics. Really, the only major thing missing is the quality NCP banter.

Same thing that killed Dues Ex 2: shitty cramped levels. You would literally knock out one dude in a corridor, then pass into another load zone where there would be one more guard who couldn't discover any bodies because they were in a different load zone.

Deus Ex and Thief are very similar. Great games with awful sequels (thief 2 is okay though).

Except that Deus Ex sucks and Thief is awesome. That's a huge difference between them.

Thief 3 and Deus Ex 2 used the same engine! The result for both was teeny tiny levels with huge load zones inbetween. That engine was the fucking grim reaper of once great franchises.

Camonk is clearly insane.

That's a good point about the load zones, but I didn't feel like it took too much away from the game's enjoyability.