Just as with any episode of Grimm, The Master Thief opens with a light-hearted version of the fairy tale narrated by Grimm. Disgusted with how the moral of the story always seems ensconced in cheerfulness, Grimm decides to muck things up by spreading his unique brand of darkness across the landscape of six or more stages, each of which involves a segment of the fairy tale.

Darkening levels was both the best and worst aspect of Grimm's debut season. It was always fun to see how each NPC, structure, and miscellaneous object would corrupt: dogs and cats would shrivel into emaciated skeletons, NPCs would become hairy and coarse, the sky would darken, and fire might sweep across the land. Problem was, none of these happenings had any affect on the story. Whether you sought to darken the entire level or did just enough to complete each objective, the story stayed the same. Players were essentially connecting the dots for a story that they'd already heard. This resulted in most Grimm episodes being at least marginally enjoyable, but ultimately identical in everything but the fairy tale itself.

If The Master Thief is an accurate account of the changes we can expect in the entirety of Season Two, Grimm players looking for more depth should be happy indeed. First on the list of changes is the content of the fairy tales themselves. The Master Thief tells the story of a thief who returns home and is charged by the town's Count to steal three items: a horse in a stable, the Count's wife's wedding ring and the bed sheets on which she sleeps, and the parson and clerk from a local church. If the thief cannot do this, he will be hanged for his years of thievery.


Instead of merely repeating these happenings while playing the game, Grimm alters the content while retaining the core elements of the fairy tale. The Master Thief is no longer just a thief, but a monster hunter along the lines of Van Helsing. The Count becomes a vampire who informs the monster hunter that he will grant him (the monster hunter) a duel if he can steal the three aforementioned items.

The changes are substantial enough to keep players pressing forward not merely to finish each level, but to see what will happen next. To steal the wife's sheets and ring, the thief unearths a corpse from the graveyard and dresses it in his garb. Upon spying the macabre dummy, the Count shoots it and takes pity on the thief, instructing his wife to hand over the wedding ring since the thief worked so hard to steal it, as well as her sheet, which he uses to wrap the corpse. The Count takes the body to the graveyard and begins to bury it, only to find the thief waiting for him. Impressed, the Count hands over the ring and sheet, and the thief continues with his mission.