Overview/opening sequence
- Garrett has been away from his hometown for a long time
- When he returns to City, he sees “a city of melting prosperity”
- Iron-fisted Baron now rules the city
- Baron crushes City’s citizens through militarized watch
- Good fortune only for the elite
- Garrett views the political chaos as a chance to get rich
- Not concerned with being the hero
- Garrett finds his way into the Stonemarket district in the back of a covered wagon
- Watches the bodies of plague victims piling up on street corners
- Guards quell small civil disputes with force
- Wealthy men stroll by with bodyguards
- “Would-be revolutionaries preach to deaf ears while men in stockades slowly waste away”
- Garrett becomes interested in a conversation between two guards talking about Eastwick, a wealthy man
- Theodore Eastwick: principle architest, richest man
- Baron commissioned Eastwick to build many of the City’s Gothic structures
- Guards say that Eastwick is visiting a pleasure house on the other side of the size
- Eastwick going to the House of Blossoms
- This is an underground cathouse serving the elite
- Gates close at midnight
- Garrett crouches behind crates, which results in a dark tint covering the screen to show that you’re hiding safely
- Bottle thrown to distract the guards, and then Garrett climbs up a pipe up the side of a building
- Garrett moves across roofs, bounds over merchant tables and under wagons, and dives through a nearby building window
- Eastwick passes through the secret entrance in the House of Blossoms
- All of the above is not a cut-scene
Next sequence
- Garrett enters the House of Blossoms undetected
- Area has rich patrons, scantily clad women who saunter by and flirt with men
- Xiao Xiao, a transvestite, greets guests
- Garrett loses Eastwick in a crowd
- Xiao Xaio notes that there is more security than usual and that anyone with something valuable can store it in his office strongbox
- Use Xiao Xiao’s logbook to determine where Eastwick has gone
- Garrett wants to get his hands on whatever is in the storngbox, so he heads to Xiao Xiao’s room
- Logbook shows Garrett which bedroom Eastwick is in
- Garrett then decides to lighten Xiao Xiao’s strongbox
- This results in a lockpicking mini-game
- Align the tumblers of a lock until it opens
- Before Garrett can crack the lock, Xiao Xiao enters
Another sequence
- Xiao Xiao enters, but Garrett rolls into a darkened corner
- Xiao Xiao doesn’t detect Garrett
- Xiao Xiao leaves to deal with a situation with one of his girls
- Garrett opens the chest and takes out a jewel-encrusted heirloom
- Garrett can’t leave the room since Xiao Xiao is just outside the door talking with the girl
- Secret button slides the wall to slide open and reveals a hidden passageway
- Garrett comes across Eastwick’s room by using the House of Blossoms’ network of backdoors
- Garrett enters the room and takes a medallion
- He then uses Focus to look at the wall Eastwick is examining
- Focus shows a mysterious symbol written on the wall in blue energy
- Symbol corresponds to one of the runes written on the medallion
- Garrett turns a band of the medallion to line up that rune with an arrow, but the medallion then begins to glow with a similar blue energy
- Four adjacent rooms show four more symbols to line up
- After the last symbol is in place, the medallion whirls and spins
- Soon after, Eastwick notices that he has been robbed and calls for help
- Garrett hears through the wall that Xiao Xiao is ordering guards to search everywhere
Last sequence
- Guards are scattered everywhere
- Garrett heads to one of the House of Blossoms’ back rooms
- He had heard two serving girls talking about a catastrophe that followed after the ventilation system was accidentally overfilled with opium
- Garrett dumps the house’s stock of opium into vents and cracks open the flue
- Everyone is sent into a deep sleep as the vapors flood the House of Blossoms
- Garrett has to hold his breath and move quick or he’ll see the same fate
- Guards circle Garrett, who retreats into the opium fog and uses his bow to fire an arrow at a statue hanging above a doorframe
- Statue falls and crushes two guards
- Another guard pins Garrett against a wall
- To buy time, Garrett enters Focus mode
- Garrett grabs the guard’s arm, jerks it back behind his soldier, eventually falls against the stone floor
- Garrett breaks free from the final guards, grapples onto a nearby vent, and rapples down into the depths of City’s sewers
AI
- Garrett isn’t a fighter
- Fighting against four or more guards in combat won’t go well
- Guards and other NPCs are aware of the level design, so they know where a person might try to hide
- Guards understand the topography of the level and which areas could be useful for hiding
- Different NPCs will look for Garrett in different ways
Gameplay mechanics
- Navigation beacon shows players where to go
- Dev. team wants players to explore environments as they see fit
- Multiple entrances and exists in each room
- Multiple options available for stealth approach
- “Focus” mechanic: has many uses, including being able to aid Garrett’s vision as he navigates through open levels
- Focus lights up the screen and highlights pipes you can climb + candles you can put out to make the room darker
- Can upgrade Focus
- Doing so will give you a bigger radius of things to see
- Fingerpints system: gives you hints on which drawers are best to look in
- Every drawer is accessible
- Can pickpocket
- Use Focus while pickpocketing to slow time and swipe up to three times as many items from others
- Can spend money to upgrade supplies and equipment at the end of each mission
- Various artifacts are scattered throughout the game’s levels
- Can use these to decorate Garrett’s hideout
- Garrett is motivated by the thrill of stealing something that others can’t take
- Focus will show a number of attack points on enemies
- Can select a point (like the chest) to do a quick push that will buy him more time to dash off into the shadows
- Can also string together a number of points to perform a more debilitating attack
- Team is trying to find a balance between making combat enjoyable and allowing players to enter combat if they want
- Major mechanics are in place
Tools
- Blackjack: use when sneaking up behind guards to knock them unconscious
- Bow: powerful, can be used outside of combat (ex: fire at a bottle in another room to lure a guard away, trigger a switch to lock the guard inside)
- Specialty Arrows: different uses; dry-ice arrow can be used to snuff flames from far away; smoke-starter arrow: cover and a distraction
- Claw: grapple attaches to certain points
General
- Garrett design made by game director Nicolas Cantin
- Garrett’s scar represents that his past has left long-lasting effects on his life
- Eidos being vague about how faithful the team is remaining to the original Thief lore
- Many of the series’ magical elements will be toned down
- “Eidos-Montreal compares game development to a high-speed train collision between art and technology.”
- Team was kept small and “stayed within the concept phase of development for a longer period of time.”
- The staff experimented with featuring a new character, making it a third-person game involving either tactical gameplay or environmental clambering (like Assassin’s Creed)
- “At one point in development, the game had so many third-to-first-person transitions that the constant camera shifting was making people sick.”
- Many experiments during first three years of development
UNVEILED FOR PC AND NEXT GENERATION CONSOLES BY EIDOS-MONTRÉAL
Critically-Acclaimed Studio Returns with a New Vision
LONDON (5th March 2013) – Eidos-Montréal®, a part of Square Enix Europe and the award winning studio behind the critically acclaimed Deus Ex: Human Revolution®, today unveiled THIEF™ for PC, PlayStation®4, and other next generation consoles. THIEF is a reinvention of a franchise that helped define an entire genre of games.
Time has moved on. Power has shifted. New greed replaces the old.
But to remain free in The City of chains – that is still the greatest prize.
First I stole to survive… then I survived to steal.
I am one man; I hear your secrets, see your hidden truths.
I am the shadows, the dark and deadly, the velvet night. You will not see me coming.
I am Garrett….What’s yours is mine.
There is a rising tide of fear in The City. Hatred saturates every stone and whilst the rich prosper, the less fortunate face misery and repression. Ravaged with sickness and famine, they wait for something to change.
Into this shadowy world steps Garrett, THE master thief in a first-person adventure featuring intelligent design that allows players to take full control, with freedom to choose their path through the game’s levels and how they approach and overcome each challenge.
"We’re handling a precious gemstone with THIEF. Fans remember the original games very fondly and we want to preserve that essence - which we have excellent experience of doing at Eidos-Montréal - whilst also introducing THIEF to a brand new, next-generation, audience,” said Stephane D’Astous, General Manager, Eidos-Montréal. “Our goal is to deliver the fantasy of being Garrett, THE master thief, and we’re building this game around that core experience.”
Exclusive coverage and developer interviews can be found in Game Informer’s April issue. Additionally, visit GameInformer.com/thief throughout the month for on-going coverage.
THIEF will be available in 2014 for PC and PlayStation®4. It is also planned for other next-generation consoles.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=519261Eidos Montreal has been working for years to reboot the classic stealth series Thief, and the fruits of its labor will finally be revealed in issue 240 of Game Informer Magazine.
Our April cover story is a world-exclusive look at this next-generation stealth title. Series hero Garrett returns to the Gothic, industrial metropolis known simply as the City to steal any and everything that will make him richer. Unfortunately, the City is broiling with social tension as it is ravaged by a plague and lorded over by a political tyrant known as the Baron. In order to survive his adventures, Garrett will have to pay attention to his environment and make use of the may possible paths through each of the game's levels.
Square Enix plans to release Thief for PS4, PC, and other next-gen platforms sometime in 2014. Check out our coverage trailer for a taste of all the content you can look forward to absorbing over the next month.
Please wait...
Also in the issue, we take a look at Sony's PlayStation 4 as well as Bungie's follow up to Halo, a new sci-fi series called Destiny. We also research the harsh realities of mobile development and learn about the challenges small teams face when making a game. Ubisoft let us check out its new pirate game, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. We poke fun at the entire industry with our annual Game Infarcer feature, and then take an exclusive look at Trion Worlds and Syfy's MMO/TV show experiment Defiance. It's a lot of content, but don't forget to check out our classic feature on Pitfall, or our previews of The Last of Us, Remember Me, and Grid 2. It's a meaty issue; you're welcome.
Print subscribers should start seeing their April issues in the next two weeks. If you can't wait that long, you can subscribe to our digital issue – which can be accessed by subscribers via your web browser, iPad, or Android devices around 2 p.m. Central Time. Check our Twitter feed to find out the moment the digital edition of our April book goes live.
If you aren't yet a digital subscriber, you can convert your print subscription here or start a new subscription here. You can also purchase individual issues or subscribe via the appropriate apps. If you prefer a physical copy of the magazine, contact backissues@gameinformer.com.
Click the banner below to go to our Thief hub, where you'll find additional exclusive content throughout the month.
http://www.gameinformer.com/tief
