Game Informer has a massive article about the newest Thief game in its latest issue. The next-gen title was revealed for the PlayStation 4, PC, and other next-gen platforms today.
Details cover some of the game’s sequences, mechanics, tools, and more. We’ve rounded up a bunch of content from the preview below.
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
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