Thief begins to find its form in a new dev interview

Like Garrett out of the shadows, details continue to emerge that give shape to Eidos Montreal's upcoming Thief reboot.

reboot. From a new Shack News interviewwith lead level designer Daniel Windfeld Schmidt we hear about the "reinvention" of the stealthy, blackjack-swinging original.

With any re-imagination of a classic series, questions often surface about the exact relationship between the new and the old. In his response to queries submitted by players of the previous titles, Schmidt addresses this connection from a few different angles. It sounds like the new game, at the very least, will be linked—through its urban setting—to the earlier editions of Thief.

"I don't want to say we completely scrapped everything," Schmidt said. "We took a lot of inspiration from what made [Garrett's] city memorable. The connection might be a little different, but for us it's still the same. We haven't locked down the names of the new districts. We choose what matches best with what the old games have. Naturally we want to make it feel like it is the same place."

Schmidt also described the role that stealth will play in the new Thief cosmos and, from his description, it appears that we'll all be feeling very precarious. "There isn't a "safe" state," Schmidt said. "Even though the game has a light and darkness kind of binary look to it, it is much more analog than that. There is this middle state as well where you are kind of exposed. There are several states and the analog value comes from how the eye works. Are you moving, are you standing up, are you crouching. A lot of this matters in how we detect you."

Although recent footagehas shown us a variety of takedowns with bow and blackjack, we also know from Schmidt's comments that the entire game will be "ghostable" and can be completed non-violently without killing or knocking out anyone. It sounds like a challenge. Are you up for it?

Thanks, VG24/7.