Thief (2014)

My Game Informer just came in. I haven't read the whole article yet, but it looks like the reason they dropped THI4F is because they're rebooting the series. I loved the original Thief, but by the time we got to Thief 3 the lore was a hot mess. I honestly can't remember a single character's name outside of Garrett. Given how successful the Tomb Raider reboot was (also published by Square Enix), I'm looking forward to this reboot.

Edit: Finished reading the article. They said they spent nearly three years in the concept phase, testing out mechanics, messing with the camera, etc. At one point it was going to be like Assassin's Creed with a third person camera and Garrett vaulting across rooftops. Ultimately they decided to keep it first person and add a "focus" mechanic (it won't be infinite but they haven't decided exactly how they want it to work yet; atm it is consumed and replenished by pickpocketing and/or stealing petty things in the environment). While using focus interactable objects in the environment are highlighted and time is slowed. The slow time works with lock picking and it opens up what sounds like a contextual in-combat quick time event where you can choose how you want to disable the guard you're in combat with.

Staying true to the original Thief, they don't want the average player to just be able to fight their way through everything. They're trying to find a balance between Garrett being too weak to fight off four guards at once and being so strong that a player can just rush through everything without regard to the security. There will be item and ability upgrades via a hub between missions and anything collected as a bonus objective (like an expensive necklace you heard about while eavesdropping on some nobles chatting with each other) will be displayed in his hideout. All in all I liked everything I read.

ganthorn_sl said:

I don't want to have to reload everytime a board creeks.

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I thought this was probably the most interesting pull quote from the article:

"Eidos Montreal's experimentation with Thief's DNA helped the studio find what it now believes to be the magic formula for designing a great stealth game: Force players into a series of impossible situations and then give them the tools to escape."

They talked about how players these days don't want to reload and replay the same segment over and over so if you get caught by a guard they want you to be able to have a reasonable chance to escape. Some of the tools include focus (with the presumably quick-time-event like mechanic), smoke bomb type arrows, and obviously straight up combat. They don't rule out combat as a viable means of getting out of a sticky situation, but they do say that the average player shouldn't be able to do it, whatever that means.

WTF they didn't hire Stephen Russel for the voice of Garrett? Fuuuuuuuuuu Trailer looks good though.

Well, they said it would be light on supernatural; I don't think they altogether ruled it out. Thief 1-3 had some pretty over-the-top high fantasy stuff. I could be misreading it, but I took it to be more like the beginning of Game of Thrones (Song of Ice and Fire) where magic is around but not overt and largely rumored rather than in your face with giant spiders, zombies, and dinosaurs like in the previous Thiefs.