Thief III Preview
Garrett returns to ply his trade in Ion Storm's next Thief game, whic will feature intuitive stealth gameplay and stunning visuals.
Perhaps never has a thief had to go through so much to be seen. Fortunately, we've seen the new adventures of the surly master thief Garrett with our own eyes. Things seemed uncertain for a while after the closure in 2000 of Looking Glass Studios, which created both of the original Thief games, as well as a great many acclaimed first-person games, including Ultima Underworld and System Shock. Thankfully, Warren Spector's Ion Storm Austin studio was in a position to hire quite a few of the studios' talented developers and continue the celebrated stealth series with Eidos' support.
Thief III--the game's working title--has a lot in common with Ion Storm's other upcoming game for the PC and Xbox, Deus Ex: Invisible War, and indeed the two games are built on the same advanced graphics engine, so Garrett can now hide in dynamic shadows, including the shifting darkness created by a torch held by a guard on patrol. In contrast to Deus Ex's myriad player options and branching design, Thief III is a focused game that's all about sneaking into places you're not supposed to be in, stealing valuable items, locating important characters, and piecing together bits of information that expose an atmospheric story that's tightly woven into the gameplay. According to Spector, "Deus Ex is a Swiss Army knife and Thief is a scalpel."
One of the reasons Eidos would rather not put the "III" at the end of the title is the upcoming Thief game is intended to attract both new and old fans. Although the game loyally acknowledges previous events in Garrett's legendary career and builds upon this legacy, you won't have to be familiar with the earlier games to understand what's going on. From the beginning, Ion Storm conceived of Thief III as a game for the Xbox and the PC, and the game is being simultaneously developed from a shared code base so the team can quickly demonstrate a new build of the game on either platform.
Randy Smith, lead designer and project lead for Thief III, told us that while this cross-platform approach presented some technical challenges, it has undoubtedly benefited the gameplay. The earlier games in the series let players use many different commands mapped to various keyboard controls, but the same commands in Thief III have been reworked for both consoles and PCs so the game's control will be "simple, clear, and powerful." The uncluttered interface we saw seemed quite intuitive--some elements appear only when relevant. Only the light gem (a magical stealth meter) is prominently displayed at all times, a reminder of just how important it is to know if you're hidden in shadow or perfectly visible to enemy guards.
There is never any doubt that you're playing a thief, and although Garrett is a master of stealth, ambush, and escape, he's not your typical one-man-army action hero. He's quite the antihero, in fact. If he could have his own selfish way, he'd spend his days plying his trade and trying to accumulate wealth toward some hazy goal of retiring. But as much as he tries, Garrett can't quite keep from getting involved in events set in motion by greater forces. But that doesn't mean he'll follow along meekly, and he's certainly not one to pass up an opportunity to steal any valuables in reach.
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- Eidos Interactive
- Ion Storm
- Fantasy Action Adventure
- Release: May 25, 2004
- ESRB: Mature
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