Oh, no. I am feeling a bit sport journalist’s regret on this one. What was so essential, a decade in the past, that I could not get behind a flawed however basically trustworthy Thief sport? What might need occurred if I might devoted all my energies to pumping the bellows within the route of its lukewarm response at launch, persuading friends and punters to offer Eidos Montreal’s stealth sequel a good shake? Possibly we would not have waited til now for the whiff of a follow-up, within the type of VR spin-off Legacy of Shadow.
As ever, context is all the pieces. 2014 was stuffed stuffed with treats. It was the yr of Titanfall, Wolfenstein: New Order and Alien: Isolation. In the summertime I stayed up all evening buying and selling arrows in Divinity: Authentic Sin, overslept, and blamed my absence at work on dodgy wi-fi. We had been busy, with unambiguously deserving video games.
Eidos Montreal’s Thief, in the meantime, had various components working towards it. Arriving at a time when stealth video games had been starting to look too area of interest for swelling triple-A budgets, it awkwardly bounced between meditative housebreaking and moments of cinematic bombast that might fill trailers. Ubisoft’s last-ever Splinter Cell, launched the earlier yr, was equally bought with shootouts and explosions.
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In the meantime, triple-A builders had been wrestling with the implications of full-body efficiency seize, a shift that disproportionately affected beloved stealth motion stars. Sam Fisher’s gravelly grandpa, Michael Ironside, was bumped for a extra physically-able youthful actor—whereas the unique Garrett, Stephen Russell, was swapped out for Romano Orzari, a veteran of Murderer’s Creed who may do his personal stunts.
“We in the end realised that holding onto Stephen because the voice of Garrett only for the sake of our nostalgia could be like desirous to solid Sean Connery once more within the new 007 films,” narrative director Steven Gallagher stated on the time. Followers apparently disagreed. Notably, each Ironside and Russell have since returned to the roles they originated.
To make issues worse, Thief’s manufacturing was marked by employees turnover and design modifications. It is arduous to know whether or not the inventive chaos was any extra pronounced than is regular for triple-A growth. However unusually for the time, all of those tales wound up within the press, making a temper of impending doom.
Then there was Dishonored, a religious successor to Thief launched a yr and a half earlier to crucial acclaim and hundreds of thousands in gross sales. Comparisons had been inevitable, however Eidos Montreal did not assist itself on this regard. Its Thief sport opens on a bridge stacked with homes, which may’t maintain even a snuffed candle to Kaldwin’s crossing in Dunwall. An early centrepiece mission is staged at a brothel, which in contrast to The Golden Cat, can’t be entered by possessing a fish and slipping by a grate. The story is even set towards the backdrop of a plague, which finds the ruling class stealing property from the useless. But Thief cannot match the devastation of Dunwall for emotional heft, nor Dishonored’s commentary on the corrupting affect of energy. Competing instantly with an Arkane firing on all cylinders was unwise within the excessive.
But in the present day, the context could be very totally different. The frontline of immersive sim growth has shifted to the indie scene. Deus Ex is useless, and Eidos Montreal is backup dancer for Grounded 2. Thief’s strengths, because the final of the right big-budget stealth sequels, have develop into far simpler to understand.
This can be a sport that deserves credit score for restoring the enjoyment of movement to Thief. 2004’s Lethal Shadows, for all its tremendous qualities, had launched a brand new clumsiness to the sequence in its rush to combine a third-person digicam. However Eidos Montreal gave Garrett a lunging, birdlike athleticism, pilfered from each Mirror’s Edge and Murderer’s Creed. It sacrificed a standard bounce key for a contextual ‘freerun’ set off, which turned out to be the fitting name. It was by no means enjoyable to mess up a ghost run in Thief II since you’d mucked up a little bit of platforming and plunged into the trail of a Mechanist fight bot.
Eidos Montreal’s different new contribution to the Thief moveset—a discreet roll dubbed the ‘swoop’—could be very welcome too. It is a traditional little bit of first-person ballet, in that it will look absurd from some other perspective, however quickly turns into second nature when darting ahead to alleviate a guard of their purse. Garrett is a dwelling reminder to not carry your cellphone in your again pocket.
Not often are you given an extended straight on which to stretch your legs, nevertheless. The arteries of The Metropolis are clogged with collapsed carts and closed gates, and probably the most direct path to your vacation spot is commonly a bypass that takes you through two rooftops, a gutter, and the bed room window of what may generously be termed a studio condo. Getting round is a continuing negotiation—one thing that reviewers bumped up towards, however which I’ve come to understand as a genuinely distinctive spatial Rubik’s Dice. Right here, navigational data is hard-earned, and to some extent that feels proper. If the Thieves’ Freeway was simply accessible, everybody could be utilizing it.
Among the previous turn-offs are nonetheless bothersome, in fact. There’s the girl within the alley behind the Crippled Burrick, whose voice strains had been clearly meant as a rallying cry to be delivered in entrance of a crowd—however are as a substitute yelled instantly into the face of some poor taffer presumably coated in spittle. There’s the vendor who provides you with water arrows, however is animated just like the Suave Dodger, with an incongruous theatricality and a backside lip that wobbles as if it is about to fall off. There are the home windows which can be actually loading screens, and actually fairly frequent. The scars of Thief’s growth are as seen as Garrett’s lacking eye.
However there are different hang-ups I’ve merely bought over. Does it matter that the sport switches to third-person for transient bouts of Uncharted-style pipe-climbing, or for the odd choreographed cutscene? If it is ok for Indiana Jones and the Nice Circle, the most effective immersive sim ever made by individuals who refuse the style classification, it is ok for me.
Whereas Thief’s foremost missions often devolve into embarrassing matches of Michael Bay, Eidos Montreal do in actual fact get what Garrett is all about. Very like Geralt, he is a reluctant shaper of the world round him. An aloof freelancer who talks loads about getting paid—however whose place as a voyeur on the sting of society makes him a greater arbiter of proper and improper than these within the thick of administration or revolution. “It is not concerning the cost,” he in the end admits to his fence, Basso. “It is who I’m.” New actor Orzari even retains Russell’s trademark supply, which splits the distinction between movie noir detective and a mumbling breeze, discovering its approach by the gaps in a windowframe.
This Thief reboot shouldn’t be even actually a reboot, however a direct continuation in disguise. The factions of Hammerites and Pagans that Ken Levine as soon as conceived could also be absent on the floor, and Garrett is sparing in referencing his personal historical past (“It higher be the Trickster’s personal gold enamel inside a jar on this factor,” he murmurs earlier than cracking a big secure). Nevertheless it does not take lengthy earlier than you are exploring a subterranean library coated within the iconography of the Keepers, the order of monkish students that when acted as The Metropolis’s MI5. The lore of Thief has lengthy been intriguingly hazy, and it feels oddly becoming that a spot like this might overlook its personal historical past—the information misplaced within the aftermath of yet one more nice hearth or epidemic.
Eidos Montreal even picked up threads from Lethal Shadows, which ended with Garrett catching a younger woman within the act of trying to pickpocket him. The scene was an echo of Garrett’s personal origin story, and implied {that a} new thief could be carrying his cowl in a sequel. Positive sufficient, in Thief 2014, Garrett has a younger, estranged apprentice named Erin—cheated out of her rightful position as protagonist, however current on the centre of the plot as a speaking macguffin. Our hero is even holed up in a well-known hideout—the Stonemarket clocktower, coated in scaffolding after our hero introduced it low in a earlier installment. Positive, the format and structure of The Metropolis has modified, however that is nothing new. If something, it is custom.
VR could be a sideshow, but when it results in one other correct Thief sport in a panorama with out Dishonored, that may be a contented prospect certainly. Again in 2014, Eidos Montreal’s Thief felt like a useless finish. But when this sport teaches something, it is {that a} wall is solely a immediate to look excessive and low and discover one other approach ahead.
