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Eidos Montreal on tailoring Thief to your play style

"There's a lot of other options the player can choose to turn on and off, depending on the kind of experience he wants to have."

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At a recent event, GR-UK's Gillen McAllister catches up with Thief's producer, Joe Khoury, and they discuss how the series reboot is shaping up.

Khoury reveals some details regarding the background of lead character Garrett: "Basically he goes through an experience in the beginning of the game where loses someone that he really cares a lot about, so we've added more depth to the character."

The game's producer then continues: "He works alone, but he does develop certain relationships with some of the characters who are directly tied with this [the revolution that acts as backdrop to the story].... Garrett won't be the person to say "I'll lead the charge", but at the same time he says "Ok, I'll use my set of skills to benefit me and the cause a little bit.""

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There are several notable features that'll interest long-standing fans of the series, no auto-health regeneration and optional Focus.

With regards to the decision not to have auto-regen health, Khoury said: "We want players to analyse what is available in front of them, whether it's AI, light or dark, the space that he's moving into, and if we want the player to be really intelligent about his actions we've got to make sure that he manages his health accurately."

"To him [Garrett], the best approach to what he does is; in and out without anyone knowing you were there. So for that to happen, you want the player to walk into a situation, analyse the risks, analyse what paths are available to him, and then proceed," he added.

The addition of Focus is a more controversial issue: "In context with the story, Focus is something that Garrett inherits early into the game, in the same accident where he loses his protege. He inherits this ability but at the same time it allows him to distinguish items of interest whenever he triggers it on. So yes, there's a lot of other options aside from Focus that the player can choose to turn on and off, depending on the kind of experience he wants to have. Going back to the big Thief fans, I think they love to explore, they love to discover things, they love to look at every corner, and try to figure things out for themselves. That's been really important to us as well."

With Thief set to launch on both current and next-gen consoles, we asked how the different versions would differ: "We want the experience to be fantastic on all platforms, but of course for next-gen and for PC we can up the resolution of the graphics, we can get higher resolution textures, visual effects are a little bit boosted. Loading times are improved, for sure, streaming times are improved, but at its most basic sense we want the experience to be of... the same experience to be gathered using any platform you decide to play it on."

We spent a couple of hours getting hands-on with Thief before our chat with Joe, and you can read our hands-on impressions right here. The latest gameplay trailer can also be seen below.

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ThiefScore

Thief

REVIEW. Written by Mike Holmes

"Yes, it's got issues, and no, it's not perfect, but underneath some suffocating design decisions is a really solid game."



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