LucasForums - THIEF (aka THI4F)

Things have been clarificationisated since. The biggest dump of information from the GI article we have atm is here.

To copy-paste their deliciously pleasing informations,

Quote:

Overview/opening sequence

- Garrett has been away from his hometown for a long time
- When he returns to City, he sees “a city of melting prosperity”
- Iron-fisted Baron now rules the city
- Baron crushes City’s citizens through militarized watch
- Good fortune only for the elite
- Garrett views the political chaos as a chance to get rich
- Not concerned with being the hero
- Garrett finds his way into the Stonemarket district in the back of a covered wagon
- Watches the bodies of plague victims piling up on street corners
- Guards quell small civil disputes with force
- Wealthy men stroll by with bodyguards
- “Would-be revolutionaries preach to deaf ears while men in stockades slowly waste away”
- Garrett becomes interested in a conversation between two guards talking about Eastwick, a wealthy man
- Theodore Eastwick: principle architest, richest man
- Baron commissioned Eastwick to build many of the City’s Gothic structures
- Guards say that Eastwick is visiting a pleasure house on the other side of the size
- Eastwick going to the House of Blossoms
- This is an underground cathouse serving the elite
- Gates close at midnight
- Garrett crouches behind crates, which results in a dark tint covering the screen to show that you’re hiding safely
- Bottle thrown to distract the guards, and then Garrett climbs up a pipe up the side of a building
- Garrett moves across roofs, bounds over merchant tables and under wagons, and dives through a nearby building window
- Eastwick passes through the secret entrance in the House of Blossoms
- All of the above is not a cut-scene

Next sequence

- Garrett enters the House of Blossoms undetected
- Area has rich patrons, scantily clad women who saunter by and flirt with men
- Xiao Xiao, a transvestite, greets guests
- Garrett loses Eastwick in a crowd
- Xiao Xaio notes that there is more security than usual and that anyone with something valuable can store it in his office strongbox
- Use Xiao Xiao’s logbook to determine where Eastwick has gone
- Garrett wants to get his hands on whatever is in the storngbox, so he heads to Xiao Xiao’s room
- Logbook shows Garrett which bedroom Eastwick is in
- Garrett then decides to lighten Xiao Xiao’s strongbox
- This results in a lockpicking mini-game
- Align the tumblers of a lock until it opens
- Before Garrett can crack the lock, Xiao Xiao enters

Another sequence

- Xiao Xiao enters, but Garrett rolls into a darkened corner
- Xiao Xiao doesn’t detect Garrett
- Xiao Xiao leaves to deal with a situation with one of his girls
- Garrett opens the chest and takes out a jewel-encrusted heirloom
- Garrett can’t leave the room since Xiao Xiao is just outside the door talking with the girl
- Secret button slides the wall to slide open and reveals a hidden passageway
- Garrett comes across Eastwick’s room by using the House of Blossoms’ network of backdoors
- Garrett enters the room and takes a medallion
- He then uses Focus to look at the wall Eastwick is examining
- Focus shows a mysterious symbol written on the wall in blue energy
- Symbol corresponds to one of the runes written on the medallion
- Garrett turns a band of the medallion to line up that rune with an arrow, but the medallion then begins to glow with a similar blue energy
- Four adjacent rooms show four more symbols to line up
- After the last symbol is in place, the medallion whirls and spins
- Soon after, Eastwick notices that he has been robbed and calls for help
- Garrett hears through the wall that Xiao Xiao is ordering guards to search everywhere

Last sequence

- Guards are scattered everywhere
- Garrett heads to one of the House of Blossoms’ back rooms
- He had heard two serving girls talking about a catastrophe that followed after the ventilation system was accidentally overfilled with opium
- Garrett dumps the house’s stock of opium into vents and cracks open the flue
- Everyone is sent into a deep sleep as the vapors flood the House of Blossoms
- Garrett has to hold his breath and move quick or he’ll see the same fate
- Guards circle Garrett, who retreats into the opium fog and uses his bow to fire an arrow at a statue hanging above a doorframe
- Statue falls and crushes two guards
- Another guard pins Garrett against a wall
- To buy time, Garrett enters Focus mode
- Garrett grabs the guard’s arm, jerks it back behind his soldier, eventually falls against the stone floor
- Garrett breaks free from the final guards, grapples onto a nearby vent, and rapples down into the depths of City’s sewers

AI

- Garrett isn’t a fighter
- Fighting against four or more guards in combat won’t go well
- Guards and other NPCs are aware of the level design, so they know where a person might try to hide
- Guards understand the topography of the level and which areas could be useful for hiding
- Different NPCs will look for Garrett in different ways

Gameplay mechanics

- Navigation beacon shows players where to go
- Dev. team wants players to explore environments as they see fit
- Multiple entrances and exists in each room
- Multiple options available for stealth approach
- “Focus” mechanic: has many uses, including being able to aid Garrett’s vision as he navigates through open levels
- Focus lights up the screen and highlights pipes you can climb + candles you can put out to make the room darker
- Can upgrade Focus
- Doing so will give you a bigger radius of things to see
- Fingerpints system: gives you hints on which drawers are best to look in
- Every drawer is accessible
- Can pickpocket
- Use Focus while pickpocketing to slow time and swipe up to three times as many items from others
- Can spend money to upgrade supplies and equipment at the end of each mission
- Various artifacts are scattered throughout the game’s levels
- Can use these to decorate Garrett’s hideout
- Garrett is motivated by the thrill of stealing something that others can’t take
- Focus will show a number of attack points on enemies
- Can select a point (like the chest) to do a quick push that will buy him more time to dash off into the shadows
- Can also string together a number of points to perform a more debilitating attack
- Team is trying to find a balance between making combat enjoyable and allowing players to enter combat if they want
- Major mechanics are in place

Tools

- Blackjack: use when sneaking up behind guards to knock them unconscious
- Bow: powerful, can be used outside of combat (ex: fire at a bottle in another room to lure a guard away, trigger a switch to lock the guard inside)
- Specialty Arrows: different uses; dry-ice arrow can be used to snuff flames from far away; smoke-starter arrow: cover and a distraction
- Claw: grapple attaches to certain points

General

- Garrett design made by game director Nicolas Cantin
- Garrett’s scar represents that his past has left long-lasting effects on his life
- Eidos being vague about how faithful the team is remaining to the original Thief lore
- Many of the series’ magical elements will be toned down
- “Eidos-Montreal compares game development to a high-speed train collision between art and technology.”
- Team was kept small and “stayed within the concept phase of development for a longer period of time.”
- The staff experimented with featuring a new character, making it a third-person game involving either tactical gameplay or environmental clambering (like Assassin’s Creed)
- “At one point in development, the game had so many third-to-first-person transitions that the constant camera shifting was making people sick.”
- Many experiments during first three years of development

It does sound unsettlingly like Dishonored, but this game has been in development for at least as long (actually, considering when Dishonored was announced, that game may have been made and wrapped up within Thief's development schedule).

All in all, it's good to hear it's staying true for the most part, Dishonored flashbacks notwithstanding. "Garrett is not a fighter" makes me happy. The closest we have to combat is that he can use his crossbow, knock out with his blackjack and debilitate using Focus. I'm also excited by the way Garrett uses his environment to his advantage, I don't actually recall the environment being that usable in the previous Thief games.