Eidos
Montreal's reboot of the respected stealth-'n-steal series is out in a
month. Here's what is right – and wrong – with the return of Garrett,
the master thief
Thief – the murky streets are filled with unexpected treasures. And also violence, of course. Photograph: /PR
As obvious as it sounds to say so, in Thief you nick things. You nick
a lot of things. Broaches, necklaces, wallets, candelabras – anything
valuable that’s lying around, really – all disappear into lead character
Garrett’s bottomless sack. You find some of these trinkets in the
oddest of places. One would expect to find a golden bracelet or two in a
wall safe behind a painting, but who on earth leaves a goblet on a
rooftop or a couple of coins at the edge of a pond?
It’s possible Eidos Montreal has left these treasures scattered
around its game in order to put players into the headspace of its
protagonist. If that’s the case, it’s an absolutely brilliant piece of
game design because stealing stuff in Thief isn’t just fun, it’s addictive.
After you’ve snagged your first five or six baubles, you turn into a
veritable magpie, filled with the need to obtain any shiny object that
catches your eye – even if it means potentially exposing Garrett to
danger in order to do so.
Victorian architecture and glowing lamps dominate the cityscape. Photograph: /PR
This compunction to loot is backed up by the game’s open-ended
structure and its seductive visuals. Thief is set in a gloomy urban
sprawl where the architectural schools of Gothic Europe, Victorian
London and Steampunk Sci-Fi seem to have collided in a mass of fog and
iron. Garrett, the antihero of the series since its 1998 premier, it
back, returning to his home town, which is now in the grip of both a
horrendous plague and a tyrannical ruler, The Baron. A palpable sense of
foreboding drapes over the city’s gas-lit streets and shadowy rooftops,
an effect that's bolstered in no small part by the flashes of lightning
that briefly throw Garrett’s shadow onto the walls and pavements around
him.
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As
sinister as all of this sounds, it becomes apparent early on that the
city’s darkened alleys and rooftops are Garrett’s natural turf. His
almost superhuman ability to move noiselessly through his surroundings
turns the skyline into his thoroughfare and makes every shadow inviting.
Garrett also has the ability to ‘swoop’ in and out of pools of light
quick enough to avoid detection and he’s armed with a decent array of
equipment including lockpicks, arrows and a crowbar to force open the
odd window. Stolen moments
From the evidence of the preview build I had a hands-on with, Thief
contains the odd brief linear passage, which helps move the narrative
along, but once Garrett is in view of a building that houses a valuable
item he’s after – whether it’s part of a side task or a story mission –
Thief’s structure opens up. Couple this loose framework with the
kleptomaniacal impulses instilled in the player early on, and the world
in Thief simply begs to be explored.
A great example of this came in a passage of play that occurred after
the game’s tutorial level. Following a bungled robbery, Garrett has to
flee back to his headquarters through one of the city’s mercantile
districts. As I picked my way across the rooftops, noticing one of the
streetlamps below me was on the blink, I heard a couple of guards
remarking on how beautiful a golden mask in the window of a jewelry shop
looked.
Well, I thought, since it’s on my way…
The jewelry shop raid showed there’s no set way to successfully pull
off a burglary. It was possible to enter the premises by observing the
nightwatch guards, taking note of their patrol patterns, timing one’s
movements to reach the shop’s door undetected and then picking the lock.
Alternately, I found after circling the emporium that one of the back
windows was open and it was possible to enter by shimmying up to the rooftops.
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Once
inside, I found that the open-ended nature of progression extended to
the style of play, too. To wit, players can proceed as loudly or as
quietly as they wish, although, they’ll find that playing to Garrett’s
strengths – moving stealthily and hiding from view – will prove easier
in the long run.
In my run-through I found one guard on patrol in the front of the
shop, but incapacitating him was easy enough. Once I’d helped myself to
everything that wasn’t nailed down on display, I picked the lock of the
window display case and found that the mask in the window that had so
impressed the guards was actually gilded glass – and thus, worthless. At
this stage I could’ve easily made my exit but I decided, since I’d gone
to the trouble of breaking and entering, to explore more of the shop. Waiting game
I’ll neither reveal what else I found, nor will I reveal any details I
uncovered about the game’s plot. Believe me when I tell you I’m doing
you a favour. The less one knows about the game’s story and its hidden
gems, the better time one will have when it’s released at the end of
next month. That is, if the developers manage to sort out a couple of
issues that, while not deal-breakers, are irritating nontheless.
Garrett’s inventory, for example, is mapped to the touchpad on the
PS4’s controller, but the way it’s been implemented renders it virtually
useless. Selecting items involved hammering the touch pad and while
this is irritating enough during sections of the game where players have
a lot of time to consider their next move, it would be potentially
infuriating if they’re under duress.
A plague threatens the clearly otherwise joyous city.
Second, I can report that Thief has a lot of beautiful loading
screens, and it's a good thing that they're beautiful, because players
will be staring at them for an awfully long time. Loading times feel
interminable and when they appear after a dramatic cutscene, they manage
to break the atmospheric spell the rest of the game is so successful at
weaving. Facial animations also look positively last-gen, which is
strange because the environments surrounding the characters are
fantastically detailed and beautiful to behold.
Here’s hoping Eidos manages to tighten up these flaws because they’re
sizable chinks in Thief’s armour. Without them, there’s a lot in this
game to admire and the pull of its world is intoxicating. Thief puts
players into the headspace of a light-fingered ne’er-do-well and drops
them into a city filled with trinkets to steal and houses to break into.
Even with its niggles Thief accomplishes what the best adventure games
set out to do – it surrounds you in a world you could get lost in and
then encourages you to do just that. • Thief is released on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on 25 February (US), 27 Feburary (Aus) and 28 February (Europe)
