Thief is out of the shadows; here’s our Thief review.
Eidos Montreal are a studio founded in the fires of fan scorn. Nobody but nobody expected Human Revolution to be the Deus Ex sequel that its original creators couldn’t muster, and yet. And now, perhaps rightfully, they have to prove themselves all over again – show themselves worthy to fashion a successor to its closest genre sister, Thief.
To their credit, the team have stoically sifted through forum after forum, opening pandora’s box after pandora’s box, in the hope of finding the odd bit of sensible feedback. That’s lead to the abolishment of a flabby XP system, and now the casting out of QTEs.
In an incident known internally as the Night of the Long Cutscenes, Eidos Montreal ripped QTEs from the nests they’d made throughout Thief and threw them out on their ears.
Asked how the studio planned to implement QTEs without trampling on that most nebulous quality, ‘immersion’, community liason Valerie Bourdeau replied: “Easy, we’re not implementing them”.
“To begin with, there were very few instances of QTEs in the game,” said Bourdeau in the fan Q&A. “In fact there was only one in that whole hour-long E3 demo.
“However, given the strong reactions it evoked in the press and the community, it was an easy decision to do away with them entirely. So we’re not doing it. No quick time.”
It’ll take more than that to do away with the pervasive sense of dissatisfaction that’s followed the game since we first saw it in motion – but it’s good to know that Eidos, like Garrett, are listening out for any unusually heavy boots amid the pitter-patter of internet footsteps even at this late stage. Don’t you think?
Thanks, RPS.