Thief is out of the shadows; here’s our Thief review.
There are plenty of reasons to feel good about Thief. No, there are. There’s that Human Revolution pedigree at Eidos Montreal, for one thing – as Ion Storm proved first in 2004, there’s no better prep for a Thief sequel than a Deus Ex sequel. And then there’s all the bits in this latest trailer that look exactly like Thief.
But it’s not quite that simple, is it?
It’s the cutscenes that irk most, resembling those made across town at Ubisoft Montreal – but I’m not clear on what might take their place. Animated sequences like those dotted about Thief’s predecessors haven’t really been in AAA vogue since Mirror’s Edge, and didn’t do much to celebrate the form then.
But I remember wondering if Ion Storm had made a misstep in allowing a clear view of Garrett’s face via Deadly Shadows’ third-person view. A mo-capped performance like that below doesn’t look like Garrett at all – because, well, we’re not used to looking at him:
“There is no reward without risk,” says Garrett, like one of his game designers might. “The challenge is everything.” Yet our Steve worried there might not be enough of it in his Thief hands-on. On the other hand, Garrett now lives in a big clock, like Hugo. I quite like that.
Thief’s out on February 28 in Europe and other PAL places. Is four months a long enough time to change an impression?