(Thi4f? 4FS.) The giant rumour-phone they call the Internet has been a-rumbling with Thief 4 noises for many months now, and so it seemed certain the announcement was imminent. Naturally RPS’ enormous BFG-like ears had long ago picked up concrete information, but we couldn’t confirm it. Now we can. Confirmed. The press release (in full below) reports that the game is still at a very early stage, and is being developed by Eidos Montreal, who are also handling Deus Ex 3. They’re looking for new staff, too. Talk about labouring under the weight of expectations, eh readers?
Eidos-Montréal is excited to unveil its previously secret second title in development at the studio, Thief™ 4, the next instalment in the legendary series.
The original Thief game, Thief: The Dark Project redefined first person gaming and established an entirely new genre of stealth based game play. The critically and commercially acclaimed Thief series has won numerous awards and accolades including GameSpy Hall of Fame, GameSpot Greatest Games of All Time and The Academy of Interactive Arts And Sciences Outstanding Achievement in Character and Story Development.
Eidos-Montréal, which is also currently producing the much anticipated Deus Ex™ 3, has recruited the very best core team for the development of Thief 4. The team is comprised of industry veterans who have worked on an incredible collection of AAA titles and who each bring personal expertise in their respective fields.
“We’re in the early development stages for Thief 4, but this is an incredibly ambitious and exciting project for Eidos,” said Stéphane D’Astous, General Manager at Eidos-Montréal. “While it’s too early for us to offer any specific game details, right now we are focused on recruiting the very best talent to join the core team at the studio and help us make what we believe will be one of the most exciting games on the market.”
Development is under way and the team is looking to recruit the very best talent as production ramps up. If you are a world-class developer looking to join the talented Thief 4 team, visit www.eidosmontreal.com to submit your résumé or www.thief4.com to join the community discussion.
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Eidos Montreal better be damn good at sequels.
Retarded name. But my god, any shot at revisiting that world is super points for me. That franchise has the most interesting fantasy setting i’ve ever visited. Thief 2 stays installed.
I hope they revisit the open world stuff but do it properly. Honestly, people bash Thief 3 for its attempts at an open world but praise Thief 2 for “Life of the party”, which is the most open of the levels in the game. If done right, i think it’s the natural progression for the series, as long as the storytelling doesn’t suffer.
I’m off to submit my resumè to Eidos. It’s completely unrealistic, much like my attempt to be elected dean at the age of 18, but what the hell. Can’t hurt to try!
They don’t need to do a prequel. They don’t need a new lead character. There’s plenty of ways to keep the existing storyline going. Here’s one off the top of my head:
It’s ten years later. Garrett has been living in monk-like seclusion out in the wilderness, contemplating balance. His girl apprentice is grown up and acts as his liason to whatever the Keepers have morphed into. She’s been bringing him reports that something is mysteriously wrong in the city, but she can’t figure out what. Then she goes missing. Garrett comes out of retirement, just as grumpy and world-weary as ever. With rope arrows.
You want a new faction? Well, we’ve never heard much about the civilian authorities who run the city. Is there a mayor? A king? A patrician? Someone will be trying to fill the power vaccuum created when the Keepers lost the glyphs. Say they’re not very good at it and the city is falling apart. Or, say they’ve instituted a brutal police state. Say the Keepers are now a rag-tag resistance group and Garrett has to reluctantly put the band back together.
I could do this all day.
What i liked the most about the Thief stories was their depiction of a secret war. Deus Ex pretended towards this but it was always quite overt nonetheless. Thief really convinced me of a covert war going on in the underbelly of the city. I believed in that world to the extent that if there were books written about it i would happily read them.
My biggest concern is actually the first person camera. I hope to dear god they don’t stick with the third person.
@kafka7: “Before anyone gets carried away with the console-bashing/fear, may I just remind listeners that we went through this whole thing with the last one and that turned out ok, didn’t it?”
What? No it didn’t.
The good thing now is that consoles are much heftier than they were in the Xbox 1 days, so they won’t have to try to pack giant environments into 64MB RAM.
We knew it was coming. Glad it’s finally confirmed. I so loved Thief and Thief 2. Horrible name as far as the placement of the 4, though. It could be construed as being confusing to someone new to the franchise, but that’s not who this announcement was for. Talk about eggs in a basket with Deus Ex 3 and Thief 4 coming from the same dev house. I hope they have a good CM to handle the raging pulsing intertubes.
Apnea,
Uhm, well, there are very few people who could have told you that since, apparently, they’re not even in pre-production yet, or even have a team finalised to develop it.
Haha, dont get too excited kids. the ball will drop soon enough.
Beyond good and evil – check
Deus Ex – check
Thief – check
Now bring back Anachronox
and The Lost Vikings :D
I bet anyone on the forum £1000 Thiaf will replace the shadow sneaking with a simple cover system and implement regen health. Bring back the rope arrows! Ahh, the first two games were so good. Please just leave a good thing alone Eidos! Since Deu2 Ex: Vi2ibly Poor came out so many of our great classic PC titles have been marred by awful sequels. Looking at you in particular, Ion Storm and Bethesda. Fingers crossed for Ma3 Payne and Maf2a
Thief 4TW!
Well, no. Actually it didn’t. Not really.
I hope they don’t look at Deadly Shadows at all for how to do this game, frankly. Most of the levels in that barely measure up to ‘Lord Bafford’s’ in complexity. If they can’t bring back the soaring majesty of ‘The Bank’ or ‘Life of the Party’ these days, they shouldn’t bother.
But good luck to ‘em anyway.
Indeed. The original Looking Glass games are far more atmospherically freakier and generally just better than Thief DS.
I loved Thief 1 and 2, like everyone else. Thief 3 put me to sleep… literally. I hope this one can liven up the series for me … either way, I will be a launch-day purchase.
@Willy359:
Finally seeing the government that can keep the City together is a great idea, especially since (spoilers) the existing powers were crippled (killed or de-powered), due to the events of the last game. I imagine a daring patrician, formerly a Keeper, covertly balancing the remnants of the factions against each other for the benefit of the City.
Lord Vetin4ri, anyone?
Nice.
The AI will definatly need to be looked at because Theif 3 AI just felt like actors in a stage play. You are hiding in the shadows and a guard hears you and he’s looking right at you but then it’s as if the gaurd is thinking: “I know he’s there but it’s just a game so I’ll turn and walk away just to go easy on the lad.” And he turns and goes off down a corridor wistling like nothing just happened, waiting for me to catch up with him and twat him with my club.
Despite it all it did have it’s own kind of charm. Deadly Shadows was a solid game, imho.
This will be rubbish.
You can tell because the name is stupid. Its science.
If it has science, I’m looking forward to it.
Thi Fourf game in da series, comin atcha from tha c0re t33m !
Lordy. I suspect they knew exactly how we would react though: amused and pseudo-appalled, but not upset enough to actually lose interest in the game. Publicity++, I guess.
@Taillefer
Admittedly, it’s only a glimpse, but ‘proof of concept’ is a good pointer as far as these things go. There’s still two years to go in any case. They may still change their minds about a few things.
Seconding that. Still playing through Thief 2, taking my merry time and getting scared out of my wits. Demo and area loading of thief 3 put me off. Might try it if I ever finish Thief 2. The idea of Thief 4 could be great, but there is little wrong with the old gameplay. Further to that, the amount of quality fan-made missions and campaigns for Thief 1+2 is humbling.
Another gripe. Why do they have to create a new forum to garner public opinion about Thief 4 when the TTLG forum is bursting with Thief fans; you know the ones that create the fan missions, the darkmod, Thief 2X, that kind of thing. If it new forum is just for viral advertising, then it’s as subtle as Thi4F.
Sigh
@Supraliminal: Sneaks behind the guard….STAB!.. Not playing on expert then ;)
Well, obviously they want to control the official forum of the game they’re releasing — they’d look like utter clowns if the discussion board to which they directed the general public became a hive of moderator-endorsed anti-Thief 4 sentiment as more details were released about the game. I don’t know why you’re talking about viral stuff; they haven’t pulled any of that bullshit yet, thankfully (unless showing the ‘Thi4f’ logo was an amusingly roundabout form of ‘viral’ advertising, in which case I would almost describe it as ‘clever’ if I wasn’t sick of the idiotic “well it got u talking didn’t it?!!!” view of advertising. What could you call that, the ‘troll approach’?…)
I’d love to play the first two thiefs but them, along with system shock 2 and presumably anything else done on that awful engine are broken on my computer even with all the community fixes.
They run alright, but the thing is that the whole game is super bright and there are absoloutely no shadows. Kind of a problem for thief..
Please be good. Please don’t be a bloomy, blurry qte-ridden mess most games are nowadays.
Everyone who hasn’t – reinstall both Thiefs, get ddfix (and the widescreen mod) so they run properly on new systems, visit the ttlg forums and play some fan missions. I swear to Builder, some of them surpass the original campaigns in quality. “A night in Rocksbourg” series or “Ominous Bequest” and its sequel to name just two. There should really be an RPS article on those, the game deserves it.
@ James T
I don’t think forums are meant to be ‘controlled’. When the moderator is called VIKTORIA it does seem akin to viral advertising to me. Not saying they shouldn’t have their own forum, but if they are going to ask questions like ‘who do you want as the main character? discuss’ it would make sense to engage with the established community a bit. Many will visit their forum but seems a bit lazy to me. That and the question is ridiculous. Do they even know what they’re doing?!
@Pemptus
I couldn’t agree with you more.
I like Ubi Montreal and have purchased and enjoyed many of their “PC” games. But I don’t think there’s much chance they’ll make a Thief sequel that’ll satisfy me. I see little chance they won’t be simplified/dumbed down to a fun but ultimately unfulfilling game.
Fortunately, the original ‘Thief’s, along with fan-made material, as well as The Dark Mod will always be there for me. And if Ubi Montreal surprises me with something that plays like the originals and feels right on a PC then all the better.
EDIT: Please disregard my post, I obviously had mixed up Ubi Montreal and Eidos Montreal in my head.
@Solar
Yup. And TTLG’s Thief 4 anticipation forums has mirror topics of so many of those on Eidos forums.
fyi – Viktoria is a long term gamer and member of both TTLG and Eidos forums. Its coincidence that she is the main moderator at the Eidos T4 forum. Could have been any of them, including theBlackman (also a prolific poster at TTLG and all round awesome 70+ year old gamer and musician). But then people would read into the “Black” in his name too!!
I hope this is a reboot into another trilogy.
I can’t wait for T5I4F and then T5I46.
Note to all internet users. The joke in the above post, despite being as obvious as the hand in front of your face, is, unbelievably, totally original and best of all – cool.
Originally Posted by apnea
Can I be the first to tell you, with good sources backing this, that it will be a VERY action-oriented Thief 4, with plenty of focus on the cool action moves the protagonist will pull out while machine-gunning arrows and the like.
Sadly, I’m serious.
PS: By the by, I have the exact same bad news concerning another major Eidos game for this year; namely, DX3.
I’m wondering who ‘apnea’ is; ie: is she an Eidos employee, married to/living with someone who is or what? And whom are her ’sources’? If she has no legitimate way to substantiate her statement, then as far as I’m concerned, it’s just another T4 rumor and more speculation.
I find it rather strange that when even Eidos isn’t quite sure what T4 is going to be all about yet, that there are a few who consider themselves ‘insiders’ and quite knowledgeable about T4.
Just sayin’.
@Subjective Effect
Thanks for the info, was a feeling very cynical when I browsed the Eidos forum. Nice to know there is some crossover between forums, just frustrating to see blind repetition in creating a community that already exists.
Pemptus: you are dead right. I even have some stuff downloaded for Thief, I’ve just not looked at it. The problem, as ever, is time. We’re in dire need of that, or money, to let us cover more.
4FS, oh yes, I sure hope thát’s not the actual logo… Thief 4 definitely is one of the most promising announcements yet, same alley as Starcraft 2 and DNF’s pending release a few months back…
of course sadly it seems to be doubtful if we will ever see the latter released.
“apnea says:
Can I be the first to tell you, with good sources backing this, that it will be a VERY action-oriented Thief 4, with plenty of focus on the cool action moves the protagonist will pull out while machine-gunning arrows and the like.
Sadly, I’m serious.
PS: By the by, I have the exact same bad news concerning another major Eidos game for this year; namely, DX3.”
Hell no, you are way way wrong. Assassin’s Creed will be changed into an even more stealthier game when it comes to the sequel, why the hell would they change Thief into a more AC-like game? They didn’t with Thief 3 and they won’t with Thief 4, it would be plain moronic.
I wouldn’t buy Thief 4 if it’s some kind of action game with less emphasis on stealth, it’s supposed to be all about stealth ffs! It’s the one game, together with Hitman, that actually successfully knows how to pull it off.