Pre-Thief: Dark Camelot Footage
"Hello, can you sssshchch - No turn the knob to the right... Hello? RPS? Yes, I think they've got me. Thanks, Kieron! Miss you! Hello, RPS. This is Craig. I accidentally fell into another universe when I left a spoon in the bowl of soup I was microwaving. Cara's chilli-laden recipe, combined with the destabilised positronic matrix caused by the spoon, dumped me in another universe. It's much like our own, only Kieron is now Prime Minister, running the country on a platform of Partying Hard, and the Thief series was never made. Instead the game it was before it became Thief, Dark Camelot, carried on development. Do you want to see it? Good. I'm transmitting the footage I have for you sssshchssscht- in the hope sssshchssscht better sssshchsssch understand sssshchssscht..."
I'm not really elsewhere. It was all an illusion. These videos actually come from former Looking Glass Video Director Josh Randall, who unearthed a VHS of his unseen work and kindly uploaded it Youtube. Thief was previously an RPG set in Camelot, built in the Stargate Engine. You would've played as Mordred, fighting a despotic Arthur. Merlin was a psychopath and the knights hired muscle. Not ridiculous enough? Your goal was to unearth the truth about the Holy Grail.
Behold, as the fogs of time part, see into what once was but now will never be.
It was a game that would eventually become Thief. It had one more step on the road, being title The Dark Project. This old, old, trailer for The Dark Project has much more of what we remember of the game that stole our hearts.
I think my dream job would be to go through stuff like this, to talk to developers about games that formed the basis for famous games, and to pinpoint where they took off in another direction. Like when Half-Life starred Ivan the space biker.