Reboots seem to be the popular thing to do with games and movies these days. On the video game side we already saw major companies dig deep into their back catalogs and restart established franchises. While some (like this year’s Tomb Raider) have been fairly successful thus far, others (like EA’s return to the Syndicate franchise) generally tanked. While I’m not sure what this new obsession says about us as a society, that is a discussion for another day.
A recently-released trailer reveals that the Thief franchise, one of if not the de facto progenitor of the stealth-action genre of video games, is joining this developing trend. Little of the new world is known outside of the trailer but it appears intriguing enough. While the original Edios world was comparable to the early Renaissance, the new Thief seems to have taken notes from its most successful protégée, Dishonored, and returns with a steampunk vibe. Garrett himself has gone over a similar makeover, trading his classic deep hooded cloak for a leather body suit that conjures comparisons to a certain fantasy anti-hero from Poland.
At this point it’s still far too early to tell whether Garrett will benefit or suffer from the reboot craze. Whether he prospers from this resurrection or not, a few requests from a fan of the first two games:
- Do not blow off the story behind his mechanical eye: Pre-reboot, Garrett got his mechanical eye after the events of the first Thief. How he lost his eye in the first place was arguably some of the series’ best writing. If the new Thief is truly a reboot of the series, don’t pass up the opportunity to work how he got his prosthetic into the narrative.
- Do not tone down the difficulty: Thief was one of those games where Quick Save was your friend and fighting with the guards almost always ended in a quick game over, it was the cruel and demanding grandfather of stealth games. By all means give the player other ways to escape and get out of fights besides reloading their last save but don’t make stealth easy for the Call of Duty crowd.
- Keep the image of a living, breathing world: Guards stopped mid-patrol to talk to one another about current events or complain about their bosses, civilians and other thieves occasionally walked in on your larcenous sulking, and several fantastical creatures prowled the caves and sewers of the Thief world. This did so much to add a layer of depth and believability to the game world.
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