Players will be able to move undetected or battle guards

Mar 6, 2013 10:39 GMT  ·  By

Stephane Roy, the producer working on the new Thief at Eidos Montreal, sheds some light on the way stealth and combat are changed in the series reboot in order to give the player more options to tackle various missions.

The Montreal team is making all guards in the game aware of the areas they are placed in, which means that they all search for protagonist Garrett in the places most likely to hide him.

This means gamers will have to be innovative in their approach and outsmart the Artificial Intelligence of the game in order to move around the world of Thief undetected.

The team uses a sequence set inside a brothel called the House of Blossoms in order to show how Garrett can sneak around, but players always have the option to go up against and fight them to exit an area and then get lost in the shadows.

Stephane Roy tells Game Informer that “We’re trying to find a balance between making combat enjoyable and allowing you to enter combat if you want, but at the same time not allowing you to clear a room that way.”

He adds, “We want you to play as a thief but we don’t want to force you to play as thief. You can play the game aggressively if you want but it won’t be easy.”

It seems that four enemies represent the maximum that Garrett can face at once, and crowd control can be essential to successful mission completion.

During combat, the protagonist can enter a new Focus mode, which highlights vulnerable points on the bodies of his enemy and allows him to launch quick attacks.

Players can use them to create room for a stealth escape or to cripple enemies so that they cannot follow Garrett.

The new Thief is set to launch on next-gen consoles in 2014.