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25 years in the past, Trying Glass Studios launched Thief: The Darkish Undertaking, and thus was born the grandparent of recent stealth video games. Thief perfected the style alongside Metallic Gear Stable, however whereas MGS popularized third-person, spectacle-driven espionage (and more and more unhinged Kojima narratives), Thief took a darker, extra intimate dive into the hearts of its gamers. And although the collection has been slumbering for years, it continues to resonate, with a thriving mod neighborhood and a era of recreation designers weaned on its iconic vibes.
Upon its 1998 launch, Thief stood in stark opposition to its twitch FPS friends like Doom and Quake, elevating tenets of immersion, reactivity, ambiance, and participant company. It charted the adventures of Garrett, a sardonic grasp thief quietly plying his commerce in a steampunk-meets-DnD world. And whereas it and its sequel, The Metallic Age, weren’t monumental hits, they’ve proved profoundly influential. Most of the authentic design workforce migrated to different studios, taking with them the teachings of their time at Trying Glass.
The stealth programs of Oblivion and Skyrim? Created by Emil Pagliarulo, Thief designer. The atmospheric, immersive storytelling of Bioshock? Conceived by Thief author Ken Levine. And naturally Dishonored, Arkane’s flagship stealth-em-up, owes its grungy DNA to Thief – which is sensible, as its challenge director, Harvey Smith, was a key designer on the unique collection. To say nothing of Deus Ex, Starfield, even Guitar Hero… the listing goes on and on, all overseen by ex-Thief builders.
“Trying Glass didn’t make Thief or System Shock by following a inflexible template, and neither ought to we,” says Dana Nightingale, marketing campaign director of Arkane’s hit Deathloop. “I’m continually charging the designers beneath my wings to treat the design philosophy not as dogma however as a college of thought, designed to be questioned, iterated on, experimented with.”
Nightingale typifies one other factor of Thief’s legacy: She started her profession as a Thief modder, authoring customized missions, and is one in all many such fan-turned-pros who now occupy the trade. 25 years on, Thief’s neighborhood continues to be utilizing the unique engine and modifying instruments to craft lots of of recent heists, from solo experiments to monumental, professional-caliber campaigns. These fan missions (or FMs) are all launched totally free and shared on the fansite TTLG, which has in flip develop into a type of incubator for aspiring designers.
Unsurprisingly, Arkane has attracted many such followers who’ve come up by TTLG, together with Nightingale, Jeremy Catlin, Anthony Huso (who created the seminal FM Calendra’s Legacy), and – notably within the context of the twenty fifth anniversary – Romain Barrilliot.
“We’re fairly tiny,” Barrilliot says of the Thief neighborhood, evaluating it to fellow 90s legends. “Quake’s [modding scene] is a fraction of Doom’s, and Thief’s is just a fraction of Quake’s. However as a result of the neighborhood is small and tightly knit, all of us need to launch high-quality stuff.”
Barrilliot sits on the nexus of all this, as each a Thief FM writer and a degree designer at Arkane. Beneath his TTLG deal with ‘Skacky,’ he’s also called the challenge chief for The Black Parade, a large Thief marketing campaign that launched earlier this month to mark the twenty fifth anniversary. Pitched as a prequel to the unique video games, it options ten new missions with a brand new protagonist, and has been rapturously acquired by each followers and critics. It’s the most effective type of love letter: one which articulates, by way of its personal building, why the thing of affection is beloved within the first place.
Enjoying Thief in 2023 isn’t cozy, within the exhausted method we check with video games like Stardew Valley, however it’s… homey? Amongst its many enduring pleasures is its crunchy ambiance, mixing industrial rhythms with animated work and noirish thriller. The retro aesthetic means each opulent mansion and haunted catacomb is completely legible, one thing that may’t be stated concerning the set dressing in lots of trendy video games. There may be an virtually haptic high quality to its sound design, with its crystal-clear propagation, and there’s due to this fact no want for gimmicks like X-ray ‘Detective Imaginative and prescient’ to navigate the world. It feels tangible. Concrete. Actual.
Right this moment, Thief stands as an enchanting anchor in time, a basic recreation that’s each attracting new followers and outliving those who grew up loving it. Although the collection has been dormant for a decade after a poorly acquired 2014 reboot, the elder statesperson of the stealth recreation nonetheless holds a particular enchantment, providing a considerate, thought-provoking different to live-service letdowns and triple-A hypetrains. If the present renaissance of successors like Gloomwood is any indication, the tripwire rigidity of an ideal heist stays its personal timeless forex.
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