‘Thief’ Reboot: Developer Says That Character, Gameplay Won’t Be ‘Mainstream’

Recently, it was revealed that the PC, stealth-oriented title Thief will be getting a reboot – which some are unofficially calling Thief 4 – and that it will release on PC and next-gen consoles sometime next year at the earliest.

While the announcement was met with a not insignificant amount of praise from fans, some of that excitement died down a bit after Game Informer sat down with game director Nicolas Cantin, who explained that the core of the series’ main character will remain intact, but the goal is to make the character, Garrett, appeal to a wider audience.

At least, that’s how the fans interpreted it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this led some fans to assume the worst – that Thief 4 might lean more towards action, and that we’d have yet another Dante situation on our hands.

If Cantin’s words on the developer’s website (via vg247) is anything to go by, however, there doesn’t appear to be much to worry about for series’ more purist fans after all. Here’s what Cantin had to say:

“It’s not correct to say that we’re trying to make Thief ‘mainstream’, or that we’re trying to make Garrett ‘less gothic’… This isn’t the case.

“I was referring specifically to a previous Garrett design we tried out internally and not Garrett from the previous games. Our early design went a LOT more gothic – with black nails etc – but we thought that this wasn’t true to the legacy of Garrett so we pulled it back a bit.”

Cantin went on explain that he intended to communicate that the team’s goals was to bring Garrett more in line with the original.

“Returning to something more true to the original Garrett is what I meant when I said we made him more ‘mainstream’, this wasn’t a comment about the direction of the game. I can assure you we’re huge fans of the original games and we’ve done our homework to create a game that maintains the essence of the original.”

So you can put down your pitchforks for now, Thief fans. All seems to be well.