Hardware News

Thief: Deadly Shadows Interview

Joe "OuTkAsT-1" Topolnisky

2004-04-22 00:02:00.0


HomeLAN has sat down with Ion Storm's Warren Spector and Nathan Regener for a quick chat regarding their upcoming stealth title, Thief: Deadly Shadows. Topics range from the storyline to new weapons. Snip:

HomeLAN - How important is the "sneaker" aspect of the Thief games in Deadly Shadows and how is that being incorporated into the gameplay for the third game?
Nathan Regener - It is a key gameplay mechanic as you might expect from the Thief series. Dynamic lighting makes it so that torches carried by guards cast flickering shadows as you creep through columns to evade them. Crates you stacked along the side previously cast shadows allowing Garrett to sneak by undetected.
Warren Spector - And it’s not just the lighting that makes Thief a fun, interesting stealth game – stealth is what Thief is all about. The AI is tuned to maximize stealth gameplay, the audio is tuned for that, combat is even tuned to encourage stealth (though the combat path is a bit more forgiving, I think, than in the earlier games in the series). Thief was the first stealth game on the PC and it’s always, in my mind, been the best stealth simulation around. Nowadays, there are plenty of games support sneaking, in an arcadey sort of way – most of the stealth games around are still designed to give you the kind of adrenalin rush you get playing a straightforward action game. Thief is a different sort of animal – it’s a game about tension, about realizing you’ve been holding your breath, a game where a single guard can be as frightening as a horde of alien monsters. And it’s all ‘cause of the killer stealth simulation.


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