Eidos Montreal Wanted Thief “To be More Grounded” Than Dishonored

Arkane Studios’ Dishonored was critically acclaimed for offering us an excellent, first person sneaker with tons of killing possibilities. And with Eidos Montreal’s Thief, the good times keep rolling right?

Talking about Dishonored to CVG, Thief lead level designer Daniel Windfeld Schmidt stated that, “They did an awesome job. But when we were playing it, it was not what we wanted to do because they had very arcade, magical mechanics with teleportation and so on.

“That gave the player a lot of freedom and a lot of empowerment, but the game was about killing people and about revenge and we’re like, ‘we just want to steal stuff!’

“A lot of Dishonored is about having a lot of different ways to play and combine powers. We’re more about the nuanced options: how do you affect the environment with the tools you have? How do you manipulate the NPCs to circumvent them?

“To really feel immersiveness you need to have relativity. This is one of the reasons we went for the mystical aspect over the magical aspect. We wanted to be more grounded and make it feel as if you’re there pick-pocketing.”