![]() Excellent world-building, not just in that the environment is highly explorable and implemented in great detail, but in that the city has a distinct foreign-metropolis-through-tourist-eyes flavor, and a history which makes itself known in various and subtle ways. In a city based on both high technology and magic, trains and robots and illusions, an innocent traveller gets swept into the center of a clandestine power-struggle which will forever change the city and how it is seen. The City looks like it’s going to be huge - I kept running into developer-placed signs that locked out many areas you can otherwise explore in the full release - and I’m excited to see what else is hiding beneath its gloomy skyline.Possibly Short's most polished work, and that's saying something. While not everything was intuitive and it took some time for me to adjust to Thief’s gameplay style (compared to the parkour-heavy action games I’m used to, Thief is deliberately slow), I did enjoy the two hours I spent with it. ![]() ![]() That led me to another switch that, despite it just being under a desk, only worked when you shot an arrow at it. A Square-Enix representative later said you’re supposed to see a long wire wrapping around a building when Focus is on, but it wasn’t working in the demo. Turns out, I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I ran around for a few minutes and used Garrett’s Focus ability (it highlights objects in the level you can interact with), but I found nothing. A ledger tipped me off to another gold stash, but when I reached the location marker, I had no idea what to do. Even though it was clearly within arm’s reach, I had to use my blunt-tipped arrows to activate it. Then I needed to look for a switch, which ended up behind a bed’s headboard. Since it wasn’t an exact replica of the in-game map in the pause menu, you have to flip back and forth between them to figure it out. In one room, I grabbed a hand-drawn smuggler’s map that marked a secret place where I could get more gold. The other two side missions were harder to find due to a combination of odd game-design choices and missing textures. The guards frantically looked around for the hand as I quietly escaped. I ignored them, cracked the safe (took me a few tries to finish its tough lock-picking segment), and went back upstairs to see that the owner had died. I snuck in from the top floor and worked my way down to where I peeked behind a curtain to see the shop owner arguing with one of the men. And with a handful of guards roaming around the building, it almost felt like a challenge level that was separate from the main game. I ended up failing all of them you get a nice gold bonus if you nab all three. One of these began because of a note I found on a dead body, which told me about a precious mechanical hand that I could find at a shop.Īs soon I as got there, I was given optional secondary goals - don’t knock out or kill anyone, remain undetected, and grab all the loot - that the previous jobs didn’t have. Others actually dropped clues that led to bigger side missions with more nuance. Some of these jobs were as simple as breaking into a room through a loose window and digging through a few drawers. He wanted me to steal a painting, a watch, a small mirror, and a pen. My first goal was to visit Basso, an old friend of Garrett’s who immediately put me to work. You’ll have to use both types to complete your missions. He has both high-tech arrows - some of which spews gas (disabling guards) and water (putting out fires) - and normal ones, like the rope arrow that lets him climb up to higher places. When a job is active, a small white circle on your minimap tells you where it is, but you can’t place custom waypoints on your own. ![]() Garrett also seems like he’s stuck between two different time periods. ![]()
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