Warren Spector and Thief’s game director are making a multiplayer immersive sim called Thick As Thieves

In this early modern metropolis, located between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool, a thief crawls across the cobbles. Illuminated by gaslights that couldn’t quite dispel the industrial gloom, they looked like civilians – rough, admittedly, but not so dark as to tickle the sword arms of any passing guard.

Until, they hit the thieves’ highway – following the grappling hook’s path up to the rooftops, from where they could see the shape of the city and the moon in the distance. Here, it’s a parallel world – the trees in the streets echo the chimneys, the hills in the distance echo the undulations of the steep gables. “We’re very proud of these roofs,” said Greg LoPiccolo. “It’s an amazing landscape that we put a lot of thought and effort into, and it’s fun to travel through.”

Back in 1998, game director LoPiccolo saw Thief: Dark Plan to completion. Today – 18 years after leading a similar project at Detour Harmonix guitar hero and rock bandAs well as other adventures – he is the game director of Thick as Thieves. “This is really an opportunity for us to do something unique and cool and new on the shoulders of something that is now widely respected,” he said. “Thieves have legs, right? People still talk about it to some extent. .

“Thick as Thieves” may not belong to the “Thief” universe, but it’s cleverly reminiscent of its namesake. On the roof, a glowing gem indicates our master thief’s cover level. Low howling winds provide accompaniment, like eerie choral bass notes – instantly evoking memories of The Dark Plan. Thief also appears in the mission description, which requires you to sneak into a library and steal a book of family secrets from a hidden room. It’s an uplifting tribute to its special nature, and it’s easy to justify the involvement of Looking Glass developers.

But what is unique about Thick as Thieves? The answer is in the title, you’ll notice it’s plural. As our protagonists survey a mansion, observing the guards patrolling the exterior, they notice movement among the black tiles on an adjacent roof. Maybe it was smoke from the chimney – until the black mass fired a dart in the direction of the thief. Warning from fellow players: This route has been taken, idiots. Try the sewer and stay out of my way.

The idea of ​​multiplayer Thief has been lurking in the shadows since the turn of the century. In fact, in the final months before Looking Glass shut down, its developers were hard at work reimagining the series as a cooperative experience. OtherSide Entertainment had the same idea when they first started thinking about Thick as Thieves.

“We talked a lot about heist games, where each player has a unique character,” said Warren Spector. “And Greg and David [McDonough, lead designer] Especially coming back and saying, “No, we can do PvP.” You put your head in your hands and think, wow, this is really going to be surprising. This will be something completely unique. That’s my stupidity: I don’t know exactly how to do it, but that’s why it’s done.

Ah, yes: Mr. Spector. The world’s most famous advocate of immersive simulation games and core RPS text director Deus Ex. After the closure of Epic Mickey studio Junction Point and a stint in academia, Spector joined OtherSide and led production on the ill-fated title. System Shock 3. He stayed there, overseeing not only Thick as Thieves but also Argos: Riders of the Storm, Another multiplayer immersive simulation game. He’s now entering his fourth decade of game development.

It’s rare to get to talk to Spector face-to-face, albeit via Zoom—he’s a Literary personand generally prefer to answer questions in writing. Personally, he had an approachable quality and, by his own admission, said more than he meant. His first love—Dungeons & Dragons, a game he played as a youth and for which cyberpunk pioneer Bruce Sterling was his DM—often appeared without prompting.

“One of the things about immersive simulation games is trying to recreate the feeling of playing Dungeons and Dragons,” he said. “Single player is great, but storytelling with friends is even better. So we wanted to see what would happen if a group of players got together and interacted with a deeply simulated world.

This is how Spector entered the world of field service. “Tabletop role-playing games have a continuum of life. They don’t end when you complete a mission. So we wanted to emulate that approach and make a game that has a continuation of life,” he said. “I played a D&D campaign for 10 years. I wanted players to feel the same way about Thick as Thieves.

You may also recognize the influence of Extract Shooter in Rogue DNA. Over the past five years, similar games Hunt: Showdown There’s a popular form of session-based infiltration in which you get a package and walk away – other players may pounce on you at any time and take the prize away from you.

“Thick as Thieves” has much the same structure. As an agent of the Thieves Guild, you go out every night with the goal of seizing rare treasures from right under the noses of NPC guards, while carefully avoiding or destroying traps, locks, and other security measures along the way. Meanwhile, other players are working toward the same goal.

Maybe you’ll ambush and knock out other players, stealing their belongings in the process; maybe you’ll avoid their attention and reach the exit without any confrontation. Ideally, you’ll get the goods your guild wants, or at least enough ill-gotten gains to increase your character’s net worth and reputation in the metagame. Between missions, each player selects a mission and follows a personal storyline.

“We imagined a game where a player could kick in doors, knock everyone down, smash display cases, and jump out of windows,” McDonald said. “The other player will be hiding in the rafters like a ghost and no one will even know they’re there. The two play styles are equally effective and will compete against each other.

This isn’t the first time a stealth-focused extraction game has been attempted. especially, The Hood: Outlaws and Legends Assassin’s Creed took place in Sherwood Forest, and the underrated Deceive Inc brings Slayer-style social stealth to the mix. What makes OtherSide’s product stand out, at least for me, is its commitment to “classic immersive simulation design.”

“Guards, safety, environmental rules, how characters walk, and how tools work—they’re all systemic, which means everything you do touches everything else and the world responds naturally to you,” McDonough Nana said.

In each session, the positions of enemies, cameras, and locked doors change with the objectives. The only way to guarantee your survival is to improvise. “We feel like this is our strongest conceptual connection to the feeling of playing classic Thief,” MacDonald said. “I don’t know how the mission is going to work, but I know how my tools work and I know how to use them, so I’m going to find my own way to solve this problem.”

In a way, it’s strange that immersive simulation games didn’t embrace multiplayer sooner. If this type of build is about bouncing variables off each other in unexpected ways, then opposing players are a gift—the most mercurial element you can add to the mix. “One of the things that makes Thief a success is the blade—am I going to get caught?” Spector said. “The introduction of other living people makes it even more exciting.”

“The other players’ intentions are a mystery to you,” Lopiccolo pointed out. “It’s not like Team Fortress, where your agenda is very simple. In this case, your agenda is complex, their agenda is complex, and you can’t predict how they’re going to respond. As we’re talking, I Spector clapped his hands in delight at the thought of using the equivalent of noise-making arrows in Secret of Thieves to send guards in the direction of a human opponent, trapping them in a high-pressure stealth scenario. . “

There are reasons to be alert. OtherSide’s only published game to date, Underworld Ascendant, was a spiritual successor to a beloved immersive simulation game that ended up being a disaster of bugs, disappointing Kickstarter backers. “We were focused on building a damn studio,” Spector admits, “but probably not paying enough attention to it.” This time, OtherSide enlisted the help of publisher Megabit, which could handle most of the business while developers Then focus on making games.

“It’s a completely different team [working on Thick as Thieves],” Spector said. “Bigger teams are better equipped to handle the incredible challenges of making immersive simulation games. Before developing these games, no one believed me – what we do here is better than most people in game development We have enough talented people to make it happen.

Spector said he’s probably the oldest person still actively involved in game development. Which begs the question: given the inherent difficulty of making an immersive simulation game, and the pain of losing System Shock 3, what brings him back to the trenches?

“I’m as interested in creators as I am in making games,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t say it out loud, but there you go. I have no filter. I’m interested in passing the torch, so the charade will continue.

Spector is pleased to see the rise of Arkane and the immersive simulation elements incorporated into The Legend of Zelda and Baldur’s Gate 3. But he left academia midway through his three-year tenure at UT because he felt there was still work to be done. “We’re in the midst of this young art form that, even 40 or 50 years from now, anyone who thinks we’re done won’t notice,” he said. “The opportunity to create a new art form or contribute to its development comes once or twice every century. How could you not want to be a part of it? I try to surround myself with people who feel and want to People who want to advance the most advanced technology.

“My personal mission is ‘Playstyle Matters,'” he continued. “These are not just words. I’m going to do this until people don’t let me anymore. But when I say I’m going to do this, I’m going to find someone who can do it better than me and I’m going to keep going. So 20 Years from now, if I’m still alive, I’ll be able to see what they did and take it to places I never imagined.