Thief Will No Longer Support An XP System


Thief 4

And it is gone. One of the features that frustrated a lot of Thief fans is no longer available in the upcoming reboot of this classic title. As it was revealed on EIDOS Montreal’s latest Q&A, Thief will no longer support an XP system due to the backlash it received. That’s the spirit EIDOS Montreal. An XP system was never necessary in games like Thief, so kudos for listening your fan base.

As Game Director Nic Cantin and Lead Level Designer Daniel Windfeld Schmidt revealed when they were asked why this XP system was removed:

Nic: At first, we wanted to outline the progression of the player with XP, but it was reducing our motivation to steal. The main goal of a thief should be to gain loot. Garrett is already the Master Thief, so we saw no need to have XP as a core mechanic.

Daniel: We wanted to put emphasis on stealing things, and put the rewards on the stealing aspect. We want to allow the player to decide the “how to” – we shouldn’t judge how the player wants to achieve their goal, only reward them for achieving it.”

This means that the goal in the new Thief title will be to use gold to buy elements to progress, which will obviously encourage the player to steal. As Nic noted, the player will be able to ‘choose how to spend money, for more stealthy or more aggressive tools.

Needless to say that we’re excited with this change, and we’re pretty sure that most of Garrett’s fans will appreciate this design change.

Thief is planned for a February 25th release on PC, X360, PS3, PS4 and Xbox One.

Enjoy!

Thief - Gameplay Trailer