I’ve had my eye onThick as Thievesfor some time, but at Summer Game Fest last month, I finally got to see a full match play out. Legendary game designer Warren Spector, who pioneered the immersive sim genre with games like Deus Ex, System Shock, and Thief, returns with a game that does something developers have been trying to figure out for decades: combine ImSim qualities with a competitive multiplayer sandbox.
Thick as Thieves has evolved a lot over the last few years, but it maintains the core spy vs. spy gameplay that makes it stand out. ‘Multiplayer Thief’ was a pretty compelling pitch, so I’m thrilled to see the game shaping up to be the next stealth hit.
A Sneaky Smokin’ Aces
Everything you love about the Thief fantasy is here. You’re dropped into a sprawling turn of the century city on a mission to steal a very rare treasure from a very dangerous person. The direct approach isn’t an option, so you’ll need to start by collecting some intel. Using rooftops and dark alleyways to conceal yourself, you move around the city, eavesdropping on everyone you see in hopes of finding a lead.
Maybe you find out the crime boss you’re trying to get to has been having an affair with a waitress, so you find her apartment and carefully pick the lock. Inside you find a picture of them together in a lavish bedroom - presumably his - with a safe tucked into the corner. Now you know where to look, the next step is figuring out how to get in.
It’s the quintessential immersive sim experience. You’re thrown into a living world and given all the tools (and a little magic, in this case) to figure out how to get what you want on your own. Different clues will lead you to different solutions, and every problem has a variety of solutions depending on the kind of thief you want to be. With the ability to pick locks, disable alarms, distract guards, and hide in the shadows, it’s up to you to decide how you want to approach each mission on your way to become a renowned master thief.
There’s just one wrinkle, of course: you aren’t the only thief in this town. Other players are pursuing the same things you are, so not only will you have to figure out how to break in, you’ll also have to do it before the competing spies, then make your escape without letting them catch you.
Luckily, you’ve got some useful anti-spy tools too. Disguising yourself as a guard might help you avoid detection or even get the drop on a rival thief. If you’re able to figure out where they’re going, you might even be able to sabotage their plan. Turning all the lights on somewhere is an effective way to slow other players down and make it harder for them to sneak through.
It’s A Thief Eat Thief World
There are no guns in Thick as Thieves, so you’ll have to rely on your wits to outsmart other players. OtherSide Entertainment has come up with some brilliant ways to engage in subterfuge, many of which feel like a natural extension of existing ImSim tropes. Say, for instance, you’ve managed to break into a safe and steal a valuable before anyone else. When you steal something, you leave behind your calling card for the next person to find, so it might be worth your time to lock the safe, close the doors, and cover up all of your tracks. That way, rival thieves won’t realize you’ve already been there, and by the time they get the safe open and realize they’re too late, they’ve wasted a lot of time. The calling card is a nice piece of emergent storytelling that tells other players that if you snooze, you lose.
The crescendo of each match is, naturally, the escape. Once a player manages to find the prize, they have to figure out how to make it out alive and, hopefully, undetected. For slow players who like to sit back and let others do all the dirty work while keeping an eye on things as they unfold, this is your moment to strike. Not all of us can be Nathan Drake after all, some of us are Rafe Adlers.
If you’re afraid all your exits are covered, you may ditch the McGuffin in a dead drop instead. If no one finds where you put it after a certain amount of time, the mission is a success. You can hide nearby to guard it, or you can be a decoy, and lead rivals away from the drop. Your typical FPS skill won’t do you any good in Thick as Thieves; this is a battle of minds.
The More I See, The More I Want
Since the last time I got a peek of Thick as Thieves, OtherSide has ditched three-player teams to focus on a pure, every thief for themselves game mode. I’m a little disappointed to lose the co-op aspect, but I also couldn’t really picture how a team would work together to pull off these kinds of heists, and I guess OtherSide couldn’t either. That said, the developer I spoke with said unofficial truces are not uncommon in their playtests.
The core gameplay loop looks like a blast, and the fantasy of competitive thievery looks fully realized. The question you have to ask every live-service game, though, is what comes next? How does it keep players engaged and coming back for more, and what do regular content updates look like for a game like this? This is the one of the hardest things for any live-service game to figure out, so I’ll be anxiously waiting to see how OtherSide plans to tackle the voracious nature of live service.
I was a huge fan ofThe Blackout Club’slive theater approach to storytelling, and I can imagine Thick as Thieves taking a similar approach to an ongoing narrative. Spector previously told me the immersive sim was born out of his love for tabletop adventure. He loves the freedom tabletop RPGs give players to decide how they want to play, which is something he emphasizes in all of his games. He sees Thick as Thieves as an opportunity to tell an ongoing, episodic story that mirrors a tabletop adventure. If OtherSide can pull that off, that’s something I can’t wait to be part of.
