Thief and Deus Ex are two of the best games ever made, and now the creators are back

You know what FPS is. This is Half-Life. This is Doom. You can easily list the core features of an RPG and point to some simple examples. But what is an immersive simulation game? Between Deathloop, Dishonored, and the 2017 version of Prey, the genre has seen a resurgence in recent years. However, there’s still a sense that immersive simulations can be anything. We know the stories in these games are affected by player choices. We know they should have RPG or RPG-lite mechanics. But “immersive simulation” feels like an umbrella term that combines other types of games. How do we move it forward if we don’t know what it is? In an interview with PCGamesN, Otherside’s Warren Spector, Greg LoPiccolo, and David McDonough think their new game has the answer Thick as a thief.
Start by going back to the roots. Thief, Deus Ex, and System Shock provide instructive descriptions of immersive role-playing games. What these games have in common is their developers, they all feature emergent and environmental narratives, a combination of combat, puzzles and stealth, and different ways to complete each objective. LoPiccolo provided sound design for 1994’s System Shock and starred in Thief: The Dark Plan. Spector created Deus Ex, was a producer on System Shock, and oversaw Ion Storm while developing Thief: Deadly Shadows. Together, LoPiccolo and Spector defined immersive simulation gaming in the ’90s and early ’00s.
Now, with Paul Neurath, also known for Thief and System Shock, and Macdonald, a former Firaxis designer who has worked on titles such as XCOM and Civilization (McDonough), the PC gaming pioneers are back looking to change the immersive simulation genre all over again with Thick As Thieves.
This is the ballpark. Thick As Thieves takes place in a gestalt web and steampunk city that’s half Victorian, half neon and noir. It is a session-based multiplayer game. You choose your thief, you enter the world, and you can choose between multiple targets. In some cases you can seek out and try to steal the most valuable loot hidden on the open world map – in classic thief style, to get the best clues you can search people’s homes or eavesdrop on gossip on the streets .
Other times, you’ll pursue your character’s personal goals. Each of the archetypal thieves (of which there are four) has his or her own story, and while breaking and entering is a great way to make money, to get the most from Thick as a Thief’s narrative you’ll also need to follow these character-specific arc.
But remember, this is a multiplayer game. Suppose you get a piece of good news, discover the place from afar, and orchestrate the most secretive of all secret heists. You reach the roof, open the skylight, and drop silently to the floor, only to find all the guards knocked out and the entire place stripped bare. This is how Otherside is trying to push the boundaries of immersive simulation gaming with Thick As Thieves. The team’s goal was to create strong, traditional simulation gameplay but with the added twist of opposing players.
“Paul Neurath and I, we started Otherside with the idea that we were going to take immersive simulation games to the next level and make sure they continue to grow and change,” Spector said. “I’ve been saying for years that the next logical step in immersive simulation games is multiplayer – a group of players interacting with the simulation world and telling their own stories together. Now, multiplayer games are bigger than Deus Ex. Or maybe Thief was more “popular” when it came out. I’ve been thinking about multiplayer The Sims for a long time. Thick As Thieves has gone through many iterations.
“One of the similarities between this game and the original Thief is that it really hinges on how we build artificial intelligence, like guards and how they see and hear, and how to adjust your tactics,” LoPiccolo continued. . “It’s very satisfying when you can make it work. But one of the coolest things is that once you plug in other players, things get complicated in these really interesting ways.
“In Thick As Thieves, it’s just you and the guards, and if they see you, they chase you and knock you unconscious. In Thick As Thieves, you might enter a mansion and find it empty because Other thieves have broken in from behind and taken everyone away. Instead, one of the more satisfying strategies is to lead the defender towards other players. Many classic stealth tactics were developed long ago that we can now use. Apply them in different ways.
MacDonald said Thick As Thieves will be a “premium game” at launch with “the content value of a game,” but Otherside plans to expand it over time. There will be new characters, new maps, and new missions, but the developers want to go beyond that and build on the traditional continuous gameplay model by telling a long story that unfolds in successive updates. Spector likened it to a police procedural. MacDonald compared World of Warcraft to Extraction Shooter.
“In most immersive simulation games, there’s a very specific, very limited story,” McDonald said. “Ongoing modeling can help develop not only gameplay, but also the meaning of past gameplay. A weird example of this is the way World of Warcraft expansions work. If you stick with the game for a long time, you’ll feel like you’re Be part of a great adventure.
“But this isn’t an MMO. It’s like extraction games, they have different definitions of success. The challenge is not only with other players, but also with the world. Missions start one way, change, and end another way. Extraction The game does illustrate these dynamics well. We’re not really an evacuation game with permadeath or roguelike stakes in every mission, but our attitude towards how a game should be played is similar.
This is also the difference between Thick As Thieves and its greatest inspiration. While Deus Ex, Thief, and the other Looking Glass and Ion Storm games will always influence Otherside’s work, Spector says he’s not interested in replicating the past. The light and dark, hide-and-seek mechanics of “Thick As Thieves” may come from “Dark Project”. Environmental storytelling, incorporating details of characters, side quests, and central narrative into level design, is the legacy of System Shock and Deus Ex. But the goal here is to do something with immersive simulation that has never been done before.
“One of our values ​​is that every game can and should have something new,” Spector said. “We’re not going to just repeat the past. That’s boring. We’re going to bring new things, like multiplayer games to immersive sims. Games need to move forward. We can’t just imitate ourselves.
“We borrowed a page from OG Thief, where a lot of the narrative was injected into the world, but it’s not like Deus Ex, where you talk to NPCs, learn about their ideologies, and in the end you decide whose ideology is right. , but also what you want the world to be. Throughout the game, you’re setting your own definition of success. I think we’re doing something that’s not common.
Still, Lopiccolo and Spector have extensive experience creating and perfecting the genre, and they have some past lessons to draw on.
“Stealth games are focused on not interacting with things,” Spector said, “whereas action games are focused on interacting with things. This tension, this challenge, is profound. How do you solve it? In a multiplayer environment, You can play as a ghost, so it feels like a thief, or you can play as a hunter and hunt down other players, which I guess you can do if you want it to be more action-oriented and faster-paced. .
“Some of the mechanics are very much based on lessons learned from those old games,” LoPiccolo continued. “Players will have some proven tactics that they can bring to the table. But now there are other humans. In Thick As Thieves, you have to be sharper and more alert because there are people who are going to do these unpredictable things. thing. It’s more dynamic.
“To me, the whole point of immersive simulation games is for players to collaborate with us to tell their own stories,” Spector concluded. “We’re not going to do anything that doesn’t express that vision. We’re not going to compromise on that. If I can’t make that kind of game, I’m going to stop making games.