Thief's protagonist Garrett is getting a major overhaul in his latest incarnation. While the original Garrett wore a simply hood and black shirt with padded leather armor, he now wears a large, billowing cloak, a long-sleeved black shirt, and a leather vest that more properly shrouds his entire body in black, leaving his arms no longer exposed to the elements.
Speaking to GameInformer, the game's lead designer Nicolas Cantin explained the reasoning behind his new design.
"In the beginning, in the conception, we had carte blanche to completely restart a new design of Garrett," he said. "We wanted to keep the main DNA of who Garrett was. We didn't want to change that much because it was kind of working already."
He explained that time had moved on from the original Thief games, and it was necessary for Garrett to do so, as well.
It's unknown whether Garrett's backstory will be retained, but in the original story, Garrett was an orphan-turned-thief who lost an eye, which was then replaced with a mechanical augmentation. New artwork of the character appears to depict him with a scar on his right eye, which imply that the character's origins have been retained.
"We wanted to bring him more for the modern audience of today's console market. He's now in the game doing more action moves and that's how we wanted the costume and the suit to reflect that.
"In the beginning he was kind of more gothic; we turned down all the things that feel more gothic. For example: black nails and things like that – we don't have that any more. We want to make him a little bit more mainstream on that."
Garrett had black nails? That's news to me. I wasn't really paying attention to his manicure.
Cantin went on to describe the new setting as Victorian rather than Gothic, and that Garrett's design should reflect that. The developer says that the character will also be fully voiced, and often talk to himself.
The new Thief game is set for release on next-gen platforms and the PC.
