While prowling the ramparts of this year’s Summer Game Fest, I rode a zipline to a broken attic window and snuck into a sealed chamber containing Thick As Thieves, the unofficial multiplayer Thief game from Otherside Entertainment. Also in the sealed chamber: celebrated Looking Glass dude and Deus Exman Warren Spector, who walked us through a hands-off demo of the PvPvE heisting sim.
I didn’t, if I’m honest, see much that wasn’t broadly covered by Jeremy Peel’s write-up of Thick As Thieves from last December. As such, I’m in two minds about whether to do a full impressions piece – this news article is testing the waters. But I did turn up a few objects of novelty. For one, the new multiplayer burgling sim features an ability that lets you pose temporarily as an NPC, as with the Semblance power in Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider. For another, it turns out that when you rob a joint, you can leave a knavish calling card for other players hunting the same treasure.
It’s possible, Spector told me, that you’ll be able to customise your calling cards, beyond just displaying your player alias. Being a fundamentally vindictive person, I already have a few ideas for what I’d write on mine.
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The earlier bird caught the worm.
The second mouse did not get the cheese.
The third anteater did not bag the swag.
The fourth raccoon did not scoop the loot.
You snoozed and you losed.
Opportunity knocked.
The real treasure was hopefully the friends you made along the way.
IOU one quest reward
Let me guess, someone stole your sweetroll.
Behind you.
Naturally, a topic like this demands the attention of the full Treehouse. I asked our recently recruited newsfiend Mark what he’d put on his card, and he suggested transcribing the entirety of this Seinfeld video into the textbox. James, our hardware Gandalf, came back with “didn’t expect weak foe”. Reviews reassembler Brendy had the pithiest and, I think, most obnoxious proposal: “first”.
But you, reader dear – what would you leave on your catburgling calling card?