Eidos Montreal On Redesigning Garrett For The New Thief

“He’s a fairly closed individual. We know him as an independent. He doesn’t trust a lot of people, only himself. He doesn’t talk to a lot of people but he’s very talkative inside his own head. He’s a funny guy, but he doesn’t necessarily crack a lot of jokes.”

That’s how Thief Narrative Director, Steven Gallagher, describes Eidos Montreal’s take on Garrett, the series’ protagonist, to Game Informer magazine. Gallagher adds: “This all sounds like somebody’s not going to be a lot of fun to play a game with, but to be honest, the contrast that that can bring in the way we tell this narratively, it brings him some really interesting texture.”

Meanwhile, the game’s director, Nicolis Cantin, who was heavily involved with Garett’s new look, shares that he borrowed certain inspirations from Assassin’s Creed’s Altair, which is a character that Cantin was also involved in designing. The goal with Garrett, he says, was to redesign him for a modern audience.

“We turned down all the things that feel gothic… for example, black nails and things like that,” Cantin reveals. “We don’t have that any more. We want to make him a little more mainstream on that. But yes, he’s a dark character. We don’t want to say he’s gothic or anything, even though the Victorian period feels really gothic.”

“We can define him as a ‘master thief,’ so this puts him at the top of his trade,” Gallagher says in a separate quote. “The best there ever was. This means that for Garrett, a lot of the stuff that gets him out of bed in the evening, it’s about the challenge. I think he puts a lot of time and effort into how people are thinking, how they might react.”