Eidos Montreal's Stephane D'Astous believes the avid Thief community is going to be "very happily surprised and impressed" with what they have planned.
He explains it's way "too early right now" to talk release windows or content, the project has just left the conceptual phase. The studio is now expanding their "core team" by 40 new devs.
"We've been working on the concept phase for five or six months. The core team has delivered a proof of concept that was delivered to an executive meeting held in Montreal a couple of weeks ago, and since we got a full thumbs-up, we're able to announce it," D'Astous tells IncGamers.
"In the world of gaming there are mainly three phases – the concept, pre-production, and production – and right now we've reached our goals with the conceptual base, the story."
It's early days yet with the development staff only numbering at 20, but they're now looking to increase their staff roster with "artists, programmers, designers" over the new six months as they enter its pre-production phase.
"Obviously, the tough part is still to come, so the team will be ramping up, which is good news because even with the hard times in the financial world, videogames still have bright skies – at least in Montreal!" continued the Montreal studio boss.
"Presently the only asset that we're able to release is the logo, which we're pretty proud of as it's very respectful of the franchise and you can recognise it very rapidly, and once we have other types of assets we'll make them publicly available."
This new Thief 4 doesn't have any original staffers from Looking Glass Studios, they're all new to the franchise but D'Astous pinky swears: "we've done our homework." The team at Montreal aren't a bunch of rookies, they all "have a lot of credentials" behind them.
"The setting, the character, the story, the features – anything related to the actual content of the game, we cannot discuss for now. What I can say is that people are going to be very happily surprised and impressed," teased D'Astous.
"I think that we've put our finger on a number of things. Innovation and originality will be important, and I think it's going to serve this great franchise very well."
Click here to visit the official Thief 4 discussion forums, and get whipped into a mouth frothing frenzy.
