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I was impressed with the early Thick as Thieves build I saw in a hands-off game session at Summer Game Fest – but despite the fact that Deus Ex creator Warren Spector's new PvPvE game seems to offer compelling, magical intrigue in its early 20th century setting, I couldn't stop thinking about cheese.
Developer OtherSide Entertainment's lead producer Samantha Stetler explained to me that her coworkers and fellow playtesters were obsessed with fighting over a Baldur's Gate 3-style, chunky cheese wheel you could pick up in Thick as Thieves; you play as one of three thieves planning clever Ocean's 11 heists, so there are jewels and other stacks of loot you can creep out of a mission with, but the cheese seemed most appealing to me, too.
While demonstrating her character's ability – each rough-and-tumble Brit you can play features a special move, like zipline agility – Stetler snuck around an old manor picking locks, impersonating cube-headed security guards, and even using magic to deploy a cute pickpocket fairy to lift keys. But in the bottom right corner of her screen, where she could stay updated with her rival thieves' movements, a stalemate was unfolding: first one player grabbed the cheese wheel, then the other took it back, then the other yanked it away, and so on.
Article continues belowThe gameplay Stetler was demonstrating was completely charming – a more PG, Dreamworks movie take on the 1998 stealth game Thief: The Dark Project, I think. But I admit to feeling a little checked out about it until Stetler herself found a finely aged cheese in one of Thick as Thieves' multiple possible, randomized missions.
It was a good cheese, a cheese that could inspire men to scale mountains – or to unrepentantly betray their friends, as was the case here.
