Thief is getting a spiritual successor in the form of Thick as Thieves. The project, which is being developed by an all-star team that includes genre legend Warren Spector, is a multiplayer immersive sim scheduled to launch in 2026 on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
Revealed at the 2024 Game Awards with a trailer, Thick as Thieves takes the basic principles of Thief, a landmark stealth series, but shuffles them into a four-player PvPvE game. It’s a stealth-action game where four thieves all hop into one mission and compete to pull off a loot heist first. While it’s not officially a Thief game, the project is being directed by Greg LoPiccolo, the director of 1998’s Thief: The Dark Project, at Otherside, a studio co-founded by Spector. That makes the project an evolution of the immersive sim created by some of the genre’s most influential names.
Ahead of its reveal, Digital Trends got a behind-the-scenes look at Thick as Thieves, which included a five-minute gameplay reel not shown at The Game Awards. The presentation highlighted how Otherside is looking to push the genre forward by combining a classic genre with modern ideas inspired by multiplayer genres like the extraction shooter. There’s a good reason for that too, as Spector told Digital Trends during an interview.
“My secret goal is that I want to make sure that immersive sims keep going and keep making progress long after I’m gone.”
Thief vs. thief
Thick as Thieves is a bit of a dream project for Spector, who says he has dreamed of making a multiplayer immersive sim like this for decades. There’s perhaps a reason it hasn’t happened until now: The two genres seemed incompatible at a surface glance. Even Spector, an industry veteran who worked on several influential games, admits that he was out of his depth at first.
“I have no idea how to make a PvP stealth game! Stealth games are about not interacting and PvP games are about interacting!” Spector says. “That’s the kind of challenge we want to take on at Otherside.”
It was only once Spector started assembling a team at Otherside to bring that vision to life that the project came together. The crew would include LoPiccolo on directing duties, as well as lead designer David McDonough, whose recent credits include XCOM: Chimera Squad and system design work on the next Bioshock game. After looking at a wide range of multiplayer genres, including battle royale games, the team eventually drew ideas from asymmetrical titles and extraction games. That gave birth to a PvPvE mix that neatly fit into the core philosophy of games like Thief.
“There’s this form of interaction, which Warren likes to quote: ‘It’s competition, not combat,’” MacDonough tells Digital Trends. “The thieves compete intensely in our game, but that doesn’t mean they have to fight each other. They could be competing for different things and all make it out with some mixture of success that means something to each of them, even though they fought fiercely. We saw that kind of stuff in extraction games. Our game isn’t as hard-nosed as a real extraction game with permadeath, but there’s clearly an appetite for this kind of more sophisticated, nuanced, thinking man’s multiplayer game.”
The premise is that players can choose from an array of thieves, each of which have their own special abilities and career progression. The Spider, for instance, is a female thief that can use a grappling hook to zip around. The story campaign is split into missions that players load into from a hub. Each one tasks them with some kind of infiltration mission that can be tackled in any number of ways as they hunt down loot. The twist? Four players are matched together in the same mission at once — and only one can walk away with the loot. That turns each 20- to 30-minute session into a game of wits as players can either try to knock out their rivals or indirectly eliminate them by getting guards on their tail.
In the recorded demo I saw, Spider had to sneak into a mansion and steal some loot. She starts by zipping to the rooftops around it and scouting the area for a way in. While she’s doing that, another player on a far-off roof sees her and starts shooting darts at her, forcing her to run and look for another way in. She eventually decides to sneak in through a sewer grate, wading through muck to wind up in the mansion’s basement. From there, she uses stealth to knock out guards, find clues, and crack safes. The team tells me that these missions aren’t static. Safe codes can change, guard patrol routes shifts, and players can approach them in new ways as they buy new gear over time.
Many of the core ideas of the immersive sim genre are present, as players have a lot of different ways to approach a situation. The multiplayer component gave the team space to experiment with new tricks, though. For instance, players can only carry so much loot at once. When their inventory is filled, they’ll need to drop some off into storage, potentially taking time away from completing the main objective of a mission. The more items players carry, the easier it is for guards to spot them. Sprinting can cause problems too, as that’ll leave footprints around the level that other players can see and use to track opponents down. All of these ideas help Thick as Thieves feel like a genuinely new spin on a stalwart genre, one that feels like a fusion of Thief and Payday.
Always another way
The more I speak to the team, the clearer it becomes that Thick as Thieves is an important project for creators who have dedicated their careers to the immersive sim. They see it as a way to bring the genre to its next level, staying up to date with more modern games without losing the spirit of the older games they worked on. LoPiccolo points at the “long chain of causalities” in Thief, connecting that to the kinds of emergent storytelling moments that happen in modern multiplayer games today. Thick as Thieves could be a generational bridge if Otherside plays its cards right.
That’s especially important for Spector, whose legacy is inseparable from a genre he helped create. For him, Thick as Thieves is a dream project in several ways. Not only does it realize his decades-long vision for a multiplayer immersive sim, but he also sees its approach to an ongoing campaign as fulfilling another dream he’s long had as a tabletop RPG fan.
“The campaign wasn’t something I initially thought of. It was initially a business decision, to be frank,” Spector says. “I resisted it, but then one of the designers at the studio said, ‘Warren, you’ve been saying you want to make a game like Dungeons and Dragons for decades now. This is just the D&D model!’ It was a forehead-slapping moment.”
One of my rules is that there’s always another way.
It’s clear from talking that Spector is especially invested in seeing the genre he helped build reach its next form. As the conversation winds down, I ask for his reflections on where the immersive sim has gone, noting that everything from Hitman to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (“Thank you for pointing that out!” he shouts when I label it as an immersive sim) seems to carry a bit of his mark. He’s proud to see so many games embrace the genre, one that he’s always believed in.
“It’s really gratifying seeing how many games seem to have been influenced by immersive sims,” Spector says. “When we were working on the early games, I remember that Doug Church, secret master of gaming, and I used to sit around and say, ‘Why isn’t everybody making games like this?’ I always thought it was the most mainstream thing in the world. One of my rules is that there’s always another way. If I’m not good enough at shooting — he said, raising his hand — try sneaking. If I’m not good enough at sneaking, try talking. There’s always another way. That seemed like an incredibly mainstream idea. And now we’re starting to see that I was right!”
Before we even formally start our interview, Spector runs through his history with the genre and throws in a surprising game as an example of an immersive sim: Epic Mickey. I’m surprised to hear him namedrop it in the same breath as Deus Ex, but he promises to circle back around to it. He does so in the final minute of our conversation, neatly tying together everything we’ve discussed with a bow. Spector cares so much about the genre because he sees a broad appeal in it that makes the genre so age-proof. Thick as Thieves is just one more step toward getting it in front of mainstream audiences that don’t even realize they already love the format. Whether it’s intentional or not, he’s living by his golden rule: There’s always another way.
“One of my secret ideas behind Epic Mickey was that I thought with Mickey Mouse as my star, I could sneak some of the immersive sim ideas into a mainstream game,” Spector says. “It was by far the bestselling game I’ve ever worked on. And a lot of that was due to Mickey Mouse, I’m not gonna fool myself, but I heard from a lot of normal humans that they got it. They appreciated the immersive sim qualities in that game. So, I’m pretty confident that the world is ready for Thick as Thieves and a game that offers them the opportunity to play the game they want.
“I think we have the capability to make this kind of game and make it as deep as anyone on the planet.”
Thick as Thieves will launch in 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
