Gloomwood - Gameplay by Thief Fans' Great Hope
Extensive gameplay from Gloomwood, a stealth game inspired by the first two installments of the Thief series, has appeared online. This is a rare occasion where an E3 2021 game shows off clean gameplay and looks promising.
Last night at E3 2021, there was a presentation hosted by PC Gamer magazine. A small part was devoted to games from the offer of New Blood Interactive. The publisher was only given 90 seconds to showcase their product, but then the web released extensive gameplay from Gloomwood, the company's most exciting upcoming game.
One of the editors of PC Gamer magazine called this project the best game he saw at E3 2021, and I completely agree with this opinion. The gameplay shows that the Dark Forest has a good chance to win the hearts of not only fans of the first two parts of the Thief series (which is the main inspiration for the authors), but also fans of stealth and the immersive simulation genre in general.
Instead of playing with trailers, the footage from "Gloomwood" simply shows five minutes of continuous gameplay. Thief's inspiration is obvious, but it's not just a clone. The game has its own personality and many unique solutions, such as the presence of firearms or the promising inventory system in which the character opens a large suitcase on the floor without pausing the game, and we have to pull things out of it. and manipulate objects to make sure our enemies don't notice us.
In addition, the gameplay showed a lot of progress made since last year's demo. The graphics are definitely nicer. It still has a visual style based on the Dark Engine (the technology behind Thief 1-2 and System Shock 2, among others), but the quality of the lighting has been improved and the maps are decidedly more interactive than in the demo.
I won't try to convince you here that Gloomwood will be a great bestseller, but for Thief fans this could be a real treat. In addition, I hope that it will be successful and become one of the games that will start the rebirth of the immersive simulation genre. The high cost of production has practically killed this category among AAA products (so there is no chance of new versions of Dishonored or Deus Ex at the moment), but indie developers have a chance to fill the gap. Unfortunately, we still don't know when Gloomwood will hit the market. However, lead designer Dillon Rogers promises that we will see a lot of new material from the game soon.