Thief Story Trailer Introduces Your Sketchy Friend Basso

Today Eidos Montreal released the first in a series of character-driven trailers for their stealth adventure Thief. The inaugural video introduces us to Basso, a former safe-cracker who now works as a fence.

Basso claims to have slept in, robbed, or pissed on every building in the City. Bragging about pissing in public places seems strange but the point is, this man's seen some shit. After years and years of living in the gutter, he's not the most optimistic person you'll encounter.

"Let me tell you about this city," Basso says in his voiceover for the trailer. "If it were my mother, I would say I'm adopted. If it were a woman, you'd find me in the nearest monastery. To call it a friend is the fastest way to an early grave."

The City's going through an especially rough time during the events of this game. A sickness known as the Gloom is decimating its residents. The sick receive no help from Baron Northcrest, the tyrannical ruler of the City. He's apparently only concerned with keeping he and his wealthy friends in power. Basso expresses hope in the trailer that Garrett, master thief, can shake up this miserable status quo.

Basso's connections to the underworld are invaluable to Garrett. He helps the thief organize his latest jobs and presumably sells him the gadgets that he needs to pull off his heists. Perhaps most importantly, he can give Garrett money for all of the various valuables he, uh, acquires during his nightly adventures.

Through the Thief series, Garrett's generally been the only memorable character. I can't remember anyone else having much of a presence across multiple games. Basso was apparently in the first two Thief games but didn't have much of a presence; he was just this faceless dude (figuratively and literally - graphics were pretty bad back then) who you did favors for. In fact, I forgot he was in those games until I looked him up just now. This new series of trailers suggests that Eidos is trying to flesh out the cast around Garrett bit more, though. Hopefully a more vivid supporting cart will result in a much more effective story.

Thief will launch on February 25th in North America and then on the 28th elsewhere in the world. Eidos is developing the game for PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. If you pre-order the game, you'll get access to an exclusive bank heist inspired by a Thief 2 mission.