2009 - Thief was originally announced in 2009, under the name Thief 4 (or Thi4f), and was confirmed to be in development by a small team at Eidos Montreal, under the management of the studio's General Manager, Stephane D'Astous.
2010 - Eidos Montreal expanded in 2010 and a second team were put to work on general multiplayer projects; whether or not Thief was amongst these was never confirmed.
The long delay between release of information led to widespread rumours that the title had been cancelled.
March 2013 - Thief (by this time the number 4 had been dropped) was officially unveiled for the first time. It was announced to be in development for the PC, PlayStation 4 and 'other next generation consoles' (i.e. the Xbox 720), and would be expected to release sometime in 2014.
The team made use of a brand new motion-capture studio in Montreal (view image above) to capture the game's animations and voicework.
The explanation given for the long delay by the team at Eidos was threefold:
- They started work on the project as a small team of just roughly 20 staff members and went through a number of staff reoganisations/
- As a reboot, the team would be undertaking a much more amibitious project than would otherwise be the case. On the one hand they had to reinvent the series, on the other they had to retain certain crucial elements.
- The game went through a number of redesigns especially at the early concept stages of production, even to the extent that early prototypes were borderline strategy games, and one prototype was in third person.
