Dominus

The universe of Thief is centered mostly on a dense, sprawling metropolitan complex only known as “The City“ so here is my vision of this industrialized and overgrown dystopian place, where magic and technology colide.

Bonus: 1920×1200 Wallpaper & High Quality Print

Marc "Mahk" LeBlanc

This week’s GAMBIT podcast guest is Marc “Mahk” LeBlanc. Marc was a programmer/designer at Looking Glass for most of the company’s life, and was one of the major voices in shaping the overarching design aesthetic of the company. This is partially what lead to Marc being a thinker, writer, and educator on game design, developing the MDA framework (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics) as a simple tool for creating emergence-centric games. I talk with Marc about his time at Looking Glass, how he remembered dealing with simulation, fiction, and emergence across various projects, and how those lessons and strategies have filtered out into the rest of the games industry after the company folded.

If you ever wanted to know how performance-enhancing drugs can help you in System Shock or what the exact difference is between the design philosophies of Deus Ex and Thief, give it a listen.

Before we go into hysteria trying to find details that aren’t there, we must remember that these are just Storyboards, which are very, very rough preliminary sketches for cutscenes. The details from the scene (scars, nails etc) don’t really matter, its more about the camera angles and lightning. Even the costume design might change over time, these sketches are from 2010 so I’m pretty sure this is not the final version anymore.
What I see here is that the characters are a bit stylized, which is not a bad thing in video games, yet it could be just the artist’s drawing style.

Things that we also know are that the new Thief’s theme is NOT Steampunk anymore, but Victorian and the main protagonist is still Garrett with a slight redesign.

Eric Brosius

This week’s podcast it’s Harmonix Audio Director Eric Brosius. Eric originally hails from Boston’s music scene. He was in the band Tribe along with Greg LoPiccolo and came to Looking Glass as a sound designer around the same time, working first on Terra Nova before moving on to bigger projects. He was one of the few members who continued to work on Looking Glass properties even after the company closed, doing sound design both for System Shock 2 at Irrational and Thief: Deadly Shadowsat Ion Storm. GAMBIT talks with Eric mostly about his approach to sound design, how he dealt with things like music vs. ambience, and how such choices became an integral part of Looking Glass’s aesthetic and legacy.

Mark LeBlanc reveals to GameSpy the story behind the creation of the now defunct Looking Glass Studios.

Marc LeBlanc — Senior Programmer: We started as Blue Sky Productions, but the problem there was that there was already a Blue Sky Software, as well a zillion Blue Sky companies in Montana.

So after the first Underworld game we went looking for a new name. The search coincided with a merger between Blue Sky (Paul Neurath’s company) and Lerner Research (Ned Lerner’s company). For a while we had settled on “Flying Fish Designs“, but we were working with EA at the time, and they expressed disdain for the possibility of having to write checks to “Flying Fish“.

So we had several company meetings where we hashed out possible names. “Nocturnal” and “Maurading Mollusk” were popular alternatives. I’m not sure who came up with “Looking Glass.” Eventually we settled on “LookingGlass Technologies“. We had considered “LookingGlass Studios“, but back then we were a very technology-oriented company, and thought that we might even do non-game work.

Then we merged with Intermetrics, which later became AverStar, and for a while we were “Intermetrics Entertainment Software, LLC“, doing business as “Looking Glass Studios“. Then later, AverStar threw us back into the sea and we became “Looking Glass Studios, Inc“.

Greg LoPiccolo

Greg LoPiccolo has risen to impressive heights as the vice president of product development at Harmonix, makers of world famous games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but he got his start at Looking Glass back in the 90s. Coming from the music industry (he was bass guitarist in the Boston-based rock band Tribe) he started out as music/sound designer on System Shock, eventually becoming project lead on Thief 1. GAMBIT talks with Greg about his roots in the music business, how he adapted to the culture of video games and software design, and how that has affected his approach to game development overall.

Ken Levine

In this episode GAMBIT talks with Ken Levine, creative director of Irrational Games and mastermind of the Bioshock series, who got his start as a writer/designer at Looking Glass. Ken was one of the main creative forces in the early days of Thief, helping to shape its eventual story, world, and core mechanics. GAMBIT talks with him about his memories of working at the studio, his writing and creative process, and how his experience at Looking Glass relates to his later work at Irrational Games.

Randy Smith

Part 4 of a continuing series, where GAMBIT interviews Thief level designer extraordinare Randy Smith. Randy created some of the most memorable levels in the Thief series, often bringing the more horror-inspired elements (zombies, ghosts, mysteries) of the Thief universe to the fore. Randy talks about his approach to level design and how it developed and evolved in the creative environment of Looking Glass before seguing into some of his post-Looking Glass work, including his role as project lead on Ion Storm’s Thief sequel (Deadly Shadows) and his indie company Tiger Style, makers of Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor.

Tim Stellmach - Laura Baldwin

In this episode GAMBIT talks with Tim Stellmach and Laura Baldwin. Tim was lead designer on Thief and Thief II, as well as a designer on Underworld II, System Shock, and Terra Nova. Laura was a designer/writer on Thief. She also worked in System Shock 2. Again discussion is joined on this podcast by Sara Verrilli, QA on System Shock and designer on Thief and Thief 2. The discussion mostly covers Thief, though there is some discussion of other projects. If you want to find out where lingo like “taffer” comes from, or what it means, be sure to check it out!

EDIT: a correction from Tim Stellmach