Thief 4 - Worrying @ Kotaku

Kotaku writes a piece titled Worrying About Thief 4, discussing the apparent loss of several highly placed developers and suggesting Square Enix has been sitting on a concept video for a number of months:

After two-plus years of work on the project, Thief 4 audio director and composer Paul Weir left the Eidos Montreal in March. The month prior, lead level designer Adam Alim went to WB Games Montreal. He apparently is not the only lead level designer to hop off the team — Pierre-Olivier Clement, the previous lead level designer, apparently moved to another project at Eidos Montreal last year. Among other departures: two senior concept artists exited Eidos to a freelance career after nearly two and three years, respectively; a senior technical level designer left last month; a senior animator went back to Ubisoft last September; and a senior level designer moved to something else at Eidos in August.

You can check out the "missing" video here.
More information.

It pains me to say this, but I'm starting to hope this game simply gets canceled. I don't want to see some half-assed piece of crap that's going to diminish the legacy of the series, and I'm not confident that Eidos Montreal can make a worthy Thief title.

Montréal have a bazillion of game developers studio, to the point that some of them complains on the public place when a new one open (mostly Ubisoft and EA). So it's normal to see employees jumping left and right to get better "opportunities".

Although, I find it interesting that some of these people where moved internally. This might suggest something else entirely, like Square deciding to wait for the next-next-gen console before releasing it.

Did the video get pulled?

Bummer But yeah I agree with JDR. I'd rather they canned it than ruin the IP with a piece of half cooked generic cr@p… If you'll pardon my french…

It is like someone clubs them in the head and pull their bodies in dark corners

you do all realize the game could be far well enough along that an exodus of staff doesn't mean doom for the game. It has been in development for at least 4 years i believe already and due to the game structure shouldn't take nearly as long to complete as the even long deus ex 3.

besides i take anything from kotaku with about as much wieght as i do the "sign spinners" on street corners.

I don't get how a long-ish development cycle ending with staff moving about is worth worrying about. Sure, it's weird that Square-Enix are sitting on a trailer for months now but a handful of people shuffling their jobs about doesn't mean anything's been derailed.

Also, Deus Ex Human Revolution was awesome. Easily one of the best games last year. How does some staff reshuffling make you think Thief 4 won't be?

I'm also kinda hoping Eidos Montreal isn't in trouble. I just applied.

Well, If its already been 4 years then I guess it does make some sense…

Fully cooked generic crap will still be equally unwelcome though
(Still haven't gotten around to playing DXHR btw)

Thief is a rather special IP. I hope these guys know how to handle it… Oh well, lets wait and see…

Actually one of the best parts of Deus Ex: Human Revolution was the stealth gameplay so unless they really screw up Thief 4 will likely be good.