Thief difficulty settings dare you to be an "Iron Man"

What kind of burglar do you want to be? That's the question the upcoming Thief reboot is going to be posing to both new and veteran players of the stealth series. The level of difficulty and UI customization being built into the game should allow for some brutally precarious attempts, according to a new interview with Thief's lead game designer Alexandre Breault.

The Ultimate category includes two settings meant to offer up a stiff challenge to even the most committed thieves—No Alerts and Iron Man. No Alerts is obvious, in that if you're detected by a human or an animal, that mission is failed. Combined with the Iron Man setting, where any death or failed mission causes a restart of the entire game from the beginning, should create a stress level that somehow seems entirely fitting for the Thief series. Other settings include Slowed Movement, No Kills or Knockouts, and No Reticle, among others.

Breault said leaderboards are being planned to showcase how players are completing the game and at which levels of difficulty. Players will be sorted by the date they completed a particular playthrough, perhaps etching their names permanently into the game's digital future.

"We wanted to make sure that you are really the one who finished it first, so once you are first on the leaderboard with that score, it will be sorted by the date you enter it so the first one that will be there will stay first [on] that leaderboard forever," Breault said.

We've heard a bit already about Thief's mission design and stealth tools , but after seeing some of the display settings and the variety of difficulty tweaks that are set to be included, it looks like Garrett will have his hands full, if you want him to.