Thief trailer tells the story of The City, via Garrett's behatted fence Basso

Thief , eh? I think it's fair to say we're all a bit worried about the direction it's heading down, particularly when it's on track to creep out of the shadows and cosh us on the head as soon as February. Does this artistic, atmospheric, sadly gameplay-free trailer ease any of our fears? Nope, but it does describe The City in some fancy-pancy words, providing some backstory for Garrett's magnificently behatted fence Basso in the process.

It's the first in a series of trailers telling the "story" of The City from the perspectives of a bunch of different characters. The first is Basso, the second is...wait, are there any other characters in Thief (besides Garrett, obviously)? Perhaps the next one will involve a candlestick waxing lyrical about 'The Gloom', the very Dishonored-like plague that's currently sweeping its way across The City.

Basso, by the way, is "a former boxman (safe-cracker) turned fence, who uses his vast connections to The City's underworld to organize thieving jobs for Garrett. He owns an intelligent, but bad tempered magpie called Jenivere who delivers messages for him. Garrett might consider himself a loner, but Basso is the nearest thing he has to a friend - and whether he readily admits it or not; he rather likes the fellow."

We recently went hands-on with Thief. Have a read of what we thought here .

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.