Thief development troubles not "all that different" to other projects - Bucci

Thief technical art director Jean-Normand Bucci has played down the reboot's rumoured development issues, suggesting the project's rough patches are par for the course in triple-A development.

"I have been in many different companies and many different projects and I don't see what happened with Thief as being all that different from other games," Bucci told GameInformer.

"The advantage of an iterative process like this is that it brings new blood and fresh ideas and people to the project. I think that the team we have right now is the best team we could have to make the game we want to make."

"What happened with Thief" is a long, drawn-out prototyping period punctuated by the departure of some key team members, and rumoured friction among various factions at Eidos Montreal.

Representatives have dismissed the scandal, with studio lead Stephane D'Astous suggesting it had been "blown out of proportion", but it's true that the game has been undergoing transformations even at this late stage. The team ditched QTEs and an XP system, for example.

Thief is coming to PC, PlayStation 3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One at the end of February.