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Reboot, if that matters

Brace for a bunch of fanboy butthurt. "It's new, so it sucks" is in full play in this fandom.

no, garrett's original personality that everyone loved got thrown out the window so it sucks.

get your facts right.

fan butthurt exhibit a

There's a reason that fans of the previous games are pretty chafed, the game simply didn't hold up to expectation with regard to the changes in Garrett (his personality, motives, background), the City and its various factions, and the garbled mess that was the plotline.

As a stand alone game, I think Thief was alright. Not great, but not eye-gougingly terrible. But as a successor to the previous games? It was... bad. Really bad.

As far as butthurt, the only thing you're going to find is some behind the scenes sighing - though that's directed more towards the disappointment in the game itself rather that the player. Regardless of the opinions expressed in the canon thread below, I find it highly unlikely that players would avoid tagging a reboot!Garrett in game simply because they didn't care for his source canon.

Do you have a canon point in mind or you are simply looking for general advice?

general

Alrighty.

So let's start with some of the more obvious stuff first. First, and perhaps foremost, Garrett is a loner. He's always been one as far as he can remember. His earliest memories are not of family or parents (he doesn't recall either) but of an orphanage. And if you've seen anything of the City, even before the Gloom gutted its citizens and turned them mad, you can take a pretty good guess that life wasn't pleasant. The guards that patrol the streets frequently remark that it's easier to die in the City than to make a living. So if you're on the very bottom with no support infrastructure or means of acquiring a trade, you're either going to turn to crime or starve.

I don't recall the mission it comes up in specifically, but presumably Garrett was fairly young when he skipped out on the orphanage to take to the streets, and being a child (or youngish teen) honest work would have been impossible to find. He had to steal to survive; he didn't have a real choice. And it was survival, no one was going to look out for him: he was just another mouth to feed and none of the poorer folk in the City had anything to spare to someone else's unwanted get, the wealthy wouldn't notice him, and the guards only cared about lining their own pockets and keeping the riff-raff from getting into trouble.

So how's this play into being a loner? Well, no parents, no refuge (or companionship) in the orphanage, and no one is going to look twice at an urchin on the streets - all of this doesn't make for someone that's going to be a social butterfly. There was no one to look out for him and he had no reason or opportunity to care about anyone or anything beyond his own survival. I should note that the reboot Garrett is probably more maladjusted to society than the original Garrett. The latter at least had the Keepers pick him up and keep him from being little more than a pickpocket.

Luckily for Garrett he was damn good at being a thief - the hows and whys are really left to your discretion (was he sneakier than the rest? Faster? Skinny enough to wriggle into the more interesting places with lucrative shinies? Some combination of all that?). Regardless, he was good at what he did, enough so that as he got older and more in tune with the City's underbelly there was little justification to look elsewhere for employment. Why break his back in a factory or on the docks or in the Town Watch when he can bring home more in an evening than any of those workers could in a year?

Anyway. This definitely affects how he views other people - Garrett disassociates himself almost entirely from them. This is rather evident in his comment to Basso once they reached the isle Moira is situated upon, that he's been a ghost his entire life. I mean, hell, Basso is arguably the closest thing Garret has to a friend and he still thinks of himself a ghost. And this viewpoint is hard to refute. As a child he was no one to anyone, and remained that way going through his youth and into adulthood. Only when he started to make a name for himself due to his successes as an infiltrator, does his transparency begin to fade - but while others might know of Garrett, they really don't know him. And he sure as hell isn't making any effort to let anyone get close - there's no reason to.

I imagine he's incredibly distrustful of others and for his own comfort and safety keeps everyone at an arm's length (or more). This isn't to say that he can't make friends or come to trust others, but it's incredibly difficult. Those that are let in (as much as he can begrudgingly allows) speaks rather highly of how the other person has grown on him. Hell, it's possible he's doesn't have a clue how to interact with others - look at how awkward he is around Basso at times and the Queen of Beggers (though she's weird as fuck so take it with a grain of salt).

Overcoming this is going to be a bit of a bear when to comes to being in a game. So you're definitely going to have to shove Garrett out of his comfort zone in order to build CR, because he certainly isn't going to go looking for allies without a damn good reason.

Let's see, despite being extremely aloof, Garrett does possess a sense of humor, albeit one that's drier than week old rawhide. He's a cynic (and quite arrogant, especially with regard to his own skillset), but pretty much anyone that lives in the City and doesn't have their heads caught in some fever dream like Orion falls into the former category as well. (It should be noted that while he is cynical, he hasn't quite delved into the utter hopelessness and despair that's gripped the populace in the year he's been awol.) He's not afraid to make quips at the expense of others (both subtle and rather blatant) though most of it remains unsaid (heaven help the telepath that gets into Garrett's head, it'd be nothing but snark snark snark and mental linefacing). The latter is likely due to the fact that Garrett prefers to keep his own company and keeps his thoughts to himself.

When interacting with others, it's obvious he's not the chatty type. He might be willing to exchange a few barbs or rare spots of insight or instruction, but they're few and far between. He's not going to willingly put up with excessive amounts of small talk - especially if it isn't immediately interesting or relevant to him (such as the location of something expensive). He's very much a quit bullshiting and get to the bottom line type person. His time is his own and he'd rather not spend it on something meaningless as conversation.

As far as emotional reactions, Garrett is pretty hard to shake. Even with all of the crazy shit going on in his head because of the Primal Stone and Erin's death, he remains fairly grounded emotionally (even if he does seriously question his sanity regarding the strange flashbacks / projections of Erin). It can make him seem rather callous, and to an extent, he is, but he's not inhuman. He feels remorse when seeing Jenivere wounded and dying within his clock tower, anger that Basso had been taken, fear of losing his mind with the magical bullshit with Erin, etc. It's just very well hidden.

In conjunction with this, Garrett keeps his own set of moral guidelines. He'll steal from anyone - rich, poor, the dead and dying (though he won't go digging up graves) - but he refuses to kill. He states in the comics that this is largely because a) the situation should never arise where killing is necessary (either by avoiding the person entirely or improvising via an escape or distraction) and b) you'll eventually have to answer to yourself for it (was a gold watch really worth a man's life?). Killing is the sign of a poor thief and Garrett is anything but - ideally, no one should ever even be aware that he was in the building, let alone force him into a position where murder is the only option (or an option at all).

Additionally, Garrett feels no moral obligation to anyone. He's not altruistic by any stretch of the imagination - he's not willingly a hero or savior, he cares about his own hide and that's about it. His rescue of Basso is likely the most selfless act he's ever committed (and even then that was certainly sweetened by the prospect of getting his hands on the vault in the upper floors).

Finally, Garrett is arrogant. He's the best and he knows it, though it's not something he'd admit to or brag about it. He thrives on challenge, on anything that can test his skills. Get into and back out of places without ever being seen is what causes him to rise in the morning (figuratively speaking, because he's definitely a night owl). The collection of loot chilling out in his clock tower is a testament not only to his skill, but his keen eye in picking up on hidden/forgotten/lost/protected valuables. Nothing is safe from Garrett's grasp.
If he can pick it up or isn't nailed down is his. And it's not nailed down if he's able to pry it up.

And now that I've completely lost my train of thought and rambled on for far too long, I hope this helps. I might clean it up later on because I haven't proofread any of this wall of tl;dr. Additionally, please bear in mind that I'm a lot more familiar with the older Garrett than the newer (I've only played through the new game once) so I could very well be missing stuff.

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