A newly surfaced detail from the development history of the Thief stealth series reveals that, around 15 years before Arkane's Dishonored was released, the original Thief's developers explored giving protagonist Garrett a rat-sized shrinking ability. The idea would have let the master thief scurry through drains, mouse holes and other tiny gaps to evade guards and reach hidden areas, offering a fresh angle on the stealth-and-infiltration gameplay the series was known for.

The concept links two influential stealth titles: Looking Glass Studios' Thief, which helped define the immersive-sim genre in the late 1990s, and Arkane's Dishonored, released in 2012, which similarly toyed with rat-related supernatural powers such as possessing and swarming as rats. The report highlights how the shrinking mechanic was ultimately not implemented in Thief, but shows the creative overlap and shared design lineage between the two games' approaches to unconventional, size- and creature-based traversal.