Taken at a glance, Dark Messiah looks like Thief: Deadly Shadows. It's quite moody and medieval, and you'll do some light stealthing as well as melee and ranged combat. But after that, the similarities start to dissolve. While Arkane Studios, makers of the underrated Arx Fatalis, has an obvious love of RPGs, the Source engine is arguably geared more towards action than dialog trees or skill point distribution. The video clips we saw previous to the presentation are actually indicative of the game's style, which favors knives over negotiation. What those brief glimpses can't capture quite as well is how smooth and nuanced the combat system is. Like Chronicles of Riddick, Dark Messiah looks to have gotten first-person melee down pat. As Trespasser taught us many years ago, it can look kind of awkward from this perspective. During the course of the presentation, we saw manual blocks, parries, attacks, and power attacks, and some interestingly stylized hand positions.