Now that Deus Ex: Invisible War is finished, how do you feel it's turned out - is it what you wanted?

Spector: I'm never one for getting satisfied, so I look at Invisible War and think: "We improved everything we wanted to improve, and we've got pretty close to our original vision," but you always want added time or energy or money or something.

In addition, this time we had the added complication of all this new technology - the new renderer, the new sound system, the new physics, all-new AI, all that stuff. In the same way that the first games that come out for a new console are never as good as the ones that come out three or four years later... it's the same thing.

We're still figuring out what we can do with our technology, so I think what we'll see is... you know, Invisible War is impressive in terms of how technology influences the gameplay, but Thief is going to take this a step further, and then subsequent games are going to be unbelievable. Well, I hope. Obviously I don't know [laughs].

There are some obvious things that we know we want to do better next time. I think we can do - I probably shouldn't be specific because there's a PR person around... Our characters, you know, are still mannequins. We've got to be better... I mean, as an industry we've go to be better with characters. Half-Life 2 is certainly going in the right direction but there's plenty more we can do beyond even what Valve is doing.

But overall yeah, I'm really happy with it.