While the story line behind a game is only secondary to the fun of actually playing it, knowing the whys and hows behind a character in a game serves to round out the experience. In Picassio, your character has been hired by a rich art collector to steal the most impressive pieces of art available. The guy that hired you wants to prove once and for all to his rich art collecting buddy that he has the biggest most impressive art collection. So of course the other billionaire hires a cat burglar himself to beat you to every punch and keep you from getting the goods. While that's a nice background story the best part is that it's fully integrated into the game's strategy. That is, when you're on a mission to steal stuff, that other burglar is on the same mission as you and he or she will try to sabotage you, steal your equipment and more or less screw things up for you while still trying to get that high priced piece of art. You're forced to be both offensive and defensive at the same time. Picassio is billed as a nonviolent game. It will combine the first person interface of many familiar shooting games, but all you'll have is a dart gun. You'll be able to knock out museum guards but they will wake up and they will try to get some help from their security guard buddies as soon as possible. You'll also be able to incapacitate enemies with chloroform but all of these offensive attacks are only intended to give you time to complete your mission. There's no need to go around taking out every enemy in a level if all you're supposed to do is get in, get the loot and get out. Equipment and high tech gadgetry has lead Promethean Designs to compare the game to GoldenEye. Crossbows, mini cameras, and night vision equipment are just a few of the toys your character will get to use. We can't wait to see how the heck you can use the Shadow Hologram Generator, but we know it's going to be good. Mastery of all these weapons is likely to be a requirement for success. The developers seem intent on preventing Picassio from becoming a fast paced "shooting faster than they can shoot me" type of game. Using the gadgets well, sneaking around, and attention to detail seem to be the skills that will get you far in this game. The game is using a brand new engine that's designed for the high performance PCs and consoles that we're going to get in the next couple of years. A multiplayer game is expected to be in there where teams of thieves will be running around achieving goals. While the game is being developed on a maxed out PC, Promethean Designs seems confident in the Dolphin's potential processing power and published specs and intends to bring Picassio to the Big N's next console. Realism is huge part of the Picassio experience and so expect to be breaking into and stealing prizes from recognizable places. Likewise your cat burglar will only be able to carry a certain amount of equipment on his or her body, but they can stash their gear wherever they want around the building they're operating in. That's great stuff, but when consider that the other cat burglar can find, steal, and use your gadgets himself or herself and you see what this game's is trying to accomplish.