They don't make them like this anymore. Without coming off as hyperbolic, Thief is probably the most immersive and atmospheric game I've played in my three decades; it's not even nostalgia speaking since I first played this twenty years after its release.

There's almost nothing negative here and I seem to appreciate the game more with every playthrough, but if we're nitpicking, the graphics were kind of average even for the time. It's apparent they spent most of their resources on the sound engine, the writing, and the lighting system. You can easily mitigate this with texture packs and even mesh replacements from the sequel, so that criticism barely holds up. The combat is clunky and a lottery, but luckily sneaking and thieving is what it's all about, and it does so wonderfully.

I would say the biggest flaw by today's standards is the audio quality, and sheesh, this game suffers from extreme compression. You can hear the noise floor on the audio files as they play in-game, and cutscenes suffer from obvious bit-reduction artifacts. You could argue it adds to the charm with its pure 90's audio stank, like Half-Life's low-fidelity scientist dialogue-but even for 1998 it seems a bit excessive. I guess compromises had to be made to fit that much content onto a CD or two back in the day. (Let's hope Nightdive Studios brings us a remaster with these issues fixed?).

Nonetheless, Thief raised the bar and set the foundation for Splinter Cell, Hitman, and especially Dishonored, the stealth genre as a whole really. Grab TFix for modern compatibility, a faithful texture pack if TFix's texture replacement isn't enough, and DSOAL/OpenAL for EAX reverb emulation, then get lost in this timeless classic.

A masterpiece.

Old but Gold