Nightdive, the remastering specialists who previously revitalized Star Wars: Dark Forces, Doom, and System Shock 2 have announced their next project, and it’s yet another of the best games of all time: Thief: The Dark Project.
There’s a part of me that wants to dive between any developer and Thief in an effort to stop them from touching what I consider to be one of the most perfect games ever created. Then I remember the rule: Remakes can’t harm the original. Which gives me enough pause to think: What if they nailed it?
1998’s Thief was Looking Glass’s, what, third masterpiece? (Ultima Underworld and System Shock preceding it.) Generally considered (by me) as the progenitor of the first-person stealth game, the fantasy-medieval tale of master thief Garrett and his robberies across the City is the great-grandfather of everything from BioShock to Dishonored. Its combination of a by-then familiar first-person perspective with a need to meticulously tiptoe in the shadows was a dramatic deviation from the bombastic nature of Quake and Hexen II, underlined by its truly revolutionary emphasis on not killing. Heck, a game that reduces the numbers of people you can kill with its increasing difficulty levels still stands out as a maverick in the industry 30 years on.
Thanks to the amazing efforts of modders, it’s also one of the most immediately playable ’90s games on modern machines, with NewDark, RoguePatcher and TFix making it a dream to play in widescreen. So why do we need a remake?
Well, because System Shock II, that’s why. Nightdive did an exceptional job with its remakes of both of Looking Glass’s System Shock titles, and while this isn’t a ground-up remake like the studio’s stunning version of the first System Shock, it appears to be the equivalent of Nightdive’s remastering of the sequel. And if it sucks, the original will still be right there to enjoy.
Must have been rats
Nightdive is apparently updating all the art, from textures to models, as well as making new cutscenes and animations, as you’d expect. But in a bolder move, Thief is getting a weapon and item wheel as part of its UI. Which, you know, sounds good! Further details are thin on the ground, with the announcement press release mostly eulogizing the original game, but we do know that the PC version is going to have support for the kerbillions of custom maps and campaigns that fans have created over the last three decades, and that’s splendid.
The teaser above shows a remastering that looks incredibly faithful to the original, but sharper, more detailed, and less fuzzy. (Although I’m not convinced I needed the game to maintain the blurry door textures?) And the new guard audio still has them sounding inexplicably like Campbell Scott, and that’s perfect. Heck, just writing this up is making me want to play the whole game yet again, so I’ll definitely be back in the winter to play the finished version.
Now if only Nightdive could wrest the rights away from Aspyr to remake Deus Ex.