The remaster of my favourite game brings controller support and it feels like magic

One of the greatest games of all time, Thief: The Dark Project, was announced to be getting the Nightdive remaster treatment earlier this year.

This remaster of the 1998 classic comes with support for resolutions up to 4K and framerates up to 120fps, along with a whole host of other quality-of-life changes that don’t interfere with the core experience.

As a fan of Nightdive’s previous remasters, and a massive fan of the Thief series, I was elated to play through around 20 minutes of the Gamescom demo for Thief: The Dark Project Remastered, sampling the opening of Lord Bafford’s Manor, the first major mission of the game.

As someone who’s played through the main campaign of Thief a dozen times, the main thing I wanted to check out here were the quality-of-life improvements that Nightdive Studios has implemented for the remaster.

Controller support is the standout feature here. As a game that has always been exclusive to PC, and released in a time where gamepad support was not a huge priority for developers, Thief: The Dark Project only had official support for keyboard and mouse.

Of course, it was possible to get controllers working with it using third party tools, but this isn’t a smooth process and you’ll often take too long trying to tinker with it than actually enjoying the game.

However, Thief: The Dark Project Remastered’s controller support feels great. The triggers and face buttons control your actions with certain tools at your disposal, while the left/right bumpers allow you to lean around corners.

The D-Pad also brings up a wheel in which you can cycle through your available weapons and gear, a huge improvement over the original’s inventory system. While I’m very used to playing this game with a keyboard and mouse, using an Xbox controller feels incredibly natural and intuitive, and will make this baby perfect for console users or Steam Deck players.

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Atari, Eidos Interactive

Thief: The Dark Project Remastered enhances the original without taking away the soul

Aside from that, the quicksave feature of the original game returns, along with a new autosave feature which periodically saves your game at key moments for you to use later on if you need to. Nightdive’s Grover Wimberly IV, who sat in with me during my session, assured me that this feature can be disabled if you’d prefer to play with limited or no saves.

Another big quality-of-life feature that I never knew I needed is the level select feature, perfect for replaying my favourite levels over and over again. Fans of The Sword or Assassins now don’t need to keep a save at the start of a level handy if you just want to play those again.

Wimberly also told me that support for custom missions and campaigns—such as The Black Parade—are also included in the PC version of the remaster, available in the menu for anyone to play.

He talked about how Nightdive would have loved to get that into the console versions, but there were various rights and platform issues that prevented this from happening.

Wimberly also discussed with me the likelihood of Thief II: The Metal Age being remastered in the future, saying that it would all depend on how well Thief: The Dark Project Remastered sells. He compares it to several remasters the company released in the past, saying that plans to remaster certain sequels were canned after lacklustre sales.

Hearing this, I’m staying optimistic that Thief fans will come out to show their support for this remaster when it drops later this year. The series has been getting somewhat of a revival lately, what with last year’s Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow, as well as the upcoming Thief: Pulse of Promise graphic novel that bridges the gap between the first two games.

Altogether, colour me intrigued by Thief: The Dark Project Remastered. If its release gets more people to check out one of the greatest stealth games of all time, I consider that a win.

Thief: The Dark Project Remastered releases in Winter 2026 for PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch and Switch 2.