Thief: The Dark Project Remastered announced for PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2, PS4, Switch, and PC - Gematsu
Publisher Atari and developers Nightdive Studios and Eidos Montreal have announced Thief: The Dark Project Remastered, a modern revival of the 1998 classic from Looking Glass Studios. It will launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Switch 2, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG this winter.
“Thief didn’t just introduce stealth mechanics, it defined them,” said Nightdive Studios CEO Stephen Kick in a press release. “With this remaster, we’ve preserved the tension and intelligence of the original while enhancing it for modern players, ensuring that its legacy continues to influence how stealth games are played today.”
Eidos Montreal general manager Patrice Baig added, “Few games have had an impact as enduring as Thief. It set a standard for immersion and atmospheric storytelling that still resonates today. This remaster ensures a new generation can experience what made it so influential, and we’re proud to see it treated with such care.”
Here is an overview of the game, via Atari:
About
Thief: The Dark Project Remastered is a modern revival of the groundbreaking 1998 classic from Looking Glass Studios that helped define the stealth genre. Remastered with Nightdive’s KEX Engine, the release includes Thief: The Dark Project and the additional missions, content and updates from the 1999 Thief Gold re-release.
Considered an early foundation of “pure stealth” gameplay, Thief stood out in an era dominated by combat-heavy first-person games. Instead of open confrontation, it rewards a slower, more deliberate approach—using light and sound to stay hidden or misdirect enemies, and when required, ferocious moments of violence that stay hidden in the shadows. Described by its developers as a “first-person sneaker,” the title is widely regarded as the pioneering 3D stealth experience or “immersive sim.”
Thief notably emphasizes player agency over scripted scenarios, giving players the freedom to navigate the world and tackle challenges in their own way, using the tools available to them to stay hidden. The NPCs in Thief are also responsive to the environment: instead of following routines, they interact with visual and auditory cues, react and investigate, and communicate with each other.
In Thief: The Dark Project Remastered, players once again step into the boots of Garrett, an orphan rescued from the streets by the Keepers—a secretive, ancient order dedicated to maintaining balance in the world—and trained to become a Master Thief. Now an adult, the rebellious Garrett has left the order and now moves through a world of corruption and conspiracy, stealing from the wealthy for personal gain. Despite his cynical outlook and dark wit, as he uncovers hidden agendas among those grasping for power his instinct is to act for the greater good.
Key Features
Advanced NPC AI – A dynamic visibility system and sound simulation allows both players and enemies to detect movement realistically; NPCs will dynamically adapt to sounds the player makes, investigate, and even raising alarms
Keep to the Shadows – Experience one of the first games to use light and sound as core gameplay mechanics; use fire arrows to extinguish torches and moss arrows to dampen loud surfaces
Stealth-Based Combat – Strike unseen from the shadows using Garrett’s blackjack to incapacitate enemies from behind or specialized gas mines and arrows to take them down from range
Misdirection – Flashbombs will temporarily blind and disorient enemies and Noisemaker arrows will distract and draw away guards.
Tools of a Master Thief – amass a full array of specialized tools including lockpicks, remote cameras, and even rope arrows to access out-of-reach locations.
Thief: The Dark Project Remastered modernizes the original experience with material quality of life enhancements. As part of the remastering effort the artists at Nightdive have carefully updated and improved the graphic textures and models, as well as the cut scenes and animations. The team also updated the UI, adding a weapon and item wheel, and mission selector. Support was also added on PC for custom campaigns so that players can experience the many missions and campaigns created over the years by fans.
From its use of light and shadow to its emphasis on player vulnerability and non-lethal playstyles, Thief: The Dark Project helped shape decades of stealth-focused design. Its influence can be seen across the genre, inspiring immersive, system-driven gameplay. The game was recognized at the 3rd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards (2000) with a win for “Outstanding Achievement in Character or Story Development.” With Thief: The Dark Project Remastered, players can revisit—or experience for the first time—the title that made stealth not just a mechanic, but a philosophy.
Watch the announcement trailer below. View the first screenshots at the gallery.
I have been playing through the PowerSlave remaster for the first time and it's dope AF! It has perfect the Mummy (1999) vibes and reminds me a lot of what a 1st person Spelunky could be.
Midnight Gaming: Being a switch for hot robot women
Hello hello hello!!!♡ and welcome again to another edition of Midnight Gaming. This week we will be revisting a couple of games that I covered on this series before, with the first of them being a remaster by nightdive studios.
Yep its System Shock 2, the 25th anniversary remaster edition.
So last time I talked about SS2, I was talking about how a good number of games that Ken Levine had a major hand in often have a twist or a sort of betrayal in it. SS2 had with Dr Polito who talks to you at the beginning of the game and its revealed around halfway that shes been dead for a while, you then had Bioshock try to pull a similar twist with Atlas and the words "would you kindly". Bioshock 2 didnt really have a twist I dont think (which makes it the best bioshock out of them all FIGHT! ME!), and then there was infinite which opened up freaking multiverse shit with the villian of the game being you all along.... oh yeah spoilers I guess.
But were not gonna focus on that, were gonna talk about the remaster that nightdive did and what changes are made to this version compared to the original.... well for one they redubbed the tutorial voice that greets you when you step off the train and into the recruitment facility. Yeah thats a bit annoying, also they changed the end credits so instead of seeing the developers lying dead on the floor, its just a slow text crawl. What the hell nightdive?
Ok well there is some notable inclusions, for one, similar to the doom 1 and 2 as well as the heretic + hexen remasters, theres now a vault where you can look through some gamedev notes, concept art, pre-release screenshots, trailers and even magazine review scans and ads. They apparently managed to get coop multiplayer working and with crossplay being an option. I havent played the multiplayer, and thats the last i'll talk about the multiplayer.
Now, being a game made for pc, its use of the mouse and keyboard control setup is gonna be a bit hard to translate to a gamepad what with the number of bindings this game has for leaning, switching ammo or psi powers or even just managing your inventory. But I have managed to get a playthrough under my belt of this game using a ps5 controller and it seems like nightdive did a decent job with the controller. Switching ammo and the fire setting for your guns can be done with the left and right arrows and the up arrow respectively, you can press the left stick to switch from moving to leaning and while you might end up stuck leaning instead of moving a few times, you can get use to it and find it quite intuitive. They also added a way to add hotkeys to 4 weapons and 4 psi powers, each attached to the right and left shoulder buttons. You can't hotkey consumables though so if you need to heal during a dangerous situation it'll be a bit of a hassle... atleast the quantum bio-reconstructer will revive you for some nanites :/.
Another thing to note is how this remaster incorporates some updated models as well some community fixes. The weapon models look fairly decent , you can see the pistol slide actually move back as it should rather than in the og where the gun just suddenly snaps back and moves back into position to simulate recoil. The new enemy models look alright, I dont believe they had it in the og game but the the service bots do seem to now break apart as you shoot them before they explode which is a nice touch. Oh and the cyborg midwife keeps her breasts covered here unlike some other graphical mods. So the remaster is perfectly competent I suppose, it works well and plays like the original with some updates and balances.
But should you buy it? Cause lets be clear here, you can still just buy system sock 2 on steam and just mod it. You can look up mandalores review on ss2 and look for the mods he recommends and get more or less the remastered experience at a fraction of the cost of the official remaster.
Infact regarding remasters, they are popping up quite frequently arent they? And while there are valid criticisms about how the industry is just constantly rehashing the old stuff for a quick buck and how folks still buy therefore enabling ths, I'd rather touch on what games are remastered and if its done well by fixing some issues and improving the game overall while also maintaining the original charm of the game being remastered without changing too much, theres already countless youtube videos out there that talk about remastering/remaking and whether its good or bad. Since I started writing this, two remasters were announced recently by two different developers who have a reputation of handling remasters.
Theres Nightdive who did this remaster but have also announced a remaster of... Blood refreshed supply which is a remaster of another remaster...... um.... so fresh supply had issues at its launch which did get somewhat fixed, though it apparently still had issues that nightdive wanted to fix, so I guess now they can do that now that atari and warner bros have reached a deal or something? Oh but this will have a new episode and it'll include the deathwish mod and sure but the fact that having fresh supply already doesnt mean you'll get this as an upgrade is just.... nah.
And I like Nightdive, they do decent work with their remasters, their work helped fix the issues that held some games back and make them more available for people to play. This blood remaster is just.... not ideal and I can imagine its not what they had in mind either, they would have just updated fresh supply instead, but atleast it'll be a perfectly serviceable, if not completely unnecessary and a bit of shill order.
But thats nothing compared to the Deus Ex Remaster which is..... jesus christ what the hell?
Now that ones being done by Aspyr who are also in the remaster business but they seem to have a different work ethic on producing remasters that folks have been critical on. Mainly that they seem to do the bare minimum and upscaling the graphics and making it playable on a system before calling it quits and moving on, even when theres still bugs and issues in the remaster. They have been panned for how they handled remastering stuff like the star wars battlefront games, the lok soul reaver and neverwinter nights 2 but this deus ex one really and I mean really took the cake....(to be fair, I saw reviews on that soul reaver remaster that mentioned serious bugs back when it launced but I checked it again recently and it seems like there was some fixes, so I bought that during a sale)
It looks awful, really awful. Its been pointed out that they apparently used ai to upscale models and textures with misspellings being observed and pointed out in the trailer. Its looking to be on the same level of quality as GTA trilogy "definitive" edition. And thats sad because I seem to recall Aspyr being a bit better in the past or atleast they werent criticised as heavily. They were doing ports on some star wars games and they were set on releasing ports of KOTOR 1 & 2 with the news that they'll include the restored content mod for kotor 2 along with the reveal of a proper remake of kotor. And then disney said no on the mod idea, Aspyr gets taken off the remake and now it feels like they've been a bit more apathetic as of late. I guess considering they went through financial issues during that fiasco they've decided its best to just do the minimum and move on while cashing their revenue cheques.
Kinda sad really.
Anyways... why did I buy this remaster? Well I wasn't planning to let alone cover it here but I had a real shit monday and decided to just buy some games that were on sale to cheer myself up. This game, Sulfur and Cult of the Lamb. I figure I'd cover this remaster to tie in with revisiting stuff I covered, along with a second game that I wanted to take a second look since I received a comment explaining some things that I felt confused before.
And that game.... will be revealed after the break.
NEWS ROUNDUP!!!
Steam Deck LCDs experience price drop - I enjoy my Steam Deck. I had no interest in buying a series x or going with a ps5 and I wasnt sure at the time the next nintendo console was going to be worthwhile (spoilers: I was right) so I decided to purchase a Steam Deck OLED and since then i've been pretty pleased with that, being able to play my steam library in a portable format and even buying a dock and ps5 controller to connect to my tv and play my library on a tv screen.
Now if you yourself have been interested in the Steam Deck but refrained due to price concerns, there is some good news as Valve are now selling the LCD model at a reduced price of $319.20/£279.20 on their online storefront. So if this appeals to you then maybe give it a look or just look at the linked pcgamer article below for further details.
Frictional Games seem to have announced Soma 2 through a "Hotel Samsara" website - Soooo...... you ever hear of Amnesia the dark descent? You did? Good, then you know who Frictional Games are since their the devs behind that as well as their previous Penumbra series and of course, SOMA which I've heard described as Amnesia but sci-fi.
Anyways a recent update to SOMA was noted in the patch to have fixed some "faulty spam filters" and sure enough near the start of the game your protagonists pc has a spam email for a hotel. Following the link leads to a real website acting as a sign up page for a hotel samsara which according to the RPS article, is described as being spooky. While folks are busy speculating what this all entails for SOMAS sequel, you can maybe check out the RPS article or even the hotel samsara site yourself if you're interested.
Animated Death Stranding movie announced with working title "Death Stranding Mosquito" - Kojima loves hollywood, this is isnt really a secret or anything if your invested in his games or just happen to pay enough attention to news involving him.
Western hollywood movies are a major inspiration for his work in the metal gear series, he's fanboying over actors, hes ecstatic to work with Guillermo Del Toro, Mads Milkkelsen and Norman Reemus for Death Stranding. Hes a pretty big movie fan is what i'm saying and I'm fairly sure I heard or read somewhere that he wanted his own studio Kojima Productions to not only develop videos games but also branch out into films as well. So with the announcement of an animated movie set in the Death Stranding ip, you would think thats them doing just that, except its being handled by the A24 folks.
The film is being directed by a Hiroshi Miyamoto from ABC Animation and its being written by an Aaron Guzikowski whom this Game Informer article credits as being behind works such as Raised by Wolves, Prisoners and The Red Road.
I've had Death Stranding on my list of games that I wanted to play but havent gotten around to since I heard it described as a walking simulator/ horror game? I hear it was well received along with the sequel, I should really get around to buying and playing it, in the meantime feel free to look through the game informer article and check out the trailer they included too.
Payday 2 now has a Subscription Service..... why tho?? - So.... I saw this when I opened up steam and read through the announcement before thinking to myself.... goddamn not again. Its lootboxes all over again.
This announcement reeks of desperate... like payday 3 bombed pretty badly and Overkill and starbreeze are having some issues but this wasnt gonna help. The last time they had serious financial issues, they had to reopen devlopment on payday 2 and create dlc to sell to folks, thats how we got the dlc collections that take place near the white house finale that took heisters to Mexico, San Francisco and Texas.
Now though it doesnt seem like they're doing that, instead its just pay a sub to access dlcs please. You can still buy the dlcs seperate but some folks pointed out that the infamy collection which had all the dlc up to the white house heist along with the game itself apparently had a sudden price increase which overkill lowered again claiming it was a mistake... yeah.... sure....
And the real kicker? This might've gone a bit better if they did two things. First off, they could've made the base game of payday 2 free, just straight up free to bring in new players who havent already bought the game and most of the dlcs already. The second is they could've announced new dlc for payday 2 will be developed. This might seem embarrassing and they'd get lampooned for basically doing the same thing they did before, but atleast the subscription option would actually have some use instead of just being seen as a greedy crash grab.
Isnt there already a large amount of dlc for payday 2 that would be expensive to acquire fully... yes but the the infamy collection, which includes most of the dlc up to white house, often goes on sale along with the post white house dlc. So why would you pay a subscription to have temporary access to some dlcs for a 12 year old game????
NEWS ROUNDUP OVER!!!
So now our second game we're are revisiting is none other than... Nikke Goddesses of Victory, yeah that gacha game with the android women.
So you might wonder why am I revisiting this? Well as it turns out, when I posted my part 2 on Tumblr, someone actually commented and gave a pretty good explanation over some of the questions I brought up regarding it. Plus I felt that maybe I didnt give it a fair shake so I decided to give it another look to see if my thoughts change this time.
So gonna give a big thanks to kumokimiko and hopefully if you're reading this you don't mind me directly quoting you here:
"in-universe, Nikkes look the way that they do because the procedure generates a body profile based on the human's exceptionally strong sense of self or ideals. at time of creation, they become an idealized version of themselves. however, if they lacked such a personality or conviction, they become a mass-produced model.
the Nikke manufacturing companies capitalize on this phenomenon, by ensuring the strong and independent designs are marketable and aspirational. Mass-produced models are fodder that nobody need think twice about (well, until it's YOUR daughter who got turned into a mass-produced, but you're more likely to just disown them to avoid the heartbreak), but the sexy top-end models, they're the "Goddesses of Victory", fighting Raptures for mankind, who every girl wants to be like someday.
why only women? in-universe, not much explanation beyond "we tried using dudes, it didn't work". out-of-universe, however, it plays into the borderline feminist critique the writers are making of women as second-class citizens in South Korea. Nikkes have no agency and have their free will subjugated by nanomachines in the brain, may be subject to horrible experimentation or memory wipes with minimal justification, and are widely distrusted by the general populace on account of being susceptible to corruption and turning on humans at any time. in Nikke, the protagonist must essentially learn how to become the Ultimate Feminist, using his own status as a 'Human Commander of growing renown' to advocate for Nikke rights and support their mental health and autonomy"
Sooo.... to my understanding:
1. The nikkes look like attractive women because the process is based on what that person believes is their most ideal form, provided they have the willpower and drive, otherwise they become a basic mass production grunt. The ones who do are essentially used for marketing and pr purposes to attract more candidates for nikke creation. Though in that sense it doesnt quite answer as to why some nikkes look like minors. Maybe they litterly used kids in some cases?
2. While it makes little sense ingame, the fact that all the nikkes are women does serve a narrative point since this game uses the framework of a post-apocalypse with android women soldiers to touch on the subject of rampant misogyny and treatment of women in places such as South Korea. In my past playthrough and this one, the games story did explain that nikkes are treated somewhat expendable and unfairly. One example is how in the story my commander is told they'll get punished severely for breaking some rules yet in the court trial, they get suspended for two days while 2 nikkes in their command are ordered to have their memories erased, essentially being given a soft death penalty despite following orders.
3. This is definitive proof that someone has actually read some of my work on this series.
No really, this is a problem. See while I would've liked to see some traction and attention on this series, I kind of gotten used to being cursed with obscurity so I just wrote my thoughts and feelings on games and news without worrying about comments because who the hell is gonna read it lmao....
Well someone did, they actually read that part 2 I did and they wrote a comment that helpfully answered my questions regarding the game and.... i'm not sure I feel comfortable with this. I know I get the rare like and even rarer repost but I never really had a comment like this, if ever. Right now it makes me wonder if I should be careful from now on, this comment might have been nice and informative but how do I know the next one won't just straight up be my home address. How do I know I'm not being scrutinised on every word even as I type this. It's just....l i've been observed....
I've been observed.
I've been observed.
I'VE BEEN OBSERRRRRRVVVVVEEEEDDDDD!!!!!!!#!@#@!#£
(Insert technical difficulties)
"Ah you must be the new commander"
"hello...."
"Yes the doctors told me you suffered severe brain trauma from that helicopter crash. Its amazing you managed to survive that as well as all the raptures in that area. Anyways commander I have some bad news, it seems that crash has had some serious side effects as all of your misogyny has been knocked out of you, effectively making you woke"
"women....deserve better.."
"Normally we'd execute you infront of firing squad who would shout slurs at you till you die by a self-inflicted injury but the central government has decided to go with a rather unorthodox strategy. Apparently that crash has also made you a gifted commander as according to the performance reports, it seems the nikkes you commanded actually like you and that made them more effective soldiers."
"women so beautiful... give equal pay"
"Commander this pains me to say this but I need you to..... respect women. You need to respect women as hard as you can in the hopes that maybe they can kill all the alien robots. That means you cannot assault, call them slurs, grope or stare at their breasts and asses. You have to actually listen to them talk and hear their problems as well as give them gifts without any expectations for sexual gratification in return. And you positively can't smell them especially on anywhere they sit. We need you to do this, it may very well be the only way to protect our future dystopic society where *BANG*CAPITALISM*BANG*STILL*BANG*EXISTS!!!"
"women deserve autonomy..... pretty women"
"Look we've tried hitting them, sexually harrassing them, stalking them, we've tried everything but for some reason nothing worked as well as what you did. Now get the fuck out there you liberal cuck. I need to detox by binging andrew tate videos and then go on fortnite to shout slurs at children*COUGH*"
"blood..."
"Yes sorry for that, I was aura-farmmaxxing last night. Also I ate some shrimp that may have been contaminated with radiation, I have seconds left to live."
(We now return you to your regulary scheduled blog post)
ok.... ok... i'm calm now... had a small meltdown but i'm cool now....
You know something? The devs for nikke and glitch productions should do a collab involving murder drones. I mean this game has robot women, murder drones has some robot women and men. That could honestly work because nikke does do some collabs, they did one for nier and evangelion, hell atm they're doing one with resident evil. They could definatly do one with murder drones, it'd be pretty neat.
Anways uh..... right last time I talked about nikke I mentioned that playing on a phone didnt feel ideal due to screen space and that'd I'd had to rely on the auto functions for aiming. Since then i've gotten a tablet, so the game should play better on it right? Well yes.... and no. Yes the large screen space is better to aim with, but for some reason its locked in portrait mode rather than landscape. Not to mention aiming via dragging my finger feels too sluggish. I ended up failing a stage while doing manual aiming and when I tried again while letting the nikkes aim themselves, they managed to beat the stage no problem. So I mostly just let them handle the shooting while I sit back and activate burst skills, only occasionally taking manual aim during boss fights to attack vital points to interrupt an attack.
I have also mentioned the fact that you could bond with your nikkes to increase their affection before but didnt really touch on it much unlike in this session. So not only do you increase a nikkes stats by leveling their affection, you also unlock episodes for that nikkes unique character story. Between these episodes along with the text message conversations you can have with a random nikke and even events in the outpost you could view for a limited time each week, it does help flesh out a lot of these characters personalities. Now granted i'm a gacha casual. I don't know if nikke is the one that did a system like this in such a way. I know I saw similar bonding mechanics in granblue and reverse 1999 but i'm not sure if they allow the same opportunities for thier characters to show their personality off unlike here.
I did manage to get a better idea on how to build a squad rather than just go with an auto-created one. I have either 1 level 1 and 2 level 2's or 2 level 1's and 1 level 2 and usually have two level 3's. The single ones tend to have skills that have a 20 second cooldown while the pairs tend to have longer cooldowns since I can choose the alternate one for that level, this way I can activate more full bursts to get complete buffs. Usually the squad contains a healer/shield nikke, buff nikke and a couple of damage nikkes.
You know looking back on the points from that comment, theres definitely an avenue for the nikke devs to do a story that touches on transgenderism given the whole "nikkes that arent mass repro are based on the subjects own personal idealised form" angle. You could definitely do a story where either a male subject did manage to be a successful transfer but they end up discovering something about themselves and end up transitioning or just one of the nikkes could have their pre-nikke history reveal that they were originally a man. I dunno I feel as if that is something they could actually do in this game.... though theres a potential chance they do it poorly or the whole nikke community goes in full meltdown over it but it is an idea.
To be honest I do feel my opinions on this has improved a bit given the context provided by that comment. Playing the game again and putting a bit more attention on some of the visual novel scenes does make me a appreciate how the game portrays the characters it has you playing gacha for, atleast on the conversations and personality side and not the pinup model one, though if this game was trying to go for story about feminism, it would kinda hurt the angle they were going if they went all "fan-servicey" over it and from what I played so far, they do manage to atleast avoid going too far, for the most part. I mean the resident evil event story did have a small scene of the commander walking on someone changing clothes and immediately backed out and apologise without showing an image of said character mid-changing, I feel like another game would have actually showed said scene in detail for a quick bit of pandering and I do appreciate they didnt do that.
Still kinda sucks that they dont look like actual robots, that would've been pretty cool and looking through all the nikkes you could get, most of are usually attractive women or just straight up rugrats, but then I found them..... Kilo.
A nikke who pilots a mech suit, uses a light machine gun to spread dakka and has some good shielding skills and a damaging burst skill. Unfortunately shes was only available during the 1.5 anniversary event and few other events and doesnt seem like you coud get her via the regular gacha. You just have to wait for her to be available in a special gacha which..... sucks.
So yeah, I gonna keep this on the tablet and maybe look at on the odd occasion but I do feel like its a lot better than I initially thought in my intial playthrough of this game.
Now, was there anything I wanted to cover about this game....
Oh right...
Syeun, the ceo for Missilis Industry, is a cunt. I dont think thats controversial to say and I don't care if she has a tragic backstory, her introduction at the outpost and her attempt to force you to work for her, even threatening to frame you if you try to extract early, makes her a massive asshole in my eyes. If shes your favourite then fine, more power to you, she just ain't mine.
So that'll be it for this edition of Midnight Gaming. Next time will be covering something I havent covered beforehand. Until then i'll see you then, feel free to leave comments and game suggestions.
