Thief: The Dark Project is a brilliant game for many reasons, among which is that it has one of the best mapping communities of any game. While the Doom and Quake mapping scenes are larger and more prolific, Thief’s mappers consistently punch so far above their weight they should probably get into boxing sims rather than stealth games. They regularly deliver maps, missions and entire campaigns that are orders of magnitude more ambitious than what exists in the base game.
Hence, any remaster of Thief worth its salt would ensure the fan mission scene is well supported, and that’s exactly what Nightdive plans to do with Thief: The Dark Project Remastered. Speaking on Nightdive’s Deep Dive podcast, producer Daniel Grayshon delved into the significance of community creations for the remaster:
“There’s been a very dedicated community that has created all sorts of wonderful additions to the game, and a lot of that has not gone unnoticed, ” Grayshon explained. “Compatibility with those is extremely important, and that’s what we’re working on very heavily to ensure that when you buy a copy of the game on PC, you’ll be able to very easily and very quickly get set up with whatever fan mission you would like to play.”
Given the number of fan missions that are out there, this is pretty ambitious, and Grayshon does say that, while they want to support as many FMs as they can, Nightdive’s resources are not unlimited. “We’re doing our best to make sure that we have a good compatibility across the board with everything that we can test given the time that we have. There’s a lot of content out there, but we’re doing our best.”
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There is one specific fan campaign that you’ll definitely be able to play out of the gate, and that’s The Black Parade. Released in 2023, The Black Parade is a 10-mission campaign with its own story, overseen by Arkane Lyon level designer Romain Barrilliot. A majestic ode to Thief, each of its levels is preposterously ambitious, richly detailed, and often bloody terrifying, and I’d count it among Deathloop and the System Shock remake as one of the best immersive sim experiences from this decade.
Nightdive is very much aware of The Black Parade’s reputation. “Obviously the big one in the room is The Black Parade,” Grayshon says. “It won ModDB’s number one mod of the year, I think, that year. And just by looking at people’s reactions to our announcement, I noticed that they will talk about ‘Oh, I can’t wait to see how The Black Parade runs in this.’
“I knew this would be a thing that people would be wanting right from the very beginning, and the reactions to the announcement have proved that I wasn’t wrong there in that. So we’re working as quickly and as thoroughly as we can to make sure that compatibility is there for the things that people want to play.”
I can personally attest to the fact that fan-mission compatibility is a big draw for Thief fans, and I can’t wait to give The Black Parade a whirl in the overhauled game. Indeed, it’s an oddly good time to be a Thief fan right now. Alongside the Remaster, Eidos Montreal just announced a graphic novel set between Thief 1 and 2, along with a bunch of other nifty merch like a new soundtrack. Now all we need is a new game from someone who understands the series. I don’t hold out much hope for this, but stranger things have happened.
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