Thief

Thief is a 2014 stealth game developed by Eidos-Montréal and published by Square Enix. It revives Garrett, the master thief created by Looking Glass Studios for the original Thief: The Dark Project, but presents him in a separate continuity rather than continuing the earlier trilogy’s storyline. The game takes place in the City, a grim industrial metropolis shaped by class conflict, disease, superstition, and political repression. Garrett returns after a year away to find the city changed and his former apprentice, Erin, apparently dead. The opening mission, a burglary at the mansion of the ritualistic nobleman Baron Northcrest, establishes the central catastrophe. Garrett and Erin attempt to steal a mysterious ancient artifact, but Erin falls into a supernatural energy source known as the Primal. Garrett survives and awakens a year later, discovering that the accident has transformed the City. A plague called the Gloom has spread among the population, while Northcrest’s brother, Orion, leads a rebellion against the Baron’s rule. The artifact becomes connected to the conflict, and Garrett investigates its origins while searching for the truth about Erin’s fate. Gameplay revolves around avoiding detection rather than defeating enemies. Garrett can extinguish lamps, hide in shadows, distract guards with thrown objects, pick locks, and use specialized arrows. Water arrows douse flames, rope arrows create access points, blunt arrows trigger distant mechanisms, and fire arrows ignite combustible targets. The player can explore districts and side locations, including hidden interiors, abandoned buildings, and the notorious asylum known as the Moira asylum. Optional jobs from characters such as Basso provide additional burglary objectives separate from the main plot. The 2014 game retains recognizable elements from the earlier Thief titles, including first-person infiltration, sound-sensitive movement, valuable loot, and Garrett’s dry narration. However, it changes the structure considerably. Earlier games offered large, interconnected mission spaces and a strongly developed conflict among the Keepers, Hammerites, and Pagans. The reboot instead emphasizes compact hub areas, cinematic presentation, and a more personal story centered on Garrett and Erin. Its Focus ability highlights objects and reveals certain interactive opportunities, although players can restrict or disable such assistance for a more demanding experience. Thief received mixed reviews at release. Critics commonly praised its atmosphere, visual design, and the satisfaction of carefully planned burglaries, while criticizing loading interruptions, uneven storytelling, repetitive city traversal, and technical problems. Despite those reservations, it remains a significant attempt to reintroduce Garrett and the series’ distinctive fantasy-stealth identity to modern consoles and PCs. Its enduring appeal lies in the specific pleasure of entering a guarded room, manipulating light and sound, taking one carefully chosen object, and leaving without anyone knowing the thief was ever there.