That GOG gloss-up of Thief is an excellent way to play the game until we get the Nightdive remaster

Two weeks ago I came to you with news that Thief: The Dark Project (and its expanded version, Thief Gold) were getting a sort of pseudo-remaster courtesy of GOG, ahead of its official Nightdive remaster coming this winter. My sentiment at the time could be summed up as: hey, this is cool.

Well, I’ve now played a chunk of GOG’s dolled-up Thief, and my sentiment can now be summed up as: hey, this is cool.

No, really. I’ve spent a bit of my workday going through Thief’s opening Bafford’s Manor mission, and I’m genuinely impressed by how well a technically un-remastered version of Thief holds up in the big ’26.

It’s not radical—you’ll have to wait for Nightdive’s effort for your proper bells and whistles—but it is remarkable. There’s a lot to be said for having a version of Thief you can just boot up and play, in modern resolutions on modern systems, and with startlingly well-integrated controller support, of all things.

It’s the gamepad stuff that most blows my hair back. Now, let’s be clear, the role GOG plays in this is mostly that of curator and collator: gathering up fan mods, securing the relevant permissions, and bundling them up. But it made good choices with Thief—the inclusion of Peter Wright’s Gamepad Mod turns the venerable classic into a game I could comfortably play on my TV.

It’s no hacky add-in, Thief really feels seamless on an Xbox One controller, right down to the new radial menus that pop up to let you select your equipment, artfully slowing down the game to enable you to make your choice.

It’s not just the gamepad, of course. Making NewDark—a fan patch for the game that’s all but mandatory these days—part of the game’s default installation is an obviously good move, letting the game run at modern widescreen resolutions out of the box like it was made for them in the first place. It all lets Thief’s age get out of the way of your enjoyment of it, and solves the vital issue of ‘I want to play this old game but can’t be bothered faffing about with mods and fan patches’. Someone else has faffed for you.

Wrap it all up with GOG’s other fixes and, well, it’s the kind of treatment I wish all the classics could get—the easy inclusion of all the myriad essential fan-patches that accrue around old games, saving you from having to venture out and install them yourself. I mean, hey, I’d rather everything got the super-polished Nightdive treatment, but until we live in that world, this does just fine.