Thief (series)

Thief is a series of stealth video games in which the player takes the role of Garrett, a master thief in a fantasy steampunk world resembling a cross between the Late Middle Ages and the Victorian era, with more advanced technologies interspersed.

The series consists of Thief: The Dark Project (1998), Thief II: The Metal Age (2000), Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004), Thief (2014) and Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow (2025). An expanded version of Thief: The Dark Project, titled Thief Gold, was released in 1999 and features three extra maps and a number of bug fixes. Looking Glass Studios developed both The Dark Project and The Metal Age. After the studio had gone out of business in 2000, many former employees moved to Ion Storm and began developing the third part of the series, Deadly Shadows. Eidos-Montréal was subsequently given the reins for Thief. The Thief series has been well-received by critics.

Gameplay

Set mainly in a first-person perspective within a 3D environment, the main gameplay tactic of the Thief series is to avoid fights, stealthily traverse the environment to complete specific objectives and instead sneak around the enemies or discreetly subdue them, without raising too much noise or suspicion. The Thief games are sometimes described as either a "first-person sneaker", "sneak-em-up" or a "first-person looter" to emphasize this difference. Classification of the game has been slow coming, as three-dimensional stealth games, such as Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed, only became more common years after the first Thief.