Nightdive Project Announced: Thief Remastered

I realize I already slipped up with my promise to myself regarding a post a month. In my defense, however, this is a big month, it seems: last Thursday (June 11th) was apparently the fifth anniversary of Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, and while I took no involvement with that game, I did upload an edit of the game to Nexus Mods and a corresponding Bandcamp album as a means of celebration.

More importantly, however, the Sunday before that (June 7th) saw the reveal of a project by Nightdive Studios, which I’ve been spending the past several months assisting with and can finally be a little open about as of that day: Thief: The Dark Project is getting a remaster! The main difference from the original packaging to my understanding is several major quality-of-life improvements, especially graphically and sonically, the latter being where I come into play. A large chunk of the audio you’ll hear even in the official trailer below, with the exception of dialog, was audio restoration and recreation work by yours truly.

How I got this position ended up being a really amusing story: evidently in early November last year they found one of my own YouTube uploads from the past sourcing what I could find of the sounds used for the music in the game, no thanks to one of those videos being featured in a PC Gaming web article back then. The coincidental part: by the time they reached out to me offering the position, I was literally busy at the time playing one of their prior Looking Glass Studios (the original developers) remasters in co-op mode with a good friend: System Shock 2! Regardless, upon getting the email, had to be quick to sign an NDA, (hence, one reason for my relative silence lately), and things took off from there!

Hesitant to reveal too much about the process just yet, especially knowing Nightdive is a subsidary of the well known Atari, but one thing they did give me permission to reveal at this time: when the project is released, we’re also hoping to release with it a spreadsheet I’ve been working with detailing what we all could find regarding where many iconic sounds, both musical and otherwise, came from. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to successfully source literally everything at this time, but even if we don’t succeed by release time, we’re already most of the way there, at least, and barring working from the original libraries and, in my case, synthesizers like we’re striving to do, we’ve also made surprisingly good headway with our own attempts at cleaning up the remaining files, including the dialog.

I myself am unable to confirm the exact planned release date for Thief: The Dark Project Remastered yet, but for now, we’ve estimated the window to be sometime this coming winter. More information about the project as a whole can be found on Nightdive Studios’ website.

Hopefully I can reveal a little more next month, but either way, rest assured, I will try to do what I can to keep this blog, and my other social media profiles, alive instead of getting too wrapped up in the work! Enjoy this art of one of my personal characters posing as the main character in the game in the meantime, drawn by the ever-talented noc_loft on X!