TheGrimSmile on 10/3/2019 at 20:20
Honestly I think a large part of it is nostalgia for me. I have fond memories of playing TDP when I was little (maybe around 2000, I can't remember for sure); I had no idea what I was doing and was too scared of zombies to ever go past Lord Bafford's Manor, but I had fun all the same. My sisters and I would gather into my mother's darkened office and play that first level over and over again, eventually graduating to playing Assassins and Undercover once we discovered the mystical level skip shortcut tucked away in the readme. Weirdly enough, I got Thief Gold and Thief 2 at the same a few years later, but didn't actually end up playing through either game in their entirety until sometime in high school. That's when I actually started to appreciate what was so good about the game itself: the amazing and atmospheric sound design, the immersive world that felt more real with every random journal and silly conversation, and the incredible stealth-focused gameplay that has remained a rare breed to this day.
Of course, the other thing I love almost as much as the game itself is the community surrounding it. While my interactions with other fans haven't always been positive, on the whole I'm constantly amazed that the community is still going strong after so many years. I'm especially impressed by the continuous efforts to not only mod a very closed and unfriendly code base, but to make those mods easier to install for people who want to jump into the good stuff right away. With display patches, updated textures, and fan-made bug fixes, the game looks and feels better than ever.
While I usually find that the objects of my nostalgic affection are better left untouched, Thief is one of the few things from my childhood that still holds up to my adult scrutiny. I have a few more niggles and annoyances with it these days, but I still play through Thief Gold and Thief 2 on a pretty regular basis and never get tired of them.
