Thief is another cross-generation game that seems to favor the new generation. While Thief is playable on old generation consoles, the experience is greatly hindered by the lackluster graphics and lack of environment effects, the addition of which makes Thief look absolutely spectacular on the PS4.
While Thief is still running on Unreal Engine 3, it has a unique art style, which truly shines on the PS4 in full 1080p. Being an atmospheric game, the toned down graphics on the old generation don’t make a good case for them. While it is expected given the power difference, we still do get some cross-generation titles that at least maintain a sort of parity between old generation and new generation. One such example would be Yakuza Ishin on the PS3 vs PS4. You can check out our screenshot comparison for Yakuza Ishin from here.
For an example of the toned down graphics, take a look at the difference between character models of the Xbox 360 version compared to the PS4 version of the game.
The comparison above illustrates the difference clearly. Besides lacking effects like depth of field and having lower quality shadows, the Xbox 360 version of the game also has severe downgrade in texture quality, resulting in a blurry mess of textures for the clothes of the main characters. You can also take a look at this GIF image, which highlights the resolution and texture difference between both platforms.
The lack of volumetric fog and low resolution textures often result in a lackluster atmosphere on the old generation consoles. As can be seen in the screenshot below, the distinct atmosphere of the PS4 version looks great compared to the Xbox 360 version of the game.
Note: Click on each image and then click on “view full size” to see the image in full resolution.
If you mainly play on consoles, we definitely recommend to play Thief on the next generation consoles. PS4 runs Thief at native 1080p(Xbox One is 900p), and while it might be locked at 30 fps, for a stealth game like Thief, the frame-rate hardly matters much.
