Garrett is a terrible thief . Invariably, each of his big jobs ends with the “Master Thief” getting caught red-handed. He is, however, a phantom during infiltrations and formidable during escapes. At least, he has the potential to be, if your skills are up to the task.

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Tension mounts as Garrett nears his target — a ring, a book, a blueprint, for instance. The stakes grow higher, guards grow in number, and levels increase in complexity. Spaces tend to constrain Garrett, forcing him to seek alternative routes, secret paths, and dash silently from one shadow to the next. Spaces are large, dense, and equally full of opportunity and risk. Breaking into a safe may pay off with enough gold to upgrade your health, but anything less than perfection could bring Hell down on you.The commitment to first-person made me acutely aware of the world around me, too. Separate from seeing the city’s suffering in the wake of industrial revolution, Thief forces you to pay attention. Third-person stealth games give you the unfair advantage of seeing what your character can’t and then adapting. Here, quiet thieves will spend lots of time hiding behind objects, peeking, and ducking into the shadows to wait for their moment.Thief’s player skill set, while not as supernaturally agile as the like-minded Dishonored, benefits from the restraint of relative realism. To some degree, it always feels as though Garrett is on a leash, unable to power through a scenario he’s forced to think about instead. With few opportunities to kill patrolling guards — something Garrett opposes ethically — Thief encourages a more delicate, often nonviolent approach to infiltration.Hardcore Thief fans have made their dread and disdain for Eidos Montreal’s franchise “re-imagining” known. Focus, a vision skill allowing Garrett to see notable objects and slow time, is the most contentious new feature. Like many, many things in Thief, you can deactivate it, and you will be rewarded for doing so. Turning off certain features before starting the campaign boosts your leaderboard point earnings. It also made me feel like a smarter, more capable kleptomaniac.I made Thief a little harder for myself. I removed my targeting reticle. Garrett was unable to take down enemies in alert mode, so detection meant vanishing ASAP. It made the satisfaction of blackjacking a guard and hiding his KO’d body all the sweeter. I didn’t have the guts to remove checkpoint saves, or to slow my movement, for the sake of additional points. Braver souls may activate one-hit kills (against themselves), heighten the price of resources, or remove character upgrades from Thief altogether. It amps up the challenge by inhibiting your progress — something masochists and the Thief faithful will fall for, no doubt.If you're feeling particularly confident, you could activate Iron Man mode, too — one death, and the entire game restarts from the beginning.“It’s all about choice” is something Eidos Montreal keeps saying about Thief, and that’s truer in its systemic options more than anywhere else. Beyond the gameplay on/off switches, you can also modify audiovisual elements to suit personal preferences. Deactivating the mini-map or directional arrow frees you from knowing where to go at all times, encouraging exploration — and, as such, the discovery of homes ripe for robbing.Thief fell off the radar for a few years, and its return left many skeptical, but it’s a relief to see that it’s real, it works, and it has plenty of intelligent aspects that don’t ruin its stealth tradition. Eidos Montreal continues to do interesting things with classic franchises, both in terms of staying true to their essence and in modernizing them for what appears to be the greater good. Even if Garrett's getting busted during every climax, at least the quiet road to get there resembles the thoughtful Thief many remember.

Mitch Dyer is an associate editor at IGN. He's trying to read 50 books in 2014. These are the 50 . Talk to Mitch about books and other stuff on Twitter at @MitchyD