Nightdive has unveiled the first trailer for Thief: The Tarnished Mirror, a new official expansion to Thief coming with its imminent remaster. Most exciting of all: The Tarnished Mirror is being made by the team behind The Black Parade, a 2023 mod that was one of the most exciting things to happen to the series in 20 years.

The Tarnished Mirror consists of four new missions, and is meant "as a bridge between Thief: The Dark Project and Thief 2: The Metal Age," according to an accompanying press release. Similar to The Black Parade, these new levels will leverage improvements in technology to offer more sprawling, ambitious maps than '90s PCs could handle.

The scenes from the trailer are all very Thief, but similar to The Black Parade, there's immediately more verticality than in the 1997 original game. There are also glimpses at interiors that leverage familiar Thief assets to create weirder, more surprising spaces than I'm used to from the mainline games.

The press release also indicates that The Tarnished Mirror will embrace Thief's contested legacy of horror in a similar way to The Black Parade, and that's music to my ears. I've always been a Thief undead mission defender, and The Black Parade upped the ante⁠—it's one of the scariest games I've ever played.

All told, this news about the expansion has more than made up for my disappointment at there being no PC version of the remaster's big box special edition. I may not get my tchotchke fix here, but the Thief Remaster is shaping up to be something very special.