Despite being built with the aging Unreal Engine 3, Thief touts some cutting edge rendering techniques that have put the game on our radar. Along with DirectX technologies such as Phong Tessellation and Bokeh Depth of Field, Eidos" latest stealth entry supports Contact Hardening Shadows, which makes shadows more realistic by sharpening shadows on closer objects while blurring those in the distance.
Support for AMD"s Mantle API is also expected in a post-launch patch sometime next month, though we won"t hold our breath though given Mantle was continually delayed in Battlefield 4 and buggy once added. Apart from the upcoming addition of Mantle, the PC version offers improvements over the PS4/Xbox One versions including better anti-aliasing, higher resolution shadows and support for multi-monitors.
Eidos also claims to have worked hard on multi-threading performance by adding a fully multi-threaded animation and cloth system, not to mention that the company has included a solid in-game benchmark, which seems increasingly rare among triple-A releases. Thief"s built-in benchmark appears to do a good job of demonstrating a worst-case performance scenario, so if your system can average 60fps in the benchmark you should enjoy perfectly smooth gameplay from start to finish.
Read: Thief benchmarked, graphics & CPU performance test
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