Thief 2014, like reboots in general, is much better than the original games.
First of all, if video games want to grow as a medium and be recognized as art, they have to convey emotion. How could the original do this when it doesn't even have real cutscenes but a bunch of still images? I though we had real time videos over 100 years ago. Second, no offence to Stephen Russell but his Garret performance sucked. It's flat and doesn't have any of the emotion and depth that the new Thief was able to achieve through comprehensive performance where the same actor did the voice and motion capture. Third, the new Thief solidifies its emotional and mature story and narrative through plentiful character interaction which the originals lacked. Garret has a companion, Erin, who he, like the player, bonds with. It's an interesting and complex tale of friendship, love and master-apprentice relationship, combining three major themes into one.
As for gameplay itself, overcompensating size of the levels isn't deep, interesting or good. It's like the level designers couldn't make a quality level so they just made everything as big and complex as possible just to hide it: quantity over quality. Smart people have a saying called "sometimes less is more". Also, it's basically a cheat to bypass guards through some alternate hidden path you found, so I don't know why these so-called old school hardcore gamers are always saying that modern games are too simple and easy. New Thief provides genuine stealth challenges with no cheat routes and has predefined rope arrow spots so the player can't exploit the game by shooting said arrows everywhere to take advantage of level designers' oversights.
Oh, and pulling random words like "taffer" out of your ass doesn't make your game more creative. Using real-life words like 'fuck' and 'cock ring' is much more honest and relatable for gamers because, guess what, we live in the real world. I think it's time you guys finally throw your nostalgia glasses to the garbage bin. It's not 1999 anymore.