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.

The developer also mentions the inclusion of Parallax Occlusion Mapping (POM) -- an enhancement of the parallax mapping technique, which in turn is an enhancement of Bump Mapping, something I first recall seeing heavily used in Doom 3 where it brought textures to life. POM gives flat textures 3D definition by using a displacement map to make the textures change relative to perspective.