Your Most Wanted Remakes and Remasters.

While this is all true, Thief shares so much dna with System Shock and Deus Ex that I do usually mentally lump it in with all of them. 

While Thief is purely about stealth, it's also largely systems driven and you do have a lot of freedom in how you approach objectives. (Shoot guard. Distract Guard with sound. Use rope arrow to get around guard, etc..), bash guard on the head and hide the body, pickpocket key from guard, etc..) 
For a time when FPS games were mainly about shooting monsters in the face, it stood out by allowing the player a lot more options (and not mainly being about shooting people in the face). 

So many of the elements that made early immersive sims unique, especially the looking glass ones, have become kind of standard in games these days. So they feel more like basic gameplay than uniquely immersive sim. 

For what it's worth, Wikipedia does list the early Thief games as immersive sims. (Though tbh the definition of Immersive Sim has always been a bit nebulous) 

Yeah, it's woolly. But, to my mind, it is a stealth game as there is only one playstyle - stealth. On Expert, you can't kill people and Garrett can't take much damage, so combat is highly discouraged. You also get the complete list of objectives on Expert, making it more the intended difficulty/way to play the game. If you need to get past a door, you will need to find the key unless you can pick the lock, but you always have the lockpicks- there's nothing optional about it. You can't break the door with your sword (unless you can and I never knew, whoa)

I think the growth in middleware for thing like physics, and the increase in the number of crafting and open world games, means that a lot of elements of Immersive Sims are much more widespread.

Back then, the mere ability to move crates and use them to create your own steps to enter somewhere was revolutionary, whereas now almost every game has open worlds with realistic physics and you can move stuff around or find alternate ways to enter an area.
Games like Zelda Tears of the Kingdom or Farcry games probably have enough elements to count.
Maybe the name has become meaningless these days.

But for me it's always been that looking glass vibe of feeling like you're in a real world. There's a story and it's not just totally open, but also the systems mean that you feel you can experiment and mess around and find solutions that the developers may not have intended. Being first person seems important to me too, though I couldn't really say why.

Wiki gives the example of the rope arrows in Thief 1 and 2 being able to attach to *any* wooden surface, whereas in later games they only attached to specific points. It sounds like a small difference, but it kinda encapsulates the reason I enjoyed the first few thief games much more.

I also spent a ridiculous amount of those games attempting to find highly implausible solutions using rope arrows.

I think Tenchu has a better prospect of a comeback than Thief at this point.

It's not about how many brand damaging bad games there have been, Tenchu can just be done cheaper. I'm team Tenchu all the way, but deep in my heart I would really like a Bushido Blade.

Does anyone even care enough and in great numbers at this point?

Immersive sim is a term that someone probably invented for marketing reasons, and it stuck. Just like GPU. That said, the way it's always been used, it usually refers to a type of game rather than a specific gameplay style.

For example, if you think that immersive sims need to give you customization and player freedom in how to approach a problem, then System Shock 1 probably doesn't fit. There is really only one way to play System Shock: keep moving and destroy everything in sight, and occasionally run if you are being outmatched. Really the only choice you get is whether to solve computer puzzles on your own or use a logic probe to bypass them. Other elements of player choice (do I engage an enemy now or later? Do I use my Magpulse ammo against that droid or save it for a tougher enemy?) are not much different from what you'd find in Doom.

Still, System Shock is usually considered an immersive sim because there are story elements, audio logs that draw you into the plot, the map encourages you to complete it yourself, and stuff. It's Ultima Underworld meets Doom, and I can understand why that would be considered the pinnacle of immersive in 1994, and even now it's pretty good if you ask me, but in terms of gameplay, the bar must have raised (SS2 on the other hand does give you a bit more freedom). Isn't BOTW an immersive sim in its own way? Why not The Witcher 3?

So yeah, I guess 'tis a silly term.

Thanks for the immersive sim discussion, chaps - interesting and informative, as always!

For whatever it's worth, I agree that 'immersive sim' is a silly term... as are most genre names, really. I mean, who decided that a combination of hardcore punk and heavy metal should be called 'grindcore', FFS? (A member of Napalm Death, if memory serves, but my question was largely rhetorical.)

Whatever one chooses to call them, I'd like to be able to check out the first three Thief games and the original Deus Ex; sadly, I doubt they'll ever be remade or remastered as long as Embracer Group holds the rights.

Yeah it could be a pain.

I actually liked that DR4 eventually gave you two ways to play and not have the timer.

DR3 is still my favourite though.

They will have to do a lot of work on DR1, I got the cheap and lazy xbox one  port on games with gold and its really rough, shit AI and combat is really awful and miss the combo weapons of later games

Yeah. It’s the boss fights for me. The timer is fine for me as the game is so incredibly short. You could complete the game in a single sitting if you had the day off. Just those boss battles required some level of cheesing as they were clunky and unfair.

Yeah, I really wanted to like it, but games with forced time limits can just get in the bin. I doubt it's aged at all well and would need some serious tweaking, but even then I'll probably skip it unless they've added a mode without time pressure.