I might be resurrecting an old thread, but what the hell.

To anyone asking, yes, Xpadder is your best friend in this case (or JoyToKey), the game will NEVER recognize the Xbox 360 controller natively. (Ironic considering that Thief 3 was made with the Original Xbox's limitations and controls in mind).

As for what is Xpadder (or JoyToKey)?, it's a third party program that lets you bind any of the keys and functions from the keyboard and mouse to your controller (ANY controller), perfectly suitable for games with little to no support for modern controllers. You have to bind the keys yourself (or just use the above configuration). Have fun with it. ;)

I've already finished both Thief Gold and Thief 2 with the good ol' WASD (I've put a good 40+ hours in each game with more to come) and I'm already looking forward to playing this with my good ol' 360 controller (I'm becoming increasingly lazy with my games lately, with that I can hook up my PC to my living's room HDTV and all that :P).

I have a Thrustmaster controller. Is there a way to set it up for Thief? I can bind all functions to the buttons as I wish, but the sticks do not work.

I tried Tomb Raider 2 with a controller. It is abysmal. Admittedly the old TR's were never designed around the stick, but the D-pad, but with the keyboard I'm like 50% more effective. Same goes for the new TR games.

Nothing beats mouse and keyboard in terms of control an efficiency, but out of curiosity I'd like to try Thief.

Try Xpadder to mimic keyboard or mouse: Xpadder 5.3

5.3 is the last freeware version, then you can at least try application.

Remember that you have to first set up the keyboards to something (doesn't really matter) then you pick the buttons in Xpadder for your controller and assign the button to something that correspond to a hotkey in the game.

Try WASD or arrows for the left stick then mouse (all four directions) on the right stick and see how it works. Theoretically I think it could work but there's likely too many keys needed in this game for a controller IMO

If you look in the options menu, there's a setting for "joystick." If you turn it on it'll actually recognize the Xbox 360 controller, but at first only the left analog stick for movement. I think you have to map the rest of the controls manually and save that profile. Shouldn't need MotionJoy or Xpadder or anything.

Yes but that only works if all buttons work as a 360. I rather use Xpadder if not all of them works so I can make sure all works as I'll just mimic the keyboard (or mouse).

But in-game you actually press which button you want to assign. I think that makes it intuitive enough but that's just me.