The title says it all.
Tell me about stealth mechanics that work well for you, and if you can think of one, a favorite I’m a sneaky master badass moment.
I have two favourite moments from Dishonored but they’re not exactly badass, just memorable.
I was in the Golden Cat on the top floor in the main tower. I’d killed the Pendletons and knocked out most of the guards but there was one left on a balcony with a courtesan. As I approached them she said how the city looks so beautiful from up here, like something out of a fairy tale. They exchanged more words before she told the guard she could make him forget his own name for some coin. They settled, looking out across Dunwall. I thought I could grab him without her noticing and if she did notice she’d drop to her knees and beg for her life, or run, but that rarely happens. It happened. She ran screaming down the stairs towards the courtesans dancing with each other, so I panicked and chased her. She had to be stopped before she alerted anybody because things could get messy from there. As far as I was aware, there were no other guards in the building but I didn’t want to leave anything to chance. As I chased her down the hard stone steps and drew close, I jostled her and she toppled. Her screaming cut short and her body went limp. There was blood on one of the steps. I stood staring at her, make-up streaming down her face. She didn’t deserve this. Worse people lay sleeping in piles behind closed doors and in dumpsters. Madam Prudence had another dead girl to throw in the river.
Another time a maid was walking around Dunwall Tower’s main chambers and she was just, y’know, walking everywhere, so she had to go. I possessed her and walked her into the nearby water closet and on leaving her she dropped to her knees and started puking up everywhere, presumably from the side effects of being possessed. Ick. This was no time to get squeamish though, I had to finish the job. So I grabbed her mid-chuck and as her head lifted upwards into my embrace chunder went all up the walls. Like, all up them, everywhere. Possession was a lot messier than time bend. No sooner had she hit the deck I heard footsteps outside. Dark vision revealed a guard, and apparently he needed the toilet because he was heading straight through the door. I paused time and sleep darted him.
Flying cloaked in EVE Online. Outwitting bubblers and campers. Complete freedom to fly in 0.0.
As a mostly PC gamer, and a fan of the Thief series, I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed the stealth mechanics in Sly Cooper and the Theivius Raccoonus.
In Sly Cooper, characters and devices in the world project spotlights that you try to avoid. In that regard, they’re basically just timing puzzles. But what I really appreciated was the clarity of it: You know exactly where the safe spaces are and aren’t.
What was really clever is that if you get spotted, all the lights turn into damaging lasers that are the exact same size as the lights were (so the avoidance patterns are the same) but will kill you. Characters will pull out guns and shoot you if you enter their spot radius. Then there’s an alarm object in each part of the level that, if you can get to it, can be smashed to turn off the alarm and revert everything to its original state.
It’s such an elegant and clear design. For a 3D console platformer, it’s perfect.
F-19 Stealth Fighter
My plane was practically shredded, evading as best I could after dropping my payload on target. Fuel was bingo, and I had to keep doing little dives to maintain enough air speed. Further evasion was out of the picture so I was trying to get to friendly territory with the most direct route. I was finally spotted and Migs were closing in on me.
I decided I wasn’t going to let the enemy get my high-tech plane or any parts, so I was going to faceplant the plane once they got me within missile range. Alerts went off as I got painted, but just at that moment a flight of F-16’s appeared on the horizon and the Migs bugged out. I’d barely made it to friendly territory and limped my way to an emergency landing with beads of sweat on my brow.
Oh, wait… you mean other kinds of stealth, don’t you?
My favorite stealth mechanic/moment from a game when I was younger had to be playing Splitner Cell, and doing the wall split jump followed up by a stealth take down. I just remember loving the move so much, I tried to do it whenever possible.
I’ll list the things that piss me off about stealth systems, because in trying to avoid them one should come up with a pretty good stealth system by default:
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linked enemies/binary nature of the stealth system: in some games, once you alert the enemy, some invisible alarm is triggered and every enemy instantly knows you’re there. Same goes for linking enemies into small groups where if one enemy gets killed the others in his vicinity will detect you. Granted, this is more of a problem in isometric titles where stealth is tacked on.
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press crouch to stealth. How about no? Spells that muffle footsteps, soft boots, even an upright stance that’s a little slower than default walk would all be a better solution. Ideally I’d like to see the game to have two speed modes - run and walk, with walk being silent by default (could be tied to equipment or passives if you’re going for class archetypes). At this point I’d like to add that some speed up in stealth stance works great if it’s implemented well - Splinter Cell: Blacklist is a good example of this
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no light or sound based checks for detection. Looking at you, Dishonored.
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various teleport moves. I mean sure, if you want to invalidate all the hard work of your level designers, why not?
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no side/frontal takedowns. Blacklist implemented this well by giving enemy a reaction timer, and if you were fast enough you were able to initiate a frontal takedown just as they turned but before they had time to react.
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contextual actions for traversing the levels. Thief: TDP vs Thief (2014) is all that needs to be said. It’s 2018, if a game from 1999 could have systems that fully support a proper stealth experience then I see no reason why a game released today couldn’t have the same.
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enemies reverting to default state after an alarm - wrong. Keep them at heightened alertness and mix up their search patterns.
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3rd person view when behind a box: a crutch that I feel is implemented when designers for whatever reason don’t iterate and tweak their game and instead give the player a tool to deal with the unrefined patrol paths and schedules.
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x-ray vision. No. Nope. Noooooooo. Minus two stars by default.
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cloak/invisibility spells or abilities - see x-ray.
That’s all I can think of right now. My favorite stealth experiences are mostly in Splinter Cell: Blacklist which I played in co-op with a good friend of mine - double takedowns, distracting enemies with one player and then initiating a takedown from above by another, etc. The game in general is extremely solid, even when stacked against the giants of the genre such as Thief. A good modern take on the stealth formula.
Summoner. The way they handled stealth in that game was just great, and really conveyed the feeling well. DAOC infiltrator would be high on the list as well. Ability to climb walls to infiltrate keeps, and then backstab someone and try to get away? …you bet.
Nah Dan that works too.
One of the things about stealth gameplay is the anticipation of falling off the cliff. Hoping you are not discovered cuz you know that all hell breaks loose then and the whole power curve is no longer in your favor.
So first thanks-- yea we are basically doing Thief stealth with some sprinkles of modern conventions.
As for enemies not going default…I hear you, but sometimes realism needs to take the backseat to fun. If the AI doesn’t reset you can’t get the player back into the tension mode, most of the time they just go postal at that point - see Dishonored, Payday stealth.
My favorite stealth game is still Mark of the Ninja, no other stealth game has made me feel more like an unstoppable badass. I don’t really have any specific moments though.
Addendum to this: Flying cloaked and mapping out POS’ and other points of interest using the probes.
I see what you did there
I just saw what I did there! :D
Also, the stealth bomber attack.
I had a great stealth moment playing Deus Ex (the original), trying to complete it without killing any but the necessary* major antagonists. Late in the game, I had run out of non-lethal ammo, and the enemies had become too tough to knock out with the baton. To avoid other enemies, I found myself sneakily following one trooper down a well-lit corridor. I hadn’t had time to assess his patrol pattern. And then he stopped. I knew this meant he was about to turn around. With no time to think I took a guess and swerved to his right. He turned to the left and missed me completely as I crept past him.
* Yes, I know you can avoid killing them with a lot of effort. Didn’t seem worth it.
Not a stealth game per se, but multiplayer sneaking is the best kind and Evolve was no slouch when you were still at stage 1 or heavily damaged, being tracked by a crack squad of hunters. Evolve was heart in mouth stuff at times. As a monster you could jump or crawl to avoid leaving footprints, you could sniff to detect nearby prey and the hunters themselves, you could knock over flora and disturb wildlife that the hunters could see and hear. Juking was so incredibly satisfying.
Evolve had a lot of vegetation which, in the right circumstances, you could hide in. Now, at stage one you’re not very big and you don’t glow. As you evolve you get bigger and you start to glow with energy and power. When you take a lot of damage your glow fades allowing you to hide much more easily…
I remember one time being chased at stage one and I was running and jumping and I just could not shake these hunters. They were organised. So instead of running I just stopped, crawled into a bush at the base of a cliff and faced it with only a section of my dark, gnarled back exposed. The hunters, eager to catch me up, boosted straight off the cliff face and over the top of me. The last hunter dropped down and quickly scanned around… but didn’t see me in the bush. I waited for their barks to die down and climbed up and away to feast and regain some energy. That was an amazing moment. Similar to this:
God, I miss Evolve.
Evolve is a very interesting case study. They got a whole lot right, but I think the game mode itself wasn’t engaging for enough people.
Yeah, which I think’s a real shame. I’m not sure what players expected to be honest because Turtle Rock delivered a great 4v1 sci-fi hunting game. I loved the Hunt mode because games never quite panned out the same depending on the map, the weather, the hunter/monster combinations, the movement of the hunters/monster, where the monster got trapped, how those fights panned out, how the monster evolved and played–what you were playing as! Playing monster solo was nerve-shredding and playing with co-operative communicative hunters was a joy. Conversely, playing with uncooperative hunters who didn’t communicate or want to learn was dreadful so… yeah. I think that group has a lot to answer for when it comes to true co-op games!
I think if you could find my first QT3 post after my lurking days you’d find my favorite stealth moment. Involving a dead cat named Gidget (not dead at the time and obviously my wife named her I would never).
Playing Clive Barker’s Undying in the dark before backlit keyboards were such a thing with a flashlight nearby in case I needed to look at the keyboard. To accentuate the experience you see.
Said feline sitting on top of couch behind me reaches out with one paw, slowly and with great deliberation, stealthily, and taps me on the shoulder. It’s a lucky thing I was not imbedded in the ceiling after that memorable experience. RIP Gidget.