What makes a good stealth game?
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Community-driven video game blog & discussion
Community-driven video game blog & discussion
This phonograph "reads" a rock’s rough surface and transforms it into beautiful ambient music pic.twitter.com/PYDzYsWWf8
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Silence.....then some random sound that will either help you or scare you.
What else?
bump
>What was that?
underrated
Have a (you) 🙂
Designing levels in unique ways around dark/light mechanics, same goes with sound. Not everything has to be reliant on those two factors, but they are important aspects of stealth level design imo. Both Thief and Splinter cell has major focus on this, although i feel like Splinter Cell did it better than Thief. What Thief excelled at was open ended level design.
Vulnerability. Level & Sound Design. Enemy AI. Atmosphere.
There have to be consequences for fucking up. The game needs to ease you into the world, but it must be difficult to master.
Doubt we're close to getting anything like that in the near future though. Maybe Gloomwood, but I have my doubts.
That's great, but in practice you just quickload the moment something goes wrong.
implement checkpoints.
But I want Thief-style open levels. It won't work together, as we saw in Thi4f.
The first Styx game has a similar level design to OG thief, although levels are smaller compared to it, I think the worst about it is how little enviroment is used, but it's not a horrible game
No quick save/load
Yeah and you can quicksave/load any pc game to death and ruin them. That's on you.
Unfortunately stealth games can't be made because they rely on the player paying attention to their surroundings and thinking. And judging from all the downgrades made to the RE4 remake to make breakable boxes somehow more obvious to retards, I think stealth as a genre is just never coming back. There's apparently NO market for people that "play games and also think while playing them."
If you hate fun. Do you quickload a shooter when you take damage too?
>just quickload
I do it on Thief because the AI never returns to an unalerted state, they get this nearly supernatural ability to instantly detect you. I don't mind a lower threshold for detection after fucking up or enemies actively looking for you, but the way thief handles it is no fun.
>the AI never returns to an unalerted state, they get this nearly supernatural ability to instantly detect you
That's not true in my experience, though enemy types may vary. The eyes in the back of the head thing is only in the period just after returning to patrol. After some time, guards will eventually return to their original state.
Doesn't happen for me, the biggest offenders are the guards fighting over lady Van Vernum in Life of the Party, if one of them survives they get instant detection for the rest of the mission. It happened to me when I had to escape through the rooftops after breaking into Angel Watch, that guy could still detect me instantly.
They can't move that much. What's it matter? The game doesn't even track detections.
That was just an example. All guards behave that way for me.
It's a mistake to put too much effort into stopping save scumming and punishing mistakes. You end up ruining the average player's experience most of the time.
People don't want to spend an hour or two exploring and creeping around a level only to have unalterable punishment because a patrol caught them off guard.
Leave that for a hardcore level. It's not inherently wrong, but you are disincentivizing exploration unless you give ridiculous rewards, which have their own problems.
Have a maximum number of saves per level, higher difficulty levels have less saves
The solution is to have various levels of fucking up, so that if you get spotted the first time, it's easy to make a decision that will get you out of the predicament, rather than having it immediately make things several times difficult. This way, you encourage players to keep their flow and react, rather than go 'oh shit i gotta quickload'
First person view. Games like Splinter Cell, MGS, or Hitman cannot be regarded as stealth games because third person view is inherently anti-stealth. Only in first person you are forced to pay attention to the environment, rely on timing when you turn your back on potential threats, carefully lean around corners, etc.
>First person view. Games like Splinter Cell, MGS, or Hitman cannot be regarded as stealth games because third person view is inherently anti-stealth
Why does Thief's fanbase have so many fucking morons? i swear Imsim queers have ruined all discussion of this game.
How bout you provide a counter-argument, faget?
>third person isn't stealth because i said so
There's no real counter-argument that needs to be made, because what you're saying is just objectively wrong. Third person is very much stealth. Just because you're on the spectrum it doesn't make you correct. God, i wish sseth and civvie never exposed a lot of people to this game.
Some Hitman games have first person view
>ah yes, Thief... *cracks open a can of monster*
>now that's a great game
What exactly did you think posting a webm of blackjacking an archer to death and not getting a game over would achieve?
So, what is supposedly wrong here? If you're an archer and some hooded bro starts mauling you with a blackjack your only option is to just take it
This also fails your mission on a hard difficulty since you kill the guy
Blackjacking doesn't count as killing.
If its done on unaware enemy and onehits then yes, but in the case of that webm it'll be a kill and fail the mission. It's quite exploitable, if you got spotted you can lure an enemy in a shadow, there's a random chance they'll lose a sight of Garrett for a few seconds during which they count as unaware and you can blackjack them to sleep
Blackjack can kill. It only KOs if the NPC has lost track of you, otherwise it just does a small amount of damage, which can stack up and kill an NPC.
Plus, there's distinct animations and sounds for deaths versus KOs, and that there is a death animation. He dead.
The blackjack does a little bit of damage, so hitting someone with it a lot of times can totally kill them. It's also impossible to knock out an enemy like that, and the guard did a death animation.
Of course this was already explained clearly but my retarded ass didn't bother reading the 2nd reply.
And there he is.
Fuck, at least he eventually went down.
>Must've been the wind.
>boomers soil their pants over this even today
Other game genres I strongly agree with old > new but sometimes I think nostalgia goggles really are a big thing in contributing to brainrot
Fr fr no cap. That 27 second webm perfectly summarizes the entire game bruh. I kinda stopped paying attention halfway through tho, it's on the long side
fr fr needs some shitty mobile game gameplay and a satisfying video of some shit being cut up no cap ong
Not freezing time when you're lockpicking
To me it's mind-blowing what insane groundwork Thief games laid down.
what do you mean?
Every "stealth" game is just an exercise in quick save + quick load. Glad this shit genre is dead.
that's a you problemo, hombre
>Every "stealth" game is just an exercise in quick save + quick load
Admitting to save scumming is kind you saying that you're not good at these games and it's less to do with it being about bad game design, but you being shit. You shouldn't be saving all the time if you're fucking up. For me i learned to set a limit of saves for myself and not to exceed it.
>For me i learned to set a limit of saves for myself and not to exceed it.
Which stealth games let you manually set a save limit so you don't have to worry about temptation?
>temptation
anon really
yes really. now answer the question, gay.
Hitman and Max Payne 1 and 2 are the only games I've played with that limitation outside of diegetic saves like ink ribbons.
You will get better at restraint by practicing restraint.
god forbid a game actually MAKE the player be good at it.
How is that mutually exclusive? As said above, do you quickload everytime you take damage in a shooter, and then decide that all shooters are bad?
not mgs
Why do you morons hate fun? You should only be able to quick save once you've been caught and are being chased.
Thief 1 and 2 are great games
>Levels are designed in such a way that they are compact while also taking about an hour give or take 15 minutes
>Levels also are mostly non-linear, letting you tackle the objectives how you want
>And each mission you can always channel yourself with getting the loot or playing as a pacifist
>The map they hand you is not taped to your HUD and doesn’t orientate itself. You have to figure where you are
>Sound design makes the stealth perfect
>Your only way of detecting enemies is to listen out for them or to conviently be out of their vision
>You can even get hints to where loot is from random NPCs
My only complaint is that Thief 1 the later levels start to become more linear and the final boss is pretty shit.
They're also pretty much the only examples of stealth games doing difficulty right. Probably helped by the fact they were designed to be played on Expert.
what's the differences in thief's difficulty?
Higher loot requirements, starting from hard some levels will add additional objectives and on expert most levels don't allow you to kill humans. I'd say that's about it in a nutshell.
>most levels don't allow you to kill humans
sounds arbitrary
It is, knocking out is always better than killing because killing them leaves a blood pool that you have to waste a water arrow on. And it's not like enemies ever wakeup anyway.
it is annyoning but it works within game
human guards are not that thought, if you are in a situation where you are about to get caught getting first strike will usually guarantee succes
On top of what the other anon said, on harder difficulties you have less health
Ability to tackle the enemies in many ways like lethal, non lethal, ghosting, baiting through noise or environment manipulation.
Sandbox maps with interactive elements and different routes to reach objective.
Atmosphere because you will spend a lot of time waiting, staring at walls and analyzing enemy routes
MGS are not stealth games
A good stealth game should strive to create the same tension in you, when you went into an abandoned mall with your brother once and had to hide behind a corner to avoid the security guard. It should make you focus on the sound of his footsteps as he is coming closer and closer and then that sigh of relief, when they just continue like before down the path.
If you just give players the ability to see through walls or kill any NPC with the click of a button, then that tension is never there. That's why Thief gets things fundamentally right, where Hitman, Thi4f and other games get it wrong. Garrett is not a master swordsman. He swings his sword kinda slowly and can't parry enemy attacks perfectly, who are capable of doing combos the player isn't. They can swing 5 times extremely fast, while you can only do a slow swoosh.
I want a Thief 4, where there are more immersive elements. Instead of simply "buying" the tip in the pre-mission screen, you need to actually find the servants, who work in the manor in a bar and them pay them money directly or otherwise convince them to draw you a map or give you a tip.
If you go outside the city to the Bonehoard, you need to actually travel through a scary dark forest by foot or skip the intermission gameplay by paying for a carriage.
Basically everything Thief 1/2/MGSV did.
1. Open levels with multiple routes/objectives
2. Pre-mission preparation like buying extra items
3. Lots of tools/systems that can be used in combination for interesting effects
3. Player is underpowered which disincentivizes attacking/killing guards
4. Player is able to retreat back into stealth after being caught. (being caught is not a failure state basically)
Optional:
5. Horror undertones
>Player is underpowered which disincentivizes attacking/killing guards
>MGSV
???????????
You can kill people in MGSV but you need to do it in a smart way or else the entire base descends on you and it becomes a massive firefight.
What? You can snipe them with ease, call in Peqoud to fuck them up or just roll in with that walker-gear thing and annihilate them. Or just hop in a fucking tank!
No you don't mate
Yeah this
Fultons and motherbase make the act of not 100% KOing everything you see simply unoptimal that you'd have to actively police yourself to not do.
I played a bunch of Monaco and I liked that they added stuff like patrol variations and phone calls to add elements of randomness. Not a huge fan of how that game handled nonviolence and looting but it did a lot of things I liked.
I'm playing Builders Paradise right now, started yesterday. This is pretty fucking spooky and unnerving.
What's map like? Cathedral mixed with catacombs?
90% machines inside a mechanist stronghold
Fan mission
What's builders paradise?
Alternative ending mission for Thief 2 when Karras succeeded and released rust gas, which killed everything except mechanists and Garret. Very suspenseful and unsettling FM.
Why's the fire not casting any light?
Any recommendations for some underrated stealth games? I only heard about this a few days ago
Which thief game do I play first
The first one
Isn't it a bit old?
It's perfect, arguably best of the series. Just turn texture filtering off, and use modern NewDark engine with patches. You can also install hd textures if you occasionally have no taste.
Even Deadly Shadows can be considered old at this point. Not a franchise to get into if you can't stand icky old games.In which case I find you to be a gay, but that's a different story.
Stealth games that allow you to save whenever are shit.
If you fuck up you have to salvage it somehow, and the game needs to allow you to make mistakes.
Thoughts on stealth games that let you kill people easily (like Dishonored)
they always suck when the AI isn't programmed to notice anyone going missing
you need npcs reguarly checking in on each other and if they notice someone missing they become alert, and if they notice further oddities like more posts being abandoned, doors left open etc they'll sound the alarm
otherwise it's just dull, more akin to a puzzle game
tbh in Dishonored they do notice when their fellows are missing. I don't think they start a full-blown alarm if they ONLY notice someone's missing, though
I'd really love a stealth game that goes all the way with realism even if that makes it frustrating/unfair
A protag who has to use stealth because he's not a good fighter
>I want stealth game to all star little girls because I'm a pedo
Fuck off
Cumbrain kys
It's so fucking straightforward I'm shocked at how few games have managed to figure it out. It's as simple as having the bare minimum of the following:
>good lighting engine
>good sound design
>intelligible AI
>some basic worldbuilding and atmosphere building
>level design that is at least fairly solid and not overly detailed
Also a proper stealth game is gong to have a vulnerable character.
Why?
I would love a stealth game where you could visit the place you intend to rob before starting the mission. Wander around all the publicly accessible parts of the building, bribe servants, etc. Come up with a plan for entry, etc.
How to handle combat in stealth games?
you are supposed to outsmart the guards not overpowering them.
Combat should drain a lot of your resources, and only be used in extreme circumstances
It should be minimalistic and should be not the answer to most encounters.
Actually using the world rather than the same shitty generic stealth design that's been done since even before Thief made it mre popular
>soooo you got a light mechanicm a sound mechanic and just make sure to stick to the shadows/out of the enemy's vision and you're kino
Cool thanks, did that 10000 times now.
Provide an example of something you think is good
Unironically Thief 4 with no UI or speciial abilities
The Ui and basically 'here's all the info you need to be safe bro' is what kills the genre because you end up just playing to the beat of the UI instead of playing with intelligence
I'm not sure if Dishonored let you remove every bit of the UI also but that would be up there if so
wtf are you talking about
The UI always is king
You're not thinking 'will that area be safe to travel' but 'keep an eye on your light meter and run away when it tells you to'
So your intelligence is reduced to being a 'check what the UI wants you to do'. It's no different than the floating quest makers from Skyrim
I know I was able to get rid of some stuff and I felt like that plus not taking any powers like dark vision, slow time, etc, made it more difficult
You don't really get much rewards for playing "the hard way" in Dishonored aside from bragging rights but it's fun in its own way (and going very aggressive with no powers but weapons out is a great relief after doing a nolethal ghost run)
Thief4 unironically can benefit from a very nice 2nd run where you can disable a lot of "features" (like using your superPOWAHS to lockpick faster) in a baked-in custom hard mode. Game is still a shitshow but it was nice that they bothered
>I'm not sure if Dishonored let you remove every bit of the UI also but that would be up there if so
You can hide it when not in combat/taking damage (my favourite option) but I think you can also toggle everything off - or individual things like objective markers "go there"
Dishonored waypoints are fine I think, the levels make you want to explore anyway due to rewards, side quests and other interesting things. Dishonored is a good stealth game I think, as the game still scales quite well to your powers most of the time.
A cast of characters consisting of women, minorities and lgbt people (the less straight cis white males the better).
Powerful guards and weak players
They player should be hiding and stealthing from guards out of fear for his life. In many shitty stealth games you hide to spare the guards life instead.
clearly defined consequences, and the means to circumvent them from multiple paths
No retarded 'press x to knock out' shit.
You get killed in one shot
Based or cringe?
Anything short of a game over when being spotted is fine in my book.
last of us 2 is the only stealth game i can think of that completely dropped that annoying gameplay thing where if one enemy spots you then the entire squad of people in the area now knows where you are and they all attack you. i likes how in tlou2 if you take someone who saw you out before they yell for backup then youre fine
thats how stealth games should play
both Thief and Nu-Hitman does that
Wow just like Thief. You're a fucking retard.
>last of us 2 is the only stealth game
lol
>stealth
>game
lolmao
thats why everyone laughs at snoys
I mean that does happen in TLoU as long as the person made any noise they immediately all go on alert.
Last fan mission you played(and liked)?
The Scarlet Cascabel. Thieving kino in a town surrounded by dense and mysterious woods.
Feast of Pilgrims. Old thief getting through the rich city district's rooftops towards hammer cathedral to steal some relics.
I think at this point my idea of a good stealth game has shifted. I really don't care for the standard one man sneaking mission knockout guards formula anymore, just seen it played out too many times. It's kind of besides the point with the stealth genre being kind of dead but for me to really get excited again I'd look for an evolution of hitman style social stealth or the monster avoidance you see in thief 1 or alien isolation.
stealth
Retrofag weirdo thread
Minimal UI
GREEN
Is it worth picking up the Thief games on steam?
It's like 3 bucks for the entire trilogy when there's a sale.
It's only $7 right now, so I guess wait for a ubishit sale?
They go on sale pretty often on any storefront that has them.
Same price on GoG right now. $7 isn't much but why pay $7 when you can pay $3 I always say.
that's the spirit
Have you played a Thief game?
Is the Thief remake good? Haven't played any of them
It's utter garbage made by retards that completely lack any understanding of what makes the originals great. Avoid like the plague.
It's shit
No, it's horrible.
Thoughts on the 2D metal gears?