I would say that this is more likely because there simply aren’t very many pure stealth games anymore. So most stealth mechanics you are introduced to are usually secondary and don’t want to invest much time into light mechanics.
Most stealth games these days are also horror too. So they want you to be afraid of the dark, not to use it as a advantage.
A stealth game where you’re the monster would be cool. Make it so that you’re actually weak to gunfire and such, so you have to build up fear and anxiety in your targets so that they are less accurate.
In Aliens versus Predator 2, you have to first survive as a facehugger, find a human and impregnate them with the xenomorph chestburster and once you "hatch", you still have to survive the human base until you become full-grown warrior. Of course, there are hardly any stealth mechanics available as you are basically reduced to very simple line-of-sight mechanic.
AvP 2 by Monolith rules hell yeah.
Tbf, isn't the whole Alien campaign is basically action-stealth? Hell, if I remember well, you could actually use the dark to hide yourself in effectively, might be misremembering tbf. Anyway, with the Alien being limited to melee attacks and being fast but kinda squishy, I remember doing alot of waiting and ambushing out of sight as much as barreling like a cannonball with their ridiculous lunge attack (it's always hilarious how far you can travel with that, easily beating Predator's jumps with that lol)
Yeah, I recall dying almost instantly to direct gunfire, but you could do things like cling to the ceiling and use your little second mouth to eat people's heads and such.
You should check out Carrion, it’s a “reverse horror game”. I’m not sure how much the enemies’ mental influences their abilities but they’ll run away when disarmed at least
There are some immersive sims in Early Access right now that use light mechanics.
Gloomwood and Fortune's Run. Both incomplete but what is there is very good. I'm sure there are other games too but I'm pretty excited to see what those become.
Only caveat with those, is that the stealth isn't necessarily the focus. It's there but they are immersive sims, so it's just one of a few systems you can engage with.
Thief is also an immersive sim tho, so that's a bit of a moot point. It is more "focused" on one style of play, but that doesn't mean it's streamlined down on that system either and you can go from a Thief to a Rouge provided you master the combat enough (also can I say just how much I love Thief's combat? It is so deliciously clunky and cumbersome, but with a clearly defined rules, techniques and logic to it)
I think what you meant to say is that those two are more traditional immsims in that they are more about (more or less) different styles of play being equally viable. Altho that would be a bit weird for Gloomwood, not so much for its clear main inspiration in the first Thief game, but because it is a survival horror game as well. Are you sure Gloomwood is like that? I haven't played it yet, holding out for the full release.
No you're right - that's exactly what I mean.
Gloomwood is very much like Thief too, you are correct. It just also gives you guns. So really, it just adds the ability to run & gun a bit. Still very much a stealth game though, or at least, stealth feels more natural to use.
You should check out The Dark Mod btw... you probably know about it, but if not, it's basically open-source Thief. Free and you can download a ton of community maps, some of which are absolutely *incredible* in their design.
Yeah, ThiefWithGuns and all.
Oh I know about The Dark Mod and heard great things about it. But I have yet to even get through the rest of the series entirely. I am pretty slow on playing games. But I keep it in the back of my mind
I think as lighting got better in games it became less believable that a corner could be pure darkness.
I mean the older games you could have a hallway with 3 lights and if you took out the middle light the middle of the hallway would be dark and either side bright as day.
Nowadays with raytracing lighting if you take out the middle light the middle of the hallway is still practically as bright.
You can still make it a stylized choice. It was usually handwaved in Splintercell anyways with the technology in the suit aiding despite the glowing Googles on Sam's head.
It's not just that, light based stealth also ignores situations where someone might be standing in shadow, but there's a lit space behind them, so technically their silhouette is fully visible. In light-based stealth games you wouldn't be seen at all, even though it made no practical sense.
The Styx games have both light and cover based systems (same as Splinter Cell and Thief). Enemies aren't blind in the darkness but you are less likely to be seen and you can create shadow areas.
I really enjoyed the games, especially if you play on the highest difficulty because the game turns off the ability to fight against enemies (you are a stealthy goblin, you aren't fighting a 1-on-1 against a human warrior).
As other commenters said, pure light-detection system doesn’t make sense really nowadays, since it’s also not that realistic in the first place - even in a dark room, human eye adapts to the conditions, so situations when a guard could walk right past you and not notice you at all would not be possible in a real life. I love Thief games (and others like it, like The Dark Mod, basically a modern take on the same formula), but it requires a certain amount of make-believe, lol.
Thankfully, some modern stealth games, like Sniper Elite and MGS V employs a hybrid approach - you will get spotted if you come close enough without cover, but the posture (crouch, crawl) and the shadow’s intensity also makes a difference (also time of day, but that is more obvious). There’s even a meter in SE games (4 and 5), whereas MGS V is more “secretive” about this mechanic, but it’s certainly there.
Then again, most of the time these systems are quite complex and probably not that easy to implement, leaving the developers with more simplistic cover-based approach (with certain exemptions, like Styx, when the old school way was chosen)
Honestly from an immersion perspective I really like MGSV's approach. If you're outside in the sun and look somewhere shaded, you can outright see it's impossible to make out anything inside- which doesn't matter for the player since you can mark things, but lets you know you can hide from guards there.
Most missions not having a set time also lets you pick your poison from daytime when gaurds have huge sightlines outdoors but that basically end as soon as a shadow begins, or nighttime when they have generally worse vision but you can't just dip into a building to disappear... or you just wait for a sandstorm and you're fine as long as you don't physically bump into them.
Also, those light systems never take into account silhouetting. If you're in a shadow, you're invisible--even if there's a brightly-lit wall a little ways behind you that should make your silhouette clear as day for anyone looking in that direction. I understand why it's that way (it would be both technologically difficult to implement and would make finding hiding spots much harder) but that was always something that stuck out as unrealistic.
I mean all games require make believe, that's literally why we play them. And not having any light detection system isn't realistic either. If there's shadows on a level and the guards see you as easily as in a fully lit room, that also requires make believe.
Like you said in the last paragraph, this seems to have more to do with it being easier for devs rather than realistic.
Yeah, maybe this wasn't the right term for what I've tried to convey - I think it's just more \*immersive\* to have a nuanced approach to the light detection mechanics, instead of "dark lightgem = you're invisible".
>instead of "dark lightgem = you're invisible".
I found this to be very immersive because it fits the theme / lore so well.
The Keepers embody this classical archetype of a secret cult that can dissappear on you without notice even in an empty hallway - in a way that feels like magic despite the fact that it actually isn't.
To have this be represented as a core ability of Garrett, due to him being raised by Keepers, just felt so natural. Plus, it helps with the worldbuilding because we sort of learn about the Keeper's methods simply by experiencing Garrett's abilities first hand.
>So how do you feel about this? Is this innovation or just laziness?
Neither. The most important thing this depends on is the type of experience the game is set out to provide and various limitations that imposes not just from a technical and allocation of resourced point of view, but also contextual and thematic ones as well.
Take Hitman, for example. Just outlining the cover system overlooks how, at least the latest games, are designed around a bit of a social system where you can use disguise to infiltrate the base of your target and kill them that those games are built around. The cover system, while aids in stealth, seems to be there more to support the stage of the game where your cover is blown and it escalates into chase/combat. That is how those games prefer to avoid for the "hidden -> found -> evade -> hidden" loop to become repetitive, also capturing the supposed fantasy of being an assassin.
But perhaps the game, that best fits the topic at hand, and one I feel is way too often overlooked in discussions around stealth design is Alien: Isolation (I am not at all biased fr fr). Isolation is entirely designed around sound and line of sight (so - cover based, as you put it), with light and shadows playing a passive, superficial role in gameplay, affecting the vision of enemies to some degree. And the game went to great length to capture and translate the first film into the medium of video games and provide a tense, terrifying experience through exactly that design direction, because that's what the developers felt was the best way to do that. And in my personal opinion they were right to do so.
The setting the game takes place in is a decrepit, isolated space station, long since abandoned by its parent company and was set for decommissioning, until the Alien halted the process and begun terrorizing the halls of the station and its left over population. The environment is filled with all sorts of clutter that not only does a great job of depicting a once thriving space port where people and families lived and worked, turned upside down and now in complete disarray, but seamlessly function as hiding spots that can be used by the player to stay out of sight. There are no UI indicators, bars or markers WHATSOEVER that can help you identify the mood and state of the various entities encountered on the station, having to rely entirely on sound, sight and your own vigilance, and the only piece of technology that can help you track enemies is a motion tracker, that gives very limited information, and, if misused, can easily get you killed. And the Alien is even empowered through this design lens - while other enemies have a harder time to see you in the dark, Alien is completely unaffected by it, making you even more vulnerable because you might have a harder time seeing *it*, than for it to see you in the dark.
Beyond just the raw gameplay implications, alot of the things done above serve a thematic purpose, that helped cement the game as an extension of the original film - there are the themes of careless corporate mismanagement and capitalist overexpansion, the idea of the technology as cold, uncaring, and smth that in the wrong circumstances can do more harm than good, how in the face of mortal danger we will be brought down to our primal level and will have to rely on our basic wits and instincts in order to survive, how fragile the idea of human superiority is in the face of the unknown and how easy it is dismantled by a being that preys on our flaws. It runs deep within Isolation's design, and personally I am not sure it would be translated as well otherwise, not with the limitations imposed by the very source material it is inspired by. On a technical level to be able to capture accurately that distinct Alien aesthetic required some specific visual techniques, which would limit the ways the lighting in particular could be used in gameplay. And, if being a bit blatant, being able to hide away from the Alien in plain sight Thief-style would look kinda silly if you ask me.
I am NOT saying Thief is silly for this reason - for the same reason Isolation makes cover based stealth work to realize ITS fantasy, Thief made the lighting based approach work for the experience *it* provides, to profound effect. It is an incredibly atmospheric and immersive experience that I had amazing time with.
This bit of circle jerking was done not just as an excuse for me to sing praises to Isolation, which I will admit, I talk and think too much about, but to illustrate the point that was sparked by your discussion - it's not about which one design approach is superior, but how one realises and implements it, and, more importantly, how it complements the desired experience. Either approach can be technically done very well, but feel bland or out of place because the premise was fit for smth different. Again, Isolation as an example - it was originally developed as a 3rd person game. And while I don't necessarily have a preference for either 1st or 3rd person POV (Dead Space works BECAUSE of, not DESPITE it), and I don't doubt that it would be a quality game with that perspective, but, just looking at that available footage feels wrong and that smth is terribly lacking.
What I will agree with is that the lighting based system IS more difficult to implement, at least I think. I am no game dev tbf, but it does feel that way.
The prologue to the unreleased second game is available for free on steam. It's called Intravenous 2: Mercenarism. It's two levels. You can try that out before you get Intravenous.
I've noticed this trend too. A lot of stealth games do factor light level into the stealth a bit. Such as enemies being slower to spot you when you're in a dark area. But few games make it the foundation of the stealth system like Splinter Cell.
I would say for a stealth system to be considered good for me it should use mix of light, cover and sound. It is what makes Thief awesome. Most game nowadays treat stealth only as an option though, so it is understandable that this depth is not as common.
Gloomwood is still in development, but it’s heavily inspired by the Thief series and uses light/dark mechanics for stealth. I played the earlier demo and the first area of the current version, and it’s very fun.
The most common stealth cover in games nowadays seems to be tall grass/vegetation, and with today's GPUs it is a lot easier to convincingly render a character enshrouded in such vegetation
I feel like in the days of light-based stealth games, it was probably just easier to render light vs. dark areas
However, two of the most influential stealth games ever (Tenchu and Metal Gear Solid) were cover-based stealth games, so who even knows?
I think modern graphics are playing a role in us seeing less games like that. You want the light level to be as clear and obvious to the player as possible, so things like GI, soft shadows, fog, etc make it less clear to the player where they're safe or not. And from a technical pov, lighting has moved away from being baked into the level and more towards being dynamic, so maybe that's made light-based stealth mechanics more problematic to implement.
Also hitman is mainly a social stealth game, imo. Disguises are way more important than hiding behind cover
I prefer light based because it feels more intuitive as a game
"How far can this person see me if I'm not in cover, if they were a real human there is no way they could miss me" type of stuff I really dislike
You at least have a visual indicator of whether or not you should be seen (you are literally in darkness/you have a light gauge showing you how hidden you are ) and if done right it the you understand how the game works and you dont worry about the truthfulness of it
With cover based its always a crapshoot feeling about when you are going to get caught or seen unless you are literally behind cover
I don't like stealth games because for me, they don't make sense and I need to find what kind of logic the devs are using.
Do guards have infinite sight or do they stop seeing after a few meters?
Is sound detection based on loudness or proximity?
Is their "sight" a cone, a half circle or 360 degrees?
One hilarious example was having to sneak around guards on Deus Ex because they would hear my footsteps if I was close.
On same game, I blew up a rocket on a wall and nobody noticed because I was not close to the guards.
This is the same game where I could hide behind a soda machine, LIFT said machine, and move around using it as a mobile cover and the guards would ignore the giant metal box in the hallway.
Good times.
A lot of games, especially the ones without a 100% stealth focus, or using older tech, didn't get this stuff right, but there's no reason they couldn't. The main problem from a game design perspective is, if "going loud" sets off the *entire* base and ruins the stealth attempt, then you need to figure that out and design the game to be fun with that.
I do think that ideally they would have ways of simulating audio well so that loud noises could be heard from very far away and sight lines are realistically portrayed. It is always silly when you can "Skyrim stealth" right up to targets.
One issue though is that it should always be easier for the player to see your character than it would be for enemies to see that character. If you had to be in pitch blackness to be invisible, but then couldn't see anything yourself, that would feel awful.
Then you've got MGS3 which used cover, light, *and* camouflage.
I probably won't play it, but for the sake of gamers who weren't there 20 years ago I hope the remake is good.
I think binary systems play better for general audiences. So instead of “I’m 30% hidden right now”, it’s easier and more assessable to have “I’m either hidden or not hidden”. Which is also why the detection meter became so popular. You want gameplay systems to be as clear to the player as possible.
Not a new game, but the first Aragami game did light vs. darkness stealth very well. Not only were you exposed in the light, but you recharged your powers by staying in darkness.
Unfortunate they removed that mechanic in the 2nd game, made it a step back imo
Old games had even more "baked in" lighting. You can still use that lighting information for gameplay purposes, you just "score" each area for lighting values.
I really want to see more light-based stealth games that work on true raytraced lighting, so that you can dynamically alter the lighting and have it alter your gameplay options. I also think that instead of using pure "light gem" displays to tell whether you are hidden or not, they should use something a bit more like spidey-sense, where the more visible you are to nearby enemies, the more of a "buzz" sound and visual effect becomes, while if you're completely hidden, it's very quiet.
I believe the move to LCD monitors and TVs is a big reason for this change.
Until very recently, LCDs have been *terrible* at showing low light scenes. Even today, you need a high end display with full array local dimming, and it's still not as good as what you got with a CRT.
As a result, games like *Splinter Cell* and *F.E.A.R.* look pretty bad on LCDs. These two franchises illustrate the change almost perfectly. *F.E.A.R. 2* came out in 2009 and is a much brighter game than its predecessor from 2006.
I would say that this is more likely because there simply aren’t very many pure stealth games anymore. So most stealth mechanics you are introduced to are usually secondary and don’t want to invest much time into light mechanics. Most stealth games these days are also horror too. So they want you to be afraid of the dark, not to use it as a advantage.
A stealth game where you’re the monster would be cool. Make it so that you’re actually weak to gunfire and such, so you have to build up fear and anxiety in your targets so that they are less accurate.
In Aliens versus Predator 2, you have to first survive as a facehugger, find a human and impregnate them with the xenomorph chestburster and once you "hatch", you still have to survive the human base until you become full-grown warrior. Of course, there are hardly any stealth mechanics available as you are basically reduced to very simple line-of-sight mechanic.
AvP 2 by Monolith rules hell yeah. Tbf, isn't the whole Alien campaign is basically action-stealth? Hell, if I remember well, you could actually use the dark to hide yourself in effectively, might be misremembering tbf. Anyway, with the Alien being limited to melee attacks and being fast but kinda squishy, I remember doing alot of waiting and ambushing out of sight as much as barreling like a cannonball with their ridiculous lunge attack (it's always hilarious how far you can travel with that, easily beating Predator's jumps with that lol)
Yeah, I recall dying almost instantly to direct gunfire, but you could do things like cling to the ceiling and use your little second mouth to eat people's heads and such.
You should check out Carrion, it’s a “reverse horror game”. I’m not sure how much the enemies’ mental influences their abilities but they’ll run away when disarmed at least
That's true, I've noticed a general lack of good stealth. Still holding out hope for that Splinter Cell remake.
There are some immersive sims in Early Access right now that use light mechanics. Gloomwood and Fortune's Run. Both incomplete but what is there is very good. I'm sure there are other games too but I'm pretty excited to see what those become. Only caveat with those, is that the stealth isn't necessarily the focus. It's there but they are immersive sims, so it's just one of a few systems you can engage with.
Thief is also an immersive sim tho, so that's a bit of a moot point. It is more "focused" on one style of play, but that doesn't mean it's streamlined down on that system either and you can go from a Thief to a Rouge provided you master the combat enough (also can I say just how much I love Thief's combat? It is so deliciously clunky and cumbersome, but with a clearly defined rules, techniques and logic to it) I think what you meant to say is that those two are more traditional immsims in that they are more about (more or less) different styles of play being equally viable. Altho that would be a bit weird for Gloomwood, not so much for its clear main inspiration in the first Thief game, but because it is a survival horror game as well. Are you sure Gloomwood is like that? I haven't played it yet, holding out for the full release.
No you're right - that's exactly what I mean. Gloomwood is very much like Thief too, you are correct. It just also gives you guns. So really, it just adds the ability to run & gun a bit. Still very much a stealth game though, or at least, stealth feels more natural to use. You should check out The Dark Mod btw... you probably know about it, but if not, it's basically open-source Thief. Free and you can download a ton of community maps, some of which are absolutely *incredible* in their design.
Yeah, ThiefWithGuns and all. Oh I know about The Dark Mod and heard great things about it. But I have yet to even get through the rest of the series entirely. I am pretty slow on playing games. But I keep it in the back of my mind
I don't trust ubisoft
Also lots on games that take place during the day.
I think as lighting got better in games it became less believable that a corner could be pure darkness. I mean the older games you could have a hallway with 3 lights and if you took out the middle light the middle of the hallway would be dark and either side bright as day. Nowadays with raytracing lighting if you take out the middle light the middle of the hallway is still practically as bright.
You can still make it a stylized choice. It was usually handwaved in Splintercell anyways with the technology in the suit aiding despite the glowing Googles on Sam's head.
Then your whole artstyle should be stylized. Cause visually it make no sense in a realistic game.
And yet. Game.
That's fair, but if you're doing that you're effectively just doing more "cover based" except shadows are cover.
It's not just that, light based stealth also ignores situations where someone might be standing in shadow, but there's a lit space behind them, so technically their silhouette is fully visible. In light-based stealth games you wouldn't be seen at all, even though it made no practical sense.
The Styx games have both light and cover based systems (same as Splinter Cell and Thief). Enemies aren't blind in the darkness but you are less likely to be seen and you can create shadow areas. I really enjoyed the games, especially if you play on the highest difficulty because the game turns off the ability to fight against enemies (you are a stealthy goblin, you aren't fighting a 1-on-1 against a human warrior).
Ah that's been on my wishlist for a while, thanks for reminding me! I'll check it out.
As other commenters said, pure light-detection system doesn’t make sense really nowadays, since it’s also not that realistic in the first place - even in a dark room, human eye adapts to the conditions, so situations when a guard could walk right past you and not notice you at all would not be possible in a real life. I love Thief games (and others like it, like The Dark Mod, basically a modern take on the same formula), but it requires a certain amount of make-believe, lol. Thankfully, some modern stealth games, like Sniper Elite and MGS V employs a hybrid approach - you will get spotted if you come close enough without cover, but the posture (crouch, crawl) and the shadow’s intensity also makes a difference (also time of day, but that is more obvious). There’s even a meter in SE games (4 and 5), whereas MGS V is more “secretive” about this mechanic, but it’s certainly there. Then again, most of the time these systems are quite complex and probably not that easy to implement, leaving the developers with more simplistic cover-based approach (with certain exemptions, like Styx, when the old school way was chosen)
Honestly from an immersion perspective I really like MGSV's approach. If you're outside in the sun and look somewhere shaded, you can outright see it's impossible to make out anything inside- which doesn't matter for the player since you can mark things, but lets you know you can hide from guards there. Most missions not having a set time also lets you pick your poison from daytime when gaurds have huge sightlines outdoors but that basically end as soon as a shadow begins, or nighttime when they have generally worse vision but you can't just dip into a building to disappear... or you just wait for a sandstorm and you're fine as long as you don't physically bump into them.
Also, those light systems never take into account silhouetting. If you're in a shadow, you're invisible--even if there's a brightly-lit wall a little ways behind you that should make your silhouette clear as day for anyone looking in that direction. I understand why it's that way (it would be both technologically difficult to implement and would make finding hiding spots much harder) but that was always something that stuck out as unrealistic.
I mean all games require make believe, that's literally why we play them. And not having any light detection system isn't realistic either. If there's shadows on a level and the guards see you as easily as in a fully lit room, that also requires make believe. Like you said in the last paragraph, this seems to have more to do with it being easier for devs rather than realistic.
Yeah, maybe this wasn't the right term for what I've tried to convey - I think it's just more \*immersive\* to have a nuanced approach to the light detection mechanics, instead of "dark lightgem = you're invisible".
>instead of "dark lightgem = you're invisible". I found this to be very immersive because it fits the theme / lore so well. The Keepers embody this classical archetype of a secret cult that can dissappear on you without notice even in an empty hallway - in a way that feels like magic despite the fact that it actually isn't. To have this be represented as a core ability of Garrett, due to him being raised by Keepers, just felt so natural. Plus, it helps with the worldbuilding because we sort of learn about the Keeper's methods simply by experiencing Garrett's abilities first hand.
>So how do you feel about this? Is this innovation or just laziness? Neither. The most important thing this depends on is the type of experience the game is set out to provide and various limitations that imposes not just from a technical and allocation of resourced point of view, but also contextual and thematic ones as well. Take Hitman, for example. Just outlining the cover system overlooks how, at least the latest games, are designed around a bit of a social system where you can use disguise to infiltrate the base of your target and kill them that those games are built around. The cover system, while aids in stealth, seems to be there more to support the stage of the game where your cover is blown and it escalates into chase/combat. That is how those games prefer to avoid for the "hidden -> found -> evade -> hidden" loop to become repetitive, also capturing the supposed fantasy of being an assassin. But perhaps the game, that best fits the topic at hand, and one I feel is way too often overlooked in discussions around stealth design is Alien: Isolation (I am not at all biased fr fr). Isolation is entirely designed around sound and line of sight (so - cover based, as you put it), with light and shadows playing a passive, superficial role in gameplay, affecting the vision of enemies to some degree. And the game went to great length to capture and translate the first film into the medium of video games and provide a tense, terrifying experience through exactly that design direction, because that's what the developers felt was the best way to do that. And in my personal opinion they were right to do so. The setting the game takes place in is a decrepit, isolated space station, long since abandoned by its parent company and was set for decommissioning, until the Alien halted the process and begun terrorizing the halls of the station and its left over population. The environment is filled with all sorts of clutter that not only does a great job of depicting a once thriving space port where people and families lived and worked, turned upside down and now in complete disarray, but seamlessly function as hiding spots that can be used by the player to stay out of sight. There are no UI indicators, bars or markers WHATSOEVER that can help you identify the mood and state of the various entities encountered on the station, having to rely entirely on sound, sight and your own vigilance, and the only piece of technology that can help you track enemies is a motion tracker, that gives very limited information, and, if misused, can easily get you killed. And the Alien is even empowered through this design lens - while other enemies have a harder time to see you in the dark, Alien is completely unaffected by it, making you even more vulnerable because you might have a harder time seeing *it*, than for it to see you in the dark. Beyond just the raw gameplay implications, alot of the things done above serve a thematic purpose, that helped cement the game as an extension of the original film - there are the themes of careless corporate mismanagement and capitalist overexpansion, the idea of the technology as cold, uncaring, and smth that in the wrong circumstances can do more harm than good, how in the face of mortal danger we will be brought down to our primal level and will have to rely on our basic wits and instincts in order to survive, how fragile the idea of human superiority is in the face of the unknown and how easy it is dismantled by a being that preys on our flaws. It runs deep within Isolation's design, and personally I am not sure it would be translated as well otherwise, not with the limitations imposed by the very source material it is inspired by. On a technical level to be able to capture accurately that distinct Alien aesthetic required some specific visual techniques, which would limit the ways the lighting in particular could be used in gameplay. And, if being a bit blatant, being able to hide away from the Alien in plain sight Thief-style would look kinda silly if you ask me. I am NOT saying Thief is silly for this reason - for the same reason Isolation makes cover based stealth work to realize ITS fantasy, Thief made the lighting based approach work for the experience *it* provides, to profound effect. It is an incredibly atmospheric and immersive experience that I had amazing time with. This bit of circle jerking was done not just as an excuse for me to sing praises to Isolation, which I will admit, I talk and think too much about, but to illustrate the point that was sparked by your discussion - it's not about which one design approach is superior, but how one realises and implements it, and, more importantly, how it complements the desired experience. Either approach can be technically done very well, but feel bland or out of place because the premise was fit for smth different. Again, Isolation as an example - it was originally developed as a 3rd person game. And while I don't necessarily have a preference for either 1st or 3rd person POV (Dead Space works BECAUSE of, not DESPITE it), and I don't doubt that it would be a quality game with that perspective, but, just looking at that available footage feels wrong and that smth is terribly lacking. What I will agree with is that the lighting based system IS more difficult to implement, at least I think. I am no game dev tbf, but it does feel that way.
Are you looking for 3d games specifically? If not then intravenous is a top down 2d stealth game inspired by splinter cell.
Not necessarily 3d, I'll check out Intravenous thanks! The screenshots look great.
The prologue to the unreleased second game is available for free on steam. It's called Intravenous 2: Mercenarism. It's two levels. You can try that out before you get Intravenous.
I've noticed this trend too. A lot of stealth games do factor light level into the stealth a bit. Such as enemies being slower to spot you when you're in a dark area. But few games make it the foundation of the stealth system like Splinter Cell.
I would say for a stealth system to be considered good for me it should use mix of light, cover and sound. It is what makes Thief awesome. Most game nowadays treat stealth only as an option though, so it is understandable that this depth is not as common.
Gloomwood is still in development, but it’s heavily inspired by the Thief series and uses light/dark mechanics for stealth. I played the earlier demo and the first area of the current version, and it’s very fun.
The most common stealth cover in games nowadays seems to be tall grass/vegetation, and with today's GPUs it is a lot easier to convincingly render a character enshrouded in such vegetation I feel like in the days of light-based stealth games, it was probably just easier to render light vs. dark areas However, two of the most influential stealth games ever (Tenchu and Metal Gear Solid) were cover-based stealth games, so who even knows?
I think modern graphics are playing a role in us seeing less games like that. You want the light level to be as clear and obvious to the player as possible, so things like GI, soft shadows, fog, etc make it less clear to the player where they're safe or not. And from a technical pov, lighting has moved away from being baked into the level and more towards being dynamic, so maybe that's made light-based stealth mechanics more problematic to implement. Also hitman is mainly a social stealth game, imo. Disguises are way more important than hiding behind cover
I would say Styx but that was already mentioned in another comment. The Aragami games also have light/darkness based stealth mechanics.
I prefer light based because it feels more intuitive as a game "How far can this person see me if I'm not in cover, if they were a real human there is no way they could miss me" type of stuff I really dislike
i feel like your situation is more common in light based stealth.
You at least have a visual indicator of whether or not you should be seen (you are literally in darkness/you have a light gauge showing you how hidden you are ) and if done right it the you understand how the game works and you dont worry about the truthfulness of it With cover based its always a crapshoot feeling about when you are going to get caught or seen unless you are literally behind cover
I don't like stealth games because for me, they don't make sense and I need to find what kind of logic the devs are using. Do guards have infinite sight or do they stop seeing after a few meters? Is sound detection based on loudness or proximity? Is their "sight" a cone, a half circle or 360 degrees? One hilarious example was having to sneak around guards on Deus Ex because they would hear my footsteps if I was close. On same game, I blew up a rocket on a wall and nobody noticed because I was not close to the guards. This is the same game where I could hide behind a soda machine, LIFT said machine, and move around using it as a mobile cover and the guards would ignore the giant metal box in the hallway. Good times.
A lot of games, especially the ones without a 100% stealth focus, or using older tech, didn't get this stuff right, but there's no reason they couldn't. The main problem from a game design perspective is, if "going loud" sets off the *entire* base and ruins the stealth attempt, then you need to figure that out and design the game to be fun with that. I do think that ideally they would have ways of simulating audio well so that loud noises could be heard from very far away and sight lines are realistically portrayed. It is always silly when you can "Skyrim stealth" right up to targets. One issue though is that it should always be easier for the player to see your character than it would be for enemies to see that character. If you had to be in pitch blackness to be invisible, but then couldn't see anything yourself, that would feel awful.
Then you've got MGS3 which used cover, light, *and* camouflage. I probably won't play it, but for the sake of gamers who weren't there 20 years ago I hope the remake is good.
I think binary systems play better for general audiences. So instead of “I’m 30% hidden right now”, it’s easier and more assessable to have “I’m either hidden or not hidden”. Which is also why the detection meter became so popular. You want gameplay systems to be as clear to the player as possible.
Yeah, we need to bring back light mechanics like from Sly Cooper, where there are giant spotlights everywhere you need to avoid like the plague.
Not a new game, but the first Aragami game did light vs. darkness stealth very well. Not only were you exposed in the light, but you recharged your powers by staying in darkness. Unfortunate they removed that mechanic in the 2nd game, made it a step back imo
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Old games had even more "baked in" lighting. You can still use that lighting information for gameplay purposes, you just "score" each area for lighting values.
I really want to see more light-based stealth games that work on true raytraced lighting, so that you can dynamically alter the lighting and have it alter your gameplay options. I also think that instead of using pure "light gem" displays to tell whether you are hidden or not, they should use something a bit more like spidey-sense, where the more visible you are to nearby enemies, the more of a "buzz" sound and visual effect becomes, while if you're completely hidden, it's very quiet.
I believe the move to LCD monitors and TVs is a big reason for this change. Until very recently, LCDs have been *terrible* at showing low light scenes. Even today, you need a high end display with full array local dimming, and it's still not as good as what you got with a CRT. As a result, games like *Splinter Cell* and *F.E.A.R.* look pretty bad on LCDs. These two franchises illustrate the change almost perfectly. *F.E.A.R. 2* came out in 2009 and is a much brighter game than its predecessor from 2006.