Extra Punctuation: An Invisible Protagonist

[garjian]

good, in ways im sure everyone has already said, so im gonna try and critisize...


how would you make a long enough story out of this mechanic... would this be one single huge mission, sneaking around a facility the size of aperture... or several small objectives?

if there are several small objectives, and no real conflict affecting you directly (except being trapped (lol, locked in a room because the guard didnt notice you ) i suppose) the only driving force of the story would be a commanding officer presence (how would he contact you without breaking your silence?) ...or perhaps like that national tresure film, where each 'piece of intelligence' leads you to the next objective. perhaps im uncreative, but i cant think of any other ways off the top of my head...

what would be the final challenge?
...i think thats all the criticism i have right now.

something fun id like to add... considering youre a naked, unarmed guy running around a well guarded and secure facility, it think it would be fun if your invisibility failed at some point... (like when you lose your power suit in metroid zero mission) ...and you have to be far far more stealthy... (perhaps, when you finally reach the final 'piece of intelligence' and send it to mr. commanding officer, he decides he doesnt need you anymore, remotely turns it off, and its up to you to escape... that can be your final challenge :O)

 

[Kyoh]

This actually sounds really fun. Excellent points. I would buy a game that had these mechanics.

 

[unca_laguna]

you should make a trilby mod

 

[Skade]

One thing I always wanted Hitman to include was more freedom to make it look like an accident or even a suicide or something.
Like the first mission in Blood Money, The target sits upstairs playing his Cello, on him he has a revolver, could you not sneak in, press the gun to his head and kill him then leave it in his hand? then before his guards rush in get out the window.
the idea of being completely undetectable is something I would really like to see in a stealth game.

Hitman: Contracts is much better in that regard. You can win the whole game without ever going noticed and make (almost) everything look like an accident. In most Missions, you have many choices on how to kill your target.

I especially loved the last mission, where your have to escape a building that is being stormed by a special weapons unit and then kill your archenemy in plain sight of others.

Sure, its optional, but Hitman is a lot of fun if you try to be a "Silent Assassin" with the lowest brutality rating.

 

[Lenin211]

I would buy that game. Sounds both fun and innovative

 

[RJ Dalton]

Also, there was the level "Casing the Joint" in Theif 2, where you were supposed to infiltrate and map out a big mansion before they moved in the objects you needed to steal. You had to do that without any of the guards even seeing you and the more in the level you moved around, the more they began to close in on your location, so the less impact you left, the better. That was my favorite level in the whole game.

 

[Nenad]

That actually... sounds like a pretty good idea.

I can think of at least one reason why publishers wouldn't go for this, though: because the main character is invisible, you can't include a five-cent action figure of him with the "special edition" and charge an extra thirty bucks for it.

Invisible guy in some cool outfit. Done aaand done.

 

[delnel]

I see his point, and it sounds like a good game, but I would never get it. And thats becuase even though I love stealth games, I suck at them. I never got past that mission in thief two (partly because the game kept crashing ever five minutes) as my whole strategy was knocking people out or just running away from the rooms where the alarm was blaring. And I was playing that on easy. This game would be just too hard for me.

 

[Deltamon]

Been there done that.. All I can say is that I love drinking from the wells in ADOM. <3

With enought luck, it can grant your character permanent invisibility if you can make a wish, just wish for "invisibility"

It makes the game almost possible to do, too bad that there still exists monsters in that game that can detect invisible players :/

 

[Jonathan Fifer]

Ghost Trick is a variation on this. You don't get to do things regular humans can do, but you do ALOT of sneaking/eavesdropping.It's a very unique game and I suggest it for everyone.

 

[SatansBestBuddy]

So basically Ghost Trick.

Have you played it yet, mr. Yahtzee?

Tis quite fun, and probably the only game where amnesia works as a plot device. (Hint: the obvious answer isn't the right one)

 

[TwistedEllipses]

I would love to see a game where you play as a ghost...I'm not sure how it would work at all...but it would open up some new gameplay mechanics...

 

[Mon9]

This reminds me of something that actually happened:
Last year I was visiting my ex-girlfriend and we were in the kitchen making tea.
We had just poored some water in a big heavy mug and were talking when the mug all of a sudden tilted over a bit, made a full circle and stood still again.
I took the mug and lifted it to see if maybe the bottom was curved or something like that, but it wasn't.
I looked at my girlfriend and said: "did you see that too?"
"yes!" was the wide eyed response, accompanied by a nervous smile.
Her mother told us later that day she had seen the ghost of a woman in the house.
After reading Yahtzee's take on invisible protagonists I feel it must have been a government experiment. Much easier on the mind.

 

[LobsterFeng]

My biggest problem with Crysis 2 was that even though you were invisible, your shadow was still showing, and it took me out of the game because even if you aren't visible, aren't there tons of other things the guards could have noticed?

 

[hansari]

Extra Punctuation: An Invisible Protagonist

Yahtzee wonders what it'd be like to be invisible in a game all the time.

Ugh. All this and you don't bring up Chaos Theory even though it too has great guard conversations and grades you in accordance to how ghost-like you were....so frustrating.

 

[FallenMessiah88]

You know Yathzee, you should totally start your own development studio...You'd be like the new Notch!

 

[Spygon]

This concept kinda reminds me of that quest in obilvion where you have to slowly kill everybody trying not to make the others in the house supisious of you.That was so much fun wandering around waiting till one of them walked into a room to do someethen shut the door kill the person then run out fo the room so the others couldnt pin point it was you.

I think it would work really well if done right and as a huge stealth player i would to play it.

Also i had a similar problem with crysis 2 i snuck around alot going from cover to cover in cloak mode abd found myself wander past lots of troops wondering if i was supposed to be doing it

 

[ascorbius]

I had a spell in Oblivion that, coupled with my maxed out Willpower, Illusion rank and high magic capacity meant I could cast in enough succession to benefit from successively. I spent a lot of the game invisible from there on, not even just on missions - running around and screwing around with NPCs and such. Sadly, the general puppet-like AI made it far less satisfying than it could have been. (It was a super camoulfage spell BTW, so it didn't disable when I attacked or stole something)

I did a similar thing in Oblivion. I got so good at making myself invisible, I could creep up behind pretty much anyone and chop 'em in the neck from behind.. (insta-kill at my level) it would startle their friends briefly, but then they'd settle back down to their old routine and then I'd do them in the neck too.. it made the combat so BOOORING...

It brings up an interesting point about AI. As a visible player, we expect the AI to chase and attack us because they can see us (actually, they can't ... they can't *see* anything). It's a moderately simple AI task depending on how deep you get into it and it's something that can be done well enough to be believable.
But to have an invisible assailant in the room adds a dimension to AI that's not been required before. It should put the heebyjeebies up anyone who's just seen their friend just die in front of them with no apparent cause. They shouldn't just revert back to their regular patrol saying "Perhaps it was nothing" - WTF, Your fiend just died!. They should freak out or raise the alarm, or try to find you by looking for clues, footprints, listening for breathing, letting off a fire extinguisher in the hope of making part of you visible... such a game would stand out as a Master Class in game AI in much the same way as Half Life stood out for it's scripted set pieces and apparent AI teamwork.

 

[Misterian]

Funny, the cloest to a game of that concept I know of is Geist for the Gamecube.

The trouble with it though is that the bad guys are somewhat already aware that the hero you're play as is a ghost running around their evil lair, but that doesn't stop you from scaring the heck out of people and possessing their bodies.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

Or, hey, you could whisper in a guard's ear so he turns round and opens fire at the 'intruder'...only to hit a fellow guard. A means of getting rid of guards without leaving an obvious trail