Extra Punctuation: An Invisible Protagonist

[Puzzlenaut]

I'd like to add another hypothetical gameplay mechanic to what could become a rather samey game:

Although invisible, you still have a reflection.

This could allow you to see your character, which could help for characterisation, and could also help to add a kind of puzzle element to it -- working out what the field of vision is for guards as they pass and ensuring you aren't spotted -- could make for a very unique game indeed.

The whole game wouldn't have to be based around this mechanic, but it would be an interesting one to have to pop up occasionally.

 

[2fish]

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

Player: "Behind you."

Guard:Wha? *turns* blam blam

Guard 2: "What the hell moron you killed him!"

Guard: "erm... There was a bad guy behind me."

Guard 2: "Give me your gun."

I would like the game the story could be about stealing tech to help improve you so going invisble doesn't hurt so much, cause medical issues, ect. As I am sick of government and evil PMC lets switch those a good PMC fighting a corrupt government by stealing tech to prevent a war and buff their invisible agent.

 

[Wolfenbarg]

Sounds like it could get sort of dull. Maybe if it was a short game...

The mechanics for being completely unseen are interesting though. It's a little ridiculous how forgiving some NPCs in some games, especially Metal Gear Solid are. I remember in the first game shooting a man in the chest with my .45. He immediately had a question mark float over his head, went to investigate at a leisurely pace, and upon seeing no one present, he decided that nothing was wrong. Some people are a little too forgiving of specters.

 

[Inkidu]

I like stealth games as much as the next person I suppose, but a truly invisible person. That would be a bit much. Plus, a lot of modern cameras (especially for high-end government facilities) already have thermal cameras at least in some of the rooms. Thermal sensor arrays, motions sensors, and the like. The problem with stealth in games is that it requires an obscene amount of finesse (which might not all lie on the gamer to provide, but the developer) but more than that stealth is very passive. People tend not to like passive anything in general. Obviously, there are exceptions.

This is why I like Splinter Cell: Conviction. Everyone said, "That's not stealth! You can hardly sneak by anyone and them not know you're there!" Well, it's not sneaking stealth I grant you that. Here me out. It's dynamic stealth. This is something not a lot of people do. Conviction wasn't about getting by like a ghost. It was about being the specter of death. They're all going to die and they don't even know what hits them. They're two sides of the same school, and any good stealth game will incorporate levels of both.

Still, I see your game having this kind of dynamic potential. Sure, there's a lot room for the more traditional fly-on-the-wall kind, but what about having to move across traffic? You have to do it quickly (something the average stealth player doesn't like. You couldn't most likely use a cross walk for fear of alerting a pedestrian, so you have to go around the cars as they inch forward in gridlock traffic. You couldn't go behind them because the exhaust going around your body would be an obvious tell to anyone looking.

If it's not obvious I spend a lot of time thinking about immersion. I don't like that you can't see your feet in a lot of first person situations, so to speak. I call for more dynamics in games in general, because let's face it. Even your best stealth games reduce things down to some pretty standard formulas. I don't know if it's ever entirely avoidable, it's probably not. I think Dynamic Gameplay would go a long way though.

 

[Lunareclipse123]

How about a game in which you were not invisible but your antagonists were, much like the creatures in the water in that one bit of Amnesia. Defeating your enemies would have to rely on detecting them through other means than seeing them directly - the splashing in water thing from Amnesia is a good one, as would be perhaps distortion in smoke like a wind tunnel, or movement of objects on the floor. Other than that it would be down to sound to try and work out where they were. Just an idea to break up the "see enemy, shoot enemy" formula of shooters in general.

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

This whole thing sounds very interesting. I've always like to be able to mess with enemies and in most games the only chance you get is when fighting other players. A game where it's part of the whole idea and you're not only supposed to stay out of sight, but also out of mind sounds like it's right up my alley.

And as for the action figures, it makes me think back to a LotR miniature game that came out not long after the films. One of the "figures" was Frodo with the Ring on, of course it was just an empty base with the stats on it, which is pretty funny. Of course they'd probably just get those "see-through" figurines instead. The empty stand would probably make me laugh and love the company even more (instead of getting angry at them for selling you an empty stand) but I don't know if that would cause me to buy the game.

 

[captaincabbage]

Here's an idea for the tutorial mission Yahtzee.

Your objective is to scare the shit out of this particular official who works at the place you're trying to break into. The level features a lot of theatrics, which you set up yourself as an invisible man, by sneaking into his study before he gets home, which in itself contains a bit of alarm disarming and such. You can set up little, rigged UV lights around the room, complete with a tiny floor button for you to step on to activate them, whilst you're covered in a special UV ink which shows up as invisible as you are in regular light.
Anyway, when he gets home, your target goes to his den and relaxes behind a desk or whatnot, smoking a pipe (a tutorial in of itself about moving through the air slowly so as not to leave any tells in elements such as smoke, steam, etc.) and you creep behind him and start whispering to him. You may have to dodge the occasional backwards swipe, but as you get his creeped-out factor to a high enough level he will start moving around and freaking himself out, shouting and generally being paranoid as fuck.
Once it gets to this point, you sneak to the centre of the room and click on the button, showing yourself in full, creepy UV makeup to fill his pants and ensure he does whatever you want.
Once he goes screaming from the room, you turn of the lights, grab your things, and try to sneak out past him and accomplish your mission.
It'd obviously require a lot of fine tuning, but I love the idea of using theatrics to your advantage, almost like an invisible batman.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

There's been one logical fallacy about invisible people that's always bothered me. How do they see? I mean, the light is literally passing through their eyes, after all.

 

[shiajun]

There's been one logical fallacy about invisible people that's always bothered me. How do they see? I mean, the light is literally passing through their eyes, after all.

Perhaps not. It's only the superficial light being distorted (there is research going into "invisible" materials that do this). Maybe only your skin and hair are invisible. If someone slices you up you bleed red. That'd be kind of creepy in and of itself, innards just materializing out of thin air. As such, light coming in through your pupil would be processsed just fine. The only thing a very observant person would see would be two tiny black dots floating around in mid-air. In fear of discovery, close your eyes. Your eyelids will hide your pupils.

A twist in the game mechanic could be that at some point you encounter another invisible individual. Trick is, you don't know they are there until they start pulling off your same antics. Then it could turn into a game of who makes the other one get noticed first. For later levels you would then be alert not only to the visible guys but try to figure out if someone else is there too. It would ramp up the tension to the sky.

 

[steve-I-am-me]

LOL @ the Venture Brothers reference, the dude was/is called Phantom Limb as a result of an experiment gone wrong of course! (Do they go any other way?)

 

[infohippie]

That sounds awesome, I would so totally buy that game. Why is this man not in charge of a dev team, damnit! It sounds a hell of a lot more fun than all the samey dull shooters on the market.

 

[redlueliger]

I can only see 2 problems with this:

1. The graphics would have to be really good so you can see any possible evidence you're leaving/making

2. You just know there'd be a ton of moronic "thisgamesucksyoucantkillanybody"-type comments.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

you would need an amazing dev team to pull something like this off, one with a sense of humour whilst still allowing a serious tone to the game. maybe valve? i dont know.

anyway, i like stealth games, but they do tend to get a tad boring rather quickly, a strong sense of accomplishment would be needed to make me play a game like this.

 

[Saelune]

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.

imagine how much more tense Kane and Lynch 2 would have been if it was about escaping undetected from Shanghai rather than gunning down half its population in increasingly stupid scenarios. ESPECIALLY if you had to babysit Lynch!

I so agree! I've done stuff like that before too, make it seem like someone else did it. Maybe the next Hitman game will actually do it.

 

[vivster]

i love stealth but normally i don't have enough patience for stealth games
if they would make it real stylish like mirror's edge i'm all in

 

[camazotz]

This sounds like an excuse to streak naked in public...

 

[Dice Warwick]

I'd buy the game. God knows how much I try to do that in most games with stealth. (except fallout: NV, I sould make a character based on that)

 

[Shjade]

If someone made a game with these exact mechanics, I would play it.

I'm not thrilled by the make-people-seem-loony idea - sounds like it'd make the game too easy, really, much the way the blackjack makes 90% of Thief levels easy to whomp your way through even at top difficulty - but the idea of precision close-quarters surveillance as a game has appeal.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Sure you could have an action figure, or rather a model anyway. Just make it a floating set of cloths or do the Hollow Man thing with the plastic suit. I like floating cloths idea better.