Extra Punctuation: An Invisible Protagonist

[Gottesstrafe]

Sounds fun. I'm guessing you'd also have to navigate through mazes of normal objects and phenomena that only exist to you because of said invisibility, right? Like, say, avoid going outside when it rains, avoid walking in puddles, carefully navigate through a nursery room without tripping over some kid's block fort, avoid haphazardly dripping paint from some of the worst wall painters in history, and even dodge flying plates thrown by an angry spouse during a domestic dispute?

Surely though, the game wouldn't be JUST limited to stealing intel though, right? One of my favorite parts of Hitman: Bloodmoney was not only getting through every level with a Silent Assassin rating, but making each target's death look like a complete accident. I'd go out of my way with exploring new paths and testing every mechanic the game threw at me to make it seem like Mr. X just happened to get drunk and fall off a balcony the exact same time Mrs. X was standing under a suspended piano held aloft by a rotting rope. Coincidentally, Mr. Y just HAPPENED to trip over his fat feet down a flight of stairs while his friend Mr. Z was trying to see how far back he could lean back over the rail outside his 8th story hotel room on a whim and was suddenly startled by an inconvenient fire alarm. Perhaps in this hypothetical invisibility game, there'd be stealth missions where you are tasked with eliminating a target and making it look like an accident. Then you could go around messing with items around the target's flat (i.e. loosening the screws on his priceless antique chandelier or placing a bottle of sedated wine in just the right lighting of a recovering alcoholic's room), scattering evidence with gloved hands around the victim implying said accident to the investigators.

 

[deserteagleeye]

That would be pretty cool and I know that I'd spend time, just following one NPC throughout a level. Hell, maybe if I had my headset on, I could whisper in his ear and tell him to burn things.

That would be hilarious! But I feel like it would be "Lifeline" all over again.
Bark like a dog.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

I'm surprised that, while Yahtzee mentioned Thief II as an example of a stealth game where you have to leave no traces of your presence, he forgot the Hitman games where for optimal results you need to make the target's death look like an accident. I always though Yahtzee was a reasonably big fan of Hitman for exactly these reasons.

On a tangetially related topic, has anyone ever heard of the Half-Life/Half-Life 2 mod called The Hidden [http://www.hidden-source.com/]? While it's not really a stealth game or anything like the hypothetical game Yahtzee described, it does feature an almost completely invisible character (the titular Hidden aka. subject 617 who is only revealed by an almost unnoticable blurring when he moves, which he does like a Hunter from Left 4 Dead) being hunted by a team of heavily armed solders. While the soldiers have pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, motion detectors and other equipment, the Hidden is armed with only a knife and a few home-made pipe bombs, but his insane strength and agility combined with his near total invisibility and the ability to track his enemy through walls mean it's quite possible for the Hidden player to take out the entire I.R.I.S team single-handedly. The Hidden can also do things like drag the corpses of his slain foes around and pin them to walls or drop them out of air vents onto surviving players in order to freak them out and has an array of special taunts for just this purpose ("I can seeeee youuuuu..."). The mod is sadly old enough now that almost no-one plays it any more, but it's still a fascinating experience. I also think there was a version of it made for the original Modern Warfare (I saw my stepbrother playing it once) which is still being used, so you might want to look that up.

 

[timeadept]

I very much like this idea and i would love to see this game made. It all hinges on the AI though. The AI has to be believable and air-tight at that. If the AI does something that no human should be able to, ever, then it could destroy immersion and suddenly driving people insane is a whole lot less fun because you're trying to beat the game mechanics instead of have fun. The more i played Hitman 2 the more i noticed this. Once a guard followed me at 2 paces for 5 blocks down empty streets and i led him straight to my informant because i didn't want to have to kill him and i thought that going inside a building would shake him off. He ended up shooting my informant during the following cut-scene during which i talked to a very dead and paranoid man lying face down at his desk. However this quirky situation saved me from the following escort section (at least i think i was supposed to escort him), with him dead but the game not realizing it i just had to follow the map to the exit. The secret passage he was supposed to show me wasn't too hard to find once it was marked on my map.

 

[Wolcik]

I want to play it - it'd be second Portal phenomen

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

Great game idea. I'd play it.

I also have that slightly creepy love of sneaking up on people, hiding under beds to grab legs, startling the unaware.

Yeah a suspicion metre could work well. Yahtzee talks about how hard it can be to sneak up on someone, but I think it is more about their level of caution or focus on awareness. People playing a game, reading a book, walking around worrying about bills--they aren't paying much attention. A bored guard desperately looking for something interesting would have a different level of listening to his senses. Fixation and directing said fixation would be the key.

And the blatant dropping of porno mags to distract, should get a hail of bullets.

It might be best set a little bit in the future, deus ex style. Where if some start to think someone is there, talk begins between the guards about light-reflecting suits, and to fill the corridor with shaving cream. That and the added possibility of evading freakish sentry-hawks and other genetically-tailored guard creatures (Resi hunters).

Lassie is not your friend.

 

[Chocolate Source]

Nova?

 

[Kilgengoor]

A very interesting game concept but it's more or less been done before: it was called Geist and it kind of sucked.

This. Although I didn't think it sucked so bad.

In Geist you are a ghost. Yeah, you die and your ghost serves in the military as an agent on covert operations. People can't see you, and you can only interact with the world through small actions such as tipping a can or frying a TV. Your mission is to frighten somebody until they are scared shitless, and then you possess them. You then can use that body and the game switches to a usual FPS presentation until your body gets killed, and then it's back again to search for another host. I think there were really cool ideas at play in there, and some of them were pretty well executed.

There was also a game called messiah for the PC which predates Geist, although the character was rather visible (a small, chubby angel who possessed people so he could destroy the world as part of God's plan to punish humanity). Still, I think the ghost approach would be a nice way to go when executing Yahtzee's idea. It uses misdirection, stealth and takes vantage of the fact that you are not expected in any way. Geist introduces you to an enemy ghost later in the game, which pits you to someone as frighteningly dangerous as you. All in all, I think it was a neat game.

 

[ninjajoeman]

two things you normally will not get from the games industry, a good stealth game or a good horror game.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

It could be a suit, which would give you two options. One, that you can have a $30 figure to sell, and two, that you can have a mission where the suit malfunctions, and you have to remain out of sight the old fashioned style. That actually sounds like a decent game, Croshaw. Not bad. Well, hop to it!

 

[Unclever title]

I'd certainly play such a game.

 

[Bearclaw66]

Yahtzee's ideas are actually pretty cool. I would definitely buy a game that relied completely on stealth and subterfuge rather than falling back on a combat system or using AI thicker than the Berlin Wall.

 

[Manhattan2112]

I'm sure this has been mentioned, but I'd rather not search every page for it: A lot of the gameplay mechanics Yahtzee described are actually implemented [on harder modes] in the Metal Gear Solid series. Wet/Dirty footprints, knocked out guards causing suspicion, trying to create background noise... It's all been done (my personal favorite is accidentally giving yourself the sniffles and losing due to a sneeze) I can understand that Yahtzee wants a game where the whole point is the stealth aspect of MGS, but it's still just "Stealth Aspect of MGS: The Game"

 

[Manhattan2112]

Many of the constraints of being invisible are in HG Wells' The Invisible Man.
Not to mention being invisibles biggest drawback, not being able to see.

I lol'd.

 

[Gauntes]

After you get the chinese stealth suit in fo3, the concept kinda becomes just that

 

[ultrachicken]

There IS one flaw in this idea Yahtzee: If the main character is invisible, then who will we have to clutter-up our American box art?

I would put some sort of silhouette standing in some "badass" pose with guards running around in the background.

 

[nonroker]

I had an idea for a game like that once. But in my version the invisible main character is also unable to affect the material world. He's like a spirit or an imp or a faerie. And he uses cantrip-like spells to manipulate a "hero" character to meet his destiny. So the idea was more like a puzzle game. I think the reason why I never made it, was the difficulty of doing the AI correctly. But I like the idea of an invisible protagonist.

 

[Monk Ed]

This ... is actually ... a really, really cool idea.

I would totally like to see this game. Every point that Yahtzee mentions is inspiring. It'd be a new take on the concepts introduced in Hitman: Blood Money, but taken to a whole new level because you'd have to be careful even just walking around normally.

 

[The Lugz]

it's a good idea, when are you making it yahtzee?

 

[spikeyjoey]

It was the "making other characters think an NPC is mad" mechanic that interested me the most

it would be hilarious to just start pelting them with office stationery or something, then stop when another npc runs in..

"but.. but.. i swear, the stapler just flew over and hit me in the head!!"

"shh,.. ok leroy, i think its time you went home.."

"but!.. but the stapler!.."

"shh, its ok, you've had a long day..."