I think Farcry and Crysis do a remarkable job of the 3 act thing. You start out running from everything with a gun (less with Crysis than Farcry) then learn to even it out with stealth, then the enemy becomes either mutants or aliens and you move into straight combat.
Stealth
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Recommended Videos
See, I understand where Yahtzee is coming from. The other day I was watching my friend play Splinter Cell: Conviction, and I just realized that it's a terrible stealth game. He spent the whole of the first couple of levels to make sure he killed EVERYONE. And he had this annoying tendancy to shoot out all the lights he could, but that's not the point here.
This was my friend's basic gameplay strategy. Sit outside a window, shoot one guy, another guy walks by and immediately yells,"Where are you Fisher?!" Friend shoots him, no one shows up for another 5 minutes. And sometimes he would break this overwhelming tension by busting in and just shooting everything in sight. Wash, rinse, and repeat until the level is complete. Watching my friend play Conviction, shooting countless henchmen, I realized that Conviction, while upholding some basic stealth ideas, is not a stealth game. If one guy sees another dead guy, shouldn't that set off some kinda alarm all across the base? Like Yahtzee says, true stealth doesn't require having to kill anyone.
But watching this, I had a second thought. Is it possible that the video game industry has produced so many action-oriented, shooty shooty games, that most gamers don't know how to sneak properly anymore? I mean, I personally did my best in my playthrough of Conviction to kill as few people as possible. But I digress. Discuss amongst yourselves, what do you all think? Is stealth a dying genre, slowly being swallowed by the action genre?
This was my friend's basic gameplay strategy. Sit outside a window, shoot one guy, another guy walks by and immediately yells,"Where are you Fisher?!" Friend shoots him, no one shows up for another 5 minutes. And sometimes he would break this overwhelming tension by busting in and just shooting everything in sight. Wash, rinse, and repeat until the level is complete. Watching my friend play Conviction, shooting countless henchmen, I realized that Conviction, while upholding some basic stealth ideas, is not a stealth game. If one guy sees another dead guy, shouldn't that set off some kinda alarm all across the base? Like Yahtzee says, true stealth doesn't require having to kill anyone.
But watching this, I had a second thought. Is it possible that the video game industry has produced so many action-oriented, shooty shooty games, that most gamers don't know how to sneak properly anymore? I mean, I personally did my best in my playthrough of Conviction to kill as few people as possible. But I digress. Discuss amongst yourselves, what do you all think? Is stealth a dying genre, slowly being swallowed by the action genre?
I actually saw this article in my head ZP style... that's pretty crazy..
like, you mentioned the 4 possible options of conflict.. and for the 4th option, no attackers, I just saw in my head your ZP avatar and an imp just looking at each other confusedly, shrugging, then going about their day.
like, you mentioned the 4 possible options of conflict.. and for the 4th option, no attackers, I just saw in my head your ZP avatar and an imp just looking at each other confusedly, shrugging, then going about their day.
I must disagree with your assessment that, just because a videogame doesn't tell a story the same way a film does, it is not art. I mean, a film doesn't tell a story the same way that a painting does, nor painting like music, nor music like sculpture, etc etc ad infinitum. Just because one art form doesn't get its 'artiness' across the same way as another medium doesn't mean it doesn't get its 'artiness' across. Moreover, the rather vague definitions of art make it very hard to say that something is NOT art, especially if it is visually intriguing and gives the person viewing/listening/sensing it strong emotional response.
Splinter Cell isn't really a stealth series, it's a time travel series. You get a long path of obstacles put at specific points with the intention that that spot provides a specific obstacle...of course you don't figure it out, a guard spots you, sounds the alarm, and Lambert yells at you...then you hit your reverse time button and go back to the checkpoint, knowing that obstacle on your next run through that section of the level, shoot the guard before he can spot you, go down a corner and get shot by the next one, warp back. Kill the first guard, shoot the light so the next one won't see you and then wait for him to walk his preset path for you, kabonk him, make it into the next room, get spotted by someone looking through a window, warp back.
That's what kind of bothers me about Splinter Cell stealth, it's less about employing stealth skill than figuring out what the specific obstacle points are and using the specific moves that the game wants you to use to defeat that specific obstacle. PT onward that is, I loved the original game, but that's mostly because I played it with the benefit of Quicksave and Quickload.
Oh, and will people stop blowing what he said about "Ebert was right" out of proportion: he was just making a (extremely cogent and very, very good) point about narrative style using hyperbole...please pop your monocles back in.
That's what kind of bothers me about Splinter Cell stealth, it's less about employing stealth skill than figuring out what the specific obstacle points are and using the specific moves that the game wants you to use to defeat that specific obstacle. PT onward that is, I loved the original game, but that's mostly because I played it with the benefit of Quicksave and Quickload.
Oh, and will people stop blowing what he said about "Ebert was right" out of proportion: he was just making a (extremely cogent and very, very good) point about narrative style using hyperbole...please pop your monocles back in.
I agree that it's difficult to properly implement the three-act story telling system in a game. Because indeed the player needs to win and win. But there is possibility to pass a challenge by failing, right? For instance I really enjoyed the plot in GTA IV: you start off at the very bottom, than get things going a little bit, then thugs burn down your house and you start over again, to eventually get back to them.
I agree with breadbinman and JustinA, I don't think it's the mixing of styles that create the lousy games we know it's the reduction in choice. The developers produce a game and state "Go into that room and kill the 20 enemies before we'll let you through" then in the next room "Don't be seen by any of the guards or it's mission over".
Why can't I sneak past the initial guards and kill the others? Because that's not how the developers want to tell the story. It's possible to play both Thief and Hitman as 'shooters' it just comes with penalties and that's what the developers need to do.
So they want me to kill all 20 enemies so instead of making it a pre-requisite; just have them patrol in awkward ways, keep them in radio contact so I can't just kill one without the others running in. In the next level have them check in with HQ at regular intervals; I can try to kill them but I have to stake out the order in which they report, make sure the others don't find any bodies.
In other words make it easier to just have to kill all 20 in the first room and evade the ones in the next, but don't make me have to do it.
Why can't I sneak past the initial guards and kill the others? Because that's not how the developers want to tell the story. It's possible to play both Thief and Hitman as 'shooters' it just comes with penalties and that's what the developers need to do.
So they want me to kill all 20 enemies so instead of making it a pre-requisite; just have them patrol in awkward ways, keep them in radio contact so I can't just kill one without the others running in. In the next level have them check in with HQ at regular intervals; I can try to kill them but I have to stake out the order in which they report, make sure the others don't find any bodies.
In other words make it easier to just have to kill all 20 in the first room and evade the ones in the next, but don't make me have to do it.
My friend is a massive splinter cell fan, but dislikes Hitman, and I am the opposite. I loved hitman and its sprawling levels and its multiple choices. I cant wait for the next game simply because Blood Money has an ending and I just want to go on and on.
I would like a game structured around, the "Conflict Triangle". Sounds like it could work if done right.
I not it's a futile hope, but I'd really like to see Yahtzee review crazy russian Art Game "The Void" one of these days.
It's almost on the fourth peg of the triangle- almost. You play in this strange afterlife where everything is desolate and barren. You're told that "Color", a type of quasi-magical soul-juice that feeds everything, used to be plentiful here- but now, everything is starving. You're given tiny, tiny amounts of this Color, which acts as health AND the way you do basically everything, including attack, and you have to manage it to survive.
It's... complicated. Basically, though, It'd be nice if more games strayed from the "Kill the guys who want to kill you" conflict. There's so many other ways to do it.
It's almost on the fourth peg of the triangle- almost. You play in this strange afterlife where everything is desolate and barren. You're told that "Color", a type of quasi-magical soul-juice that feeds everything, used to be plentiful here- but now, everything is starving. You're given tiny, tiny amounts of this Color, which acts as health AND the way you do basically everything, including attack, and you have to manage it to survive.
It's... complicated. Basically, though, It'd be nice if more games strayed from the "Kill the guys who want to kill you" conflict. There's so many other ways to do it.
Like other recreational activities, video games vary from person to person.
This is why there is such a smaller industry in the psychological area, usually they resort to the basic fight or flight since they apply to every human beign that hasn't gotten the idea of runing in shooting bullets everywhere with my invincible armor and giant cock is a fool-proof perfectly respectable plan of action.
This is why most games tend to just have the 'scare' or death, since thats the only identifyable trait within all gamers that aren't teary eyed heroics waiting to jump infront of a bullet to impress a girl. Slightly pleasing the masses is more economically rewarding than pleasing a small cult of followers that consists of 4-5 people.
Most developers produce to gain not to please.
I agree with this statement, when it comes to psychologically based recreational activities (games in particular) they have to be tailor made for each specific person in order to push their buttons in the perfect manner. If you see a game that will claim to psychologically assess the player and then adapt to push their buttons (Silent Hill: Shattered Memories for example) usually the result is more than lacking.psychodynamica said:
This is why there is such a smaller industry in the psychological area, usually they resort to the basic fight or flight since they apply to every human beign that hasn't gotten the idea of runing in shooting bullets everywhere with my invincible armor and giant cock is a fool-proof perfectly respectable plan of action.
This is why most games tend to just have the 'scare' or death, since thats the only identifyable trait within all gamers that aren't teary eyed heroics waiting to jump infront of a bullet to impress a girl. Slightly pleasing the masses is more economically rewarding than pleasing a small cult of followers that consists of 4-5 people.
Most developers produce to gain not to please.
Yet in the same series we had Silent Hill 2 which produced different endings depending on how you played the game as well as which events you might trigger.mrsketchy said:
But yes people do find different things scary which is why it the theme of stick the player in the dark and make things jump out of them is so prevalent. It takes time and effort to craft a convincing psychological storyline so why bother when the developer can just produce some linear levels and point the player along them with a hearty cry of "There be the enemy".
Interesting bringing the 3-Act structure out into the light in video games. I had a think, something I try to avoid for fear of cranial hemorrhaging, of what games (if any) fit into the 3-Act structure. Here's one that I may have discovered;
Metroid (Super and all the iterations thereafter) - They expose you to a huge world after, you spend the most of the time powering up, you are still in harms way with stupidly overpowered final boss. But then (at least in Super Metroid) you are given powers by a Metroid itself and suddenly comes the climactic denouement.
This got me thinking again (getting dizzy now) games don't fit into the 3-act story arc because of how we experience them. Not all of us go through Half-Life 2 in one long playthrough, because it is much much longer than a 'normal' film, or television series. Which brings me to Alan Wake. Alan Wake hasn't been out yet so I have yet to see if this format works, but the episodic content and the use of chapters gives (should give) each chapter an arc, and by doing this letting us step away from the game as we would a book. The the game should also have an overarc as well, like any good television series. (well... that's a debate for another forum)
Metroid (Super and all the iterations thereafter) - They expose you to a huge world after, you spend the most of the time powering up, you are still in harms way with stupidly overpowered final boss. But then (at least in Super Metroid) you are given powers by a Metroid itself and suddenly comes the climactic denouement.
This got me thinking again (getting dizzy now) games don't fit into the 3-act story arc because of how we experience them. Not all of us go through Half-Life 2 in one long playthrough, because it is much much longer than a 'normal' film, or television series. Which brings me to Alan Wake. Alan Wake hasn't been out yet so I have yet to see if this format works, but the episodic content and the use of chapters gives (should give) each chapter an arc, and by doing this letting us step away from the game as we would a book. The the game should also have an overarc as well, like any good television series. (well... that's a debate for another forum)
I always thought Fallout 3 had a sort of film like character progression. I spent the first half of the game literally running away from most creatures because I hadn't had enough chance to stomp on radroachs to level up my character, so while my inclination to explore the vast environment was strong, I was reluctant because everywhere interesting was full of big spiky monsters.
It was only until I'd levelled up enough and found big guns that I was stomping around killing everything that i'd become the inevitable bad-ass at the end of the film, except this film didn't end and i kept wandering the wastelands
It was only until I'd levelled up enough and found big guns that I was stomping around killing everything that i'd become the inevitable bad-ass at the end of the film, except this film didn't end and i kept wandering the wastelands
And once again Deus Ex proves to be a perfect game, with all 3 points on the triangle and all are at the discretion of the player. Not much evasion but enough to make it memorable.
Oblivion/Fallout 3 have stealth but it is ignorable and not mandatory. The sneak attacks in Oblivion become useless after a few levels unless you use mods.
As for story games that is why STALKER is perfect. There is a cursory narrative but the real star of the story is the Zone. The weird mutants, the bandit gangs, the ruins, the guys at the camp who bust out their guitar occasionally.
Oblivion/Fallout 3 have stealth but it is ignorable and not mandatory. The sneak attacks in Oblivion become useless after a few levels unless you use mods.
As for story games that is why STALKER is perfect. There is a cursory narrative but the real star of the story is the Zone. The weird mutants, the bandit gangs, the ruins, the guys at the camp who bust out their guitar occasionally.