On Dishonored and the inherent inferiority of the stealth ImSim.

[NecroLord]

In Thief, if stealth fails, you still can run away, often you can find creative way to escape exploiting the environment (mantling, locking doors, reaching unaccessible spots with rope arrows, etc). You can put your pursuers to the wrong track with noise arrows (you can use anything to make noises, even throwing objects). Or you can just fight back, if you aren't outnumbered. Stealth failure is rarely a true fail state.

The problem is that many autistics think that "ghosting" is the true way to play this game, but forget that it was meant to be played in a different way.

Yes.
Garrett is a Rogue, not a simple thief...
He has many tricks at his disposal and it is entirely up to you, the Player, to make use of them.

 

[ind33d]

dishonored should have dropped all the narrative bullshit and just been a co-op splinter cell with whales

army of two with stealth sounds great

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Garret is a common thief, and his biggest advantage would be being sneaky and having tools. He cannot fight. Corvo is esentially a commando, physically fit and strong and has magic powers too. so it's kinda silly to try to think of them as equals. Dishonored, thus, is an action game with stealth elements.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

1. It's extremely slow paced. You crawl into a new area, and then you gotta observe the guard patterns for a while, to understand how to proceed, then you gotta slowly stealth past them, then you will inevitably fail a few times and have to retry. Doing all this hundreds of times through the game is just so much more boring than other types of gameplay.

Stealth in gaming is a failed concept. You either need cheating radar/camera to look round corners or you spend your entire play time sitting around doing nothing learning to solve the exact puzzle the game designer put in place. The only exception I can think of is Hitman and that has the same problem of gamified stealth means guards are easy to lore away or have a set pattern you can exploit.

Said it in previous Thief threads but the way to fix stealth imsims is to make guards wake up after being knocked out (and, ideally, remove the player's ability to just straight-up kill guards, as this trivialises everything in both Thief and Dishonored).

Hitman does that already but you can hide bodies in lockers and stuff to remove them from the map entirely. It doesn't solve the core problem of stealth games being stealth (pun intended) puzzle games. The genre needs to pick up on the AI stuff going on and start using it to improve NPC actions. Targets need to be suspicious if you follow them too long or you start acting weird.

Is arkham asylum and Tenchu the best stealth series? Both use a lot of verticality and give you ways to stay above your targets. Don't need radar as much when you can look down and plan what you're doing. Dishonoured has verticality too but the level design is more cinematic and it has to rely on a ping since it's first person.

The real issue has to do with the inherent boredom of such games. Think about it like this: imagine you were a real life version of Garrett or Corvo, trying to pull off some perfect heist. How would you go about it? Well, you would probably do what's called casing the place, ie spend a lot of time (several days at least) hanging around your target and observing guard patterns, people patterns, etc. Now if you are doing this as work (for a huge potential payout), it kinda makes sense, but doing this in a game is ... boring. Of course in games you don't need to case the place for days, since the risk is less (fail, reload), and the guard behavior is more simplistic than human behavior, but still, the end result is fairly boring gameplay when compared against games with more action or cerebral stuff (Ultima Underworld, Arx Fatalis).

Like it's normal for a person to suddenly collapses for few minutes and teleports to nearby bush.

Clearly, you, sir, are not a drinker.

 

[Nano]

Garret is a common thief, and his biggest advantage would be being sneaky and having tools. He cannot fight. Corvo is esentially a commando, physically fit and strong and has magic powers too. so it's kinda silly to try to think of them as equals. Dishonored, thus, is an action game with stealth elements.

Garrett was trained by the Keepers for both stealth and combat. He can fight.

 

[Borelli]

Garret is a common thief, and his biggest advantage would be being sneaky and having tools. He cannot fight. Corvo is esentially a commando, physically fit and strong and has magic powers too. so it's kinda silly to try to think of them as equals. Dishonored, thus, is an action game with stealth elements.

Garrett was trained by the Keepers for both stealth and combat. He can fight.

True, but i never saw him as a warrior in a same way that Corvo is even though it is very easy to kill everything in Thief (i'm talking here about stealth bow and sword kills not sword bunny hopping). Making a Thief game that has the same action as Dishonored would be a step in the wrong direction.

the end result is fairly boring gameplay when compared against games with more action or cerebral stuff (Ultima Underworld, Arx Fatalis).

Stealth games must be played with a different mindset, the "boring" gameplay is something you either love or hate, although when said stealth is implemented poorly it is boring for everyone involved. Adding Dishonored's action to a stealth game inherently changes it to something else.

That being said, while i don't think Dishonored has bad stealth, the action parts are much more fun, freezing time and putting a bomb in someone's pants never gets old. I feel like designers made a miss with trying to please both sides.

 

[Haba]

Lets see, you have a game where you need to skulk in the shadows, stalk your enemies to learn their patterns, find out ways to isolate them in order to...

Knock them out?

Where is the fun in that?

How obvious do I have to make this? Instead of having middle aged men as guards, replace them with teenage girls.

Another genre fixed.

 

[masterridley2]

I played Dishonored many years after its release so maybe I missed something. But the experience was p. disappointing.

Nothing like the Thief games, handles like shit. And it felt railroad-y. Got bored of it quickly and gave up.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I played Thief games when they originally came out. I found them to be very interesting, because nobody was doing stealth back then, but honestly, after a while, that kind of gameplay just grows boring. Which is the point of the thread.

 

[Silverfish]

Fair enough, but if that style of game gets boring after a while, isn't it a feather in Dishonored's cap that you can eschew that way of playing altogether and go on a rampage?

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

You can, but then it quickly turns into a cognitively dissonant shitshow, since the game isn't really made to support that.

 

[NecroLord]

Thief 1 and 2 are stealth games through and through.
Dishonored is a "stealth sim".
Why do all those "sim" games end up being so phony and cheap?
Thi3f is also a stealth sim and that game ended up being a piece of shit...

 

[Lyric Suite]

If Thief was so boring they wouldn't keep making custom maps for it.

Just like Doom has the most perfect gunplay in any shooter ever, hence the never ending series of custom wads they keep making for it, Thief is the most perfect stealth game ever made.

The only thing i would improve on Thief is the AI, which could afford to be a little harder, but even that's depadable since one of the remarkable things Thief does is that it's never frustrating or obnoxious. It just has that perfect balance that makes it perpetually addicting, at least for me.

 

[NecroLord]

If Thief was so boring they wouldn't keep making custom maps for it.

Just like Doom has the most perfect gunplay in any shooter ever, hence the never ending series of custom wads they keep making for it, Thief is the most perfect stealth game ever made.

The only thing i would improve on Thief is the AI, which could afford to be a little harder, but even that's depadable since one of the remarkable things Thief does is that it's never frustrating or obnoxious. It just has that perfect balance that makes it perpetually addicting, at least for me.

For all its faults, Thief: Deadly Shadows improved the enemy AI. On harder difficulties they notice when treasure items are missing and when torches are put out...

 

[ind33d]

If Thief was so boring they wouldn't keep making custom maps for it.

Just like Doom has the most perfect gunplay in any shooter ever, hence the never ending series of custom wads they keep making for it, Thief is the most perfect stealth game ever made.

The only thing i would improve on Thief is the AI, which could afford to be a little harder, but even that's depadable since one of the remarkable things Thief does is that it's never frustrating or obnoxious. It just has that perfect balance that makes it perpetually addicting, at least for me.

For all its faults, Thief: Deadly Shadows improved the enemy AI. On harder difficulties they notice when treasure items are missing and when torches are put out...

people don't talk enough about thief's tone. it's played completely straight, which makes the gameplay feel real, even when the mechanics are too simple. if they made thief today, there would be a big ITEMS STOLEN: 0/25 bar and a fat lesbian telling you which direction to walk

 

[NecroLord]

Yes.
And those awesome cutscenes made by Daniel Thron.
They also served the purpose of storytelling in the form of writings made by the Hammerites, the Pagans, the Mechanists, the Keepers...
Or in the form of journals found during missions.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I think the simplicity in a lot of older classics is part of the equation. The lack of complications in Thief allows you to focus on the things that matter, like atmosphere, level design, tension etc.

Older games just had a tendency to get to the fucking point and allow us to have fun without getting cock blocked by retarded bullshit every step of the way.

 

[Lyric Suite]

If Thief was so boring they wouldn't keep making custom maps for it.

Just like Doom has the most perfect gunplay in any shooter ever, hence the never ending series of custom wads they keep making for it, Thief is the most perfect stealth game ever made.

The only thing i would improve on Thief is the AI, which could afford to be a little harder, but even that's depadable since one of the remarkable things Thief does is that it's never frustrating or obnoxious. It just has that perfect balance that makes it perpetually addicting, at least for me.

For all its faults, Thief: Deadly Shadows improved the enemy AI. On harder difficulties they notice when treasure items are missing and when torches are put out...

Yeah something like that.

I remember trying a mod for Thief 1 that made the AI harder but all it did was making it easier to alert the guards which sort of ended up becoming annoying after while. Since the mod didn't work on Thief 2 i ended up taking it out.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

I don't agree, but people like Warren Spector do, which is what motivated him to make Deus EX. At least he thought the stealth formula was too restrictive. I've also seen other Deus Ex fans make the same arguments. So don't be too hard on Porky.

I can remember some stealth games that have trial and error gameplay and many sections which needed to be done in a specific way. I don't think that's a problem with Thief, but it's something the stealth formula can quickly degenerate into. Slow gameplay, though, is not a problem at all.

On the other hand, Thief was just a beginning and shouldn't have been the pinnacle of the genre. It'd be nice to cutting edge dynamic AI, ability to choose time of day at the start of missions and other variables to open up different possibilities.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

The real issue has to do with the inherent boredom of such games. Think about it like this: imagine you were a real life version of Garrett or Corvo, trying to pull off some perfect heist. How would you go about it? Well, you would probably do what's called casing the place, ie spend a lot of time (several days at least) hanging around your target and observing guard patterns, people patterns, etc. Now if you are doing this as work (for a huge potential payout), it kinda makes sense, but doing this in a game is ... boring. Of course in games you don't need to case the place for days, since the risk is less (fail, reload), and the guard behavior is more simplistic than human behavior, but still, the end result is fairly boring gameplay when compared against games with more action or cerebral stuff (Ultima Underworld, Arx Fatalis).

One feature of every heist movie is that section where the robbers plan out the heist in exquisite detail. Guard placement, shifts, security cameras, redundant security systems, points of entry, escape routes, insiders, surrounding infrastructure, etc. We take only a very brief glance at this process, but it's an exciting thing. I think this is one point where stealth games can get a lot more involved.

 

[Lemming42]

The lack of pre-mission planning did bother me in Thief even as a kid. I remember thinking that it was dumb as hell that I'm a master thief but I'm also completely clueless as to what's behind the next corner. Garrett just draws a rough sketch and he's like "yep, ready to go". Playing Rainbow Six at around the same time made me think how cool it'd be to have a planning screen in Thief where you could scout out potential points of entry and exit to places, and possible guard locations.2

Having some missions pre-planned with rough outlines of guard routes and points of interest would also let the devs raise the stakes by depriving you of that on missions where you'd logically not be able to plan ahead (eg Bonehoard and Assassins!).

 

[Raghar]

After getting bored of constant stealth in Dishonored, I played a couple of levels combat heavy, and it was really bad. Pure cheat mode type stuff (e.g. stop time and kill whatever you want while it's frozen), or uncanny valley type stuff like shooting guards in the head with the upgraded flintlock pistol over and over and over, or try to fight them with sword but then they shoot you from 20 sides. It's not really possible in a fun way, as Lemming42 says above.

What? If you have stop time at all, you are later half of Dishonored already. How did you fight in previous parts when you had less resources?
Also mod you configuration files to keep dead bodies, game engine removes excess dead bodies and that prevents some nasty alerts.

If you are starting the game, go into DefaultAI.ini and change these lines:

m_CorpseAbsoluteMaximumCount=10
m_CorpseIdealMaximumCount=5

Obviously to something much higher like 40 or so. Dunno if it counts rat bodies as bodies, or if it removes rat bodies first (it should). It will slow down things, but as long as you have fast CPU, preferably overclocked, it will make no difference on speed.

Assassination heavy might be fun, but developers decided they would create not an alternate decent ending, but some kind of bad ending. So instead of princess maker like QUEEN OF DARKNESS ending, you have quite lame duck ending where ferryman would shoot you and you try to do stuff in last mission wounded when guards were alerted on your location. Basically you can save them with high assassination counts but they still act as morons.

 

[Borelli]

The real issue has to do with the inherent boredom of such games. Think about it like this: imagine you were a real life version of Garrett or Corvo, trying to pull off some perfect heist. How would you go about it? Well, you would probably do what's called casing the place, ie spend a lot of time (several days at least) hanging around your target and observing guard patterns, people patterns, etc. Now if you are doing this as work (for a huge potential payout), it kinda makes sense, but doing this in a game is ... boring. Of course in games you don't need to case the place for days, since the risk is less (fail, reload), and the guard behavior is more simplistic than human behavior, but still, the end result is fairly boring gameplay when compared against games with more action or cerebral stuff (Ultima Underworld, Arx Fatalis).

One feature of every heist movie is that section where the robbers plan out the heist in exquisite detail. Guard placement, shifts, security cameras, redundant security systems, points of entry, escape routes, insiders, surrounding infrastructure, etc. We take only a very brief glance at this process, but it's an exciting thing. I think this is one point where stealth games can get a lot more involved.

This is one thing that i liked about Thief 3 free roaming in the city, you could rob the tavern, it is not a mission, something you do on your own initiative and you have to plan for everything by yourself. A pseudo open world experience in a way.

 

[Groover]

Give Amnesia The Bunker a fair shot, if you haven't already. It might just be the most tense and dynamic stealth imsim on the market right now. It's not exactly competing in the same space as Dishonored and Thief, but I think that it's a much more robust overall package than the former two. Stealth is pretty much mandatory as you can't overpower the enemy like in Dishonored, or abuse their numerous limitations like in Thief. This assumes you're playing on a higher difficulty level, of course.

 

[Itoh]

IMO the "boring parts" of the stealth genre are, in a good title, a necessary and useful component of the experience. I think there are probably two essential differences between good and bad stealth that make this true. The first is linear vs nonlinear levels. When I'm tucked away in a safe space in a game like Thief, I'm peeking out and pondering which is the best route to take next - Do I go around the corner, not knowing if there's a guard to catch me, or do I have time to try for the window? Or maybe I take a shortcut using my last rope arrow and risk not having it later. I'm not just waiting around doing nothing. The second is instant game over vs variable failure states. The former is frustrating, but sneaking around when you have multiple reactions to being caught - using flashbangs, fighting it out, or indeed just dying - is incredibly tense, so a few lulls are probably necessary to keep the tension from ratcheting up too high and making me desensitized. Though as has been said, some people are just Not Into That, which is fine.

I think most complaints result from ancillary stealth systems in games with other focii, and those are indeed pretty shit. In order for stealth to work it needs to be one of, if not the, central mechanics of the game.