These awareness lines – along with much of the HUD’s additional elements, like objective markers and even the frob highlight – can be toggled off.
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And they don’t just religiously follow their patrols. They’re sometimes pulled off by a painting in the environment, or a fireplace, or a rat that they want to stomp – these little dynamic things – and then they go back to the patrol. So that factors into the situation as well. However, if they ever actually engage you – they for sure know you’re there, and fight you, or find a body you’ve left behind – they never fully cool down. They will conclude that maybe you left – ‘Ah, he got away! Let’s keep an eye out!’ – but they will stay at a minimal level of alert after that. They’re not going to conclude it was nothing.”
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“The guards notice when a patrol route has been vacated,” Smith adds. “Sometimes they change routes to make up for it.”
The result is a stealth game where levels can never be truly ‘learned’, and goes a fair way to addressing the issue of patrol routes amounting to elaborate timing puzzles. And with that constant uncertainty should come an ever-present tension.