What made these (T1/T2 depending on what setting you prefer, Chaos Theory, Blood Money) classic stealth games so good?

What made these (T1/T2 depending on what setting you prefer, Chaos Theory, Blood Money) classic stealth games so good?

Why can't modern titles even come close to the level of stealth in these games?

What are some other notable stealth games?

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Because they tried to reinvent the wheel, and then forgot what the wheel was

...

They made the games for people that actually liked the genre instead of trying to attract new people.

>Why can't modern titles even come close to the level of stealth in these games?
Hitman TM is as good or even better than as BM.

I just started playing through splinter cell. Its a pretty trash game. Here is an axample
>there is a fall, and a ledge I need to be on
>jump over the pit and grab the ledge
>WATER YOU DOIN SAM GAME OVER
>happens a few times
>one time decide to climb a pipe instead of jumping
>this was the only acceptable way to proceed

and things like this just go on. The game forces me to save scum by being terrible. I hope the other 2 arent as bad

>They made the games for people that actually liked the genre instead of trying to attract new people.
Pretty much sums it up.

Found neo/v/

Dishonored 2 isn't really a proper stealth game, visibility is binary and noise is only tracked when you break shit.

Also, considering you are either on par or even stronger than guards, no-kill/full stealth is essentially optional and more difficult than just blazing through guards with your cool time abilities.

Not that I'm saying dishonored 1/2 aren't fun/good games, they're just not fulfilling stealth games at all.

True, unfortunately. I kinda wish games weren't ruled by money anymore. You can't have major experimental games, everyone just wants to play it safe

nitpicky stuff that improves the game

Which SC?

What level?

I can't think of a level in CT where if you just fall in an area you trigger a "special" game-over

Thief is still the best stealth game because:
>It and Chaos Theory have the best light/dark mechanics out there by FAR.
>The sound propagation tech used by LGS is very robust and still unmatched to this day. You can precisely pinpoint someone's location by just listening to them walking or whistling and sounds do not leak through walls like 99% of games (sometimes happen but that's the level designer's fault, not the tech's).
>The level design is stellar, very organic, very natural, very open-ended and never feels artificial, especially in TDP. Chaos Theory has great level design too but the levels are much smaller.
>Garrett is proper fragile and doesn't stand a chance in open combat, as it should be.
>The fact that it's a first person game with an incredibly robust system allows for unprecedented immersion. You do not play Garrett, you ARE Garrett.

The thing with modern stealth games is that they very often fall into the trap of giving options all the time with next to no required effort as to limit frustration. For instance in games like Deus Ex: HR you always have a vent conveniently placed here, or a destructible wall there, always in close vicinity of each other. In Thief you actually have to work your way to these options and find them by yourself, they are sometimes very well hidden and sometimes quite far away and hard to reach. This is part of what makes Thief's level design feel so natural and organic. Instead of artifical setpieces you have levels that don't feel gamey if that makes sense. Dishonored avoids this for the most part. I've yet to play Dishonored 2 but I hear that the level design in that game is exceptional and even better.

Meant to quote this, whoops.

>sounds do not leak through walls like 99% of games
Yeah, they leak through ceilings instead. There's no denial that Thief has absolutely amazing sound design but the ceiling bug was very annoying.

Another key point for the immersion argument is how fleshed out the world is - letters, conversations, and great level design that tells a story are all important

Dishonored is probably the closest we'll ever get to a modern thief, which is kinda bittersweet.

The system used in Thief to propagate sound is called roombrush. By default maps do not have sound. You have to create a roombrush which is an ethereal volume where sound exists. When two roombrushes touch each other that means sound will propagate from one to the other, no matter what's in between them. You can have ten walls or ten ceilings, if two roombrushes touch each other through these sound will propagate nonetheless.

Besides Blood Money, what Hitman games are worth playing?
I have all of them sans TM, which I plan on getting at some point (From what I can tell most people consider it a great hitman game, but disagree with it being always online)

2, Contracts and TM. CN47 is shit and Absolution is what the fuck happened tier.

It may not ring as true for the main missions of the game, but the optional side stuff in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided came damn close with how you have to approach a lot of it and what you have to do/can do to get through it. Very highly interactive. Hopefully with the DLC we'll see more of this everywhere in the game.

Dishonored's case is pretty interesting because the background is amazing and really well fleshed out while the story itself is kind of meh at best. You can have a very simple and very effective story, but Dishonored's is very simple and not very good.

2 is very good. I hear the latest is also pretty sweet and a definite improvement over Absolution.

MGS V TPP and Hitman tm are good.

The first Splinter Cell is pretty fucking jank by today's standards. Chaos Theory is the fucking tits though, it's so above and beyond the first one especially.

>MGS V TPP
>Stealth

I played Splinter Cell 1 on PC just last year, I didn't think it was bad. Maybe it's sequels have made it pale in comparison, I haven't played any of the others yet since I didn't want to burn myself out on stealth and start up 2 straight away.

I'm actually really happy that Hitman went back to its roots after absolution. It has casual elements while retaining what made classic hitman good, which is really all one can ask for when a developer makes a modern title

Wait, really? How do doors work with roombrush, with the whole leaning into them and doors blocking sound until opened?

>hand holding arcade-y piece of shit is better than BM

Please

>BM
>good
AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
DELUSIONAL NECKBEARD NOSTALGIAFAGS
BOY I SURE DO LOVE BEING ABLE TO LITERALLY FUCK UP ALL AI IN THE GAME BY CIRCLING AROUND THEM
10/10 GAME XDDDD

BMFAGS BTFO'D
youtube.com/watch?v=bH2PnxaNzDQ

this genre is relatively challenging and often involves trial and error

modern devs are gay and scared, and they think that players demand reward at every second, so they make current stealth games too easy, half-automated and utterly predictable

Mainly because those games does not handhold you in any way. You're dropped off with one or more objectives and you have to search for them, there's no markers or anything like that.

>hand holding arcade-y piece of shit
Did you mean BM or TM?

It's a bit complicated. Doors act as portals between two rooms. What's behind a door is basically not rendered until it's open but sounds and NPCs still exist, hence why you're able to hear them if you lean against a door or are close by. Doors also have different sound attenuation values that can be changed. Now the method used for sound to properly propagate through doors is pic related.
Purple represents roombrushes and the black line is the door. For example you have two rooms with one roombrush in it each and the doorway has two roombrushes that touch each other in the middle of the door and the doorway. This ensures that sound will properly pass through the door. If you had a single roombrush in the doorway linking Rooms 1 and 2 then sound wouldn't propagate properly. This can be detected easily by picking a door: if it makes a faint sound and opens loudly that means it's not roombrushed properly.

>abuse issue with AI in close quarters
>BTFO BM IS BAD GAME

(You)

>literally just shit AI
>ABUSE ABUSE YOU'RE ABUSING THE AI BY PLAYING THE GAME UGHHHHHHHHH STOP IT GAMER!!! JUST HALT NOW! STOP ATTACKING MY FAVORITE GAME

TM is so fucking stupid because it's all scripted. AIs starts doing shit and talking only when you enter the room, unlike in BM.

>Why can't modern titles even come close to the level of stealth in these games?
youtube.com/watch?v=jPqwDGXxLhU

>Trespassing doesn't matter
>Infinite coins
>Can't get covers blown in your own suit
>Enemies shooting at you don't matter
>Enemy alert from suspicion doesn't matter
>Can kill every single NPC on the map using """accidents""" without any impact
>Disguises make you invisible
>AI is dumb as rocks

TM is way superior mechanically.

>issue that literally only crops up if you're fighting a lone guard in point blank range
>shit AI
?

Just started replaying splinter cell games, completed the first one a couple of weeks ago, and i'm in the middle of pandora tomorrow on PC. First one i savescummed a lot admidedly. But i like staying undiscovered as much as possible. When i played it on PS2 i didn't have the luxury of quicksave so that was harder.

The AI has ALWAYS been shit. The hitman games have ALWAYS been mediocre.
Literally only retarded redditors who can't make up their own mind and have all of their views controlled explicitly by what others say online actually like this series.

I have to admit, some of the quotes are pretty great though, but no reason for a series to have this many awful games just because of the quotes.

>only crops up
Only? It happens literally everywhere and at any time. It's how so many speedrunners save their runs when shit goes bad. Hold up a goin and spin and AI literally malfunctions.
Keep trying to defend shit AI though as some 'fluke' or 'abuse', it's pretty hysterical!

Please post an example of this working when there's either more than one guard and/or you're not hugging them

Hitman is not a stealth game. it's a puzzle game.

I just finished blood money and it was fantastic.
Went to play the very first game in the series and jesus fucking christ it's something different alright.
I'll probably get through it once I figure it out, but are there other games in the hitman series worth checking out, or was blood money kind of a one hit wonder?

Is a terrific game but it can also be played loud. This is the problem with modern stealth games, companies make them so they can also be played like straight action, which is good in theory as it expands the audiende, but it also makes the stealth gameplay feel watered down. The only modern games I can think of that are pure stealth are pixel/indie shit like Mark of the Ninja or Gunpoint

Hitman is in its own category of stealth, where it isn't explicitly stealth and it's not explicitly not stealth. Some user called it "Social Stealth" which I think is an apt description

youtube.com/watch?v=M_xeJlp02N4

Here, enjoy an entire 20+ minutes of AI acting retarded over stupid shit.
But keep trying to make excuses, your favorite game is mediocre and you should feel bad.

Codename 47 is a proof of concept more than anything, it really doesn't hold up at all. 2 and Contracts are good, though.

BM was a fluke. The other games are horrendous, both to control and get through. The only reason why anyone actually finishes those games is because they were so in love with BM they convinced themselves a game from the same studio must be worth playing.

But new Hitman is the best in the series.

t. a salty millennial

Hitman series was popular way before BM.

>i didn't enjoy this game so you should feel bad for enjoying it
autism must be rough

also for the most part exploits in that video are abusing how guards can be lured easily more than anything

il prob get hate but this is pretty fun

I can't speak to the quality of that specific tenchu game, but the classic ones are fairly good. The reason they're not really held as high as the games listed in the OP I think really comes down to the fact that Tenchu is on PS1 while the others are multi-plat, meaning that its controls are sub-par regardless of emulation

Thief 1 is essentially the beginning and the end of modern stealth, all else is derivative.

MGS had its own school of arcade stealth but it traded that uniqueness to be a watered down Splinter Cell.

Hitman was always doing its own thing too which is good, strange how its the only one still preserved today

I wish they would remake Chaos Theory on the Alien:Isolation engine. You know you would buy it.

Tenchu Z was underrated.

Coop was fun, and there were enough customization options for your ninja to keep it interesting.

the thing about Blacklist and MGS 5 is that they reward you for being silent and sneaking and non lethal or ghosting etc.
i don't think you get any rewards in dishonored do you?

either way, nowadays i think blacklist is more fun than Splinter cell 3.
and MGS5 is more fun than MGS 3.
and hitman 2016 is more fun than Hitman blood money.
all these games just improved a ton on controls and are just more fun to play.
i would rather replay any of these 3 modern ones than the old ones.

...

I played CT way before 1 and when I got around playing it, I was surprised at all the scripted "action" sequences, especially in the end when you get surrounded in the president palace. Was pretty good nonetheless, even though not as good as CT.

If Thief 4 just cloned T1/T2 with better graffics it'd be significantly better (and potentially an actual success), so I don't really see that argument

Being derivative of something isn't inherently bad. Take NuDOOM for example. It's derivative of painkiller and other shooters, but it's not a bad game. In fact, it's a very good one

Yeah, the flak vest made you almost invincible.

I didn't meant to imply derivative meant bad, its only that in today's conception of stealth games you can see Thief's DNA strewn throughout, whether the devs are aware of it or not.

Splinter Cell in particular is a more compact take on what Thief started.

Ah, fair enough.

Splinter Cells take on Thief is very fulfilling in my opinion, the spy-thriller aesthetic complete with cool gadgets and freedom of movement makes it pretty gripping gameplay-wise

>sequel to 10 year old game is better mechanically than the 10 year old game

holy shit stop the fucking presses

My favourite stealth game is Barman Arkham Asylum to be honest. It's just flat out the most fun. Is that frowned upon?

New Hit man is very good too, and I prefer it to Blood Money which I struggled to get into.

I love stealth threads

>splinter cell
>good
Nigga, those are some basic babbys first stealth games, stop pretending they're good, since you played them as a child.

I actually played through CT for the first time after picking it up from the recent steam sale
It's fun and still holds up, if linear as hell.

I know which one he meant, this where you had to move from one balcony to another and if you just jumped, you failed because you were suppose to avoid being seen by anyone. It was the first one iirc

Git gud

Does anyone like Far Cry 3 and 4 as stealth games they are my fave.

>love the idea of stealth games
>absolutely terrible at them

On the rare occasions where I don't fuck everything up, stealth is so damn satisfying.

The problem is, I start out decently, but then I always make one wrong mistake and suddenly the guard is shouting "HE'S HERE!!!" and the alarms are going off and it's just a total mess.

I'm not sure how to get better at them.

Eh, shallow LoS based stealth

Save scum until you don't need to save scum

Is the new hitman game worth buying guys?How much is it on steam?Can't check right now sadly

I wouldn't really compare Hitman to SP and Thief because hitman is more about hiding in plane sight with disguises and stuff. The actual hiding and not being seen elements in it are practically just jump in a closet instead of anything really deep.

It's actually a great open world stealth game underneath.
The problem is that your character is so powerful with his infinite self-heals and all the super powers you get from the skill tree makes you wonder why they went through the effort of putting in stealth elements.

Far Cry wasn't really that fun desu senpai

Honestly, I found it more fun than TPP.

REMINDER TO ALL YOU TAFFERS

INSTALL OPENAL SOFT AND SET UP HRTF FOR EVEN BETTER SOUND

youtube.com/watch?v=cYIc7HLpk-w

Most people probably have regular openal installed, but not this open source version that has support for a ton of effects that make sound positioning even better.

You have to set up an hrtf folder and an ini, should be guides if you guys google it.

HRTF is a mathematical function that filters audio in the way your ear does to feed your brain positional cues with only two speakers, ideally with headphones. Bullshit CMSS3D stuff does this by mixing fake speakers with positional data, but if a game has a good HRTF implemented into the engine itself like Thief as of the newdark, it will mix with in game positioning.

Combine this with the EAX effects OpenAL was allready emulating, and you have the best goddamn sound in any game ever.

It's $60 for the complete first season, and if you don't care about the always online requirement, it's easily the best hitman game yet.