Stealth Mechanics: 3 Innovations and Refinements Gamers Want to See

Stealth mechanics are constantly being refined and reinvented thanks to improved hardware capabilities—we’re at a point in gaming history that allows for greater experimentation than ever before. Enemy AI is far more intelligent than in early stealth games, players have more freedom of movement, and there’s a greater array of weapons and approaches to choose from.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t do more to further the genre. For hardcore stealth mechanics fans, there are some new mechanics that would take a stealth game from fun to mind-blowing. Some of them require a significant overhaul of what makes a stealth game, while others might just be dreams for the future, but they’re still tantalizing ideas for what we might expect from the future of stealth mechanics.

Batman’s Detective Vision in the Arkham game — Batman’s Detective Vision in the Arkham series shows enemies’ mental states, a great starting point for stealth mechanics that use psychology to improve enemy AI.

More Psychological Stealth Mechanics Make Enemies Feel Real

Enemy AI is crucial to a good stealth game, as enemies that are too smart can make a game frustrating and enemies that aren’t clever enough make it too easy. But the relationship between intelligent and unintelligent is a dichotomy that deserves more complexity and less of a sliding scale approach. This invites more possibilities for enemy behavior.

One such complication is states of alert. Many games have played with this before—for example, Skyrim, while not a pure stealth game, features indications for detection—but still tend to focus on a sliding scale from alert to not alert. To complicate this, stealth mechanics could deal with different types of alertness, exploring the differences between a guard who has heard a noise versus a guard who has seen a light go out or heard a shot. For example, repeatedly throwing rocks—a common distraction technique in stealth mechanics—could aid immersion, as a truly intelligent guard is unlikely to hear somebody throwing rocks without starting to investigate the source and not just the sound itself.

This leads into another aspect of AI—psychology. In the Arkham games, which delves specifically into enemy psychology, enemies begin to exhibit erratic behavior as fellow guards disappear or die in mysterious circumstances. Incorporating more of these techniques in other games would be a huge advance for stealth mechanics, making enemies feel truly alive and responsive in ways where they currently fail.

Sleep darts in Dishonored — Corvo’s sleep darts in Dishonored allow players to take down enemies without increasing Chaos. While this affects the story, there is little difference between lethal and nonlethal takedowns.

Eliminating Lethal/Non-lethal Takedown Similarities Aids in Immersion

Choice is a huge draw for fans of stealth games, who like the option of choosing to take out enemies in traditional shoot-up-up ways or sneaking by with dedicated stealth mechanics. Many games have implemented the option to take out enemies without killing them, often in conjunction with a moral element.

But when you get down to it, non-lethal takedowns are nearly identical to lethal ones. Tranquilizer darts instead of bullets have much the same effect, except that the latter results in bloodstains.

To remedy this, it would be great to see some games play with more effects than just the story consequences of games like Dishonored. For instance, enemies that die will stay dead, but enemies that are knocked out might get back up and let others know what happened. Enemies that have been incapacitated and hidden could make noises to attract other guards, putting them into a higher state of alert.

Non-lethal stealth is often already more difficult than lethal stealth, which means that this would have to be done with care to not make the game harder than it already is. But having some potential consequences for how we use stealth mechanics could lead to a lot more fun and planning, giving players more reasons to think ahead.

Resident Evil quicksave — Resident Evil’s limited saves is the solution to players feeling dependent on quicksaves and reloads, but may frustrate others.

Quicksaves Distract from Engagement but Allow for Experimentation

When you’re gunning for a perfect stealth run, reloading a save becomes your best friend. But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if there were alternative responses to being spotted or botching a stealth move that didn’t mean retrying from scratch?

The issue here is simple: quicksaves and reloading do a lot of good. The freedom to try something and then retry immediately on failure allows for more experimentation because the consequences aren’t so high.

More than that, death and failure don’t have to be the only consequences of a botched move. Games that include rankings tackle this issue, as discovery is no longer a failure state. Other stealth mechanics, like guards stopping investigation after a certain amount of time, also try to address this problem, but they often sacrifice immersion to do so. Games that limit the number of saves also limit your ability to save and reload, but that level of frustration may prove too much for some players. It’s a tough problem to tackle, but addressing it could really redefine the way that we approach failure in stealth games.

We’ve Come a Long Way, but There’s Room for Innovation

Stealth mechanics have come a long way since the genre first emerged. Games are more complex than they used to be, but that doesn’t mean innovation has to stop there. Pushing for new, more complicated stealth mechanics keeps the genre feeling fresh and new. We don’t need to get rid of classic stealth gameplay. But we also shouldn’t be afraid of mixing up genre standards like the not alert/alert binary, the similarities between lethal and non-lethal takedowns, and the immersion-breaking nature of quicksaves and reloads.

Alekhine’s Gun blends classic stealth mechanics with innovation like stealth rankings, which reward players for escaping the game’s 11 open-world levels without being spotted. Now available for PC or console!