Why did the stealth genre die?
i hate stealth games
>>735505794>Doing nothing and standing still for large periods of timeWho'd thunk it?Hitman is fine because it's social stealth
>>735505794Most people don't have the patience for it now.
>>735505794>why are pacmanlikes outdated?ftfy
>>735505794hiding and running away from enemies is just kind of lame.
Too heigh iq and slow for most people Puzzle games are same but solo Dev's can make good puzzle games in unitySame cannot be said about games you posted I can't imagine asmongold playing dishonored or intravenous
>>735505794From the past five years, I can think of:>Sniper Elite>Aliens Dark Descent>Gloomwood>Intravenous>Ghost of Tsushima>Peripeteia>Styx>Sekiro (I guess)>Aragami 2Also, most modern horror games are stealth games now. In a gay way.
>>735510332Gloom is in Early access Got and sekiro has ubisoft "stealth" that's just sneak up to enemies in right order then fighting when cover is blown
>>735505794Instead of dedicated stealth games it became just another part of larger games in other genres, just like how Pipe Mania went from a dedicated puzzle game into a hacking minigame in Bioshock
the vast majority of stealth games are horribly punishing and just force you to reset and try again, which is really not that fun. MGS was the one game where if you fucked up and got caught you could recover and keep moving
>>735510619EVery open world game is inherently a stealth game no reason to make a genre out of a mechanic.Its like asking why arent platformers a thing anymore
>ITT: broooooo wtf do you mean i have to actually play smart instead of just shooting everything as soon as i see it this is not bussin fr no cap so lame and dated
>>735511184>stealth>smartmore like pussy hiding in the corner like the cuck you are
>>735511406>hurr durr hiding is for PUSSIES im such a big dick alpha durrrrrrIt's a video game, Tyrone, calm downYou're not badass for having a low attention span and needing the constant dopamine rush of pressing l2 and r2
>>735505794new hitman is barely stealth unless you do suit only challenge runs, it's more like a sandbox gamewhich is great
>>735505794Hitman is so fun, I love stealth games. Also most rpgs and action games have stealth components in them nowadays, you just choose if you want to stealth or not. I think that's optimal.
>>735505794Stealth is quite boring which makes it a niche market. Objectively stealth in everything, even real life is a waiting game, it's made worse when you're voluntarily waiting in a video game.They're also just harder to design.The level design needed is far harder than any other genre, you have to think about everything, the better the stealth game, the more shit you have to design levels around. You have to make the levels challenging enough to be fun but not so easy that stealth is optional.Every other genre is easier to do level design for.Which also has the side effects of there's not many people that are competent at a stealth games level design because they don't practice it.
>>735505794Secret Flasher Manaka is the best stealth game I've played in over a decadeIt solves a problem games like MGSV and Dishonored suffer from wherein the stealth exists to protect enemies from you and all challenge is self-imposed. Manaka has goals that encourage you to constantly push the limits of your stealth gameplay while unlocking new mechanics when successful. It's beautiful really
>>735514573Dangerously based.
>>735505794Because stealth has become a playtstyle in greater games, it no longer needs to be stuck in a genre.
>>735515196Retard.
>>735511132>>735514419it's simple, both platformers and stealth are heavily dependent on level designyou try to push those mechanics into a game that doesn't levels designed for them and it's gonna come off as shallow and boring at best
>>735516070Ironic.
>>735505794not a single good game there, no wonder why it die
>>735505794See for yourself >>735515196https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo-5dRPcYUI
Level design is a lost art and zoomers wouldn't play a game without detective-x-ray-witcher-shado sense which trivializes the genre
>>735505794Because it's hard.Think about the audio cues in thief. The light/shadows that had to be done in SCCT to let the player know when he's exposed or not.The level design in dishonored that had to account for a dozen different abilities. It's much easier to just build an on rails shooter with global lighting systems that make adequate screenshots.
>>735505794If you look through all of the games that weren't remembered like any of the few that were: this is the reason for the most part. It was hard to into it for video game developers. It was rare for them to ever develop competent games. For indie developers its down right impossible for them most of the time. It can only be attempted with somewhat of a sizeable team and a little more of budget, even if that budget it still shoe string.
>>735510892I think most stealth games work like MGS in that regard. Instead, it's stealth sections in non-stealth games that tend to be obnoxious like that.
>>735515196>Because stealth has become a playtstyle in greater gamesIt's never been as good as it was in dedicated games. The only argument you might have something on was Deus Ex and i think it's stealth system was fairly mediocre and the model that they went with in Invisible War whilst still primitive was one of the few better ones that they did even if it was still by most accounts barebones. It almost resembled Thief. However when it comes to Immersive Sims Thief stands above Deus Ex and completely stomps it. Because it was designed in that way and it shows. I really hate hearing people claim that the games that create it as viable playstyles are better than the ones where it's the only playstyle because it's just the opposite of the truth.
>>735523047@Lurking Youtuber FagsYou are to make a youtube essay about how Chicken Run defined the Stealth videogame genre.
>>735527060>just Deus Exand Zelda, and Elder Scrolls, and Blacklist, and Cyberpunk, and
>>735505794They went unnoticed
>>735527413Blacklist is alright but none of the rest of those games you listed. You can't make a good game unless it's the core pillar of the design because it also translates to level design. This is why what you're saying about how it could be added into other games isn't true about it becoming irrelevant. It makes for the most shallow experience when remaining unseen wasn't the primary goal of the game. Deus Ex just has good level design that would work in any great stealth game. But you need more than good level design. You need the levels designed around it's mechanics.
>>735505794>assassin's creed didnt even make the listlmao
>>735528296see >>735519587Stop pretending to be retarded.
>>735514495Skyrim unironically is the best stealth game out there>inb4 stef archurI actually prefer to use melee in stealth. unlike other "stealth" games I can go invisible and quiet whenever i want then just go around stabbing people with a 30x damage bonus. I dont have to learn patrols. i dont have to fight the enemy. they cant see me, they can't fight back. and if i get bored i can cast a Fury spell and make them all kill each other for my amusement. It's such an easy build to get going too, stealth kills give a ton of XP so you level quickly. you can power level Illusion in an hour to get invisibility and the DB questline is piss easy if you side with them, then you get their OP stealth gear. the hardest part is getting infected with vampirism since it gives a stealth bonus, as if i didnt feel badass enough, now i'm in an invisible creature of the night oneshotting everything openly. i dont stick to corners, i dont run unkillable stalker enemies, i dont fear enemies. i am the night. i am the danger
>>735527743
>>735505794Stealth games past the scrub level are basically puzzles where doing well requires learning guard routines properly, making the most of your movement options, knowing how to neutralize bosses quickly etc. This is too scary for most normalfags so all we have left now are AC tailing missions and Sony 'hide in tall grass to win' gameplay.
>>735505794When devs realized the "guns blazin'" route was more fun they pivoted into making only theaction-y side of stealth, so we ended up getting batman arkham for meleefags and covershooters for rangedfags.
>>735528394>stop pretending to be retardedIt's literally open world slop. I'm just well aware of how these games should be made and I'm unsatisfied with how stealth design was thrown away completely. You ignored my point about the core pillar of the design being you must remain unseen is not first and foremost the intended approach then the levels themselves will never be memorable. This is absolutely crap compared to the best levels in Commandos 2 or even Desperados 1 for that matter. That's something you could take note of how to make playing a sneaky game feel really tense and satisfying.
>>735527197>@Lurking Youtuber FagsAlright which youtuber covered Augustus Auf Dem Kaisers that wasn't a german doing a playthrough of it? only Dan Vávra has talked about Chameleon aside from another youtuber.Which one talked about Inquisition The Chronicle of the Black Death? which one covered Cold Zero: No Mercy? actually my knowledge of this genre is just very deep.I've played a lot of games nobodies even heard of. Even so much as mentioning Stolen 2005 or Cold War 2005 will only get you a review that happened not far off the time it released.
The answer to these questions is almost always just opportunity cost and fickle publishers. stealth wasn't really a genre, it was a collection of a few franchises. when those ran their course corps tended towards the path of least resistance occasionally utilizing stealth as a side mechanic.
>>735527197I also left out one of the worst Commandos clones in existence from 2003 that probably only has one review featured on formerly LowTax's website Something Awful (as in non mainstream journalist reviews) so you can trust how genuine that seems about just how much i know. Shit is goddamn near unplayable. But nobody knows about it.
It didn't die, it's just hidden
>>735505794Patience is a lost art
>>735505794It's a frustrating genre with a very narrow level of satisfying challenge between total lack of player agency and braindead easy where the only hard part is waiting and memorizing layouts.
>>735532203Stealth games aren't about patience unless you're save scumming.
>>735532338lolwat
>>735532389Stealth games aren't about patience unless you're save scumming.Do I need to repeat it a third time before it goes through your thick skull?
>>735532595>cumming in a vagina isn't straight unless you're gay
>>735529946dont even reply to those people they just taking a counterpoint to be edgy, as if cyberpunk or zelda can compare to chaos theory blood money and thief
>>735505794Tenchu committed seppuku by not sticking with the playstation.
>>735505794Tenchu pioneered the stealth genre along with MGS and Thief so the rest could walk. It didn't have any staying power as its structural design was derivative.Shadow Tactics is less of a stealth game and more of a strategy game in the vein of the desperados series.The Hitman games are too egregiously overplayed with how they handle their multiplicities in assassinating targets. They're now more seen as speedrunning chokeholds than actual games. Dishonored and its immersive-sim ilk are too barred by their shoddy level design. Go on a killing spree in each level? Congratulations. You get the high chaos ending that's cinematic as all hell. Actually play it as a stealth game, though? The main villain chickens out and leaves the keys on the table for you to pick up. It's extremely contradictory and anticlimactic with how the developers set the game up in mind and in expectation of how players actually play.MGS as a whole is too Hollywood-esque and suffered from corporatism the most out of any franchise barring Nintendo's bureaucratic lily-padding that reflects how much the games as a whole have like milk in retrospect. Yeah, no, sure, they're only *groundbreaking* because there was nothing else for normies at the time of their launch. MGS2 was proof of that divide between game design and ownership.Splinter Cell and Thief are the pinnacle of the stealth genre and, thus, prove how already perfected they made it to be by actually emphasizing the shadows on how stealth games are meant to be played.
>>735508983>>why are froggerlikes outdated?ftfy
>>735531296I'm pretty sure stealth is dead because a significant portion of gen Z and perhaps the very late portion of millennials (to not have grown up with Thief or Splinter Cell) had not played any of these games. We're stuck with ADHD gamers so there's no demand too.It's dead from the development perspective of that no one is talented enough to program them as well. It's practically kryptonite for the majority of talentless indie developers too. It can only really ever be attempted from the AA side of development and even then there are no guarantees of success either. There's still high risks involved and everyone wants to avoid the risks. It's not easy for someone who has no veteran experience to even construct the games let alone write competent AI scripting. Having them figuring out dynamic lighting or advanced sound propagation techniques is out of the question and is basically filtering out 99% of them and that's a fact. Let alone younger generations don't think these are ground rule necessities because they've played too much Assassins Creed to know any better. For some reason the only real depth you'll ever get out of an independent project will always be The Dark Mod. So they'll just make some casual crap instead.
>>735533230I was a little puzzled over how someone could perceive Zelda to be a stealth game. Are we talking about the stealth sections of Windwaker or something? because I'm very confused over what conceptually we are talking about. I don't think something that amounts to what Beyond Good and Evil did at times is a stealth game. Not seeing it with BOTW or TOTK either. It might not be bait because there are some people that genuinely believe that the optional stealth route replaced this design. Just a very misinformed opinion. There are some Neil Druckmann fans that call all of Naughty Dogs shit stealth games too so we always have morons claiming things that don't make much sense most of the time.
>>735510332It's really not an alive genre and Ghost of Tsushima is glorified Assasin's Creed and Suckerpunch were relegated to becoming open world devs since Infamous. In fact it might even be weaker than AC in that regard if that was hard to fathom. Suckerpunch are hacks in general with a few classics under their old studio.Gloomwood is an eternal early access game which just reminds me of why modern gaming is shit. It didn't make me think that there was some revolution happening in regards to seeing Thief fans having a new golden age. It's just been slow drip of when the content comes and the marketing line that immersive sims are development money burners.Sniper Elite is all there has been argument for and still it's about the sniping gimmick and everything else feels secondary. They're okay games but they also don't feel close to touching genre greats. Where's the Hitmans and Splinter Cells? i don't really want to hear that Intravenous has ever been an acceptable replacement. Nor do i personally think Gloomwood for Thief filled this role but that's just my opinion. At any rate it's too few and far between in the indie scene at that's a major problem. It's too few and far between out of AA development too.
>>735533528>Tenchu committed seppuku by not sticking with the playstation.Not really it's just down to genre popularity. Sony were exclusively promoting Aquires new game Yakoh Shinobi Ops anyway from their own State of Play event. I doubt it will garner many players and it's puzzling enough that they made it a co-op enforced game so i won't be touching it despite being the target audience. I have no idea what jap devs are thinking but they've lost it and are pandering too much to larger audiences because they're scared of their games not selling.
>>735532280>e between total lack of player agencyI don't understand this talking point that is even bashed from immersive sim fans when they will tolerate something like Dishonored that threw away all of Thief's good design elements. Who the fuck cares about player agency when you crippled the whole goddamn game? in Dishonored all you do is crouch walk and there's practically no sound management aspects at all. It's braindead in a different way than what you will claim is intelligent design in other areas. This is why i consider myself a fan of Thief but not immersive sims.
>>735536152>Nor do i personally think Gloomwood for Thief filled this role but that's just my opinion.IIRC, even the devs behind Gloomwood realised that marketing it as "Thief with Guns" was a mistake. As it turns out, many thief fans who looked into it were put off by the survival horror elements, including the save point system.
>>735538364Maybe they could get away with survival horror under the justification of the Haunted Cathedral or something and that's pretty much stretching it where no benefit of the doubt should be given. It's still kind of misreading of my actual desires out of a stealth game even thought gloomwood did do things like light gem mechanics which is the part that half salvages it. I consider those two genres to be distinctly different even if some people don't see it that way. I don't call horror games stealth for the most part. I don't mind Gloomwood for what it is (even though I'm fairly unimpressed with their early access timeline) but i dislike their marketing for certain.
>>735538364to me thief is novel as a general action adventure. stealth is a part of that, but there's more that defines it.
>>735505794Ultimately went nowhere. The fact that it's 2026, and we still don't have a legit Phantom Thief simulator, is completely shameful.Like what the fuck is the industry even doing. It loves heist shit.
Trial and error game design isn't fun
true stealth/imsim games are antithetical to the modern gamer. you can't dumb these games down without completely destroying the entire point of them
>>735505794Didn't nu hitman sell like 30 million copies
>>735539531And yet, souls-likes are dime a dozen these days
>>735539095>to me thief is novel as a general action adventureThief was advertised as both things in reality on it's box covers. Stealth and action adventure. But i just think it's stealth first and foremost at least to me personally. But i also prefer The Metal Age since Ultima Underworld dungeon crawling was my least favorite aspects. Not that i can't enjoy those games or even that kind of gameplay i just preferred anything to do with The City more than often. I play lots of FMs for this very reason because there are people who made the maps i prefer.
>>735539610Some people believe Hitman has fundamentally changed from what it was on Contracts and Blood Money. I personally prefer the two myself and would like to see this era of Hitman replicated again. Doesn't matter to me if it's official or unofficial and someone tries the spiritual successor route.I suppose it's better than nothing but i can't help but wonder why the indie scene has never tried to recreate HM Contracts. There was like one Russian developer back in the mid to late 2000s that did something similar if you know about Death to Spies. A critically panned series and janky as all hell. Then maybe The Slater? that's actually the worst one I've ever played that i have to cut the Russian dev some slack. I don't think an indie hitman will ever exist.
