Stealth gameplay

[Urre]

Stealth games are fun, but I've never seen them take it to the next, ultimate level. I'd want a game where you have the entire complex infront of you as one huge seamless level, and you map areas as you make progress, possibly find maps over areas.

Also, all the interaction you make with the world is permanent. This means, guards who spot you won't forget about you as they do in other games. If they spot you somewhere, and you are unable to kill off the guards who did, they'll alert the rest of the complex that there's an intruder, and try to flush you out until they're sure you're dead. They'll remember where they last saw you, and make assumptions about where you'll turn up next.

The interesting part here is, the first guard you kill, will drop a com-radio. You'll hear all the chatter between guards about what they think you're up to. This will also be shown on the map, with indicators pointing where you were last seen, and if you have those parts of the map, indicators where they expect you to currently be.

The guards expectancy levels are also dynamic. If they spot you in the ventilation system, they'll know to expect you from vents.

Imagine Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, except more free.

[Sajt]

This is similar to a "one-level game" idea I've had since 2004 (somewhat inspired by the Doom Bible) called "steal the ship", a semi-futuristic game where you enter a five or six story complex with all sorts of usual rooms (mess, bedrooms, labs, mucky basement, etc). The inhabitants all act out their normal lives like an RPG, and you are supposed to steal and fly away with one of the two big spaceships. You can do this by force or stealth or (possibly) diplomacy, if an interesting dialogue system were made. You start with no weapons though, so getting a weapon in the first place is hard. (You can use any object as a weapon to bash people with until you get your first "real" weapon.) The guards only make up a portion of the population. There are a lot of scientists. There are intercoms and an alarm system. There is a central "security HQ" which is nigh impossible to penetrate, but if you do you get to see all the security cameras and radar things and whatnot. There are escalating responses to the alarms, first the guards will look for you, then robots will come out of closets, then a SWAT team will arrive in a helicopter (which you can see coming when looking out a window). Snipers may be placed on the roofs too to hem you in.

[Urre]

[Team Xlink]

This would be an interesting game, a really fun with with AI and depth ahead of its time even if it wasn't in the latest and greatest stuff.

Other games try to create a whole world but one thing I think they lack is the NPC interaction aspect.

For example, in Half-Life, I walk up to an NPC, that says, something like, not right now Gordon, 'm busy. Then I can walk up to another 5 scientists who say the same thing, despite being totally different looking.

Each AI having a purpose would add a whole new level of depth to the extent of a complete virtual world.

The idea of a feat that is nearly impossible but is ultimately rewarding and not required nor straightforward to do every single time you try, like Sajt's Security HQ is awesome.

[gnounc]

Soooo like Splinter Cell...but with great AI?

I've always wished splinter cell had awesome AI.

Its not terrible ai, but its definately not great,
and conviction is way too linear: (

Still I love the franchise, I would love it to have intelligient AI....and more places to run and hide and more interactivity in the level.

[Downsider]

I don't like Conviction that much so far. I mean, it's fun, but it lacks depth and it's restricted a lot. Chaos Theory still holds the number one place in my book.

[Urre]

The AI doesn't even have to be that great for this to be interesting. I was more interested in the seamless non-linear world part, where most NPC behavior is emergent rather than scripted. Nothing stopping you from having scripted events in some places here and there, it's great for variety. I've just seen very few good examples of non-linear games with scripted events.

[frag.machine]

And don't forget the cardboard boxes. A stealth game without cardboard boxes to hide is a big no-no:

[qbism]

[gnounc]

[Chip]

Wasn't it a StealthQuake around here, by Cocot IIRC? It could be converted to a nice stealth game.

[Urre]

[Arkage]

[frag.machine]

Agreed.

Regarding the current AI status in most games, I think the industry could do a lot better without great effort. I'll take Prototype as a typical example: the AI is so poorly coded that you can walk by the street carrying a rifle or RPG without being noticed by the surrounding military; or, you can morph/disguise in front of civilians without bigger consequences beyond one eventual scream; finally, you can enter a military base, consume the base commander in front of everyone, escape to cancel the strike team and come back as the consumed commander one minute later and nobody gives a flying "f" to that. Putting this all together, the immersion factor is greatly flawed by this lack of awareness of the surrounding environment.

[Sajt]