Code Like It's 198x

Stealth Mechanics

Unseen and unheard

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Stealth mechanics make the enemy something to avoid rather than to shoot. Castle Wolfenstein (1981) already had patrolling guards, a pursuing SS and a stolen uniform; Metal Gear (1987) split play into sneaking and alarm; and in 1998 Metal Gear Solid, Tenchu and Thief turned alert states, shadows and noise into systems the player could read. Hitman and Splinter Cell took disguise and light further.

Most action games treat an enemy as a target. A stealth game treats it as a danger to be avoided: something that watches, listens and raises the alarm, and that the player gets past by staying out of sight. The idea is older than the word. Silas Warner’s Castle Wolfenstein had patrolling guards, a pursuing SS and a stolen uniform in 1981, long before reviewers wrote of stealth as a trend. What changed over the next twenty years was how much the game told the player about being seen: first a switch between “sneak” and “alarm”, then question marks over guards’ heads, and by 1998 a gem on the screen that glowed brighter as the player stepped into the light.

Fast facts

Castle Wolfenstein, 1981

Muse’s advertisement in the first issue of Computer Gaming World, in November 1981, set up a situation later games would reuse many times. The player is an Allied prisoner in a castle run by “the dreaded SS”. A dying cellmate hands over “a Mauser M-98 pistol fully loaded with ten bullets”, and the mission is to “Find the Nazi war plans and escape Castle Wolfenstein alive.” The game cost $29.95 and needed an Apple II with 48K.

Warner explained the idea to Electronic Games in June 1982. “It started out as a guy running around the rooms,” he said, and then he watched The Guns of Navarone, with its commandos slipping into an enemy fortress. The magazine noticed what made the result different from a shoot-’em-up: “the object is to escape the enemy guards and their castle, not necessarily to kill and destroy”. There was no score at all. The guards shouted “Achtung” and “Halt!” in a digitised voice, which was Warner’s own, filtered.

The castle already had most of the parts of a stealth game:

  • Patrols. Ahoy!, reviewing the 1984 Commodore 64 version, explained that ordinary guards “walk routine patrols” and could be shot “from around a corner”, or made to surrender at point-blank range.
  • A pursuer. The SS “patrol no posts; rather, they roam the castle”, and “once you get the SS on your tail, one of you will die before the chase ends.”
  • A disguise. Chests might hold a German uniform. “Without protective coloration of the uniform,” Electronic Games explained, “the guards will identify, pursue and perhaps destroy the prisoner immediately.” Even in uniform, an SS man might see through it and follow the prisoner “from room to room until he loses the trail”.

The reviews did not call this stealth, and the game was often bloody. Ahoy!‘s reviewer thought “you almost have to leave a trail of dead bodies strewn behind in order to beat this game”. But Electronic Games’ own review of May 1982 already gave the advice later stealth games would build on: “Caution is the watchword”, and once the plans are found, “switch tactics from direct confrontation with the enemy to simple avoidance”, because “the more time spent wandering around, the greater chance that hard-to-kill SS men will begin dogging your footsteps.”

Not every infiltration game

Durell’s Saboteur! (1985) is sometimes listed beside Castle Wolfenstein, but CRASH’s Christmas 1985 review describes a fighting game: a martial-arts mercenary, a “paymeter” that “clocks up a few hundred dollars each time you do for a guard”, and comparisons with Impossible Mission. The one hint of stealth a reviewer noticed was the walk: “when you walk you crouch down just as if you were an intruder.”

Metal Gear, 1987

Kojima’s Metal Gear came out for the MSX2 in July 1987. When The Games Machine reviewed the £20.95 cartridge in Britain that December, it described a game with two states. Snake infiltrates the fortress of Outer Heaven “attempting to avoid the numerous guards”. If he is spotted or trips an alarm, the game switches from “sneak” mode to “alarm” mode, “all hell breaks loose”, and “the chances of survival decrease rapidly as guards home in for the kill”. The magazine gave it 79%.

A Famicom version followed in December 1987, which Kojima told Edge he “wasn’t involved with”. There were “many things that I wanted to do on the MSX”, he said, but the machine “disappeared from the market” first.

1998: three kinds of stealth

Metal Gear Solid

Kojima returned to the idea on the PlayStation. Edge’s January 1998 feature described a game that “requires players to use their surroundings as cover - hiding in vehicles, crouching behind crates, using the warehouse’s air duct system” to get past “terrorists, guard dogs and ever-vigilant security cameras”, any of which would “sound the alarm the moment they catch a glimpse of Solid”. In May the magazine’s preview showed how the game told the player what the guards knew. “Alerted enemy soldiers are signified by a suspended question mark”, an exclamation mark “means it’s time to make a move”, and once seen, “players have to evade their opponent for the duration of a red countdown timer before the pursuing soldier ceases the chase”. Kojima said the delayed game was “the game I had originally envisaged when I did the MSX version of Metal Gear.” It came out in Japan in September 1998.

Tenchu

Tenchu, a ninja game published in Japan by Sony Music Entertainment, reached Edge as an import first. In May 1998 the magazine saw it as part of “the growing trend of the more earthbound stealth fighter”, and credited GoldenEye 007 with showing “just how crucial the ability to sneak up on enemies could be”. A successful surprise attack triggered a cut-scene of the kill, but the reviewer wished “more had been made of those stealthy ninja abilities”. Reviewing Activision’s European release, Tenchu: Stealth Assassins, in November, Edge singled out the grappling hook and the “sense of tension” as “you employ all your ninja skills to run across rooftops and sneak up on enemies”. It gave both versions seven out of ten.

Thief: The Dark Project

Edge opened its review of Thief by asking whether Looking Glass could be serious about “a game where the enemies are to be avoided and where the only bloodshed is usually that of your character”. What Thief added was feedback on how visible and how audible the player was. “Shadows are the most important asset to the player, with a glowing onscreen gem indicating how well hidden stealthy hero Garrett is. The light in an area, closeness to walls, the speed at which he’s moving, even whether or not he has a weapon drawn, all affect his visibility.” Sound mattered almost as much: “the opening of doors, walking on metal gratings and other actions alerting enemies. Guards will shout into the dark if they hear something, or call for help if they do find Garrett.” The player could change the level to suit: “noisemaker arrows for providing distractions, Moss arrows for covering the ground with silencing vegetation, and water arrows to extinguish lights”.

PC Zone‘s Paul Presley described the guards’ side of it: crouching in a dark corner “while a guard walks by muttering about his job”, or dropping a plate on a stone floor and hearing “someone in the room next door say ‘Did you hear something?’” On the harder difficulty levels, he noted, the mission objectives “forbid you to kill anyone”. Computer Gaming World’s holiday buying guide added one more rule: hide “the few bodies you leave behind (lest the guards discover them)”. Edge thought Thief’s “stealth elements outdo those of Metal Gear Solid”.

Disguise and shadow: Hitman and Splinter Cell

Two later games each took one of these threads further. Hitman: Codename 47 (2000) returned to Castle Wolfenstein’s stolen uniform and made it the main tool. Presley, reviewing it for PC Zone, wrote that “Disguises play an important role, and there is nothing quite as classy as initiating a gunfight, switching clothes, then strolling casually away while bodyguards and henchmen run around like headless chickens”.

Ubi Soft’s Splinter Cell (2002), in Edge’s view, “makes no secret of the inspiration drawn from Hideo Kojima’s games”, giving Sam Fisher Solid Snake’s back-to-the-wall moves. Its “main innovation” was light: “if Fisher keeps in the dark, he won’t be seen and the presence of an enemy round the corner can be deduced from the shadow he casts. Shooting out lights (or finding the lightswitch in time) becomes an essential skill.” Edge rated the Xbox version seven out of ten, calling it “an often compelling and creative attempt to push the genre in new directions”; asked whether it was “an MGS2-killer for the Xbox”, Edge thought not.

How the systems work

Across these games the same few parts recur, even though the period reviews give no figures for them:

  • Perception. Guards see in a direction and hear within a range. Thief made the player’s own visibility a variable, built from light, movement and posture.
  • Alert states. A guard moves from unaware to suspicious to searching, and back again after a time. Metal Gear had two states; Metal Gear Solid drew the in-between state on screen and put a timer on the chase.
  • Feedback. The player needs to know how exposed they are: the question and exclamation marks, the light gem, guards who talk to themselves.
  • Ways to change the level. Water arrows, moss arrows, shot-out lights, hidden bodies and stolen clothes all let the player alter what the guards can perceive.

Sources

  • Computer Gaming World issue 1, November 1981: Muse advertisement for Castle Wolfenstein “by Silas S. Warner” (the story; $29.95; Apple II 48K); new-releases listing.
  • Electronic Games vol. 1 no. 3, May 1982, pp. 77–78: Castle Wolfenstein review (“kill-or-be-killed survival”; “Caution is the watchword”; “simple avoidance”).
  • Krist Boardman, “The Man in Muse’s Castle”, Electronic Games vol. 1 no. 4, June 1982, pp. 22–23: Silas Warner on the origins of Castle Wolfenstein; no scoring; the uniform and the SS; Warner’s voice.
  • Richard Herring, Castle Wolfenstein review (Commodore 64), Ahoy! issue 6, June 1984, pp. 57–58: guards and SS; the uniform; “a trail of dead bodies”.
  • Home Computer Magazine vol. 4 no. 2, 1984: Castle Wolfenstein review (“bullet-proof vests and Nazi uniforms”).
  • CRASH issue 24, January 1986: Saboteur! review.
  • The Games Machine issue 2, December 1987, p. 61: Metal Gear review (MSX; “sneak” and “alarm” modes; £20.95; 79%).
  • Edge issue 54, January 1998, p. 28: Metal Gear Solid feature and Hideo Kojima interview (the MSX2 original of July 1987; the Famicom version; cover, cameras and the alarm).
  • Retro Gamer issue 101, April 2012, p. 41: the Famicom conversion of Metal Gear in December 1987.
  • Edge issue 58, May 1998, pp. 48–51: Metal Gear Solid preview (question and exclamation marks; the countdown timer; “originally envisaged”).
  • Edge issue 58, May 1998: Tenchu import review (the “earthbound stealth fighter”; GoldenEye; seven out of ten).
  • Edge issue 64, November 1998, p. 89: Tenchu: Stealth Assassins PAL review (Activision; the grappling hook; seven out of ten).
  • Edge issue 67, January 1999, pp. 88–89: Thief: The Dark Project review (the light gem; noise; the arrows; comparison with Metal Gear Solid).
  • Paul Presley, Thief: The Dark Project review, PC Zone issue 72, January 1999, pp. 96–97.
  • Computer Gaming World issue 173, December 1998: “Holiday Hot 100” (Thief).
  • Paul Presley, Hitman: Codename 47 review, PC Zone issue 98, January 2001, pp. 78–79.
  • Edge issue 118, Christmas 2002, pp. 86–87: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell review (Xbox; seven out of ten).

See also

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