Stealth Mechanics

Stealth mechanics make the enemy something to avoid. The sources held here describe four steps: a 1981 Apple II game whose reviewers advised “simple avoidance”, a 1987 MSX game its designer remade in 1998 with a visible alert state, a 1998 PC game that turned the player’s own visibility and noise into readable systems, and the disguise and light-and-shadow games that followed.

Fast facts

Castle Wolfenstein (Muse, 1981, Apple II): “by Silas S. Warner”; guards on “routine patrols”, SS who “roam the castle”, a Nazi uniform to find.
Metal Gear (Konami, MSX, 1987): Hideo Kojima’s original; Metal Gear Solid (1998) was “the game I had originally envisaged when I did the MSX version”.
Thief: The Dark Project (Looking Glass, 1998): a “glowing onscreen gem” for visibility; doors, gratings and dropped plates for sound; guards who “shout into the dark”.
Disguise: Hitman: Codename 47 (2000), where “Disguises play an important role”.
Light and shadow as variables: Splinter Cell (2002), where “if Fisher keeps in the dark, he won’t be seen”.

Castle Wolfenstein, 1981

Muse’s advertisement in the first Computer Gaming World (November 1981) set up the situation that later stealth games would reuse: a prisoner, a smuggled pistol with ten bullets, a castle full of SS, and a mission to “Find the Nazi war plans and escape Castle Wolfenstein alive.” Muse’s own description was “an action adventure game” that “generates an unlimited variety of castle layouts”; the magazine’s listing called it “A game of action-adventure that attempts to bridge the gap between arcade-type games and the more complex adventure/fantasy games.”

The evasion was in the play rather than the advertising. Electronic Games reviewed it in May 1982 and named Silas Warner as designer; its advice was “Caution is the watchword”, to duck into a room, look, and retreat, and once the plans are found to “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.” Ahoy!’s review of the 1984 Commodore 64 conversion describes the two enemy classes — ordinary guards who “walk routine patrols” and can be made to surrender, and SS who “roam the castle” and, once on your tail, chase until one of you dies — and the disguise the briefing promises: “One prisoner almost made it when he found a Nazi uniform.” Home Computer Magazine lists “bullet-proof vests and Nazi uniforms” among the props.

Neither review calls it stealth. Ahoy! thought “you almost have to leave a trail of dead bodies strewn behind in order to beat this game”, and Electronic Games justified the killing as “kill-or-be-killed survival”. The mechanics — patrols, a chase state, a disguise, avoidance as the winning tactic — are there; the word was not.

Saboteur!, 1985

Durell’s Saboteur! is often listed beside Castle Wolfenstein, but the Crash Christmas 1985 review describes a fighting game: a martial-arts hero, a “paymeter” that “clocks up a few hundred dollars each time you do for a guard”, and comparisons to Impossible Mission. The one intruder-like detail a reviewer noticed was the walk: “when you walk you crouch down just as if you were an intruder.” It is not treated here as a stealth game.

Metal Gear, 1987 and 1998

Edge’s January 1998 interview with Hideo Kojima dates the series: “Metal Gear first appeared on the MSX in 1987, followed by a Famicom version the year after”. Kojima said he “wasn’t involved with the Famicom version” and that “there were many things that I wanted to do on the MSX” before the machine “disappeared from the market”; he had wanted to make a polygon Metal Gear since hearing rumours of the PlayStation around 1994. By May 1998 he told the magazine the delayed game was “the game I had originally envisaged when I did the MSX version of Metal Gear.”

Edge’s previews describe the mechanics that Metal Gear Solid made standard. The game “requires players to use their surroundings as cover - hiding in vehicles, crouching behind crates, using the warehouse’s air duct system” to outwit “terrorists, guard dogs and ever-vigilant security cameras”, each “ready to sound the alarm the moment they catch a glimpse of Solid.” Players “must still sneak undetected around the levels”. The alert state was drawn on screen: “Alerted enemy soldiers are signified by a suspended question mark” and “an exclamation mark means it’s time to make a move”; once seen, “players have to evade their opponent for the duration of a red countdown timer” before the pursuer gives up. That three-stage cycle — unaware, suspicious, alerted with a timer — is the earliest explicit alert-state description in the sources held here.

Thief: The Dark Project, 1998

Edge opened its review 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 the player’s own detectability. Visibility: “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: “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 listens too — “for footsteps, the sound of whistling, or conversations” — and carries tools to change the environment: “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 made the same point from the other side: “you’re not asked to wade into room after room of bad guys, killing everything in sight. On the contrary, a thief needs to avoid being seen or heard”. His example of the guard AI is the one most often retold — crouching in a corner “while a guard walks by muttering about his job”, or dropping a plate and hearing “someone in the room next door say ‘Did you hear something?’” — and he notes that on harder difficulties the objectives “forbid you to kill anyone”. Computer Gaming World’s holiday list summarised the loop: eavesdrop, douse torches with water arrows, “creep along heavily shadowed walls”, and hide “the few bodies you leave behind (lest the guards discover them)”. Edge’s caption ranked it above the year’s other stealth game: “stealth elements that outdo those of Metal Gear Solid”.

Presley also wished Warren Spector had been “as in charge now as he was then”; the review’s complaint was the undead levels, not the stealth.

After 1998

Two branches appear in the sources within four years. Hitman: Codename 47 (2000) made the disguise the tool: “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”. Splinter Cell (2002), which Edge said “makes no secret of the inspiration drawn from Hideo Kojima’s games”, took Thief’s light system further: “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 it seven, calling it “an often compelling and creative attempt to push the genre in new directions” — by then “the genre” needed no further name.

No source held here gives the numbers behind these systems (light values, sound radii, alert timers), so none are stated. Later games — Tenchu, Manhunt, Assassin’s Creed, Dishonored, Mark of the Ninja — are outside the sources and the period.

Unseen and unheard