This thought occurred to me while playing CP2077, but it's prevalent in a TON of games - instant kills by sneaking up behind enemies.
I usually play stealthy if given the option, I find it more fun than just wading through people in an ocean of blood, but this mechanic is almost game breaking in most places it appears. No matter how outgunned you are, all you have to do is wait til the enemy NPCs backs are turned for an instant, low-risk kill. Sure, some games make you grab them first before the kill, leaving a slight window where you can be spotted by another enemy or whatever, but with the tiniest modicum of planning that risk is almost nil.
In the case of CP2077, the stealth kill is available right from the start as well, so for someone like me who likes to play the stealthy way, there's barely any reason to spec into any other shit (except for the abilities which make it easier for me to sneak around dudes for the instant kill, lol).
If instant stealth kills weren't a thing, there'd be much more challenge in trying to ACTUALLY be stealthy, i.e. sneaking around enemies without killing/incapacitating them, completing your objective, then sneaking back out unseen. Of course, there are some games that reward this playstyle (MGS for example). But plenty of other games (including '77, not trying to dunk on it exclusively it's just freshest in my mind) will give you bonus rewards for "not leaving a trace behind" (i.e. not having a combat alert) when you've actually left a trail of snapped necks.
I don't really know what I'd like to see instead - I guess games where there's better application of stealth are usually ones that are designed with the stealthy playstyle from the ground up (the Arkham series, MGS). And I appreciate they're trying to give you a reward for creeping up on people, but like I said, it's almost game breaking with its effectiveness in most games. What do y'all think?
I really liked the way this was handled back in the Thief series; you had to be really almost absurdly careful about whether people could see you, dead bodies are instant red alert, sound was easy to alert with too, etc Because the whole game was built around it none of it was too easy and screwing up and getting guards alerted on you was pretty much always going to overwhelm you and kill you.
for most of the games that include it alongside just killing everyone it's definitely almost game breaking but I feel like the just kill everyone way of getting through them is also usually just as boring/easy so it's kinda just the whole game not really making it's mechanics particularly important either way. and with those, it's really just more about having options for the kinda choose your own adventure part of what is otherwise basically just an interactive movie.
The Dishonored series did it really well too. There was something about the autohide under tables that just felt so smooth to me. That and how basically everything in the game was traversable and you actually could solve the missions in like 10 different ways
For sure. As much as “misdirect guard, sneak around, snap neck” might not be the most exciting gameplay loop, at least you have to scope out the area and form SOME kind of plan versus going in guns blazing. At that point you might as well just be playing COD.
I only played the most recent thief, I thought it was pretty decent but I never finished it, no reason, just fell off it at some point. Had nice progression and mission structure I thought, didn’t overdo the open world stuff like a lot of games do these days ahem