I've always had a complicated relationship with stealth in video games.
On the one hand, I really enjoy the feeling of closing in on an opponent from the shadows until I get into just the right position and land a killing blow. On the other hand, stalking from guard to guard and setting off alarms or instantly dying when I make a mistake is immensely frustrating and hard for me to enjoy in any way.
I think it's all about balance for me with stealth elements in games. I've been thinking about this because I've been playing through Breath of the Wild, which has some very minor stealth segments. The most notable area I can think of is on Death Mountain where you must lead the timid Yunobo past a series of floating sentries in an effort to infiltrate the Divine Beast Rudania. I think even on paper this doesn't sound super fun. It's essentially an escort mission, which isn't great by itself, but when you combine that with stealth elements in which the punishment for failure is a shower of magma rocks that will almost certainly reduce Link to 50% health, you end up with probably the most frustrating quest in the game.
I think stealth feels best to me when the punishment for failure isn't death, but rather increased difficulty. I never want stealth to be absolutely the only option. For the vast majority of Breath of the Wild, this isn't the case. Sure, it might be easier at the end of the day to tiptoe past the fearsome Lynel to reach that shrine, but if you happen to mess up (or are just brave), there's that exciting moment of having to face a really tough enemy that you might not be prepared for. The game is balanced in such a way that if you're skilled enough, even the toughest enemies can be overcome without a lot of resources. Even just with a couple of well-aimed arrows, clever use of magnesis, parrying, or divine beast powers, it's possible to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. I do really like that feeling of having options.
In the case of the preamble to Rudania, you have really only one option. You need to carefully sneak past all the sentries and you need to get Yunobo to follow you in doing so. To be fair, you could slowly whittle down the sentries with your bow, or God forbid, you could waste some of your precious Ancient Arrows to take them out, but it feels like the most efficient way to get the job done is to just keep sneaking. But it's also the most frustrating.
I've also been playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which of course also features some pretty hefty stealth elements. It should be no surprise that the stealth in these games is pivotal to the gameplay, but it always serves as a vehicle of assassinating your opponents. Fail to get your mark or alert them, and suddenly you find that you're brawling instead--and maybe with many more opponents than you'd bargained for. I've only played the game for a couple of hours, but situations in which stealth doesn't pay off result in considerably harder fights. It feels rewarding in this case when stealth is successful, because I know I've accomplished something more efficiently. But I still take comfort in the fact that it's not the only way the job can be done.
Almost any game that gives me an automatic game-over or instant death when being spotted from stealth, either due to line of sight or due to a sentry of some kind is a huge turn-off for me. I loved Uncharted 2 for instance, but there's a stealth segment near the beginning of that game that almost made me stop playing entirely. It's the only complaint I have in a game that is of pretty stellar quality the whole way through. All of these lackluster stealth experiences make me wonder if pure stealth is really something I enjoy. I've always wanted to play the Metal Gear Solid series, for instance, but since stealth is so integral to how those games work, I wonder if it's something I'd really even enjoy.
At the end of the day, I really like stealth in theory, but in practice it's frequently frustrating and not as satisfying as I would like. It's one of those feast-or-famine things in that it feels pretty good when you're successful but pretty bad when you don't. One of these days I'll play more stealth-centric games and get a better idea of which games do it really well and which don't.
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