this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
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Read the article and watched the attached developer diary video. So it's a Dishonoured-themed Thief. I'm okay with that.
The problem with any stealth game is that the computer has to know where you are for the game itself to work on a few levels. To play chess or any kind of game with a computer, the computer has to dumb itself down for your benefit. Deus Ex was a great sneaky game, but the game wasn't good for sneaking, it was just dumb as a box of rocks. I only play DX1 on Realistic and I can skate through Liberty Island without using a single item. Of course I collect the extra weapon from Paul. But I don't even loot the pier. I just get my sniper rifle, skip Paul's disappointed dialogue (sorry Paul, the tranq darts suck, they don't really work, blame Ion Storm), and then I hang a right once I'm on the island and just kinda... walk past everyone. I leave Gunther and the informant alone, they'll be fine without me. I'm not good at stealth. I just understand that DX1 enemies have a very limited sight cone. Once you realise that and how limited it is, you can really just walk through a lot of the game.
That doesn't really make any sense. Of course the game engine has to know where the player is, but that doesn't mean it actually factors into the decision-making of enemy AI. Whether you're behind them or not should not affect when they decide to turn around. It's not like a parent pretending not to see their badly-hidden child while 'coincidentally' moving towards their hiding spot, GTA 5 does this when cops are searching for you, it's extremely obvious and it sucks. I've never experienced a stealth game that does the same.
I get what you're saying, and surely the game can isolate each enemy's AI (not in the new sense of GenAI but of the decision making process) from knowing where the character is, but it sure as shit doesn't feel that way in some games where the enemy — as you so succinctly put it, acts like a parent pretending not to see their child who is hiding. Except some of these games don't act like it doesn't know where you are.
But on the other hand — and please don't think I'm trying to move goalposts here, that isn't my intention — if I'm walking up behind you, you probably know it. Skyrim is a good example of this. With no sneak skill, your best efforts mean jack shit since you'll always be spotted. But with Sneak at 100, you can literally walk right by a guy looking for you and he won't see you. Neither extreme makes any sense. So if a game is good at letting you sneak around, I think it's letting you cheat somehow (even though that's the game). If it's bad at letting you sneak, that's a flaw and my character better be able to fight, so I stand a chance.
Deus Ex, much as I love it, had a shit stealth system. Deus Ex 1 had the same stealth system as Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. I'm talking about the castles where the guards are on the lookout for you. (I think a lot of Zelda games had this mechanic.) Just dumb bots that move in one direction at a time and have a specified cone of vision. If you enter it, they hunt you down until you die (or you respawn at the beginning). A lot of games that do this have systems that let you escape. Break their line of sight and stay quiet and out of sight. But they're still going to hunt you down and that's not unrealistic.
It's fine in Zelda because Zelda is a silly little fantasy game. The more serious a game takes itself, the more I'm gonna dump on that stealth system. In Deus Ex, you had really high stakes. People aren't gonna let you waltz by because you have plot armour and you're the hero.