90s and early to mid 2000s seems like was the peak for 3D games with deep storylines and pure stealth mechanics (MGS, Splinter Cell). By the time the late 2000s rolled around we started getting the watered down hybrid model aka stealth but you can play it like a FPS or TPS if you prefer.

Finally in the 2010s seems like even these hybrid stealth games were on their way out for the most part. Correct me if I'm wrong but I can count the number of releases on one hand.

My pet theory is that these types of games are simply too high brow for casuals who have become a larger segment of the target audience.

I don't want a game where Sam Fisher gets spotted and gunned down in three seconds flat. I want a game where I can hide in unrealistically deep shadows and pull off the mission

The Splinter Cell lighting stuff never made much sense anyway, since you'd be perfectly fine if you were standing in a shadowy patch while making a clear silhouette on the illuminated wall behind you.

The strangest misbehavior moment I remember from the first game was like this: There were two NPCs working on computers in a dark room. Behind them was an open door to an illuminated office. I walked into the office and shut the door, they didn't notice there was suddenly no light coming through. I turned off the office light, no reaction. I opened the door again, and then they noticed the office light had gone out.

The real world has much more light bouncing fidelity than even modern games. There are still dark things we can't see.

Physically based rendering should be exactly the opposite of what the article is complaining about: it gives you the "correct" way to communicate how light is moving through a space. So the player and the game designer should be able to communicate much more easily, and the artists should be able to focus on actually communicating what they need to, instead of tweaking non physical phong and ambient lighting parameters

In the game light/shadow (in addition to what outfit you're wearing, surface you're on, if you've showered recently and other factors) has an effect on your camouflage index. Unlike prior Metal Gear Solid games this is never shown as a value on-screen but instead communicated by clues from enemy reactions and sound cues, where eg. their animation will change to show they've noticed something suspicious from a distance.

Additionally, no one is actually forcing anyone to use ray tracing or real time global illumination schemes. These are self-inflicted wounds. If you want to make a stealth game and you think baked lighting is the best supporting technical direction, then what is stopping you? Every modern engine still offers this technology and it's incredibly mature. You could make a hell of a splinter cell game if you just got started and stopped coming up with wild excuses about how new, non-mandatory tool features sometimes dont do what we need them to.

If you throw a flare around a corner and it bounces of just right, you'll see you enemy's shadow as they're approaching.

And, as a bonus, the original Splinter Cell 75% off on Steam[2] and 50% off on GOG[3] (same price on both platforms).

[1] https://github.com/Joshhhuaaa/EnhancedSC

[2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/13560/Tom_Clancys_Splinte...

[3] https://www.gog.com/en/game/splinter_cell

e.g. You can see all enemies thru walls with X-Ray vision, and they have a status indicator hovering above their head that tells you if the enemy can see you or not. Tall grass makes you invisible, guaranteed. The games were dumbed down long before ray-traced lighting came along.

Is this "him wot worked on" a typo or a deliberate style of speaking, presumably for dramatic effect?

Old splinter cell and other stealth games still used on screen indicators of stealth. It was never "simple lighting" that made the player understand if they are "in stealth or not". It has always been up to the game designers to make visual understanding of what is hidden and what isn't hidden, this has nothing to do with graphics.

He should blame the developers for lacking taste, and ultimately, the higher ups who gave the greenlight (pun intended)

Splinter Cell games became bad long before we had raytraced shadows.

and RPS delivered :DDDD idiots

Direct illumination displays only the "first hit" light that comes directly from light emmiting sources, e.g. the sun or a lamp.

Global illumination (indirect illumination) then adds bounce light that is reflected from the directly lit environment back onto other parts of the environment, e.g. from directly lit walls to other walls. This can also include multiple bounces (indirect to indirect).

When you don't have global illumination, only direct illumination, you get very deep shadows. Anything that isn't directly lit appears perfectly black. Like famously in Doom 3 in 2004. This is why you get so deep shadows in space: you only have the sun as main light source but almost no bounce light from somewhere else.

But even if a game doesn't have any global illumination (bounce lighting), developers in the past were able to avoid unrealistic, perfectly black shadows by always rendering the normal texture colors at a certain minimum brightness. Then the dark shadows merely lower this base brightness to a certain degree rather than appearing completely black.

This was great for a stealth game, because the developers had very clearly defined direct show casting (from emissive lights only) while being able to exactly specify how dark they are compared to the rest of the environment which is directly lit.

But if you introduce realistic global illumination (usually through baked or real-time ray tracing), these tricks don't work anymore. Bounce lighting is very diffuse and it erases the clear distinction between shaded and unshaded areas. Everything lights everything.

I don't think there is a way around this: Either you have clearly defined dark shadows, or your lighting looks nice and realistic. You can't have both.

Possibly a solution is to make the game more stylized, so the missing bounce lighting doesn't stick out negatively. In the past stylization wasn't necessary (Splinter Cell wasn't particularly stylized), because the rest of the graphics weren't very realistic either, so the lack of global illumination wasn't as noticeable.

Metal Gear Solid 2 has a radar with myopic vision cones. MGS has similar myopia. Shadows are irrelevant. It’s just about line of sight. MGS 3 makes the vision concrete: the camo index. For the most part, you just think about: field of vision (hiding behind trees); the surface texture; tall grass (guaranted three-feet invisibility).

And all these games had a bit of grace when it came to being spotted. A little “huh?” window.

I would say that, for graphic fidelity reasons or whatever else, spotting the enemy became a little harder across the games. MGS2 models have stiff movement and they are situated in urban environments. MGS3 models (enemies) have green uniforms in a jungle. Also there are more visual distractions. But the MGS3 infrared vision is really a multi-purpose highlighter: animals (including snakes) that you want to avoid or eat light up; enemies of course; but also claymore mines, destroyable objects like oil drums, and booby traps. (MGS2 also had this in the form of lighting up claymore mines.) Then MGS V improved this by combining the infrared vision and night vision. So in a non-stealth shootout on FOBs you can put on the night vision goggles and have all tangos light up.

A totally different game, Desperados, had excellent night scenarios. Clear pitch-black pockets (top-down) to pile a dozen dead bodies.

> It feels like you could write a big old essay about how changes in lighting technology have shaped stealth. I wonder if the rise of "social stealth", instigated by Hitman and Assassin's Creed, has anything to do with designers pulling their hair out over the balancing of lighting systems?

But Hitman: Codename 47 is contemporary with MGS and Splinter Cell.

Hitman was a cruel social stealth mistress. You have the perfect disguise, but you naturally feel out of place as a muscual white man Chinese waiter. And then you just blasted on for no apparent reason.

Hitman 2 was better and has a “stress” indicator. But it still feels a little arbitrary. You have the perfect disguise but then you have to move through a corridor and you move one foot too close to a goon and the stress meter goes bananas. Okay, so you just move carefully, and with perfect knowledge of where you are supposed to go. But you have limited saves. Ah. And now next you have to sneak through a mountain valley overlooked by tower snipers. Woof, the player feedback then gets awful.