Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/splinter-cell-veteran-says-realistic-modern-lighting-has-screwed-up-stealth-games-it-gets-very-hard-to-tell-whats-light-whats-shadow-whats-dark-whats-safe

by Tomte • 2 months ago

90 74 2 months ago

rockpapershotgun.com

jdw642• 2 months ago

I believe that creative liberties in games and movies are essential. Just as Star Wars would have been incredibly dull without laser sounds in the vacuum of space, there is no absolute need for entertainment to strictly mirror reality. From a design perspective, if implementing a cutting-edge lighting system clashes with the core game design, I think it's perfectly acceptable to fall back on a legacy lighting model.

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

bombcar• 2 months ago

You can either do it where the safe areas are just super dark, raytracing be damned, or you can do it where even if there is light, and you're clearly "visible" as long as you stay below a certain light level, everything is fine (Minecraft style, perhaps).

thaumasiotes2• 2 months ago

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/08/16/innovationes

flowrange• 2 months ago

True. There comes a point where the endless pursuit of realism starts getting in the way of a certain kind of narrative creativity. And in the process, we lose what should be the very essence of the word entertainment: to entertain.

The other day, I watched Emmerich’s latest film, Moonfall. A proper disaster movie, with all the necessary tropes. In short, that was real cinema, I had a great time. And yet, a large number of reviews on IMDb kept pointing out how “unrealistic” the film was. But if I’m watching an Emmerich movie, the very last thing I want is realism.

I think this is part of the current zeitgeist. The great inversion of real and virtual, as described by Guy Debord in The Society of the Spectacle, seems to make people believe that what happens on screen is reality, and then has to reflect their own conception of reality. The slightest deviation from that conception reminds them that it is only fake, and that they must, at all costs, "return to the matrix" in order to escape the real and the existential dread that follows.

pfortuny• 2 months ago

Also: you cannot pretend to be "physically realistic" on a computer screen. The simplest thing: if there is more ambient light, your pupils decrease and your sight is different. You cannot simulate "true light" unless you also simulate that.

philipallstar3• 2 months ago

Splinter Cell was good here because you could make enemies visible and you not visible by virtue of the fact your character was wearing night vision goggles.

account42• 2 months ago

Yeah some games are practically unplayable if you don't completely darken your room and even then contrast depends so much on the display tech of your monitor.

kaan0200• 2 months ago

This just feels like old man yells at sky.

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.

jdw642• 2 months ago

You're not wrong, but if you consider the fundamental principles of ray tracing, Hocking's point makes perfect sense. I get that 'realistic ray tracing' is a major marketing buzzword and crucial for competitive advantage.

The core issue, however, is that what the player sees on screen must align with the UI. Baked lighting created hard, discrete boundaries, but modern ray tracing outputs a continuous gradient of scattered light. This inherently creates systemic confusion between the visual feedback and the UI.

The only workaround is to design areas of absolute, pitch-black darkness. But doing so severely restricts level design, not to mention that 'realistic' absolute darkness practically doesn't exist in the real world anyway.

I find myself agreeing much more with the game designer's perspective on this one

Morromist• 2 months ago

The best sneaking experiances I've ever had in games is actually in modern Multiplayer games. Dayz and Squad are fantastic sneaking games, its hard, its fun and there's no need for a "You're in a shadow now" indicator - although I always thought those were great.

boneitis• 2 months ago

+1. At the end of the day, this boils down to a more general problem of conveying state/data to the player (though maybe I should concede it now arises in the new dimension described by the author).

Two examples that immediately come to mind are trying to fight in World of Warcraft when underwater (where I had no eff'ing clue where exactly the enemy actually was, relative to my character) and overly flashy effects in games, often MOBAs (where they were taken so overboard to where I had no idea what was even happening on the screen).

I'm surprised people put up with either of these. I found both of them in and of themselves really frustrating and detracting from the fun of just playing the game.

I'll give an affectionate shoutout to Transistor; one of the mechanics is having to deal with paparazzi-like monsters that are just flying cameras whose difficulty is in obscuring your screen with flattering action shots of the protagonist. Lazy, but clever and adorable!

jrflowers• 2 months ago

The implication is that the reason why you don’t see a lot of people sneaking around splinter cell-style in real life is because the lighting makes doing that really hard

usrusr• 2 months ago

We don't see them because they are so good at it, obviously ;)

Yeah, those stealth games never really clicked for me, with their absurdly imperceptive professional guards standing around everywhere.

Mashimo2• 2 months ago

I remember playing the demo version of Splinter Cell on my 800 mhz computer. It was laggy, but the framerate would go up when switching to thermal view :D

quchen• 2 months ago

"Check it out, a licence plate" still rings in my head. It's a random sentence at the very end of the demo. 10-ish me must have played that first short level dozens of times. But as you said, the framerate was ok, and the final game being much more open and effectful it lagged my computer to death. Good times.

iLoveOncall• 2 months ago

This feels like a very poor excuse when there are plenty of stealth games, or games with stealth aspects, that are successful despite leveraging modern tech.

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

debugnik• 2 months ago

Games with stealth aspects rarely scratch the same itch as Splinter Cell did, which I miss. Mind sharing some examples of successful modern stealth games with light-centric gameplay?

stuxnet792• 2 months ago

Splinter Cell is definitely on a class of its own. I'm also eager to hear if there are any stealth games that have been released in the past 10 years that AREN'T some vibe coded hot mess on Steam ...

saidinesh5• 2 months ago

Mark of the ninja - definitely fun and half the gameplay was putting out lamps.

The mimimi games: Shadow Tactics, Desperados 3, Shadow Gambit are my favourite.. it's view cones but they also depend on the amount of light there is. they're isometric though.

flohofwoe• 2 months ago

there are plenty of stealth games...

Can you list some? The stealth genre has pretty much died out, and most games where stealth is not a central gameplay element (e.g. the AssCreed games) implement it poorly.

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

The last one (Blacklist, 2013) was actually very decent.

literallywho• 2 months ago

I don't really understand what's he on about. Even the best SC game (Chaos Theory) has tons of places where it's really unclear whether you can be seen or not. You pretty much always have to look at the light indicator. And sometimes it shows you as 0% visible, even though it doesn't look like it. And that, of course, also happens in every single classic SC game (I've not played Blacklist).

fsfod• 2 months ago

The Dishonored creators also talk about this and why they went for cover\LoS based stealth in lets play they did a couple days ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVq0af9DwPU&t=1370s

curtisf• 2 months ago

This has everything to do with art direction, and not technology.

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

yieldcrv• 2 months ago

HDR lighting is not realistic lighting

magicalhippo• 2 months ago

HDR lighting is not realistic lighting

HDR lighting is not sufficient for realistic lighting, but it is required for realistic lighting.

Physically-based BDRFs[1] and such is also needed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidirectional_reflectance_dist...

stuxnet792• 2 months ago

As an aficionado of the genre, it is a real shame that stealth games have fallen out of favor with the current crop of gamers.

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.

rustyhancock• 2 months ago

Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a flash in the pan (although the asymmetric horror genre continues basically dominated by dead by daylight).

Yet, the sheer exhilaration I felt the first time one of the "killers" walked past me as I kneeled in a bush was quite spectacular.

It's not the same as splinter cell (it's much more chaotic, you don't get to totally dominate the enemies, it definitely doesn't have that mindful quite as you systematically work your way through a level you know we' ll).

But the key, I can stand in the right spot and human can't see me really is its own kind of feeling.

King-Aaron• 2 months ago

Alien Isolation had a brief time in the spotlight for being a pretty serious stealth focused game.

ehnto• 2 months ago

The whole Amnesia series, and SOMA (cannot recommend enough) also do something similar. Of course it's horror rather than tactical.

brainzap• 2 months ago

a new james bond game was just released, which is based on the hitman stealth style

philipallstar3• 2 months ago

But you can punch your way out of various situations - it's "crouch near stuff until you're close enough to hit them" rather than pure stealth.

swazzy• 2 months ago

Your comment reminded me of Commandos! apparently it has new releases so down the rabbit hole we go

npodbielski4• 2 months ago

Ah commandos I remember people not believing me that I cracked the last mission. Ah I would play this again. (An)using bear trap to kill every German soldier and all the backup was fun

Hamuko• 2 months ago

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.

Cyberpunk 2077, Death Stranding, Ghost of Tsushima, Deathloop, Deus Ex, Starfield immediately come to mind. I think a lot of the open-world Ubisoft games also allow you to pick your poison too.

yread• 2 months ago

I like it that you can play the way you want. And some are definitely not easier than the classics. Try Kingdom Come Deliverance (1 or 2) with the "do not kill anyone" achievement

crabmusket2• 2 months ago

And don't forget Thief, the king of medieval stealth punk fantasy loot games.

Self promo: I wrote a tiny post about an interesting technical detail of Thief's game engine - the world is actually solid, and gameplay areas are carved out of it like caves.

https://crabmusket.net/2025/the-solid-universe-of-thief-the-...

More here:

https://nothings.org/gamedev/thief_rendering.html#csg

thaumasiotes2• 2 months ago

I wrote a tiny post about an interesting technical detail of Thief's game engine - the world is actually solid, and gameplay areas are carved out of it like caves.

This is true of Unreal Tournament too. How unusual is it?

cookiengineer2• 2 months ago

Anybody remember the game Project IGI (I'm Going In)?

That was the original stealth game in my opinion :D

... well, apart from XIII, NOLF, Commander Keen and Agent Sam, of course.

The 90s sure had some awesome games

justsomehnguy3• 2 months ago

Commander Keen

An.. interesting proposition. Wolf3D is a stealth game too then - there is an option to quietly stab some enemies from behind.

close042• 2 months ago

watered down hybrid model aka stealth but you can play it like a FPS or TPS if you prefer.

This allows players to pick their style so hybrid games target a much larger audience. A game which allows you to go full stealth if you choose to, but also go gung-ho on your enemies makes more players happy. It's a good compromise if designed well.

I was replaying Dishonored and realized that I no longer have the same amount of "disposable time" to go all stealth. But still wanted to go through the game so I put on my Rambo bandana and went to work.

Realism was never a real trait of stealth games, or any game. At best we aimed at visual realism but everything else about every game is unrealistic. The health system, or enemy alert levels, even the save game system, etc. I don't see why the technical implementation of the stealth should be more realistic than "if you sit in this predetermined area you are invisible". In Splinter Cell you'd sit in unrealistically dark shadows. In The Last of Us Part II you can completely hide in grass that's not even knee high. In Mark of the Ninja you can hide behind a barrel from the player's point of view but on the side of a barrel from the enemy's point of view. Screw realism, make the game fun and it's enough.

philipallstar3• 2 months ago

Dishonoured is the king of games like this, and it more works on builds rather than moment-by-moment choices. You can't go full stealth abilities and suddenly start fighting. You have to choose. The OP is talking about "stealth" games that just have very viable fighting options as backup when you fail to stealth.

episteme• 2 months ago

This is exactly the point OP is making, fans of pure stealth games don’t want you to be able to muscle your way through, that cheapens the experience.

It doesn’t matter that you think you only have time to mindlessly mash buttons, and it’s not about being realistic, it’s about a game doing one thing very well and not making it optional, it’s a particular type of puzzle to figure out.

Fricken• 2 months ago

I've been having fun playing Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun (2016).

In it the player controls a team of stealthy assassins in real time who coordinate to infiltrate heavily guarded Shogunate fortresses. The characters and voice acting are quite well done.

The gameplay is very tricky and fickle but I guess it's fun because yesterday I downloaded the expansion with a bunch of new level to sneak around in.

OptionOfT• 2 months ago

Both Hitman and Splinter Cell both gained one of those limited-use mechanics to walk by someone and you could press a button and they wouldn't spot you.

Completely ruined the immersion for me.

Edit: In Hitman it was called Blend In, and in Splinter Cell it was called Mark and Execute.

Springtime• 2 months ago

MGSV had realistic graphics (one of the first games with PBR) and handled it well. One of the devs had a GDC talk about their lighting approach, too.

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.

systemz• 2 months ago

Hitman WoA is pretty popular and well designed stealth game

oersted• 2 months ago

Hitman does have all stealth modalities, but it is generally a lot more about disguise and avoiding line-of-sight, rather than being all about hiding in shadows like in classic stealth games.

Ironically, the Splinter Cell suit would stand out like a sore thumb if they were seen like Agent 47 is seen most of the time.

aorth• 2 months ago

Celebrated designer Clint Hocking – him wot worked on Far Cry 2, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Watch Dogs Legion, and the forthcoming Assassin's Creed Codename Hexe

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

crabmusket2• 2 months ago

I'm pretty sure this is normal for RPS house style.

smcin• 2 months ago

"him wot worked on" is just British English slang for "the guy who worked on"

aezart• 2 months ago

Splinter Cell and Thief are the only series I'm familiar with that actually have light and shadow based stealth. Everything else is all hiding around corners or inside/under furniture, like Metal Gear Solid.

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.

Mashimo2• 2 months ago

I'm not 100% sure, but I think Oblivion also had shadow based stealth.

keyringlight• 2 months ago

One of the biggest challenges with computer UIs is how you convey information to a user, and that goes especially for games where players often can't take much time to analyze complexity, and it gets boiled down into a light gem indicator. One of the things I really love about the Thief games is how intuitive they are because they're mostly relying on sight/sound senses, you can relate to how the guards/defenses are going to sense you because it's how you would detect someone. If you're noisy you know what will happen next, and the guards are extremely vocal in telling you their state.

Going beyond that simplicity to account for other factors you could technically improve the simulation with is where I'm not sure it makes it more fun. Ultimately a mission needs to be conquerable, how far can you go making it more challenging and leave space for the player to push through while remaining plausible. Silhouette, different areas of your body being lit/unlit, whether movement speed of a lit/partially lit person affects detection makes a difference, guards having long term memory and adapting to half of them - they all sound good but I'm not sure they'd actually be rewarding to players and the development studio that implemented them. How do you 'tell the story' of a guard that spots your shape, knows you're sneaking around acts accordingly to take you by surprise and ends your game.

Similar with armor systems in a lot of games, we can probably simulate a lot of coverage/protection and the impact on mobility, that characters ability to fight with various weaponry because of what they wear, injuries, and so on, but for most games it gets abstracted into categories or points. Even if computation challenges of physically simulating that were overcome for dozens of characters in a fight, how do you convey all the consequences to the player to suggest how they can change things.

pirates• 2 months ago

Newer Metal Gear Solid games definitely have light and dark as an element of stealth. In MGSV playing at night is basically easy mode.

bob1029• 2 months ago

I don't see how the lighting tech has anything to do with the ability to make a stealth game. You certainly wouldn't want to simulate and measure the actual light levels in real time. You'd use an entirely separate information system in world space to define stealth areas, points, volumes, gradients between them, etc. The gameplay designers need total control here. You can't rely on emergent properties in the engine's lighting system for a good stealth game experience.

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.

Stevvo2• 2 months ago

This is so obviously untrue. The stealth games that "define stealth areas, points, volumes, gradients between them, etc" are not fun. e.g. think of grass in an Assassin's Creed game: clearly defined, but the mechanic feels cheap and unrewarding because grass functions as a black hole. Contrast that to a classic stealth game like Chaos Theory, that uses actual visibility and sound, that keeps you immersed and challenged through the whole game.

justsomehnguy3• 2 months ago

clearly defined, but the mechanic feels cheap and unrewarding because grass functions as a black hole

This is a game design problem. This has nothing to do with the engine. Just remember the bikes in GTA:Online. Utter bullshit from the start, removed, added back because people wanted the utter bullshit of these bikes.

Ukv• 2 months ago

You certainly wouldn't want to simulate and measure the actual light levels in real time. You'd use an entirely separate information system in world space to define stealth areas [...]

Issue of readability still applies for manually defined stealth areas. You want to indicate these in-game to the player somehow, and more complex lighting does so less clearly than a sharp cut-off would.

Additionally, no one is actually forcing anyone to use ray tracing or real time global illumination schemes. These are self-inflicted wounds.

Some of the lighting techniques mentioned (like ambient occlusion) are relatively basic by modern standards - it's not just ray-tracing. While there is a market for games that put readability above all else, there is also a pull for games with some level of visual detail, both externally from reviewers/consumers and internally.

[...] 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.

Hocking just seems to be discussing the challenge faced ("there would be some learning if we wanted to really use these modern lighting techniques"), not using it as an excuse to stop making games.

WhereIsTheTruth• 2 months ago

How can he blame the lighting technique

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

Tade0• 2 months ago

Lighting also means shadows - the other day I experienced this while playing one of those extraction shooters.

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.

keybored• 2 months ago

Whatever Splinter Cell game I played on Xbox was amazing in terms of lightning. Yet I remember it being clear about what the shadows were. It was not remotely too advanced for its own good.

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.

Stevvo2• 2 months ago

What stealth games? There hasn't been popular light based stealth games since Splinter Cell. Nowadays, what counts as "hidden" is so much more clear than it ever was in 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.

cubefox• 2 months ago

To clarify the lighting point in the article: there are two basic parts to realistic lighting, direct illumination and global illumination.

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.

lofaszvanitt• 2 months ago

the actual title: Splinter Cell veteran totally fooled them

and RPS delivered :DDDD idiots

b2ccb2• 2 months ago

Just a quick shoutout to the Splinter Cell Enhanced patch[1], to restore, among other things, the shadows from the original console version.

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

Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game

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