I don’t know, to this day, still,
what it was about the original Metal Gear Solid that made me
fall in love with the the stealth action genre. From Thief to
Dishonored, two titles that we’re released much more
recently than Metal Gear Solid was, the stealth-action genre
still continues to hold my admiration whenever a new stealth game is
announced, I always hold it to a bar that has been set incredibly
high.
Generally speaking, I don’t care much for classification built on genre lines either.
I see stealth more as a set of mechanics, just like anything else, that build towards the finished project
and not necessarily a set of checkpoints that the game needs to ‘fit’ to be considered stealth, or stealth action or whatever games get called now.
Anyone who’s ever played hide and seek as a kid knows that there’s a certain easy-to-understand thrill of actively trying to hide from someone, for one reason or another it gets our blood pumping!
The act of hiding has been influencing fiction for years, from the chauvinist Spy of yesteryear,
it also contributed to the incredible popularity of not only The Ninja in the western world, but also characters like Batman and Daredevil who managed to capture the unique role of using stealth to instill fear in their opponents.
An endless amount of saboteurs, spies, vigilante's have influenced our fascination with hiding and to a lesser extent, shadows. It's hard to imagine a character like Batman operating without his focus on stealth and fear, just as it's hard to imagine super-spies not needing disguises or gadgetry.
Permutations on the concept are basically endless, and I’m sure you can think of a dozen examples just off the top of your head.
Borrowing concepts from action and spy movies of the 70’s and 80’s, Hideo Kojima’s head was filled with an idea of translating the modern action movie to a home console (in this case, the MSX computer).
Constrained by the limitations of the console, maintaining an air of tension even though there was a relatively limited amount of sprites that could be onscreen proved to be difficult (it was the same for the NES, too). Instead he changed the focus of the game, instead of actively pursuing your foes, Solid Snake would have to evade detection and slip past enemy lines undetected.
Metal Gear was far from the first stealth game, but it was certainly one of the most influential.
Even though I grew up with a Sega Genesis and primarily an orginal-era Playstation, as a ‘little’ kid Solid Snake's first adventure was probably one of the first and most important games I played; my older brother had bought it for our parent's seldom-used (by that time) NES.
Whimsical platformers never really did it for me, the dark military world that FOXHOUND and Solid Snake inhabited was right up my alley.
To me, it was like being let it on the things my older brothers were constantly talking about! I was shooting guys; more often I was punching guys. I was a fucking adult and the world needed to be ready for me.
That feeling of being included with people older than me was more than anything, addicting.
I was mature okay. The rest of those kids on the playground didn’t know about Gray Fox! They we're still stuck on saving princesses or whatever.
For some reason too,
I felt oddly powerful playing as Solid Snake. That’s why I’d
like to think I drifted towards stealth games being one of my
favorite genre of videogames. Not only that, but there’s a strange
sort of power associated with stealth games. It doesn’t matter if
I’m playing as Solid Snake or Rikimaru, as long you’re not hiding
but you’re hunting. Generally speaking, I don’t care much for classification built on genre lines either.
I see stealth more as a set of mechanics, just like anything else, that build towards the finished project
and not necessarily a set of checkpoints that the game needs to ‘fit’ to be considered stealth, or stealth action or whatever games get called now.
Anyone who’s ever played hide and seek as a kid knows that there’s a certain easy-to-understand thrill of actively trying to hide from someone, for one reason or another it gets our blood pumping!
The act of hiding has been influencing fiction for years, from the chauvinist Spy of yesteryear,
it also contributed to the incredible popularity of not only The Ninja in the western world, but also characters like Batman and Daredevil who managed to capture the unique role of using stealth to instill fear in their opponents.
An endless amount of saboteurs, spies, vigilante's have influenced our fascination with hiding and to a lesser extent, shadows. It's hard to imagine a character like Batman operating without his focus on stealth and fear, just as it's hard to imagine super-spies not needing disguises or gadgetry.
Permutations on the concept are basically endless, and I’m sure you can think of a dozen examples just off the top of your head.
Borrowing concepts from action and spy movies of the 70’s and 80’s, Hideo Kojima’s head was filled with an idea of translating the modern action movie to a home console (in this case, the MSX computer).
Constrained by the limitations of the console, maintaining an air of tension even though there was a relatively limited amount of sprites that could be onscreen proved to be difficult (it was the same for the NES, too). Instead he changed the focus of the game, instead of actively pursuing your foes, Solid Snake would have to evade detection and slip past enemy lines undetected.
Metal Gear was far from the first stealth game, but it was certainly one of the most influential.
Even though I grew up with a Sega Genesis and primarily an orginal-era Playstation, as a ‘little’ kid Solid Snake's first adventure was probably one of the first and most important games I played; my older brother had bought it for our parent's seldom-used (by that time) NES.
Whimsical platformers never really did it for me, the dark military world that FOXHOUND and Solid Snake inhabited was right up my alley.
To me, it was like being let it on the things my older brothers were constantly talking about! I was shooting guys; more often I was punching guys. I was a fucking adult and the world needed to be ready for me.
That feeling of being included with people older than me was more than anything, addicting.
I was mature okay. The rest of those kids on the playground didn’t know about Gray Fox! They we're still stuck on saving princesses or whatever.
Maybe it’s the feeling that by
way of how stealth games are generally designed, it puts more of a
focus of a self-imposed challenge on the player. Few stealth games
conditions for losing are being seen at all,
even Metal Gear Solid's sloppy, almost arcade-y combat mechanics we’re meant more as punishment for the player being seen than an outright game-over, so when you can navigate an entire challenge in the shadows it makes you feel fulfilled, and it’s pretty addicting.
Just like people who might steal for the sake of stealing, there’s a high that comes with being somewhere you’re not supposed to be and doing it well.
I remember it, because it’s the exact same feeling I got the first time I was taken somewhere to break into a house.
As a teenager, I was a ‘good kid’ which, more important to me than anything, meant that if I did something bad I didn’t get caught. If I was going to be hanging out with people older than me (I was frequently the youngest) I had to be smart about it.
That frequently engaged in backing out of things I didn’t think was safe, but there were a few times where I’d get pulled into doing something I didn’t necessarily want to.
I would make for a decidedly piss-poor guard. Unless I’m on a hike somewhere, being alone somewhere I’m not familiar with makes me even more anxious than I already am.
When you think of any good stealth game, the feeling is the very same. Unless you’re waiting for a pattern to open up, you really don’t stay in the same place for too long. You have to be constantly moving and aware of where you’re going, and often time planning ahead of the easiest way to get there.
The people I was
with had left me alone and told me to wait in the car. The last thing
I wanted is to be caught out there, in the middle of the night,
alone, so I followed them.
Pulling a window-screen out of the metal groove it fits into and then undoing the often plastic locks that even I’m guilty of using to secure my windows shut with isn’t something that can really be relegated to a QTE in a videogame and accurately surmise how wrong you feel the first time you learn to do it.
I wanted to get it over and done with, and I did.
The whole time I was in that first house I was being rushed, not just by my own anxiety, but by the people that were there with me. We actually reasoned it’d be easier to do in the day, we pulled up in the driveway in a friend’s car and proceeded to act like we were locked out of the house.
We even made sure we left through the front door. I recall their neighbor, who was a woman in probably her late twenties asking us if we needed help.
Imagine being a teenager at the age of 14 and someone approaches you trying to break into a house and asks you if you needed help getting in, a deep-seated feeling at the bottom of your gut like at any point in time the encounter would go somewhere bad.
I wasn’t necessarily In a bad place when I got involved in that sort of thing, I would still go home and tell my parents I loved them, I would still get good grades and I could sit down on a computer game and roleplay being a Knight with my friends; experiencing a kind of quasi-dissonance anytime I fought someone who's character was any kind of Thief or Assasin
(READ: I’ve never broken a neck I swear; thank god Snake still has that over me).
Even today, I still play tons of stealth games. I enjoy Metal Gear Solid as much as Tenchu or Deus Ex: Human Revolution and there are a handful of independent games I’ve got my eye on (side note: happy to see independent developers embracing the idea of stealth as a main focus)
Do I still get drawn to thinking about things I did as a teenager?
Well, yes. Of course, I can’t get it out of my head and doubtlessly ever will.
More than being reminded of the act of breaking in somewhere when I sometimes play games today, I’m reminded of how alien it feels, and how maybe stealth games could learn from that. I don’t want to drop a ‘people like me’ here because there are definitely people who’ve come to serious harm or even dealt serious harm to other folks lives because of this sort of thing; and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to empathize with those people because I did it for a different reason.
I’ll never forget how alien it feels being in someone else space. The feeling still makes my skin crawl to this day. Neither is the feeling ‘exotic’ either, it’s alien. You're not just somewhere you don't belong, you're occupying a space that is someone elses sanctuary. If that sounds particularly nightmare inducing, you still have your higher thought functions.
Tenchu takes place in a sort
of mythological Japan, that despite its setting still presents us
with spaces that ‘nerds’ might be familiar with, as much
as people that aren’t. There are castles, and within them are homes
and bathhouses.
Yet, do you ever really feel like, despite the presence of soldiers, you’re intruding upon a space?
The inherent nature of being a videogame mean each location is dressed up more like a series of obstacles to be planned around, and not necessarily a real physical space.
Even in Stealth games where the objective is to kill a specific target, the player never really feels bad afterward, whereas in real life there’s a very real and palpable feeling before and after breaking into a place. I stopped at the age of 16, but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember it like it was yesterday.
Naturally, our experiences shape the way we view the media we consume (for better or worse)
I don't necessarily know if I’m calling for the spaces we inhabit digitally to be given more concrete form, or to resemble 'real' spaces more, but I think what I'd like to see is Videogames start exploring what might be considered bad experiences just as well as the good one.
I know people that are in jail for petty theft now, or breaking an entering, but you very seldom take that role in a videogame. For example, in Grand Theft Auto, those sorts of people are hyper-sensationalized and almost romanticized. Maybe I'm not asking that there shouldn't be sympathy for those sorts of characters, but perhaps more of a focus on understanding why they might be the way they are.
Some of the people I've known (but no longer associate with) have been asked why they might do the things they do, and it's almost never something that can be answered with a simple one-sentence response.
The memories aren't fond though, so I’m glad to still have things in my life that can serve as an outlet, and more importantly, to remind me I never have to do it again.
I just wish the same could be said for a lot of other people in the world.
even Metal Gear Solid's sloppy, almost arcade-y combat mechanics we’re meant more as punishment for the player being seen than an outright game-over, so when you can navigate an entire challenge in the shadows it makes you feel fulfilled, and it’s pretty addicting.
Just like people who might steal for the sake of stealing, there’s a high that comes with being somewhere you’re not supposed to be and doing it well.
I remember it, because it’s the exact same feeling I got the first time I was taken somewhere to break into a house.
As a teenager, I was a ‘good kid’ which, more important to me than anything, meant that if I did something bad I didn’t get caught. If I was going to be hanging out with people older than me (I was frequently the youngest) I had to be smart about it.
That frequently engaged in backing out of things I didn’t think was safe, but there were a few times where I’d get pulled into doing something I didn’t necessarily want to.
I would make for a decidedly piss-poor guard. Unless I’m on a hike somewhere, being alone somewhere I’m not familiar with makes me even more anxious than I already am.
When you think of any good stealth game, the feeling is the very same. Unless you’re waiting for a pattern to open up, you really don’t stay in the same place for too long. You have to be constantly moving and aware of where you’re going, and often time planning ahead of the easiest way to get there.
Pulling a window-screen out of the metal groove it fits into and then undoing the often plastic locks that even I’m guilty of using to secure my windows shut with isn’t something that can really be relegated to a QTE in a videogame and accurately surmise how wrong you feel the first time you learn to do it.
I wanted to get it over and done with, and I did.
The whole time I was in that first house I was being rushed, not just by my own anxiety, but by the people that were there with me. We actually reasoned it’d be easier to do in the day, we pulled up in the driveway in a friend’s car and proceeded to act like we were locked out of the house.
We even made sure we left through the front door. I recall their neighbor, who was a woman in probably her late twenties asking us if we needed help.
Imagine being a teenager at the age of 14 and someone approaches you trying to break into a house and asks you if you needed help getting in, a deep-seated feeling at the bottom of your gut like at any point in time the encounter would go somewhere bad.
I wasn’t necessarily In a bad place when I got involved in that sort of thing, I would still go home and tell my parents I loved them, I would still get good grades and I could sit down on a computer game and roleplay being a Knight with my friends; experiencing a kind of quasi-dissonance anytime I fought someone who's character was any kind of Thief or Assasin
(READ: I’ve never broken a neck I swear; thank god Snake still has that over me).
Even today, I still play tons of stealth games. I enjoy Metal Gear Solid as much as Tenchu or Deus Ex: Human Revolution and there are a handful of independent games I’ve got my eye on (side note: happy to see independent developers embracing the idea of stealth as a main focus)
Do I still get drawn to thinking about things I did as a teenager?
Well, yes. Of course, I can’t get it out of my head and doubtlessly ever will.
More than being reminded of the act of breaking in somewhere when I sometimes play games today, I’m reminded of how alien it feels, and how maybe stealth games could learn from that. I don’t want to drop a ‘people like me’ here because there are definitely people who’ve come to serious harm or even dealt serious harm to other folks lives because of this sort of thing; and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to empathize with those people because I did it for a different reason.
I’ll never forget how alien it feels being in someone else space. The feeling still makes my skin crawl to this day. Neither is the feeling ‘exotic’ either, it’s alien. You're not just somewhere you don't belong, you're occupying a space that is someone elses sanctuary. If that sounds particularly nightmare inducing, you still have your higher thought functions.
Yet, do you ever really feel like, despite the presence of soldiers, you’re intruding upon a space?
The inherent nature of being a videogame mean each location is dressed up more like a series of obstacles to be planned around, and not necessarily a real physical space.
Even in Stealth games where the objective is to kill a specific target, the player never really feels bad afterward, whereas in real life there’s a very real and palpable feeling before and after breaking into a place. I stopped at the age of 16, but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember it like it was yesterday.
Naturally, our experiences shape the way we view the media we consume (for better or worse)
I don't necessarily know if I’m calling for the spaces we inhabit digitally to be given more concrete form, or to resemble 'real' spaces more, but I think what I'd like to see is Videogames start exploring what might be considered bad experiences just as well as the good one.
I know people that are in jail for petty theft now, or breaking an entering, but you very seldom take that role in a videogame. For example, in Grand Theft Auto, those sorts of people are hyper-sensationalized and almost romanticized. Maybe I'm not asking that there shouldn't be sympathy for those sorts of characters, but perhaps more of a focus on understanding why they might be the way they are.
Some of the people I've known (but no longer associate with) have been asked why they might do the things they do, and it's almost never something that can be answered with a simple one-sentence response.
The memories aren't fond though, so I’m glad to still have things in my life that can serve as an outlet, and more importantly, to remind me I never have to do it again.
I just wish the same could be said for a lot of other people in the world.
-skeletons
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