Why Assassin's Creed: Unity's "stealth button" might be the best news of all

Assassin's Creed: Unity introduces a "stealth button" that players use to enter sneak mode and evade detection. Is this the straw that broke the stealth action camel's back, or precisely the change the series needs?

Assassin's Creed: Unity isn't just a bigger, prettier, annual release. It's going to make some significant changes to the franchise's formula to date.

After chatting with creative director Alex Amancio, Kotaku posted a neat list of features and gameplay changes coming to the series with Assassin's Creed: Unity in addition to the widely-discussed co-op mode.

There are a bunch of things in there that sound great, and I really encourage you to go and look; Stephen Totilo's take is that Unity will build on some of the best features of Revelations - Amancio's previous Assassin's Creed title - to build the kind of "chemistry set" of systemic crowd interactions which made that title so much fun to just play with.

That excites me too; the crowd has always been one of Assassin's Creed's key features and anything that foregrounds it and makes it more useful, reactive and possibly entertainingly unpredictable is going to produce a lot of good "and then I did this, and they did that" water cooler stories.

But what I find most interesting, and what initially set off clanging alarm bells for me, is a couple of changes to the stealth system. I'm quoting directly from Kotaku here:

• The addition of a crouch button that activates Unity‘s series-first stealth mode. While in stealth mode, Arno will crouch and be harder to detect.
• The change to the threat detection system which will emulate Far Cry 3 and put the awareness meter around Arno’s body instead of on each enemy. Players should have an improved understanding of who is spotting them and from which side. “We’re all about making stealth better,” Amancio said, “making it easier to read.”

The sound you hear is thousands of "hardcore stealth fans" going up in the air and coming down in a different place - myself among them.

Let's talk about stealth

Let's stop talking about Assassin's Creed for a second and just jam a bit on stealth in general. Stealth is a complicated business. There are whole websites dedicated to exploring what goes into engaging and rewarding stealth design. We've all played stealth games or sections that drew us in and blew our minds, and we've all played stealth games or sections that felt unnecessary, poorly implemented or just plain boring. It's clearly not the easiest thing to pull off.

It's really hard even to nail down what makes stealth fun - especially when that's such a subjective assessment. For some players, punishing rules that force you to reload or start again if you mess up is the most satisfying, and others prefer the opportunity to hide in a cupboard for 45 seconds while the guards suffer sudden, all-encompassing amnesia. Some players like simple detection systems where there's only one factor - shadow, say, or line of sight - and others like a more complicated approach, with a number of non-binary factors affecting detection.

Some players like knowing precisely how tools, techniques and AI will react every time, and others like the chaos inherent in a systemic sandbox. Some players like to spend the whole game undetected while others enjoy frequent bursts of action or firefights. Some people like RPG stats, including luck, to play a factor in how stealth plays out, and others prefer it to be purely skill-based.

There are many other aspects to consider; what I'm trying to say is nobody's yet figured out the perfect stealth formula that ticks everyone's boxes, works as intended, and makes for a fun addition to a video game. That's why you get divisiveness over games like Dishonored, Thief and Metal Gear Solid; there'll always be at least one person who just doesn't enjoy the formula and wanted a different experience.

So however Assassin's Creed wants to do stealth is fine - but by making major changes to how it works, Ubisoft risks alienating a significant proportion of its established fan base.

Next: maybe this is just what we need.

Back to Assassin's Creed

I like a lot of different stealth games; I'm probably more forgiving of various "flaws" than many who identify themselves as hardcore stealth fans. Dishonored was one of my favourite games of the last few years, and that has quite a skill-based, unforgiving stealth system, but I also really enjoy stealth in Skyrim, and guys, let's face it - it's pretty much broken.

In general, if I'm playing a game that's all about stealth - as opposed to one of multiple options - I want that stealth to be "realistic". I want detection to have gradients, and I want mistakes to be consequential. I definitely don't want to press a stealth button and turn invisible. So when I first read that comment about how Assassin's Creed: Unity introduces a crouch button to go into "stealth mode" my eyes rolled so hard I gave myself a small headache. Assassin's Creed is a game all about stealth - surely you're in stealth mode all the time!

At first, introducing a stealth button seemed to me an admission that stealth is not Ubisoft's priority any more, but something to be tacked onto the game as an optional extra. But then I gave it a bit of thought and realised that that's kind of how stealth has felt for several releases now.

In my recent feature on the ups and downs of the Assassin's Creed franchise, I noted that Ubisoft has made significant changes to the formula over the years. These changes have had deeply consequential effects on stealth gameplay. In the first Assassin's Creed, guards were always capable of spotting you. To run around, climb, or even just walk too close to them would put you in danger. There were very few ways to hide while moving around, which made exploring the city a tense affair.

I really enjoyed that shizzle but I understand that for many players it wasn't fun. Who - besides me - wants to walk slowly around a city doing nothing to attract attention? You can do that in real life! That's why Assassin's Creed 2 introduced a scaling notoriety system, meaning you could get away with a lot more as long as you kept your reputation under control, and later games did away with it altogether, having the guards ignore many instances of weird behaviour and forget you exist as soon as you escape - except during alert situations or in clearly defined high security zones.

As such, the core experience of Assassin's Creed shifted away from pure stealth with side activities to a hybrid gameplay style foregrounding lots of excellent things, like the ever-improving parkour and combat systems. And that's fine. Not every game has to be pure stealth and the success of the Assassin's Creed series shows that gamers like whatever it is that the game is now.

However, I feel pretty comfortable saying that stealth has taken a backseat over the past few Assassin's Creed releases, and it hasn't done the series any favours. Although Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag fixed several of the stealth problems introduced in Assassin's Creed 3, in general, being super stealthy has become less rewarding and enjoyable. Missions that are purely about stealth, such as eavesdropping, have been poorly implemented and are among the least popular. Most missions can be finished without making any effort to be stealthy. The few missions that do insist on you going undetected are just frustrating.

As such, Assassin's Creed has lost a little bit of its heart - of what originally made it stand out from other open world action games. It does still stand out, of course, but new differentiators - like Black Flag's excellent sailing - only serve to highlight the fact that stealth is no longer one of its selling points.

It's time for a shake up

As I said above, but will repeat, it's fine that the series has grown and changed to background stealth a bit. It doesn't make Assassin's Creed any less good; it just makes it different, and that can be disappointing for fans like myself who were so attracted to that core premise.

Reading that Unity will introduce a "stealth button", take out the day-night cycles that made timing an important factor in missions and include a UI to show detection initially disgusted me. I felt like we were finally seeing the end of the process by which the franchise's stealth systems have been watered down into near non-existence.

"Ubisoft has lost the plot," I said. "This isn't Assassin's Creed."

I stand by the latter half of that observation, but I'm rethinking my opinion of Ubisoft's decision making. I feel confident saying that this new stealth system Amancio has championed isn't the Assassin's Creed we know. But as I've argued in the section above, the Assassin's Creed we know isn't a very good stealth game.

For years now, any chance of a genuinely satisfying stealth system has been crushed under Ubisoft's other design goals. The stealth system has not evolved in line with other aspects of the game, and Ubisoft has not introduced additions to compensate for the features that have been removed for being too inaccessible or frustrating. It's all just been gradually stripped away.

So maybe a further evolution, and a more drastic, considered one at that, is precisely the right thing. With the changes Amancio is introducing, Assassin's Creed's stealth systems will finally get the shake up they've needed pretty much since Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. I might not like the sound of a stealth button and a UI, but I do like the sound of that.

The new stealth systems of Assassin's Creed: Unity might not be of the kind that I generally prefer, but if this overhaul brings stealth back to the forefront of the series and makes it rewarding and worthwhile, then I'm on board. I'm ready for major change, Ubisoft. Make it so.