Do Stealth Games NEED a Crouch Button?

What I love about the way crouch-walking is implemented in the modern Hitman games is that it does a good job decreasing your visibility from guards, but it can work against you because doing it in view of the many passive NPCs is a great way to draw unwanted attention because it's an extremely weird thing to do at a social function.

Great video. One thing that you missed touching on is that while crouching as a way to move stealthily is somewhat silly looking and not really necessary for good stealth mechanics, the act of crouching acts as an extremely strong and clear visual indicator as to whether or not your movements will be stealthy. It's really important for a player to be able to have an accurate idea of what their character will do in response to input, and crouching removes a vast degree of ambiguity. There are certainly other ways to achieve this beside crouching (such as using UI indicators like Skyrim's eye when sneaking), and I think it's a good question to ask whether or not a diegetic (but somewhat unrealistic) indicator is better than a non-diegetic one.

A point that should be mentioned (although I think you did so fleetingly) is the reason it's used so often is because of the instant, universal understanding of what 'sneaking' means. Show anyone (from a 5-year old to a 50-year old) a picture of a guy walking and another picture of a guy crouching behind a wall and all will immediately understand that the crouching guy is hiding. I mean, we all played hide-and-seek as kids -- and I guarantee many of us 'got low' as we were hiding. Whether behind a sofa or under a table -- making yourself a smaller target by crouching is an innately understood thing. Now, crouch-walking is another thing entirely (and quite frankly beyond the scope of what I wanted to write), but I hope my point is clear. Very cool video! :)

I always find real life crouch walking really strain your legs and not to mention doesn't really make you silent, instead make you clumsier. I remember in Metal Gear Solid 1 when Master Miller/Liquid Snake giving realistic advice how to be silent, like putting socks on your shoe or walk with your heel first slowly. But Solid Snake say he can't do that, so Miller then tell you to just crawl. In Call of Cthulhu game when you try to Stealth, you don't really crouch but the camera go slightly foggy white and slight crouch, probably to imply that you are trying to duck a little bit and walk step by step.

I thought AC1s approach to stealth was so cool when I was a kid. It was so much more believable to me keeping a low profile, blending into crowds, and traversing via rooftops rather than just crouching around everywhere

One of the (many) things I really appreciate about Alien: Isolation is that, even though it has the typical crouch-to-sneak mechanic, it's designed in such a way that you're barely ever obligated to use it as anything other than a way to hide behind/under objects. 99% of the time, just walking is quiet enough that it's by far the better option. It's refreshing to have the mechanic available to you, without you being tethered to it. In other stealth games it often seems the optimal way to play is just to never stand up; at which point why wouldn't the devs just make that the default mode of movement?

The problem isnt stealth walking itself, its that stealth walking is usually too fast that theres no trade-off at all. You sacrifice nothing to not be stealth walking all the time.

I get that the assasin's hood is too iconic at this point for them to not add it in any shape or form, but in my opinion was always a bit stupid from the start. In AC1 made sense seeing how the people in that time period used to dress, I always though it could have been better if they made assasins from different places and time periods to have different attires that made sense for social stealth, and grabbing things like the symbol in the belt or the cut finger as identification, you don't see templars wearing a uniform that screams "look guys I'm a templar!" in any of the games, they literally just wear a ring.

Dark Messiah has a walk button, and is the best way to stealth quickly and not get heard. And it is such a relief in stealth. You crouch to make yourself more hidden, but walking makes you faster but silent. Its weirdly good.

The problem I have with crouch-walking in most stealth games is that normal walking is often LOUDER. Why!? 0-o

I think Assassins creed should've leaned more into social stealth rather then crouch walking , Or take some inspiration from thief and you use shadows to hide urself or making the ground itself a stealth section with what type of ground you're walking on , It would make it much more interesting then just pressing 1 button and now the enemies suddenly need glasses to see you

Metal Gear Solid had one of the best creative solutions for crouch walking and cover with the cardboard box because you could take some cover with you, and its effectiveness was based on your behaviour (staying still, not blocking patrol paths, using the right box at the right time and in the right area, etc). In the first 3 games using the box is a substitute for a crouch walk, and can be used to get past some obstacles faster. MGS4 added the barrel/steel drum which was bullet resistant and could be used to make special attacks. MGSV took it much further it by giving boxes durability, and letting you do things like fight from the box, stand up straight and run while inside the box, and put posters on it so that enemies might be distracted by different images e.g a bikini pin-up which would cause them to drop their primary weapons due to arousal, or mistakenly salute a poster of an officer, thinking that it was a real person. For balance purposes these would only work if you hadn't been spotted yet, but if you were, the box was still useful as cover and transport to slide down hills faster. Then to top it off, boxes were a key part of the fast travel system in several games. The difference in MGSV was that they were an optional part of your loadout. You never had to take a box with you and could always get more if they were destroyed. Hitman was another good example of creative stealth because the idea of wearing a disguise was not entirely new, but that series definitely took it to new places by making it a core component of the gameplay; devs made it so that sometimes you might be the most famous person in the room that everyone had heard of, but might never have met. Sometimes you took the place of a famous artist, actor, or model where absolutely everyone was looking in your direction, but were never suspicious of. Concepts like suspicion take stealth a step further, where if they don't suspect you of anything, maybe they think you're just being a bit silly or weird when crouching behind some cover "Did you find something over there? Let me know when you're done looking around..." and they just ignore you. For the sake of gameplay however, it tends to rapidly escalate from zero suspicion to "Oh my god this person wants to murder me" in a couple of seconds otherwise there's no risk.

When I was in the military, crouch walking was trained into us as a legitimate form of stealth. But we were also told that it is extremely strenuous and is really only practical if you have almost no gear on otherwise you're just begging to have your knees blown out. Otherwise, going prone and low crawling was more practical, like how Snake does. Since then, it always made sense to me for someone like Snake, Batman, and Sam Fisher to crouch walk since they're either physically augmented or intentionally travel light. But when other games do with where you have shields and swords dangling around, I always try to suspend my disbelief and think this is only a gameplay mechanic and in-universe sense they probably wouldn't do this. Kinda like Kratos struggling to open chests or lift a door in the original GoW games, it's a mechanic and not a lore thing that would happen.

Some things to point out: (1) The original thief games did have separate sneak and crouch mechanics, though since crouching makes you move more slowly which translates to being quieter. (2) There are situations where crouch walking would make since in real life, and it is depicted in movies, though usually for very specific situation (sneaking through bushes, being a prime example); of course, seeing anyone behaving stealthily in plain view (where you would see them) would look silly, as would many ways video game characters move. (3) From an ergonomic perspective, having separate crouch and sneak controls does increase control complexity and increase the chance of mis-keying in play, so often collapsing the two into one makes since from that perspective.

Every time I play a new action game with stealth elements I'm forced to do the same dance all over again, where I need to determine to which degree line of sight, movement speed, footstep sounds, physics interaction noises (i.e., breaking a vase), floor surface material, attack animations, attack sounds, jumping, cover and crouching all individually affect your detection by enemies. It's never completely clear, and while some games have tutorials for their stealth mechanics, you always need to spend some time experimenting to really get a grip on the rules.

I've done crouch walking in real life in cosplay before. (As Jin Sakai with a metal armor I made) at conventions. It gets tiring enough after a while but you can sneak up to people if they are focused on something like walking or shopping. I've done this to a couple of people by "Photo assassination". The armor is pretty noisy due to the skirt and metal parts moving around, but if you walk smooth enough it wont make any noise. Sometimes I throw a one of my wind chimes and the first thing they do is stop or jump then go to grab it, or turn around to see who lost it. I usually pretend to be part of a group or just go up to ask for a photo.

I love crouching and crawling as one of the things one can do to hide from the view of a foe. Ofcourse, it should not be the only thing. I wish more games that feature stealth as a way to achieve goals would allow for disguise, which could simply be picking up the outfit a fallen foe and putting it on from the inventory. Another would be the use of tricks and traps, such as baits to lure a foe away from you or into a snare or a mine or a covered pit. I also wish the darkness and the surroundings and camouflage could be used to hide as well

Crouching does make you a lot stealthier. Having played airsoft in the woods, crouching makes you a lot less likely to get hit. When you stand up you make yourself a huge target and you stick out a lot more.

I'm actually a dev working on a stealth / imsim game for VR right now. It was my graduation capstone game and was very well received so I guess I'm trying to see if I can make it a real thing now. Because of the nature of VR as a medium I've had to think heavily about how crouching works in the moveset of a stealth game. One of the fun things about VR is that you turn your player's natural range of physical motion into mechanics and have to design your game to work with them. Crouching is a thing that (most) people can do in real life, and when you're seeing people try to sneak around in VR a lot of them will naturally hide behind barriers, which may involve crouching. I presented the prototype of my game at a small local trade show and had a couple dozen people playtest it, and seeing how people try to sneak with their actual bodies was really telling. The thing about crouching in real life is that it's awkward. It's tiring. It's not a very natural way for a person to be, and it's not easy for them to move. But the benefit of a reduced posture is inarguable for hiding behind things and breaking line of sight. So I started thinking about how crouching SHOULD work as a mechanic. In most modern stealth games, crouch walking is basically a free action with no downsides. You move a teensy bit slower, but you're significantly less visible and make less noise. So why would the player ever not crouch? I think that crouch as a state could exist, but it should be a bit more costly. Either you move so much slower that it's not a viable means of getting around (like the old Hitman games), or you're louder, or it costs stamina similar to sprinting. I think all of these make a lot of sense as drawbacks, since in real life trying to walk while crouching is a clumsier slower affair than it is in video games. You should never be in a position where one option is always better than the others all the time, because then players will never use anything else. Crouching should be a contextual decision with costs and benefits. Maybe it's useful to hide temporarily behind things but not convenient for getting around. Maybe it costs stamina and if I get caught while using it I'm in a position of disadvantage. Maybe it's noisy, so when I'm sneaking up behind someone to knock them out it makes less sense to crouch due to that, so when approaching someone from behind you have to be more visible to other guards so you won't be heard by your current target. There's a lot of options for how you might do it.

Good video! One thing to add. If you want the character to have a "sneaky mode" and a "fast mode" of movement, you can do it like Metal Gear Solid 3, where you get run, walk, and creep animations based on input as you move. But if you want to enter a "stealth mode", that mode needs to be visible when the player isn't moving. Crouching is great for that because the player can easily read the "mode" by looking at the character's body posture. There may be other options, like turning on a "Predator camo" visual effect, or having the character change their costume in some way (wrap a cape around themselves, activate a camo pattern on their clothes, put up a hood/mask), but just making them crouch is very simple, intuitive, and easy to notice.