Lugaru 2 - Stealth

[marmorek]

I am a big Splinter Cell fan, so stealth was one of my favourite parts of Lugaru 1. I do however have several suggestions for how to improve stealth gameplay in Lugaru 2:

1. Grabs - Sneak up behind an enemy and put him in a neckhold. Put a weapon to his throat if you have one. You can then use him as a rabbit/wolf sheild, to extract useful information, or to kill them quickly and quietly.

2. Knives - I to be able to throw a knife at an enemy before he sees me (is this already possible?). Throwing swords would also be useful.

3. Moves - A greater varity of stealth attacks would be better (not just Spinecrusher and Tracheotomy).

4. Wall press - Go up to a wall and press shift to press your back against it. Then you can sneak around and peak around corners.

5. Night and shadows - Light should play a much greater role in how well your enemies can see you. If you stay in the shadows you'd be much harder to detect. More dawn/dusk levels (long shadows) and some night levels (moonlight) would be very cool.

6. Moving/Climbing - Trees and other objects should be climbable. A rope/grappling hook could be used for ascending walls and cliffs, descending (rappeling) them, and as a weapon. Knives, swords, and other weapons could be jammed into trees or walls to make steps. There should also be things you can hang off of and move along (ropes, vines, branches, beams, ledges, etc). Ropes or vines to swing on would also be cool (yeah I know, not very stealthy, but cool).

7. Distraction - Make a noise (or use a metal weapon to reflect light into an enemy's eye) and he will come to investigate. Then you can sneak behind him and attack.

8. More objects - Most Lugaru 1 levels are quite open, so more obstacles would allow for a more stealth oriented approach.

9. Body dumping - Pick up an enemy's body and drop him in the bushes so his friends won't find him and possibly revive him (if knocked out, not killed). Enemies' weapons can also be hidden.


If you have any suggestions, ideas, or comments fell free to post them.

[Jeff]

1. Grabs - Sneak up behind an enemy and put him in a neckhold. Put a weapon to his throat if you have one. You can then use him as a rabbit/wolf sheild, to extract useful information, or to kill them quickly and quietly.

There will be a grabbing system in L2, but it is more designed to allow you to intuitively throw people into other people rather than holding hostages. The instant kill will of course still be in L2.

2. Knives - I to be able to throw a knife at an enemy before he sees me (is this already possible?). Throwing swords would also be useful.

Already in L1. This will be in L2 of course. As for throwing large swords... Doubtful.

3. Moves - A greater varity of stealth attacks would be better (not just Spinecrusher and Tracheotomy).

Hmm... probably not. If you have a knife and someone is not facing you, you'll cut their throat, not do some kind of Prince of Persia-esque 15 hit combo.

4. Wall press - Go up to a wall and press shift to press your back against it. Then you can sneak around and peak around corners.

Probably not. This is completely unnecessary and adds complexity to the controls.

5. Night and shadows - Light should play a much greater role in how well your enemies can see you. If you stay in the shadows you'd be much harder to detect. More dawn/dusk levels (long shadows) and some night levels (moonlight) would be very cool.

L2 already has a next generation lighting system as well as a day/night system (see blog for more info).

6. Moving/Climbing - Trees and other objects should be climbable. A rope/grappling hook could be used for ascending walls and cliffs, descending (rappeling) them, and as a weapon. Knives, swords, and other weapons could be jammed into trees or walls to make steps. There should also be things you can hang off of and move along (ropes, vines, branches, beams, ledges, etc). Ropes or vines to swing on would also be cool (yeah I know, not very stealthy, but cool).

L2 is going to have a much better movement system that will include intuitive versions of Prince of Persia/Lara Croft stunts. But jamming weapons into trees to make steps is an example of something that adds way too much complexity for the player at a gain of very little.

7. Distraction - Make a noise (or use a metal weapon to reflect light into an enemy's eye) and he will come to investigate. Then you can sneak behind him and attack.

Probably not. That adds a lot of complexity and is not really necessary.

8. More objects - Most Lugaru 1 levels are quite open, so more obstacles would allow for a more stealth oriented approach.

Yes, L2 is going to have entire cities.

9. Body dumping - Pick up an enemy's body and drop him in the bushes so his friends won't find him and possibly revive him (if knocked out, not killed). Enemies' weapons can also be hidden.

Possibly... Like in L1, soccer kicking bodies into bushes will certainly be in there. There will probably be a way to grab bodies and drag them.

[marmorek]

Awesome! Thanks for the info.

[Albab]

You know how bodies were charred after they were in the fire in L1? How about cremating people? You know, to hide the body? Or to burn stuff that you don't need and don't want found, or something. I dunno.

[GaGrin]

Cremating people?

Not to be entirely negative but if you've ever had a barbeque you'll know that burning meat is NOT the best way to hide it.

It reeks. Unless you're fighting people with nassel trouble they'll SMELL the burning flesh and then discover charred'o'bunny. Probably making them Really-quite-angry'o'bunnies.

Still - a nice idea for burning stuff and no reason that body burning shouldn't be in (aside from any technical or tasteful reasons I may or may not know about).

[NickD]

You should be able to change the style of fighting techniques by pressing 1, 2, 3, 4 ect . This will add a majority of possabilities for L2. And there is going to be dying effects in L2, not just rag doll, right?

[MacWiggy]

Change styles? You mean like Ninjitsu, Karate, Kung Fu and the like? Nah, that would be rather pointless. They're all basically the same.

Throwing people would be awesome. You just pick them up by the scruff of their neck, "You talkin' to me?" and throw them against the enemies. "Catch!"

One thing you should definitely have, instead of the spinecrusher, is neck breakage, like in Hitman. You've probably seen the move somewhere, where they grab the chin with one hand, and grab the head with the other hand, and twist sideways really hard, and somehow this breaks their neck.

Tree climbing and vine swinging would be pretty useless though. You're a rabbit, not a monkey.

Dying effects are good. Like if you light someone one fire, instead of going limp and falling to the ground, they writhed and screamed in agony.
(Stop drop & roll )

[Sage]

You should be able to change the style of fighting techniques by pressing 1, 2, 3, 4 ect .

No. I have 1 bound to my combat knife (or seal knives), 2 for akimbo 'rettas, 3 for my USP, and 4 for my Mossberg 500.

And you should run faster with a knife. "Everybody runs faster with a knife!"

Anyways, different fighting styles would be neat. Would keep us on our toes and force us to look for more than just "When he does that he's going to legsweep" etc.

I think David said that we would be able to grab and throw enemies?

The neck breaks because, if you try to turn your head around, you'll notice that you can only turn it so far. If somebody forces your head to turn further than that point then your spinal column will break there, and that's bad. Paralyses or kills people.

Tree blimbing and vine sweeping. I agree the you could just jump onto a tree, but we could have the same kind of thing to climb large walls and ladders etc. Swinging on vises is plausible if you can get to an area you couldn't get to using longjump.

The dying animations would be progressive, which is good, but the problem is that after a while it would STILL become monotonous. In HL2 hitting someone with the organic gravity gun made their ragdoll jump around, so when they ragdoll to the ground you could just have it so theit their hands violently jump around for a second.... not sure though.

[Sartan]

We can already peek around corners by turning the camera. Likewise distractions, just fire a corpse in their direction.

[Renegade_Turner]

That's not really a distraction so much as a sign saying "There's someone here killing everybody, be alert".

[Zantalos]

Ha ha, ya I doubt someone would view a friend flying through the air on fire the same way as movement rustling up a nearby bush. Ones a wtf? and the other is possibly a bird or something.

Stealth distractions are pretty useless though, they had them in the Xbox version of Farcry but seriously, no one ever used that.

I like blowguns, tranquilizer darts are the most badass way to down an opponent. Plus, you can make them the hardcore kind that doesn't just put them to sleep, it paralyzes the crap out of them. Which means alot of spazzing on the ground, yeah, I liked the organic grav gun too. Their body would start tripping out like something out of a comic book man.

[Sage]

just fire a corpse in their direction.

Actually when I did this in Lugaru they looked at it, then walked on by .

We need a mod that lets usmake explosive barrels to shoot at bunnies, but that is irrelivant.

EDIT: Woah that IS irrelevant... STEALTHILY shoot exploding barrels at bunnies.

[MacWiggy]

"Stealth distractions are pretty useless though, they had them in the Xbox version of Farcry but seriously, no one ever used that. "

I haven't played FarCry, but in every stealth game I've ever played distractions helped a lot. Like in "The Warriors" video game, you can throw objects at stuff without leaving your hiding spot, and then the enemys will rush over there to see what happened and you make your escape. Same as Splinter-Cell and Deus Ex.

Sorry about the long absence, I was in New York.

[Macdogg]

I think it would be a cool feature in L2 to have a camo system (like in Metal Gear Solid 3). Different costume would better hide your appearance. And if you picked the perfect camo (I would prefer no HUB to tell you) you could be close enough to a wolf to actually throw a knife at him without him even knowing what happened.

Of course Solid Snakes rarely work with Rabbits, but you never know.

[Renegade_Turner]

you could be close enough to a wolf to actually throw a knife at him without him even knowing what happened.

I think if you can get close enough without being detected, a knife throw to the right area should be fatal even to a wolf. If you're up close, it should be much easier to hit a kill shot. I don't think, however, you should get an automatic kill shot every time you hit a rabbit no matter how far away you are.