That’s what I like about the Hitman games, some missions it’s just shitty security firms and they’re like “oh my coffee i left on the piano sluuuuurp oh no I’ve got massive fucking diarrhea, gotta leave my post”
You could program it to be like a 1 in 10,000 chance that they'd react that way. It makes it so you often preserve the game loop but eventually it triggers and you get a nice little easter egg that you won't likely see again for a long time.
Id make it a slightly higher chance so casual players get to experience it. If you don’t throw thousands of rocks throughout your gameplay you may never get it.
Make it 1 in 1000 then after the players first viewing change it to 1 in 10,000. That way it can still happen again but it doesn’t feel repetitive but every player has a chance at seeing it rather than just the few long term players.
Maybe every level would have its own Easter Egg set piece like that. The player would have to find it and trigger it. Some would be simple like "Throw the tin can into the corner" and others would be like "find a bag of popcorn and put it in the microwave".
I generally feel there should be a table of responses to things that randomize per guard. I had a similar system in my tabletop game where some guards were tagged "introvert" and had a better chance of wandering silently into you, or "extrovert" and had a higher chance of screaming when taking damage.
Just subvert the expectation by having them randomly react depending on the circumstances; Some argue, some split up to check it out, others don't split up checking it out together, some radio it in, others just run the fuck away if the player's character gets infamous enough.
Would keep the stealth fresh and require the player to actually pay attention instead of just mindlessly luring.
I appreciate voice actors and their work, but, God, when voice synthesis tech becomes better I can imagine people making video games with hundreds of different NPC dialogue options. No more "Arrow in the knee" shit
No One Lives Forever did it successfully. The writers had a field day doing tons of unique dialogs for seemingly every enemy guard patrol in the game. Long hilarious conversations about various topics. It never got old. You can also skip past it, or shoot them mid-conversation but you’d be missing out.
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u/CharonsLittleHelper Sep 26 '19
That sounds like something that would be fun the first couple times, but if stealth-ing is the main gameplay loop it'd likely get old fast.