What The Hell Happened To The Stealth Genre?!

Following The Creed, For Better Or Worse

By the mid-2000's, we had a wealth of sneaky games to tuck into. Splinter Cell and Hitman had spawned some amazing sequels in Chaos Theory and Blood Money, respectively. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater wove incredible story into stealth, whilst Thief: Deadly Shadows was reigning supreme on PC and Xbox.

The genre was expanding, yet players were growing accustomed to the methodically paced nature of stealth. To say it was going stale wouldn't be fair, by something needed to be done. A new level of dynamic stealth was on the cusp, and it was Splinter Cell creator Ubisoft that pushed it into mainstream with Assassin's Creed.

Regardless of the series' directions over the years, the first game was a welcome entry to the world of stealthy gaming... to an extent. At its core, it was predominantly about striking silently and largely going unnoticed, but held some action for those that craved it. It brought a new hybrid of stealth gaming, a sort of faster paced, more active kind of gameplay.

Gone was patiently waiting in shadows for minutes on end to strike, instead favouring the constant movement and blending in to surroundings on the fly. Metal Gear Solid was going down the more action focused route with Guns of the Patriot, with sneaking being sidelined instead of focal for more action set pieces.

It brought life into the genre that fans didn't know they needed, adding faster gaming and fluidity over what many retroactively saw as a staleness in earlier games. And before long, it started creeping into other genres too...