What is Social Stealth? 

My biggest problem with the social stealth in Assassin's Creed has always been how inherently unbelievable it is. All the protagonists are incredibly distinct, suspicious looking people who don't blend in to the crowds at all, even in the game acts like they do. Honestly even Agent 47 is a pretty weird looking dude.

I think one of the tragically underrated mechanics of Watch Dogs 2 is how you can call police on someone and how it goes from there. It is goldmine of concept in how you can use that manipulate for social stealth.

Agree that Hitman is the definition of social stealth. Not only can you hide among the crowd with the right disguise. But you can also manipulate NPC with certain disguises. Example 47 can disguise himself as a cameraman. Then lure in a target to a certain spot for an opportunity for an assassination.

The Hitman WOA trilogy is an S+++ tier stealth experience. It not only nails the “hidden in plain sight” gameplay while being completely self aware, but the levels also allow for many instances where it could become a traditional stealth experience depending on the player’s approach.

Only by revisiting AC1 you can see how much it was watered down / streamlined mechanically in the sequels

Actually I believe Ubisoft did try to innovate the aspect of social stealth in their on franchise. Unfortunately it's a game that not even the company had much faith in depsite having so much potential. AC Liberation had some great potential in social stealth with their Persona System and interwoven with the story quite well tbf.

The biggest limit I think social stealth has is that you can’t really be social in a game. In real life, social stealth involves being as boring as possible, and covering your tracks to make yourself look like a completely uninteresting, utterly boring person. Think about a murder mystery, where the murder has to carfully set up the murder, and then navigate their way out of the situation to survive. You need to convince people you are innocent, which isn’t really achieved in games where you’re playing by yourself. The human element is simply one of the most difficult parts of real life to replicate, so we rarely see something that engages that part of the fantasy.

I feel the need to mention Deacon in Fallout 4 is an excellent example of being on the receiving end of social stealth. The moment you find out he has been following you around in various disguises is downright uncanny. Until you know he is doing it, you wouldn't even think to look for him.

AC1 had the best social stealth imo. Altair was already blending in with the crowd in his scholar outfit. Having more scholars were just a bonus. Each action you make matters, high or low profile. The crowd of npcs were like little mines on the map that will ruin your social stealth, so you had to treat the public like a puzzle. There's no need to hide, since the guards already see you. Theyre just looking for an excuse to kill you if you slip up socially. That's why you see plenty of civilians and scholars needing to be saved, because even they even failed to blend in socially. Kinography makes a good guide about social stealth in his channel. AC2 and onwards started making it simplified, using all the npcs as a blanket to hide. You no longer had to pay attention to how the crowd acts in order to follow them in later games. The only games I really appreciate after social stealth wise is Liberation because of the persona system, and even Syndicate because of how they tried to split Assassin/civilian with the hat/crouch system. Syndicate was badly excuted, but it has potential. Same with Liberation.

In AC2-Rev if you bump into a guard or appear near a crime scene you can make one guard at a time walk up to you, yell at you for doing something suspicious, but not outright socially unacceptable, and shove you twice before returning to their posts. At first this seems like a punishment since the shoves prevent you from acting... until you realize that it turns your body into a mobile distraction device that a guard will chase all the way across the city as long they don't lose sight of you for too long or complete their routine and get the second shove off. You can walk them straight into a crowd or hiding spot, a trip mine, around a corner, or even just get them to turn their back while some hired thugs create chaos or a bomb goes off somewhere else. Kino is really good at this, he can talk your ear off about the power of policing more than I can I wrote a concept for a game that follows more closely in the footsteps of AC1 in which different guard types have special policing behaviors like Brutes being able to disperse crowds and benches with their booming voices like Seekers already can with haystacks or Agiles being able to run after you faster and create additional pressure to clear the investigation. That's my best idea for how to expand on behavioral social stealth Also they should put this in a Watch_Dogs game. Think about it, a dude in a baseball cap staring at his phone is about the most inconspicuous thing I can imagine in a modern setting. I already pretend it has this feature when doing crimes, but I want to actually be able to sneak up on someone like this

I love the fact that you put Wally/Waldo in the thumbnail ❤

For a while, my favorite expression to describe the difference between the two stealth varieties has been 'remaining undetected by being unseen by anyone vs. remaining undetected whilst being seen by everyone'. For my personal take, I still believe that Hitman: Blood Money is the most robust social stealth system ever made. Even if it lacked enforcers, its AI was honestly more complex than the WOA games (even if it was also more buggy). Assassin's Creed 1 is the only 'real' social stealth game in the series, though an argument can be made for Unity & Syndicate as well. Rather ironically, Odyssey's dialogue system (arguably the most divisive addition to the series) could've served as the foundation for deeper social stealth if used ever so slightly differently. If instead of using it to badly clone the Witcher 3, they had used it as an 'in-between' state when a guard is suspicious, it would have been the mechanic that separated Assassin's Creed from being a shallower version of Hitman. Imagine that if when you killed a guard, instead of the guard merely pushing you around, or instantly turning hostile, they instead come over to interrogate you, at which point you enter a dialogue system where you have to deduce the personality of the person confronting you to lie your way out of it. Something like Deus Ex: Human Revolution comes to mind for that dialogue system, instead of the Witcher 3. This system should be complicated by what you're wearing. Wearing civilian garbs & carrying no weapon (that isn't the hidden blade) should incure a 'stealth bonus' that makes the player less suspicious if a crime is committed. A final side note: You missed the real landmark example of social stealth which was arguably served as the real base of Codename 47's entire system. That would be Thief: The Dark Project's 'Undercover' Mission, which saw you infiltrate a heavily guarded religious temple disguised as a novice of the faith. This mission actually had a number of 'social stealth' mechanics that other games haven't done since. In that mission, if you picked up loot, you would be detected if any of the guards saw you. However, this meant that this was the only mission in the game where guards noticed stolen loot, so if you stole something when there were no guards, and then a guard went to that area, they would freak out & turn hostile. The justification for this was that Garrett was the 'new guy', so if anything went wrong, he was the prime suspect (and you're told this in the mission briefing). As a result, you had to watch your actions even when you weren't in view. I don't think any dedicated social stealth games have really tried to simulate that 'new guy' mechanic in that way. The WOA games have something kinda similar with the enforcer mechanic, but I do wish all NPCs were more 'social' in these games. Though it's hard to know if this would necessarily be fun on a larger scale.

I think Hitman's social stealth shines with Freelacer mode in the World Of Assassination trilogy, specially during Showdowns in alerted territories.

Babe wake up, new So Says Jay just dropped.

Might be a bit ambitious, but I'd love to see a social stealth game that's like the TV show "The Americans." In the show, KGB agents not only disguise themselves, but they take on entirely new identities and really get to know their targets before extracting information out of them, assassinating them, extorting them, seducing them, etc. With all the dialogue options this would present, it might feel more like an RPG at points. Perhaps this will be the great innovation in the genre that Jay mentioned.

Ah, finally I can listen to you're calming voice again

I really enjoyed the social stealth in [Prototype]. Trying to see how much you can get away with while wearing a disguise is still a blast. The numerous details put in like soldiers saluting you if you bump into them while wearing a higher ranked disguise, tank gunners closing the hatch if a civilian hops on top of the tank. Taking part in the random clashes between the infected and blackwatch while pretending to be a marine. It's fun to try and take down the infected hives with only human weapons.

Social stealth is one of those things that if you screw it up, it's agonizingly obvious, but getting it right is so difficult. I will say that AC:Brotherhood's multiplayer is the best Assassin's Creed experience I've ever had - by far - it creates the fantasy of being nobody, and having that be your weapon and your shield. And the fantasy - the roleplay - is necessary for social stealth. It should be fundamentally different from normal stealth, but the way you can tell should be the feeling. If I feel like the Blade in the Crowd, the person with the power because they don't know, then it worked. If not, no matter how fancy the AI or systems are, it isn't. A really odd place where this happens is Neeko, in League of Legends. She can turn into one of the lane minions, or most any other target, and then it becomes about moving like one should, about blending in. Leblanc actually has a somewhat similar vibe.

This is the reason I'm waiting for Bordeaux (the studio, not Ubisoft the company) to remake AC1, in order to refine the core tenets and moving from there. I doubt Codename Red will have anything AC-worthy to it.

The watch dogs series actually incorporates social stealth into its multiplayer, wd2 in particular has a whole mode dedicated to it called hacking invasion. I’d love to see those elements return to AC on a fully fleshed out system. *I wrote this before jay mentioned the exact same point😂

I loved the multiplayer of AC Brotherhood. I do think there‘s potential for such a multiplayer to come back and succeed. With todays multiplayer concepts in mind ubisoft could create a free to play multiplayer and get the money through cosemetics, unique kill animations, etc. I genuinely miss the multiplayer of ac brotherhood. It wasn’t perfect but it was a lot of fun.

love you from the bottom of my heart, brother. Codename 47 intro was a mesmerising feel.

I'd say some of the best advances in the genre are going to come from games where the ecosystem of social dynamics aren't going to be modeled after humans responding to humans. You've got moments in games like Dying Light allowing you to cover yourself in filth to hide among zombies, Inside tasking you with imitating pattern responses in mindless slaves, PlagueInc, Prototype, Prop Hunt, etc. all able to provide insight into how to improve upon the formula. Heck, you could make a game out of using observational skills and pattern recognition to pretend to be a robot communicating to other robots with Simon Says to avoid detection.

With AI beeing so popular right now, I would love to see a game where you have to actually roleplay and talk to the npc and convince them to do things

assassin's creed multiplayer is a hidden gem. it has the potential to be one of the most interesting multiplayer games of our time, yet ubisoft abandoned it like they abandon everything with potential

Really cool video, I wish you had more subs. Personally, I keep wondering why we never had a secret agent game, such as playing as a CIA operator or something else. I dunno, but being a sleeping agent would be quite a feat of social stealth. Maybe it's due to the fact that real life intellingence and counter-intel is fairly boring.

What about traditional RPGs like Fallout and Deus Ex which have a social system? I remember having to infiltrate bases and cults, needing to say the right words to gain access. That was on area where the social stealth concept surfaced to my surprise

I think multiplayer social stealth’s future lies in VR, especially with eye tracking technology becoming more common. Imagine having to consciously stop your eyes from darting left to right in case your opponent picks up on it; or meticulously studying the way someone performs actions like opening doors, sitting down, moving through crowds for the slightest break from the animations an NPC has. Food for thought

Wonderful video! I really liked what you described as role-playing in the first Assassin's Creed. Slow pace, avoid running, like a normal citizen. What do you think about the different outfits in AC Liberation? The fact that the Assassin outfit was suspicious by default really incentivizes disguising as a slave or a lady. It gave you different "haystack skins", like working or flirting, in order to avoid the crowd/bushes repetition

AC Liberation is the most interesting AC Game for social stealth

I would argue that to blend within crowds one would have to be at least seemingly interacting with the crowds I don’t like that in hitman or Assassins creed you can just stand in the middle of a few strangers and call it done. Realistically if I did that, I would be interrupting whatever was going on there and calling more attention. But of course, if I were to be walking along other people on a busy street that would be easier, and then again, that level of realism is not necessary in video games in the wnd

In Watch Dogs I always would cause about 20 car accidents at intersections then start online to get hunted as i watch a player confusingly search each accident until getting bored and leaving thinking i had left a massacre behind and left. No online has been as fun since

Whenever I play a game with different outfits depending on where I am in the world would use the outfit that best matches the environment. Such as in my gameplay of ac4 I where is the offices outfit in Kingston, and the merchant outfit in Havana everywhere else I’ll just go with either steed bonnet’s or the pirate cloak I chose specifically those outfits because they match the colors of the military and the character is armed to the teeth. Also, those are the only outfits I can find that look like non-player characters. I am also going to do similar for rogue and red dead redemption as well.

I really enjoyed this video :) I've subscribed

Very cool! (Also I completely missed your last video. The last one I remember seeing was 'Do Stealth Games need a Crouch Button?' I wonder if RU-vid didn't surface the AC Syndicate one for me...) Regardless, love to hear your takes on stuff. I'm not much of a stealth person myself -- I'm more of a 'Run in guns blazing and eliminate everyone Rambo style' kind of player -- but it's cool to hear your perspective. Take care -- and Happy 2024! :)

Interestingly enough, its documented in the Bansenshūkai (a book containing a collection of knowledge from the Iga and Kōga clans on the training of ninja.) that ninja used both these forms of stealth and held them under the In-Yo concept (The Japanese Yin-Yang). One being the art of hiding out of sight and avoiding being seen, the other being the art of hiding in plain sight and blending in.

Here's something I've never heard ANYONE talk about in regards of stealth, probably because it's embarrassing, I guess. One thing that is so exhilarating about any kind of stealth is this aspect of voyerism. Any stealth game is at it's best when you are sneaking past people just living their lives, eavesdropping on random guard conversations and keeping tabs on people who don't even know you are doing it. Social stealth allows for voyerism to happen in places where you could not sneak in more traditionally a.k.a. a crowd.

Another banger from Jay!

The Slater mentioned. liked the vid immediately

Another banger!

I really love social stealth and it's really sad how little studios care for it. I get that it's pretty niche but it still has its place in the market I think. Ubisoft in particular just keeps disappointing with the way the handle the franchise. Instead of taking advantage of that lack of social stealth games they just decided to chase trends and tried to warp it to fit into other more mainstream markets.

What this video is telling me is that I need to play Hitman. I never thought much about social stealth in the AC games because, well, you’re right, they’re mostly alternative forms of haystacks. I barely saw it as something special about them. But as I moved from the AC games to Immersive Sims it’s become clear to me that the thing the ImSims I’ve played is missing is more social stealth. The closest I felt an ImSim has gotten to using the concept was Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom with the monster masks, the Gerudo and Yiga costumes, and using food to distract monsters, and those barely count and BotW and TotK are non-traditional ImSims anyway. I would love more variety in my stealth with things like disguises or finding ways to look contextually normal so you’ve mostly convinced me that Hitman is something to look into. It’s a shame that the mechanics of social stealth aren’t more widespread in single player games but at the same time I understand why given the complexity of systems you’re trying to manage for the AI to handle. Having to understand so many forms of context sounds like the sort of things that rapidly increases scope and prone to NPC glitches and behaviors that would be some combination of funny, frustrating, immersion breaking, and game breaking.

Obviously hitman is best at this as it’s simply always been a true stealth game as opposed to AC, which never was. But social stealth in AC has never really been just about having you blend in with the social environment, it’s about doing so but still looking and feeling like a badass assassin. For 47, it’s perfectly fine and in character/fantasy to have him switch between different outfits, be it serious or outrageous because he’s all about achieving the end goal. But for AC, it’s of the tradition (Ezio trilogy) to every now and then to get a sprinkle of disguise change, but ultimately players(ones who care about stealth) want to do so with the iconic assassin silhouette. Although if Ubisoft really want the best of both worlds, they can easily do so too by just having an animus toggle to keep the outfit and design most missions with disguise change opportunities

Welp, as someone who never got the fuss about social stealth in Assassin's Creed, thanks for the custom tailored video 😂

Good video

8:00 It's even comically easier when you can hire "dancers" and be right behind them in full view and you never had try to hide when you are surrounded by them

"Nobody's trying to do a social stealth game like Hitman" "What about Yande-" "Shh! No, we don't talk about that one."

Always hilarious when RU-vidrs say they’ll respond to people in the comments but never do.

The multiplayer stealth mechanics in Watch Dogs were surprisingly good, as the game would make you look like a random NPC and you could hide in crowds or shops and look inconspicuous. However it was somewhat undermined by how the game made it that if you were scanned you would be instantly detected, which led to the main strats being either hiding in cars, on top of buildings, or abusing the blackout hack to remain unreachable on top of drawbridges and behind garage doors. I say "were" because the lack of interiors and randomized appearances in Watch Dogs 2 only enforced the hide-and-seek aspect of the gamemode. I guess Ubisoft always gets tired of social stealth after the first game.

Make a video on ac odyssey. Absolutely loved the game. It was over the top but fun ah

Honestly Deceive INC and Spy Party do social stealth better than any single player game.

Social stealth is very good.

I think the thing that makes crowd blending good and more than just a disguised haystack, is because they are moving NPCs, the blend fade time and low detection speed when low profile, as well as even being able to kill without being detected while in a blend group, which is something even Hitman doesn't do, make it mechanically different from regular stealth, this really only cosistently applies to the Ezio Trilogy since social stealth was heavily watered down after Revelations

Prop Hunt should be the considered some type of stealth

It’s really sad when the only ac game besides the first that focuses on social stealth and tries to improve it is a side game made for the PlayStation vita. Yes I’m referring to AC Liberation which by far has the best social stealth in the series.

Not sure if that's intentional or not, it's neat how much easier Ezio is to notice than Hitman

I social stealth irl every time i piss in public

Its funny that impostor games like among us have kinda adapted this idea to multiplayer

...and that's why we love Hitman folks!

"It's only me..." - Sam Fisher

I personally am more of a traditional stealth kind of guy tham social stealth but it could be because social stealth in single player games aren't really all that good outside of Hitman. I don't even think Hitman's stealth is that amazing. I prefer the darkness based stealth of Splinter Cell and Thief

Agent 47 has a barcode on his head and that's just a real problem with social stealth

I think I have maxed it out irl

The problem with social stealth in Assassin’s Creed and Hitman is that both protagonists stick out in a crowd like a clown at a funeral😂 The are both extremely suspicious looking, Assassin’s don’t dress like others around him walking around, his assassin gear is so different from the norm that I’m surprised he isn’t attacked everywhere he goes. 47 sticks out because he’s usually doing highly suspicious things without drawing attention. If I saw some bald dude with a bar code on his head, in a tuxedo,walking around the area I was supposed to be guarding and he started testing locked doors and shit, I’d be highly suspicious. In an effort to make the characters look cool they break the stealth immersion. I never felt like I was “blending in” in assassin’s creed! At least if there’s a fancy party mission I n Hitman, 47 doesn’t look very suspicious

Great video, subbed. Comment for the algo.

The early days of stealth isn't metal gear, it's thief

If you think about it, Social Stealth is really just second person gameplay.

You forgot one other game: TF2, spy

Lol. I just started playing ac Valhalla and they casually give me a hidden blade before later teaching me the high tech stealth abilities of putting on a hood and not running around like a jackass.

Face of Mankind was the best for this. Put on a blue shirt, talk your way past the guard, sneak into the police station, release all the prisoners... And all these people were real players. The most brilliant game nobody played, until they ruined everything cool for the few people who did play it.

My first thought when I saw the thumbnail definitely wasn’t thinking about passing as a trans person.

I social stealth irl as an autistic person

Unfortunately, Yandere Simulator was the biggest Hitman imitator

In gaming the best social stealth game is Assassin's Creed even you agree or not.

its unfair to compare ac basic '' stealth '' to one of the best games ever.. you can even call ac social because the ai is too simple it has a sight radius and a hostile/neutral states even shooters have better stealth mechanics.... agent 47 is not the most social man so you cant call hitmans system social but there are scial norms implemted to the ai .. there are dress codes running / walking .. ranks to guards and different patterns to different enemies and npcs .. a lot of them feel unique and match the ocasion because its a level based game that is compact so it allow a lot of interconnectivity to its mechanics .. but to me a real social stealth system will need actual dialogue trees with many possibilites which is impossible to implement on a large scale unless its a point and click pixel art game where the whole budget and time are focused on that.. idk if you can call games like fallout 3 and new vegas to be social stealth games

It's blending in while standing out. I've just saved you 16 minutes.

Do you have Twitter, I wanna follow ya

Actually I believe Ubisoft did try to innovate the aspect of social stealth in their on franchise. Unfortunately it's a game that not even the company had much faith in depsite having so much potential. AC Liberation had some great potential in social stealth with their Persona System and interwoven with the story quite well tbf.