using perks, so that hopefully when you get into
the flow, it’s like shiv shiv shiv, one after another,
and the AI just has this delayed response,
‘Ooh, Steve’s just been killed’, but they can
never quite pinpoint you.”
Designing Shroud to work against AI was
straightforward enough, Willans says. Designing it
to feel fair in PvP was a different story. “I think
that was probably one of the hardest things
throughout development to get right.” Sumo
experimented with total invisibility, but this
proved “impossible” for opponents, “so it was kind
of working back from there.” Some early
prototypes for Shroud were downright horrifying.
“We had a bug for about three months where her
eyes stayed visible while cloaked. It looked so
sinister – now that was truly the Predator.”VIEW TO A KILL
A pivotal moment for Sumo was remembering
that the Predator is much more apparent in
motion. The creature’s camouflage acts like a
camera lens running over the backdrop, distorting
the scenery. The challenge then became to decide
exactly how transparent Marianne’s Shroud
should be – and how much control players should
have over the effect. “She’s roughly 50%
[transparent] with her base ability,” says Willans.
“If you use a perk, you can actually increase thatto more like 75-80.” The Hood team also drew on
the lessons of Eve: Valkyrie, its VR space
dogfighting game for CCP Games, which features
a stealth ship influenced by the cloaking Klingon
warships in Star Trek. In Valkyrie as in Hood, the
faster you travel the more conspicuous the
shimmer of the background through your craft.
Marianne’s invisibility formed part of a
larger conversation during development about
immersiveness and mood. Sumo considered
adding a visibility gauge, akin to Thief’s light gem,
but removed this for a couple of reasons, one
being an inevitable gap between HUD feedback
and what other players could actually see. “People
would look at the user interface, and they’d go,
‘all right, I’m safe. I’m in darkness’, and then
somebody comes up behind them and cracks
them on the head, and [they’re] like, where did
that come from?” But Sumo also wanted to
cultivate an atmosphere of dread, even in the
mind of a hidden player. “I like to leave a little bit
of ambiguity there,” Willans says. “[So] that there’s
a bit of tension for you, even as the assassin – am I
hidden enough? You almost want to get one of
your mates to check – can you see me? Can you
see the whites of my eyes? Can see the glint on my
weapon?” Grounding the stealth in what players
perceive makes Hood’s strangely ahistorical
setting more convincing, of course. “If you’re
hiding behind a tree which is breaking line of
sight, that feels more natural than [saying that]
you’re crouched in a bush and are now fully
invisible to other players.”
You might expect Battlefield, the definitive
photorealistic military shooter, to
have similarly elaborate ideas
about camouflage, but in a game
of large-scale PvP with a fanbase
of millions, questions of balance
take priority. The recent
Battlefield 2042’s reconnaissance
‘specialists’ may seem dressed to
blend in quicker than other types
of soldier. Take Casper, described
in-game as a “master of
camouflage”: he sports a ghillie
suit, an iconic variety of stealth
gear which uses long strips of
cloth, twine and foliage to breakSPECIAL STAGE
Feats of illusion, shared by Mariano TomatisPHANTASMAGORIA
ETIENNE-GASPARD
ROBERTSON
One of Robertson’s tricks
used a black shutter that
could be rotated to view a
space with a black
backdrop. By rotating the
shutter, people behind it
appeared to disappear.PEPPER’S TRICK
JOHN HENRY
PEPPER
Working with the
engineer Henry Dircks,
Pepper used a glass
sheet to conjure ghosts.
Reflections of actors in a
hidden room would
appear on-stage whenTHE VANISHING
LADY GEORGES
MÉLIÈS
One of the earliest
demonstrations of the
magic of film editing,
based on a famous stage
trick involving a hidden
trapdoor. Here, no
trapdoor is needed.Invisibility
FE ATURE
Maid Marian is reimagined
as a deadly assassin in
Hood: Outlaws & Legends.