The director of the best Splinter Cell game reckons that modern lighting engines are making stealth games 'so much harder to read'

I love a good game about skulking through the shadows, but it isn't an activity I get to do much in virtual worlds anymore. Even within the already sparse genre of stealth games, most modern sneak 'em ups are based around lines of sight rather than levels of light.

I always figured this was because such an approach is simpler for players to parse—especially given most games that feature stealth are not exclusively stealth games. But according to Clint Hocking, director of the second-best stealth game ever made—Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory—it might have something to do with the nature of virtual shadows themselves.

Speaking to FRVR, Hocking explained that the shift from baked lighting and dynamic lights with hard edges, to softer shadows and ray-tracing lighting models, may have had an impact on players' ability to assess their own stealthiness.

"I actually think one of the difficulties with modern stealth games is the sophistication in the rende...