Deceive Inc
You can listen back to the exact moment Ubisoft coined the term ‘social stealth’, onstage at E3 2006, on YouTube. But the genre kickstarted by Assassin’s Creed has since been largely abandoned by triple-A studios – bequeathed to indie developers who have begun to explore the multiplayer potential of hiding in plain sight for themselves. Deceive Inc is the latest development in that story. Created by a team of former triple-A hands, it carries DNA from extraction shooters such as Hunt: Showdown, while also embracing social stealth as its core mechanic in a way no big-budget publisher would today.
It tasks you and several other players with competitive corporate espionage – infiltrating the vast vault of a swanky mansion, underwater hotel, office tower or tropical holiday resort to steal a briefcase and make your getaway in a flying car. Since there’s only one briefcase, it’s not just the defences of the vault you’ll have to contend with, but your rivals, who reveal themselves now and again for messy firstperson shootouts.
Most of the time, though, you’ll be acting a part: nonviolently navigating a sprawling indoor environment disguised as a partygoer, guard or staffer. Going unnoticed requires you to mimic the jolting cadence of the NPCs around you: walking a while, pausing to stare into the middle distance, and then heading off in another direction. Perhaps you’ll sit on a chair, or wash your hands at a sink. Sweet Bandits Studios has done a marvellous job of muddying the waters by teaching its AI to err in human-like ways – you’ll see guests break into jogs, and walk into places they don’t belong. A single slip-up is not the smoking gun you might expect.
Before long, you recognise subtler tells in fellow players: an unbroken gait, a tendency to zigzag between valuable items, a trail of opened ammo boxes. You’ll want to be sure of your target before opening fire, since doing so inevitably involves blowing your own cover, drawing the attention of guards and rivals. Your performance is complicated by the actions you’ll need to carry out simultaneously. Hacking a locked door, opening a safe, buying ammo – all cost intel, a resource collected from computer and device screens all over the map. A closed drawer might conceal intel, but opening one is a calculated risk, predicated on the hope that no one is watching.
Most dangerously, you’ll want to break into the security rooms dotted around the level, which house not only the best upgrades but the levers that must be pulled before the vault will open. As in Hitman, an appropriate uniform and keycard will grease the wheels of espionage, but there’s a hierarchy to the costumes. Some areas are so secure that even security guards aren’t invited.
These chokepoints are designed to throw rivals into close proximity, where the façade quickly breaks down. Once it does, you learn there’s no such thing as a swift, clean kill in Deceive Inc. Non-automatic weapons are the standard, and players can take a few firm hits before going down. It’s a setup that turns each battle into a panicked, strafing dance, punctuated by potshots and the use of gadgets such as portable turrets. These loud and public displays can pull in other participants – particularly in team mode, where a third trio might recognise the opportunity to pounce on weakened opponents.
Impressively, however, Deceive Inc goes quiet just as quickly as it goes loud. Disguises are swiftly restored outside combat, and a host of tools enable you to disappear fast – claiming temporary invisibility, or transforming into a waste paper bin. As of launch, Sweet Bandits has already found an audience more interested in melting into the background in creative fashion than racking up kills for their own sake.
After all, it’s only ever about the briefcase. That single objective allows for all sorts of flexibility in the minutes between spawn and extraction. You might arrive on the scene tricked out with cover-breaking tripwires and door traps, content to land your peers in trouble rather than incite it yourself. Or you could take an inflatable trampoline and sniper rifle to the fight, bounding onto the rooftops near a vault exit to wait out the would-be victor. Some approaches are more effective than others, but all are valid, thanks to the systemic FPS fundamentals into which every aspect of Deceive Inc is plugged.
Some, mind you, will consider this genre mashup a mismatch. The game’s social stealth and shooting sides pull from fundamentally different skillsets – it can be frustrating to hunt down an opponent via perception and patience, only to flunk the firefight. While certain playable characters reduce the demands on your thumbs, a fast and reliable aim will always put you at an advantage during confrontation. And while crossplay was the smart choice for a project that depends on speedy matchmaking for its survival, we do wonder whether, in the land of the slow-loading revolver, the mouse-wielder is king.
Then there are the bugs, which at time of writing have resulted in three match-ending crashes over a 24-hour period, and occasionally sent our avatar into a spin when switching weapons. Yet we’re inclined to forgive: Deceive Inc’s occasional unsteadiness belies its overall polish, which is accentuated by a first-class soul-revival soundtrack and the retrofuturism of its Bond lairs. When you’re spending long minutes people-watching, it helps to have a few leonine ice sculptures to occupy the eye.
The team mode is all well and good, but it’s in solo play that Deceive Inc shines. Here, you’re given space to consider every gesture and interaction, and to let your brain run wild with all the gestures and interactions you’re not seeing – the fellow spies gathering intel in the next bathroom, or passing by in the lobby. The trappings of high society barely conceal the violence yet to come, and the air crackles with anticipation.
8
The game’s social stealth and shooting sides pull from fundamentally different skillsets