Lighting Engines

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

Clint Hocking, director of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, believes modern lighting engines make stealth games harder to read. He argues that the realistic, diffuse shadows in contemporary games obscure player visibility compared to the clear, baked lighting of older titles like Thief. Hocking suggests that developers aiming for pure stealth experiences with modern graphics need to carefully consider how to implement lighting.