Guest contributor Adam Rosenberg covers games from his secret lair in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, typing, reading and playing the days away as his dog Loki looks on in bewilderment. In addition to the noble pursuit of video games, Adam enjoys spending time with fine film, finer food and his fine fiancée Bekah.
Velvet Assassin is an anomaly. For one, it’s a Hard Stealth game. Not “hard” in the challenging sense — though expect the finished product to be difficult — but rather it stays true to its roots. Sneaking isn’t just one possible route to success in Velvet Assassin; it’s the only one. Show yourself even once, and get a face full of bullets for your troubles. I can’t even remember the last video game that focused solely on striking from the shadows.
Then there’s the premise and its real life inspiration. The game’s protagonist is Violette Summer. She works as an MI6 spy behind enemy lines during World War II. The game unfolds as a flashback, with Violette recounting her wartime experiences from a hospital ward. Violette Szabo is the real life velvet assassin. After her husband Etienne was killed in action at the Battle of Battle of El Amain, the twenty-two year-old Szabo joined Britain’s Special Operations Executive as a spy. She completed one successful mission in 1944, but was captured following an attempt to sabotage German communications prior to the Normandy invasion. After enduring months of torture and hardship while confined in a Nazi concentration camp, Szabo was executed in 1945.
The Nazis are the undisputed “bad guys” in the game — how could they not be? — but it’s interesting how nationality informs Assassin’s design. Its creators are Hamburg-based Replay Studios, and the context of their German heritage colors even a brief session with the game. For example, Violette frequently comes across personal effects belonging to one soldier or another. During my hands-on, I came across a love letter addressed to the sweetheart of a German soldier. Perhaps even the one whose throat I’d just viciously slashed open. In moments like these, it’s tangible how national perspective has affected the game’s development.
The play itself is rooted in classic stealth in the tradition of PS1-era Tenchu and Splinter Cell, a cyclical pattern of observing enemy patrol routes and employing misdirection to move from A to B unseen. When Violette’s violet, you’re safe; both she and her body-shaped health bar icon are cast in deep shades of purple to indicate concealment. Shadows aren’t a magic safety zone however. Enemies will react realistically to movement, cast shadows (thanks to some stellar lighting effects) and proximity. You could be hiding in Germany’s deepest, darkest shadow and still be spotted if an enemy soldier happens to pass by too closely.
Violette doesn’t have much more than her graceful self and a knife for defense. She’ll come across the odd firearm or two, but ammo is scarce. Her most helpful asset is her morphine supply, a tool that brings a novel twist in such a stayed genre. Since the game takes place in a flashback, Violette’s memory can be altered to ease the difficulty of play. When it’s used, morphine blur’s her recollections, and the dark leather spy outfit is replaced by a hospital gown. Enemy soldiers are highlighted by hazy backgrounds and white mist as time slows to a crawl. Violette cannot be seen when in a morphine state, granting her either a free stealth kill or safe passage through a heavily populated area.
At the start of the game, Violette can store no more than a single shot of morphine. This can change however. Scattered throughout the game are collectibles and hidden objectives. Picking up or completing these nets XP awards, which can be spent on upgrading one of three categories: strength, stealth and morphine. Each category is built on a five-star rating scale, though it is impossible to fully upgrade all three in the course of a single playthrough.
The problem with stealth-heavy games is that the pace is often too slow to hold the attention of all but the most genre-devoted players. Velvet Assassin’s traditional sneaking is at least augmented by an experience system allowing you to upgrade stealth and strength stats as well as the amount of morphine you can carry. Since it will be impossible to max out these stats in a single play through, individual player preference and style may foster a more “active” stealth experience. I also wonder how deeply national identity will inform the overall experience. After all, here we have a German developer making a game in which players kill unsuspecting German soldiers from the shadows. As I said, even a small portion of the game shows a real effort to humanize the enemy. As to how far Replay will go in making Nazi soldiers three-dimensional antagonists remains to be seen. Velvet Assassin was an honest-to-goodness surprise for me, not only for its generic (for its genre) play focus but also for the questions it raises about the continuing evolution of the game as an interactive art form.
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