With Catlike Tread / Video Games

• Assassin's Creed: Revelations:
  • The Templar Stalkers come with a Scare Chord and yell "Die Assassin!" before they try to kill you. They're really easy to counter, and that usually involves jamming their own daggers into their own mouths.
  • Thugs and Harlequins in Brotherhood will run up to you, then start a short cut scene to announce their presence.
• Brought up by Minsc in Baldur's Gate when using stealth:
  None shall see me, though my battlecry may give me away.
• In the Harley Quinn DLC of Batman: Arkham Knight, Harley is incapable of silent takedowns since all of her stealth attacks involve her loudly braining her enemies with a bat.
• In BioShock, it's not always easy to see splicers slinking around the darkened corridors. They make life considerably simpler by constantly mumbling gibberish to themselves. This includes spider splicers, whose stealth is supposed to be their strong point. This is, however, probably justified by them all being quite insane.
  • Which makes the Plastered Splicers (stronger Spider Splicers looking like statues) in Fort Frolic possibly the scariest enemies in the game. Not only can they disguise themselves as statues (or just spawn right behind you), they are the only enemies that attack in absolute silence.
• In Blood of the Killer, when Handy and Mandy are stalking BB in the record store, they give away their presence by loudly discussing how to follow her without being noticed.
• In the first two Brothers in Arms games, when ordering the placement of your squads in an ambush, the player character will bellow loudly, even if the enemy is quite close and not alerted of your presence. The third game, Hell's Highway, averts this tendency by introducing a situational mechanic that makes the player character whisper to his squadmates if the enemy is unaware.
• In Dawn of War II, any unit that can infiltrate will loudly announce a certain line when they do so. This wouldn't be bad except every player hears it, including your opponents. Probably the worst offenders in this regard are the Space Marine Scouts:
  "SEE BUT DO NOT BE SEEN!"
  • Incidental dialogue by your units can also be heard by opponents from an impressive distance away, and large Commander units or vehicles crashing through objects and terrain make a loud racket. Both of these things can spoil an ambush, or warn a sharp opponent that you've got something coming their way through the Fog of War.
• Dead by Daylight has the Huntress. Playing a Killer involves getting the drop on the Survivors, and while Killers usually have their Leitmotif play when they're close enough, it doesn't pinpoint where they are. The Huntress, however, is the only Killer in the game that cannot sneak up on her targets, because she is constantly, constantly humming. On the other hand, she's one of the few Killers with a ranged attack.
• Disgaea:
  • In Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Flonne sneaks into Laharl's castle while she loudly provides the sound effects ("Nin nin nin!") for her own sneaking. Strangely enough, it works for the most part. Mostly because the Prinny guards were out partying.
  • Turns out this trait runs in the bureau from time to time. In Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten, Vulcanus does this at some point in the exact same manner.
• In the original Doom, you can sneak around while carrying a running chainsaw. Just don't punch the air with your bare fist, that makes enough noise to alert monsters. Monsters that haven't been alerted to you don't care if they see other monsters growling at and attacking you, either - with a mod that adds proper sound-detection for weapons (e.g. Brutal Doom making the fists actually silent), this can lead to a zombie totally ignoring a nearby imp suddenly exploding into bloody chunks right in front of him.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Morrowind's Tribunal expansion kicks off when you are attacked in your sleep by a Dark Brotherhood assassin. Despite being renowned throughout Tamriel for their skill as assassins, this one evidently isn't very good... First, you awaken to "a loud noise," then the assassin yells at you as he attacks.
  • Skyrim:
    • It is far too easy to do this yourself by means of forgetting to change your active Shout for something more discreet. You wanted to use Aura Whisper? Too bad - you left Unrelenting Force as your active Shout, making every guard/Draugr in earshot home in on you.
    • During the quest "Repentance", you're infiltrating a hag coven with Ilia, the daughter of their leader, who wants to put an end to them. Since she was sent to procure a human sacrifice (for the ritual to transform her mother into a hagraven), she suggests that you pretend to be the sacrifice and act as a distraction, and then Ilia will strike her down from behind. This goes all according to plan up until she's about to strike, at which point she announces her plan and apologizes to her mother for having to kill her. Predictably, this completely spoils the opportunity and turns mommy hostile. (Since you're at that point seated on a chair and have to spend a few seconds going through the "dismount chair" animation, you end up taking a few spells to the face before you can act properly.) Better option? Allow Ilia to present you as a sacrifice, and when mommy expects you to sit down so she can get to work, you strike her down. That's how surprise works.
    • A possible enemy encounter in the game is a Dark Brotherhood assassin out for the Dragonborn's blood. They usually are really no sneakier than any good old bandit. Apparently, this guns blazing approach is surprisingly common in the Brotherhood - some of the members are Destruction mages, despite the fact that their spells tend to involve loud and flashy fireballs and lightning bolts. One member, Festus, will happily tell you that his method of assassination attempts is going up to his target, melting their faces off, and then running like hell.
    "Works every time!"
    • Speaking of the Dark Brotherhood, should the Dragonborn choose to join them, you can also invoke this trope on your targets. All minor assassinations that don't require a specific method allow you to speak to the target and tell them you're there to kill them. Shockingly, this is actually one of the best "assassination" methods, as the target will attack you, despite most likely not standing a shadow of a chance against you, and then you can kill them in "self-defense" without incurring a bounty.
• Fallout 3 companions can complicate the stealth approach by hollering to the enemy, "Come on out and let's fight face to face!"
  • The Prototype Medic Armor is a lovely set of Powered Armor that protects you from radiation and gives you morphine when you need it... and if it notices an enemy anywhere in the vicinity, roars out, "TIME TO KICK SOME ASS!" at the top of its lungs. Thankfully, the Stealth Unit Med X is completely quiet.
  • You can also sneak around (with enemies perfectly oblivious, with a perfect Sneak score and the right items) with your Pip-Boy radio blaring music, news, propaganda, or the nearest distress signal. But God help you if your Pip-Boy's light is on. Except in New Vegas, where with Lonesome Road^note though you need another add-on besides that, otherwise it's beyond your available level cap you can take the "Broad Daylight" perk that actually gives you bonus points to your Sneak skill when the light is on, to offset the penalty to sneaking you otherwise get from attempting that.
  • Fallout: New Vegas continues this; whenever you crouch (start "sneaking"), your companions will say something to mark the occurrence. Depending on the companion and which of their lines happens to play, this can range from a whispered word of agreement, to a full sentence at normal volume, to shouting. None of it affects your stealthiness. The funny thing is that Lily, a Super Mutant who shouts out how she knows how to keep quiet is actually the stealthiest of the companions since she'll activate a Stealth Boy upon sneaking.
  • Also played straight in both games with certain melee weapons. In 3, all melee weapons are considered quiet, so nobody notices anything when you use a rotary saw to dismember a person right next to them. New Vegas is worse, as it adds actual chainsaws, punch-triggered shotguns, and glowing energy axes to what guards fail to notice.
• Final Fantasy VII can allow the player to pull this. When outside the Shinra building, Tifa and Barret suggest different plans for how to get to the upper floors to save Aerith. Tifa wants to sneak in the back and take the stairs, avoiding fights with Shinra soldiers, while Barret just wants to burst in the front door, guns blazing. The player can then make Cloud agree with Tifa in the Dialogue Tree, only to instead follow Barret's plan.
• Happens occasionally in online multiplayer games where the characters speak. Sneaking up on people in Gears of War gets hard when one of your teammates (here's looking at you Cole) suddenly yells "Oh YEAH baby!" A similar effect happened in Star Wars: Battlefront 2, where Jedi/Sith characters would randomly say phrases, which, in Jedi to Jedi matches, could really screw up a surprise attack.
• Ghost 1.0: Jacker intended for Ghost to infiltrate Nakamura Station stealthily, which is why he had her delivered to the station facility in a crate. The first thing she does upon leaving said crate? Test out her new Particle Gun on the other crates in the room, making a HUGE racket as they explode. After several more incidents like this, Jacker and Boogan just give up on trying to convince Ghost to remain stealthy.
• In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Carl and Ryder are ready to break into a war veteran's house and steal as much as possible; Carl suggests sneaking in rather than taking the place by storm. Ryder agrees that it's a smart idea, but then follows this up by howling "COME OUT YOU OLD BASTARD!" at the house.
• In Half-Life marine commanders occasionally yell at their men to quiet down with their usual loud radio-distorted voices.
• Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery: A valuable flying broom goes missing, and Skye Parkin accuses a rival House's Beater of stealing it. She decides to take the player character along to search for the broom in the other House's common room. You'd expect Skye Parkin to search quietly, peeking under the furniture without moving it, to avoid being heard by the Head of House. But nooo, she just has to start flipping furniture and making a huge racket that gets her and the player character caught and landed in detention!
• In the first section of Jönssonligan: Jakten på Mjölner the gang has to break into a laboratory at night to steal some info. To do this, they must blast open a steel door with dynamite. Immediately afterwards, they may optionally pick up a telephone and loudly hoot into it. Of course, all of this goes unnoticed by their adversary Biffen who is walking back and forth in the room right next to them and will only notice them if they practically walk into his shadow.
• In the final portion of King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!, you're sneaking through the evil wizard's castle and one of the things you can interact with is a gigantic pipe organ, which will of course end up alerting the wizard to your presence and get you force choked to death.
  • Mocked by Paw Dugan in his Let's Play, seen here:
    "It's probably because I played that stupid organ and gave away my position; it's like, 'LAAAA, I'M BEING STEALTHY!!'"
  • Of course, being properly stealthy doesn't necessarily stop him from finding you, anyway.
• In League of Legends:
  • Teemo has the ability to stealth when standing still. This is very helpful if the enemy doesn't see you turn invisible in a blatantly obvious manner. In which case he will stand right next to you, call in his team and you will be subjected to a large number of area effect spells and die.
    • There's also a video of a Teemo who stealthed in a bush, waiting to ambush an enemy at the start of the game, and made the mistake of using his taunt emote as the enemy walked by. While this didn't break stealth, the enemy did hear it, letting him know Teemo was in the area and allowing him to guess exactly where he was.
  • Aurelion Sol becomes invisible in bushes like any other champion- but his passive (three stars orbiting his location) remains visible, clearly marking his location.
• Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2: The special infected make a lot of noise (except the Hunter, who is silent in his idle state, but will make noise when he's ready to pounce), so an attentive player will hear them and be on the lookout for them. The AI for the special infected is very hit and miss, so you can have occasions where they'll reveal themselves early, which leads to them being blasted to death by the players. However, this can also swing the other way where the special infected can launch a surprisingly good ambush on a player and catch them completely off guard, despite all the noise they're making. Both scenarios can also apply in VS mode where players take control of the special infected, depending on how skilled (or lack thereof) they are.
• The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night: At the beginning of the game, Spyro and Sparx has to traverse through the temple while avoiding waking up the elder dragons. While Spyro is at least trying to keep quiet, Sparx seems to think that communicating around the sleeping dragons is difficult.
  Sparx: What? I can't hear you over all this snoring!
• The Legend of Zelda: Somehow, Link can always stay unnoticed as long as he's out of sight no matter how loudly he grunts and screams.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: One can sneak past ReDeads without alerting them by tiptoeing. Or, one can equip the Iron Boots, which cut down Link's speed and make him stomp around with very loud clangs. While the player hears the bangs, the game still registers him as walking slowly, allowing him to stomp leisurely past ReDeads as long as he doesn't draw a weapon.
• Mass Effect 2: Can happen via Gameplay and Story Segregation, given the existence of a stealth mode and Commander Shepard's habit of loudly exclaiming whenever he/she finds some variety of weapon or loot. The volume of these exclamations seems to be unintentional, though, as they are considerably louder than most other examples of in-game dialogue.
• Mega Man X: Certain stages (such as Magna Centipede) have a section where you have to sneak through, avoiding the searchlights or sensors that move around the stage. Oddly, only touching the lights will set off the enemies, not the loud vreeeeEEEEE-PSHOOOOWWW!! of firing a Charged Attack.
• Metal Gear Solid: Four invisible mooks that are on the elevator with Snake, literally close enough to reach out and touch him from the moment he steps on, must sit and wait for our hero to riddle out what's going on in an absurd fashion over the radio despite the fact that all four of them have machine guns. Conforming to the mook code even further, one of the mooks announces their presence after the hero has already figured out what's going on with a hearty, "Too late, Snake. Now you die!" Of course no, no he doesn't. Even stranger in that they can't hear what he is saying over the radio, since codec communications directly stimulate the receivers they are tuned into. He's talking but they can't hear it.
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty: It becomes a viable tactic if there's only one guard in the room or you get one far enough away from his buddies. You can run in loudly and jump-kick his ass, since even if he sees you beforehand, if you knock him out before he radios for back-up and nobody else hears his cries for help/of pain from getting kicked in the face, naturally you'll get no alert phase and it won't count as being spotted. Since it was a massive game breaking tactic (you could quite literally say "to hell with stealth" and run through rooms cartwheeling guards and get through unscathed) later games added an Obvious Rule Patch where being spotted no matter what triggers an alert phase, and taking a guard out before he radios for help only delays reinforcements.
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War: There are stealth missions you can send your orcs on. Most Orcs will be quiet in these missions, but if you send one with the title of "Screamer" they will yell their lungs out.
• Overwatch: A major design element is that every hero (except Zenyatta, who floats) can be heard through walls; it can be very easy to hear Reaper (who wears big heavy boots) or Winston (a giant gorilla) attempting to sneak around you.
  • This became a bit obnoxious to some players when Sombra was added to the game, a character whose primary mechanic is stealth. Though it's not because of her footfalls, but because decloaking causes her to announce her presence to anyone within earshot. Alleviated somewhat when she got a buff that reduced the audible range of said proclamation, but the statement itself remains.
    "Been here all along."
  • If the "Uprising" event is any indication, Reinhardt is prone to this.
  Mercy: Be quiet. We don't want to attract any unwanted attention.
  Reinhardt: COME OUT, YOU BASTARDS! I'LL FIGHT THE LOT OF YOU!
• PAYDAY 2 has DLC achievements that are all about intentionally doing this and still successfully sneaking. The OVERKILL Pack has one for completing the stealth-only Shadow Raid heist while using the Vulcan Minigun and HRL-7 rocket launcher, which is appropriately named "I Have No Idea What I'm Doing". The Butcher's AK/CAR Mod Pack has another one for completing Art Gallery in stealth within four minutes while wearing the heaviest armor in the game, in which cameras will spot you near-instantly and guards will hear you from rather far away - tellingly, the most commonly-cited tactic for getting through that one is saying "to hell with stealth" and abusing a chain of ECM devices to simply keep them from calling in an alarm while the team then rushes through the gallery as quickly as possible.
  • The Scarface Character Pack DLC includes a new melee weapon: a chainsaw. It has the absolute worst concealment stat in the game, even outweighing all other concealment bonuses that apply to a player. Plus, if it's charged, it constantly makes a revving noise... and yet, if you stalk a guard with it active, they won't even bat an eyelid.
• Persona 5: Makoto's method of trailing Joker is to blatantly follow him everywhere he goes while holding a book up to her face... and if you talk to her, she'll have her eyes closed like she's desperately trying not to look at him even though he's currently talking to her.
• The Pokémon Zorua and Zoroark can disguise themselves as a teammate with their Illusion ability. A human player will realize what's up if it uses its own Secret Art or an attack the Pokemon it's imitating doesn't know.
  • In Pokémon Sword and Shield, the player at one point encounters a pair of Team Yell grunts trying to make sure a Silicobra sleeps peacefully, who promptly berate you and Hop for being to noisy...while yelling, stomping around, and challenging you to a Pokémon battle. For extra points, the Silicobra doesn't even seem to notice, only waking up and leaving after the grunts have left.
• Los Illuminados in Resident Evil 4 would often laugh or say "I got you!" in Gratuitous Spanish when trying to sneak up behind you. Some of them actually shout "Behind you, you idiot!" in Spanish. Then again, maybe they were just too crazy to understand the benefits of a stealthy approach.
• Sonic Heroes brings us this gem:
  Espio: Hey, they're asleep so stay quiet and move slowly...
  Charmy: OK!!
  Vector: Whaddya doing! Be quiet!
• In Splinter Cell multiplayer mode, enemies can hear your real-world teamspeak if you don't keep it down.
• The Thor in StarCraft II brings up this trope in one of its Stop Poking Me! quotes.
  QUIET! I'M TRYING TO SNEAK UP ON THEM!
• In the climax of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Emperor Palpatine is trying to tempt Starkiller to turn to the Dark Side when Rahm Kota breaks his bonds, screams "No!", steals Palpatine's lightsaber with the Force, and lunges at the Emperor. Palpatine looks up, momentary bewildered, before blasting Kota mid-lunge with Force Lightning, indicating that his attack could have worked if he hadn't yelled. On the plus side this does distract Palpatine long enough for Starkiller to break his bonds as well, so it wasn't completely pointless.
• In Street Fighter X Tekken, Raven is halfway through outlining his plan to distract and sneak up on Vega and Balrog when his partner Yoshimitsu leaps at them yelling at the top of his voice. It's honourable, apparently.
• Hot Foots from Super Mario Bros. 3 are living wicks of fire who pretend to be the flame of a candle. Like Boos, they stalk Mario when he is not looking but stops and "acts natural" when he looks back. As one can imagine, it is impossible for a fire wick to pretend to be normal when it is on the floor instead of a candle.
• In Team Fortress 2, inexperienced spies frequently end up dying because they use mic chat while disguised, putting a speech balloon above their character that's their real team's color and ruining the disguise. The decloaking noise for the default Invis Watch is also pretty loud, and a replacement "Pocket Watch" which allows you to fake your death is even louder. In a subversion, when disguised any keyboard voice command will be in the correct voice for that disguise. This includes announcing that you've found a spy. Fun thing to watch as long as there are no pyros nearby.
  • This can also happen to an extent with other classes if a player micspams or over uses keyboard commands while trying to sneak up on other players. More than one Scout has met their end because their player couldn't resists spamming the "Medic!" button and tipped off a nearby enemy to their presence.
    • This only matters in Alltalk servers (all players can hear each other's mics, regardless of whose team they are on), which nobody would take seriously enough to matter anyway.
  • Heck, a good spy can disguise as a scout, waltz up to an engineer and spam NEED A DISPENSAH HEAH. Thanks to the fact that actual scout players really do that, it's one of the better ways to make it seem you're not a spy. Yes, that means proper stealth around engineers can involve running up to them and screaming in their face.
    • It works even better by disguising as the biggest possible disguise and shouting POOTISPENSERHERE over and over, since your speed won't give you away (disguised Spies slow down to match the top speed of a class that's slower than they are, but can't speed up to match a faster one).
    • Spamming the "negative" reaction disguised as the engineer is surprisingly convincing, since distressed engies yelling "Dammit fellas! Dammit dagnabit!" is actually pretty common.
      
• Being a game about ninjas, Tenchu is prone to this. For example, the player can hang from a ledge while holding their sword. The sword will not be seen by enemies despite it sticking out.
• In Uncharted this sort of thing happens at least once a game. Nate will carefully enter a room and state that he should try and do this quietly, only for, say, the ledge to collapse and drop him in, or some other accident that not only gives him away but sends him scrambling for cover.
• The Flying Machine in Warcraft III:
  "They'll never hear me coming!" (Aircraft engine splutters.)
  • Also the Pit Lord from the expansion pack:
    "I think a certain... finesse is called for here. GRRRAAAAAGGGGHHH!!!!!" (Sounds of violent killing and screaming.)
• Warframe:
  • It is entirely possible to get stealth kills with unsilenced weapons. How? With the mods, you can buff your weapon's damage output so high that they can kill enemies before their AI can even detect the gunshots. Given, the shots will alert other enemies in the area, but you're almost always guaranteed at least one stealth kill.
    • Also thanks to the game's weapon modding system, you can put a silencer mod on any weapon in the game... including the game's many grenade launchers, flamethrowers, and chainsaw guns. Humorously, it actually does lower the in-game volume of the weapon's firing sound.
  • Gunblades, by virtue of being melee weapons, are considered silent and can perform stealth kills. Even when using the shotgun or energy blast versions of their attack combos.
  • Octavia's Metronome ability grants buffs to her and allies for performing actions in time with her song. One of these, Nocturne, is an invisibility buff gained by crouching to the beat. Her music inexplicably doesn't count as noise to alert enemies, so the bard frame ironically ends up being one of the best for stealth.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 1, Riki is prone to screaming "Riki sneaky!" when activating his "Sneaky" skill, a special attack that deals more damage when hitting enemies from behind. This doesn't actually affect enemies' perception of him, though.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles X most enemies won't notice you unless you enter their line of sight, regardless of how much noise you're making. This leads to such situations as "infiltrating" an enemy camp while piloting a 30 foot tall mech. In some cases it's even possible to start a battle and wipe out a group of enemies without the sentries noticing you because they happen to be facing the other direction.

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