Mark of the Ninja (720p HD) NK, NA, NSC, NG+ Walkthrough - Part 3: The Trail of Shadow
15Here's another level ripe for stealth. A select few sections are tough to get by without killing or item usage, but you can basically speedrun a large chunk of the early part of this level by just not bothering with killing. Many of the artifacts and scrolls are more or less along the way so you don't even have to explore and expose yourself that much.
1:00 - If you notice me moving more aggressively, well, I guess I'm just getting a better hang of the game's boundaries. My first time through the game, I tended to move slowly and carefully and almost never ran, instead trying my hardest to be absolutely stealthy and making sure I explored every corner of each map. But if you experiment a bit, you realize the AI is not that sharp if you stay undetected or even if you get detected but you move quickly, so you can almost speedrun certain levels without much effort once you get a good feel for the paths, enemy patrols, etc. That might seem like what intentionally speedrunning would entail, but even when going for scrolls and artifacts you can minimize a fair amount of exploration if you don't care about maximizing score with kills, repeated distraction, traps, etc.
2:28 - This is a good example of what I'm talking about. I was spotted, but since I was at the edge of the flashlight beam, it didn't immediately raise an alarm but rather further NPC suspicion. I darted out of the way quickly, and I was fine.
2:45 - Another good example. I was very close to a guard while making noise, but also very quickly got to a safe spot and no alarm was raised.
2:57 - Scroll #1. I recommend running and closing the door behind you to avoid the laser beam that'd trigger an alarm.
3:14 - There is a guard and some other things to the left of here, but unless you want to kill him for points there is no reason to go over there, not even for a hidden collectible.
4:16 - Remember, there are never living enemies in challenge rooms, so you can run to your heart's content.
4:27 - You never need to activate this lever, but I thought I'd demonstrate that the solution for Scroll #2 isn't to just simply hit everything here. Only the top left and bottom right levers are necessary.
7:54 - Though the guard is sleeping and not paying much attention, walking, running, or jumping past him could still wake him up, so better that you just go back from where you came if you're not killing.
8:26 - Whether you run or not, if you don't kill these birds they will attract the attention of the nearby guard, so move fast.
9:01 - Can't avoid using an item here, and it has to be a smoke bomb as nothing else would work. Fortunately, I prefer them as my distraction item besides the bamboo darts, so all is well.
9:45 - It is totally unnecessary, but unlocking doors like this will net you a few bonus points if you are fast.
10:17 - Did you even catch that there was a transition around here? I know splices can be annoying, so I tried for as much stuff as possible within a single clip, and this particular splice ended up very smooth (minus the music differences I guess) without me explicitly setting it up to be that good.
11:32 - This part of the level is actually much harder to do if you are killing (e.g. for the optional objective to get rid of at least six guards here), because if you're not you can actually get far ahead of the slow-moving courier.
11:55 - Another optional objective in this level is to put five guards in dumpsters. This is a bit trickier as there are five and only five dumpsters in the entire level, in contrast to there being more than six targets for the other optional objective. You'll have to be on the lookout during the entire level to fulfill this objective.
14:45 - This was the hardest part of the level for me to stealth through, as the guard to the right can end up in just the wrong positions when trying to sneak by, and the guard to the left means it's hard to do that much AI manipulation of the right one either. A noise maker could probably work a little more stealthily here, but since I had smoke bombs I just ended up using one of those instead.
16:24 - The courier becomes suspicious as soon as you lift the device off of him, so I recommend quickly grappling away to avoid an alarm.
18:00 - If it's possible to get Scroll #3 without a smoke bomb, I have no idea how. I think it's set up to teach you that smoke bombs are good for blocking not just kill lasers but also alarm lasers too.
18:45 - No idea why the recording glitched out here.
19:03 - It's important to note that the smell radii of dogs do not trigger from below. Quite handy in cases like this.
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