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[Kyuugatsu]

I've been working on designing a stealth game, and I was wondering, what are some ways cameras are handled in these types of games?

My game is 3D, and current concerns mostly revolve around making things simple, since I might be targeting young kids who don't necessarily want to move an extra stick around to see who or what is chasing them. It seems like the most intuitive stealth mechanics involve the camera being in more or less 2D -- top down, like the classic MGS, or side scrolling like Mark of The Ninja. Most 3D stealthing seems kind of unintuitive and not user-friendly (such as the 'detected' mechanism in Skyrim).

There may be some games that compromise between the 2D/3D concepts, adding something like a minimap.

What do you think? Do you have examples of games that do something different, like switch from behind-the-back 3rd person to top down when you are detected?

[Thaumaturge]

It's 3D, but I think that the mechanics in Thief: The Dark Project worked excellently. In particular, the "light gem" provided a pretty effective means of telling when the player was in shadow, I think. That said, I daresay that non-visual elements like audio cues helped quite a lot, too.

That said, if you want to keep things simple, then a top-down 2D camera may indeed be better for your game. As you note, it simplifies the controls, and it allows the player to more easily gather the state of the level.