Styx: Blades of Greed Gameplay Reveal Shows Real Stealth Energy—With Some Risky New Tricks

Styx Is Back-and the Stealth Crowd Should Pay Attention

This caught my attention because pure stealth games have been on a slow drip for years. Cyanide’s Styx series has quietly carried the Thief torch since 2014, and after a long silence, Styx: Blades of Greed just dropped a proper gameplay trailer at the Future Games Show. The pitch is simple and refreshing: stricter stealth, denser vertical maps, and a toolbox that leans into trickery-think throwable potions that spawn goblin minions, short bursts of mind manipulation, and a new paraglider for airy escapes. It’s due this autumn on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series, and if you’ve been starving for sneaky, system-driven levels, this looks like a promising meal.

Key Takeaways

• Back-to-basics stealth: scouting, shadows, and one-shot finishers over brawling.
• New tools matter: potion-spawned minions and guard mind control open creative plays.
• Traversal upgrades: a paraglider plus taller, layered spaces hint at sandboxier levels.
• Expect AA ambition with rough edges-Cyanide’s ideas often outpace their polish.

Breaking Down the Gameplay Reveal

The trailer doubles down on the series’ identity: you’re fragile, the guards aren’t, and getting caught is a problem you avoid rather than solve with a sword. That means recon first—reading light sources, studying patrol routes, and picking routes through vents, rafters, and furniture. When you strike, it’s fast: backstabs and throat-slits that end encounters before they start. The series has always rewarded patience; Blades of Greed looks even less tolerant of sloppy timing.

The flashy additions are the “toybox” systems. The goblin minion—conjured via a thrown potion—behaves like a living trap, grabbing a curious guard who wanders too close to a closet or choke point. That’s a clever twist on Styx’s old clone antics, with more emphasis on placement and timing. The mind manipulation is the spicier wildcard: briefly puppeting a guard to walk them into hazards or isolate them from a group. Used well, these powers could recreate the cat-and-mouse rhythm Dishonored players love, just without the safety net of superheroic combat.

Crucially, none of this looks like “press button to win.” Cyanide is signaling higher demands, not lower. Noise management, line of sight, and light levels still seem to rule the sandbox. If you try to brute force your way through a patrol, the game looks ready to punish you quickly—and honestly, that’s the point of Styx. It’s for players who celebrate a perfect infiltration as the reward.

Vertical Maps and That Paraglider

Verticality has always helped Styx punch above its budget, and Blades of Greed appears to scale it up again. The new paraglider (yes, very “Link would approve”) isn’t about open-world freedom; it’s about stitching multi-level infiltration routes together. Drop from a chandelier into a balcony shadow, glide past a torchlit hallway, or escape a blown cover story with a quiet float to a lower ledge—it’s the kind of traversal that makes replays satisfying if the layouts support it.

Shards of Darkness flirted with bigger hubs and multiple entry points; this trailer hints at tighter, more vertical puzzles rather than bloated sprawl. If Cyanide nails sightlines and guard audibility—two things that were inconsistent in past entries—these levels could scratch the same itch as classic Thief fan missions: layered, readable, and ripe for creative solutions.

Cyanide’s Track Record: Ambitious Ideas, Uneven Execution

I like Cyanide’s scrappy AA energy. They’re the studio behind Styx, Blood Bowl, and 2018’s Call of Cthulhu—all brimming with ideas, rarely flawless. The upside: real mechanical identity. The downside: janky animation, patchy AI, and launch-week roughness. The trailer promises “new ambitions” in presentation; I’m hopeful, but I’ve been burned before by stiff stealth takedowns and guards who either psychic-detect you or miss you entirely. For Blades of Greed to sing, Cyanide needs to tighten feedback loops: clear detection states, consistent sound propagation, and generous but fair checkpointing.

One big question the trailer didn’t answer: co-op. Shards of Darkness experimented with it, and the series’ clone mechanics lend themselves to two-player mischief. If co-op returns, it could be a quiet killer feature; if not, solo design focus might yield sharper levels. Either way, transparency before launch would help players plan.

Why This Matters Now

We’re in a weird stealth moment. Hitman continues to own the systemic assassination lane, Assassin’s Creed drifted into action-RPG territory, and Splinter Cell is still stuck in remake limbo. There’s room for a mid-budget, no-compromise stealth sim that makes you study a room like a puzzle box. Styx’s goblin anti-hero vibe gives it flavor, but it’s the purity—the “don’t get seen, think three moves ahead” demand—that sets it apart.

If you loved creeping through Dishonored without using lethal powers or replaying Hitman levels to perfect the silent assassin run, keep Styx: Blades of Greed on your radar this autumn. If you want power fantasy and forgiving combat, this probably won’t be your thing—and that’s okay. Not every stealth game needs to be a superhero sim.

TL;DR

Styx: Blades of Greed brings back strict, systems-driven stealth with smart new toys—goblin minions, brief mind control, and a paraglider for layered routes. It looks like a win for stealth diehards, but Cyanide’s usual polish concerns remain. Launching this autumn on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series.