A New Home

You start in a small briefing room inside the MI6 training facility. M and Tanner walk you through what's expected for today's evaluation. Listen carefully as they outline the core stealth mechanics you'll rely on throughout the rest of the game.

This is essentially an extended tutorial, so take your time and don't rush. Pay attention to how movement noise works and how NPC vision cones operate, because these fundamentals will save you many times later on.

After the briefing, you arrive at your shared flat in a quiet London building. This is where you'll meet your roommates and get a feel for the living environment. Take a moment to walk around and explore the space before moving on to objectives.

The flat has several rooms and interactive objects that build atmosphere, though none of them are mandatory collectibles. You'll notice basic interaction prompts appearing here - opening doors, examining items, that sort of thing.

Once you leave your apartment, you enter the shared hallway of the building. This is where stealth training properly begins, as other tenants move about their daily routines. The corridors are narrow and visibility is tricky around corners, so you'll want to stay low and move carefully.

NPCs follow predictable patrol patterns here by design - it's teaching you to observe before acting. If you get spotted, you won't fail immediately, but treat this like a real mission anyway.

Down on one of the lower floors, you encounter other Double-0 trainees going through similar exercises. This section is mostly dialogue and cutscene driven, but pay attention to how they talk about the evaluation. There's some friendly rivalry here, and one trainee in particular offers unsolicited advice about the upcoming challenges.

Don't take everything they say at face value - some of it is deliberately misleading to test whether you're paying attention. The conversation ends when someone mentions the course has been upgraded from last year, your hint that things are about to get more serious.

You're sent back up to the flat with tasks to complete without being detected by observer NPCs placed throughout the apartment. These challenges test your ability to move through familiar space while avoiding observation - much harder than it sounds when people are actively looking for you. You'll need to retrieve items from rooms, close windows, and interact with objects all while staying out of sight. The observers have fairly tight vision cones, but their patrol paths are designed to give you small windows of opportunity.

At one point during the flat challenges, you're prompted to look out a specific window. This triggers a short scripted sequence where you observe activity on the estate below. Pay close attention to what you see, because the layout from above is the same area you'll navigate later.

The game is giving you a free reconnaissance opportunity - note where guards are, where cover sits, and how open spaces connect. It's nice design that rewards patience instead of just rushing to the next marker.

Once the flat challenges finish, you need to make your way out of the building entirely. This is trickier than retracing your steps because more observers have been positioned on the stairwells and in the lobby. The ground floor in particular has multiple NPCs covering the main exit, so you'll need an alternate route.

There's a service door near the back that works, but getting there requires timing movements between overlapping patrol routes. If you've been practicing timing, this is a satisfying test of those skills.

Stepping outside onto the estate during daytime presents a completely different challenge. Open areas mean less cover, and more people are about - not just observers but regular civilians too. The game introduces blending in here: you can walk at normal speed among crowds without arousing suspicion, as long as you don't do anything obviously suspicious.

Stick to groups when crossing open spaces, and use benches, planters, and market stalls as visual cover when breaking line of sight. Objective markers are spread across the estate now, so plan your route instead of beelining.

Objectives eventually lead you into the basement levels beneath the estate. This is where the tone shifts noticeably - lighting is dimmer, sounds echo more, and civilians are scarce. The basement bridges open daytime stealth with the tighter, tenser corridors coming up.

You encounter maintenance workers who are part of the exercise, and their routes are less predictable than NPCs upstairs. There are multiple rooms to navigate, some with useful cover and others completely exposed.

Deeper in, lighting fails almost completely and you navigate by emergency lights and the occasional flashlight beam. This section teaches how darkness works as cover - you can be literally within feet of an NPC and unseen if you're in deep shadow and staying still. The tradeoff is you can't see well either, so you'll rely heavily on sound. Enemies carry flashlights that sweep back and forth, and getting caught in a beam gets you spotted immediately.

A cutscene triggers once you reach the end of the basement corridors, marking the halfway point. You're contacted via comms by the evaluation lead, who lets you know the second half will be significantly more difficult. They also mention nocturnal conditions are about to activate - a fancy way of saying night is falling fast.

Take this moment to catch your breath, because pacing picks up considerably from here. There's a brief moment to explore a small safe room and collect your thoughts before heading back outside.

When you emerge back onto the estate, it's full night. The atmosphere changes entirely - where daytime felt open and crowded, night is shadowy, quiet, and far more dangerous. Most civilians are gone, replaced by trained observers and patrol teams.

Streetlights provide pools of light you absolutely want to stay out of, and cover that worked during the day may not work as well with flashlights and night vision in play. This feels like a classic stealth mission, putting everything you've learned to a real test.

Night brings a new set of objectives similar to the flat challenges, but on a larger scale against far more alert opposition. You move between objectives scattered across the estate while patrols actively hunt for intruders. Difficulty comes from overlapping routes and very few safe resting spots.

You'll probably get spotted a few times on your first attempt - that's normal. The key is learning from each mistake and figuring out which routes work and which are deathtraps.

The last major gameplay section is a gauntlet requiring navigation to a building on the far side of the estate with zero detections. This is a perfect stealth section - getting spotted means restarting from checkpoint. The pressure is real, but by this point you have all the skills needed.

The route takes you through gardens, around the heavily patrolled main courtyard, and finally through a narrow alley approach. Take it slow, observe patterns for several minutes before committing, and remember that patience always wins in stealth games.

After completing the stealth gauntlet, you reach the assessment area where Greenway, a senior instructor, waits to debrief you. This is a story-heavy section where your performance throughout the chapter is commented on - they'll note frequent detections, non-lethal tactics, that sort of thing. Even with messy sections, Greenway cares more about overall approach and decision-making than perfect execution. The conversation takes unexpected turns as they reveal the evaluation wasn't just about stealth - it was about how you adapt when rules change.

The chapter closes with a cutscene tying directly into Chapter 6. Without spoiling anything, you leave the training environment with new appreciation for how seriously MI6 takes the Double-0 program, and a hint that real operational deployment isn't as far off as you might think. Take a moment after the cutscene to review what you learned - all the stealth mechanics here (timing, cover, darkness, distractions, blending) will be used repeatedly and in more complex combinations ahead. If this chapter felt challenging but fair, you're well prepared for what's coming.