Silent Service

Silent Service's sub fantasy inspired Thief's unseen-strong, spotted-weak power dynamic. Ken Levine drew Thief's core tension from the submarine simulator Silent Service. A sub can strike unseen with torpedoes, but it panics when destroyers find it because it cannot fight them toe to toe.

This is the opposite of shooters, where the player stays strong when seen. The video frames the tension as "How powerful you are when you are unseen, and how weak you are when you are spotted." Make the player very powerful when unseen and very weak when spotted.