If you didn’t know, trees in the HITMAN 1 locations were reworked for HITMAN 3. According to this article, the change was made to reduce performance costs, compress file size, and enable VR rendering. This is generally good, if not great, but some noticeable issues are present, especially while comparing HITMAN 3 to 1.
Whether or not the new trees are an improvement; that’s beside the point. The point is that the trees for HITMAN 1 had a specific scale and structure that suited the environment. They were likely designed, placed, and rotated to prevent both geometry and characters from clashing. In HITMAN 3, the newer trees are out of proportion resulting in branches clipping through walls and blocking paths from view. 47 is practically walking through leaves that hang far too low to be taken seriously. This is most noticeable in Sapienza which looks overgrown at the moment. It’s as if there was no thought to accommodate the size of the newer trees to the environment. I guess Sapienza doesn’t pay the gardeners to prune trees anymore. There sure are many of them, though.
Unfortunately, there are even more issues, like floating trees in Paris, missing foliage in Bangkok (now less dense and lush), and no collision for trees in Sapienza (47 can walk right through). It feels like assets were just swapped on a whim without consideration. Many trees also lack volume when viewed from a distance. This wasn’t an issue in HITMAN 1.
On a positive note, trees in HITMAN 3 locations (Dartmoor, Berlin, Mendoza, etc.) look very good and conform to the environment nicely. Great job! But this is odd, as the newer HITMAN 1 trees were likely created around the same time as the HITMAN 3 trees. I suspect the newer trees were done in a rush to enable VR at launch, possibly ignoring the artistic discipline taken in HITMAN 1. But is that worth the sacrifice for a mode most people don’t even play?
Whether you play VR or not, the standard way of playing suffers the consequences of “High-Performance Foliage”. Had the trees been optimized separately for VR, this likely wouldn’t have been a problem. I understand that the file size would increase, but adding 5GB for trees shouldn’t be an issue for a game that’s 60GB at launch (which isn’t much these days). Don’t get me wrong; I’m impressed by how much HITMAN 3 compressed HITMAN 1 and 2 while adding on top of that. Still, would it have hurt to dedicate a little more space to optimizing trees?
Look, I’m not criticizing the art of the trees themselves. But after comparing HITMAN 1 and HITMAN 3 (as seen in the images below), I fear we have lost something. The newer trees look fine but feel out of place, lacking any sense of scale and placement. Locations like Sapienza used to be my favorite, specifically for its stunning environment. Unfortunately, its artistic integrity has been tampered with, and I can’t help but cringe every time 47 walks through leaves that are far too overgrown to be realistic. This also tampers with sniper points in Sapienza now obstructed by branches that weren’t there to start. It feels needlessly clumsy, especially for someone like me who loves experimenting with the sniper rifle. Sapienza is adored for a reason, but personally, it always breaks the immersion in an otherwise stellar video game.
If HITMAN 1 launched with HITMAN 3 trees in 2016, I probably wouldn’t be posting because there’s nothing to compare. I’m only posting this because I love HITMAN and IO Interactive and I want people to have the best experience while playing. I’m simply making an argument as to what we have lost. Yes, there are many things to be grateful for, but I think I’m making a fair observation, and hopefully, this won’t be overlooked. Thanks for reading!
Here are the images: https://imgur.com/a/gWEkRT2
PS: This is my first post so I couldn’t upload more than one image. The link was added instead. Sorry for the inconvenience.
