broadly speaking, what do you consider ‘good’ level design?
have you played bm recently?
i’d say the addition of vaulting and cover alone were huge qol additions. the latter in particular meant you no longer had to stand up against a wall to see into a corridor or room like you were a bald blair witch.
you need to go into more detail to make your point clearer, otherwise you’re just repeating a statement.
now, i’m way too lazy to get into each level of Woa, so i’m only going to do Paris
(Note: when i say WoA has the worst level design, it doesn’t mean it’s always bad, just not as good as the other games).
Paris
Most of it is empty space, makes sense because i remember that IOI advertised it as (i think) 6 times bigger than King of Chinatown.
There are 2 “main” areas (Inside/Chateau and Outside) to the level and i’m going to explain both seperately.
In the starting area, you can go to the right, when you go to the right there’s a parking area with guards prohibiting you to get into that area, if you do get into the area, you can go to the left (towards the tree i think) you can go to the right side of the chateau.
However if you go to the right there’s just some green plants and absolutely nothing (maybe a screwdriver or something but that’s not important now is it).
the whole back “garden” of the chateau is also useless, there’s a helicopter in the middle of the field (why? but that doesn’t matter), to the right is a small area with 3/4 guards patrolling, and you can go to the sewer to get to that massive “thing” to snipe the targets.
To the left there’s the meeting place with Novikov, which is too big, too easy to navigate through the guards.
all of that is bigger (in surface) than the chateau when it could have been so smaller, 47 was made very clunky in the new game and moving feels painfully slow many times, it’s like the level is the Bjarkhov bomb.
Anyway, bad level design because too much empty space
This is similar to the problem above, but not exactly for the same reasons.
The attic is fine, same goes for the 3rd floor
The 2nd floor though, has many rooms i have no idea why they exist and never end up visiting them, the best example is the the area with the firework controller, it’s connected to many rooms, but they all look the same, contain nothing (except maybe screwdriver or crowbar), and generally do have nothing in them.
Similar for the first floor (or ground), there’s areas i don’t see the point of, for example the weapon showroom, the room with the camera, etc.
The main problem with the design in all levels, is not exactly the design itself but rather how it ties into the (not very good) mechanics of the game, like Absolution, it’s heavily encouraged to use the “Instinct” mode, the map is static, and there’s A LOT of waiting.
Actually that might be my real problem, not the level design but the mechanics of the game which are really clunky compared to Blood Money.
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the levels are bigger spaces because they were designed to accommodate the main mission, contracts, escalations, elusive targets and (occasionally) bonus missions, where a lot of those spaces are/can be used.
i see you havent, because vaulting was always present (in BM at least)
cover is useless, you can just crouch.
I have no idea what you’re talking about with the last one, as you still have to do that in WoA.
2 things.
The entire area needs to exist (everything has a purpose)
Make the player want to explore the area
So as dumb as it sounds, End of the Road from absolution is a level with great level design.
Like i said, better Level Design.
Feels like an actual hitman game (dark and moody, soundtrack is off but 
i can live with that)
Story is actually better than WoA (that doesn’t mean it’s good though).
Actually felt like hitman levels (many were you are being chased, although you don’t have targets, was always major point in the hitman games, like “the Setup” “Asylum Aftermath” “Deadly Cargo” and i could cite a few more) (Sidenote: this is also why i consider Colorado a fantastic level).
Contracts mode in that game was more fun than WoA.
i could find a few other things if i really put my mind to it but i’m too lazy to do that right now
I already mentioned it if you would have read my post, but you weren’t able to even do that, were you?
because recycling is always better than making new original stuff 
more seriously, that’s irrelevant from a game standpoint.
As a multi purpose map, sure it can be great,
But when i play “The showstopper” those rooms are still unused, doesn’t matter if other “extras” (escalations, ETs, etc.) use them.
TheKotti definitely thinks the same, and he’s a hardcore fan, so i truly doubt that only 0.01% of players would think that, even my brother who played the reboot (only 2016) agrees with me.
my brother is 17 years older than me, he actually played the first game when it was released, before i was even born.
Thus no, this cannot be possibly just myself
A general reminder. If you are unable to engage in a civil discussion without resorting to name calling, then you have nothing to do in this or any other thread on forum.
you can vault over any low walls? that’s genuinely news to me! 
cover is for staying out of sight and still being able to see what’s ahead.
if you needed to look down a corridor without being seen in bm, you would walk up to the wall and angle the camera. maybe crouch. it looked dopey compared to using the cover system in woa or absolution, which also allows you to switch cover smoothly and shoot enemies/throw items while remaining hidden.
so, no, you don’t have to do that in woa. i think it’s an excellent addition in terms of both gameplay and ‘immersion’.
you have to be shitting me. it’s basically a large room with a target in the middle
as you may be able to tell, i really hated end of the road. it’s one of the many levels of absolution that felt like nothing. i played it thinking “why am i even doing this?”
for me, a good hitman level is basically promenade theatre. it’s a sandbox space that ‘feels’ real and has a clockwork diorama going on within it. the game then let’s the player prod at the world and become a spanner in the works in any number of ways, often by using the environment or items to manipulate npc behaviour in a beneficial way.
it needs to have myriad different ways to complete the hit. the environment needs to work seamlessly with mission design and be robust and open enough to accommodate the player’s imagination, not just the developer’s. it needs an array of spatial puzzles. it needs chokepoints that require the player to traverse an interesting, hazardous space, though they also need multiple solutions to overcome.
there’s loads more to it, but i’m too lazy write them all 
mumbai, basically.
it certainly is when you’re a relatively small studio that is on a budget and is releasing a live service game based on a property which has almost always been designed around replaying the same levels in different ways.
phew!
the maps were designed with multiple uses in mind. regardless of whether you ignore that fact or not, it is literally a principle part of their design. 
I actually like Untouchable as final mission. Not as level, but as final mission it’s great. However, if I would to design final level for H3, I would do a tanker level, in international oceans.
10 posts were split from this topic.
Player creativity flourishes more with less developer intended kills rather than having 35 accident kills/m².
I love WOA and I do think it’s the pinnacle of the series so far but I can’t help but be overwhelmed sometimes by the amount of options available in each level. When I have a hundred options for each target, why should I care when I discover yet another chandelier drop or yet another secluded area where I can dispatch them? There have been many before it and there will be many after it; it simply loses value, much like how with money, inflation sets in when there’s too much of it flowing (I’m not an economist, don’t strangle me).
This is why Golden Handshake is one of my favourite levels in this game. Each kill opportunity feels worthy of my time, each approach feels like it’s ‘mine’ rather than blindly following the benevolent ghosts of the developers guiding me everywhere.
I’m not some masochistic gatekeeping stealth god who plays every game on expert difficulty with no HUD nor am I a legacy Hitman nut who thinks the older games have no faults. I simply want to explore a level, discover something on my own and then proceed to take advantage of it without the developers breathing down my neck saying ‘good boy, now go do X’.
It’s not even a problem of playing with all gameplay HUD elements on, as my complaints lie with the overall gameplay loop. Every area feels carefully crafted just to accomodate whatever kill method I can think of, making no idea special simply because I can’t shake the feeling I barely figured any of this out on my own but was rather just subtly guided to it.
Hitman 3 looks like it caught on to this ‘less is more’ approach (at least on the surface) but I haven’t played it to say much about it.
Just want to end this by repeating that WOA is not bad by any means and I still consider it to be objectively the best in the franchise even if Contracts is my personal favourite.
Couldn’t have said it any better.
I play with no minimap and no instinct, (I turn instinct on in contracts, of course).
It’s quite the experience, especially if you’re playing a map for the first time.
Not knowing where targets go is just a chefs kiss imo, reminds me of playing C47, aimlessly running around trying to find the target.
Here are more of my unpopular opinions that I wanted to get out there:
1, Hitman 2016 had the best soundtrack overall, though H2 is a close second.
2. Mumbai is an underrated level/dosen’t get much credit and it’s large and convoluted design is what puts it in S tier for me, not to mention the sick mission stories, especially the Kashmirian.
EDIT (forgot to put this one in) - 3. Hitman 2016’s briefings were the best because of the music and their short and brief length but H2 briefings had better visuals.
Dunno, I think there are many that consider Mumbai a very good level, there have been several polls with best levels and it was pretty high on the list 
Number one though…
Pffft. Pretty sure what Kotti mostly don’t like about is the inconsistent mechanics (head turning, bins, etc).
Want to respect your opinion but tbh, cannot take you seriously at all. Nearly think that you are a troll 
.
mumbai is the best level in the entire series.
