Pistol equip restriction + elimination streak 
Best escalation.
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Honestly, the Kotti Paradigm is one of my favorite escalations. I approached it as a puzzle, and it was fun to take my time and figure out a consistent route. It presents a challenge that extends beyond the pure gameplay, but really took place in the head. You couldn’t just wing it, you really had to plan and think on your feet at the same time. The three eventual targets have interesting routes, and interesting ways to modify these routes, making for additional pieces in this intricate puzzle.
I think it’s also the first escalation that only had three escalation levels, setting a very positive trend for future escalations.
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I love puzzle style contracts/escalations, and I love really challenging contracts, but this isn’t a good example of either. I can kill the first two targets in a minute but the third is such a pain. Literally the only way I’ve ever been able to take out the third target unnoticed is dress as the sheikh, sabotage the auction, change back, put a gun in the staircase she escapes from, distract the guard with a gun, put coins near the gun place to keep him distracted, and hope to hell he doesn’t notice randomly when I try to leave past him to get to the basement exit like he did when I just tried it before posting this thread. It takes ages, is convoluted as hell and is not fun. Or do you have a better method?
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it should be fine as long as there’s no unlocks tied to completing it (aside from it helping with mastery). i feel like its one of those things people love to hate, just look at bigmooney’s playthrough of it. hilarious
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Agreed. I also think the world map start screen is the best out of the trilogy.
That’s what she… never mind. Anyway, if we can stuff a sniper rifle in a tiny suitcase, why not a battle axe!
Would have been cool if IO had stuck with the idea of that stalker AI. We could have had a couple agents in Berlin tail you over time. But only if they’d managed to improve it, that escalation was a rough one 
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not the same thing but the constant’s behaviour in sgail is quite similar, his route will change depending on where you are. i think that could have been adapted quite well to make the ica agents more than just basic enforcers
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I know they at least re-used it in the Sarajevo Six, the Colorado target follows you the same way the stalker did. Not sure the mechanic ever left Colorado tho 
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Afaik Montgomery has this
If you’re on PC, (not that you might be) can’t you just unbind that key? Would be a nice workaround at least for some people.
PS4 for me, but after a couple more accidental pushes and some swearing at the television I finally remembered not to jump.
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Oof, I feel your pain. It’s even worse that the level fails a few seconds after you’ve hit the agility button, so it’s really heartbreaking realizing at the same time as the level ends “shit. I jumped over that fence.”
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As a player who prefers stealth challenges over puzzle ones it’s definitely not one of my favorites, but man are there a lot of worse ones from 2016. There are some escalations from back then I never even finished, which I can’t say about H2 and H3 so far.
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Unless it’s only with certain disguises, I don’t think that’s the case. He’s had the same route regardless each time I’ve played.
I’ve replayed most of the escalations in H3 and it’s the worst one so far, no offence to Kotti. I’m sure the ones with mines were worse, but the therapy made all the bad things go away. 
The Kotti Paradigm makes you think about how to traverse the entire palace in your suit without climbing, which is great. However, it features all the annoying things about escalations. You need to find a specific item. You have no idea how hard the escalation is really going to be until the last step. You have to go a very, very long time without messing up. The SA method I’ve seen relies on abusing AI behaviour. There’s a huge loophole in the rules… which I’ve interpreted as “screw it, it’s massacre time”.
The worst escalation isn’t this one. That title goes to the one that remains only in H2016 that had mines, but the safety/remote device location had a few different spots it could spawn into after each restart.
Fuck that one right in the ear.
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I had also hoped IOI would experiment more with the stalker concept. Reminded me of It Follows but with the AI creepily walking towards Agent 47.
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