AGENT 47: Hello, Game Maker's Toolkit Something that I love about stealth games is the
way they often have these large, open-ended levels. Stuff like Camp Omega in Metal Gear Solid:
Ground Zeroes. Or the various shifting mansions in Dishonored
2. Or the intricate Palisade Bank in Deus Ex:
Mankind Divided Unlike a lot of video game levels, which can
feel like linear and claustrophobic theme park rides, these stealth stages feel more
like real places. You can scope them out from high-up vantage
points, choose your route as you go, and deal with situations however you like. But no game does this quite like the Hitman
series. The franchise is jam packed with memorable
levels, like the opera house in Blood Money. The seaside town of Sapienza in Hitman 2016. Or the drug fields of Colombia in last year’s
Hitman 2. Every single level is an intricately designed
and fully explorable space, filled with people going about their business on clockwork routines. You can enter almost every building, pick
up dozens of objects, and disguise yourself as loads of different people. So, I’m left wondering - how, exactly, is
a Hitman level designed? Well, to figure this out - let’s focus on
a single level. And I’m going to pick the bombastic Florida-based
racing mission from Hitman 2, called The Finish Line. Let’s zoom out and look at the Making of
Miami. Of course, there’s only so much that I can tell
you about the making of this level. But I know a couple guys who can help… JAKOB: Yes, my name is Jakob Mikkelsen and
I’m game director on Hitman 2. ESKIL: I’m Eskil, I’m the associate game
director on Hitman 2 So I wanted to know where a Hitman level began. What’s the very first step taken when bringing
one of these stages to life. JAKOB: So typically we brainstorm a lot of
locations, and then it’s like “wouldn’t it be cool if… 47 went to a race,” “wouldn’t it be
cool to do a fashion show,” “wouldn’t it be cool to do the streets of Mumbai with
all the slums and all that stuff”. So that’s kind of the originating idea. So this level is set during the Global Innovation
Race: a sort of Formula 1-style race on the coast of Miami. Globe-trotting assassin Agent 47 can explore
the food stands, the paddocks, and VIP lounges - all while a race speeds on around him. Developer IO Interactive liked this idea because
games set at racing events always put you on the track - but this Hitman level would
let you explore the areas you never normally get to explore: everything but the track,
basically. So, what’s next? JAKOB: Once we’ve settled on a location,
we begin to develop the characters. In Miami it’s the Knoxes - how do they work
in the mission? Miami has two targets for Agent 47 to assassinate:
there’s a racing driver called Sierra Knox, and her father: the inventor Robert Knox. Robert Knox is what IO calls a “dweller”
- he sticks to just one location. That’s his office building where, other
than a tiny public showroom, the entire location requires strict security clearance. IO calls that a “fortress”. If left to his own devices, Knox sticks to
a pretty small loop. He visits the Android testing lab, looks out
over the balcony, talks to some scientists, heads upstairs to his office, and so on. He simply repeats this loop over and over
again. Sierra Knox, however, is a very different
beast. For the first 20-odd minutes she’s driving
around the race track in her car. There are ways to assassinate her while she’s
driving, but she’ll also start a new routine, on foot, after the race ends. Now she’ll bounce around the VIP area and,
at this point, she’s more of a “roamer” - a target who walks around more public spaces. So that’s the location and the targets dreamt
up. What’s next? JAKOB: And then we ask the question, the recurring
question, “what could possibly go wrong here, and how can Agent 47 get a grip on the
situation, how can he affect the situation?” So Robert Knox might be stuck in a predictable
little loop, but that clockwork pattern can be disrupted in lots of different ways. Mess with the air conditioning in his office,
and he’ll go to the bathroom to use eyedrops - which you have hopefully poisoned. Turn off the satellite, and he’ll go to
fix it - giving you a moment to boot him onto the track. Break his prized car, and he’ll come repair
it - giving you a moment to.... whoops, sorry pal. You can even get him to leave the offices
if you’re particularly smart. Each of these murders requires a bit of set-up. You’ll need to find items, like poison for
his eye drops or an octane booster to sabotage the car. You’ll need to visit various secure locations,
like Knox’s heavily guarded office, and you’ll often need to wear a certain disguise. And IO can use this multi-step approach to
tease you into more assassination possibilities. When you discover a military robot that uses
facial recognition to pick out and kill targets, your mind lights up at the possibility of
finding a photo of Robert Knox himself, to feed into the robot. JAKOB: We invite you in, and we set up the
moments in a way so you can take advantage. ESKIL: But you know this Mark, because you
touched upon it so nicely in the Art of Repetition, where you talk about the gunpowder - and of
course when you find the cannon there’s a tonne of gunpowder there so it’s not like
oh I need it here. But it is just to nudge you, and to tell you
“ooh, there is something else here”. And the exploding golf ball, it’s constantly
giving you little promises. And little temptations. Sierra has her own routines. When she’s on the track, you can of course
shoot her as she drives down the straight, or sneak into the Kronstadt pit building and
rig her car to explode. But there’s lots more ways to deal with
her when she gets off the track. You can dress up as a Flamingo and boot her
down a hatch. Kill her with a poisoned IV drip. Or off her during a drinking game. And at some point, you’ll probably figure
out that there are multiple ways to kill Sierra while she’s on the podium - like being able
to poison the champagne in the trophy, or rig the pyrotechnics to explode. You might overhear this in a conversation... RACE OFFICIAL: You could fry
everyone on stage if the pressure gets too high! Characters in Hitman tend have very useful
conversations the moment Agent 47 is in earshot. It’s one of the few ways Hitman feels quite
scripted and gamey, but it does give you that awesome feeling of overhearing useful information. You might also wander into the podium building
while exploring, and see that you can poison the champagne - another little tease. Or you might see the assassinations on the
challenge list. These can be a bit spoilerific (though, you
can turn them off) but they also give you even more hints at possible assassinations. But the really interesting thing is - by default, Sierra
doesn’t win the race. She’ll come second, meaning she won’t
visit the podium building at all. This adds a really cool wrinkle to the level. To get her to the podium, you either need
to figure out how to help her win, or make her opponent - Moses Lee - lose. There’s almost point and click-style problem
solving going on, where you need to figure out what steps to take to get Sierra to win. Now IO went back and forth over whether Sierra
should win or not, but ultimately decided to make her lose. JAKOB: Making it so that you can make the
decision whether she wins or not - it puts you in power. I think that’s very Hitman-y.
ESKIL: There’s a lot of teasing. We like to taunt our targets as well. So now I’m gonna make her win, and then
I’m gonna kill her. JAKOB: There’s poetic justice. Pulling off these kills often means waiting
on the character’s schedules - the 5 or so minutes Robert Knox spends roaming Kronstadt,
or the nearly 20 minutes Sierra takes to drive around. And this waiting is a double edged sword for
IO. The schedules do make the world feel more
alive. In most games, it feels like the world is
designed specifically for the player, with bombastic events triggering perfectly for
you to see them. But in Hitman, the world marches on around
you, indifferent to Agent 47’s existence until he pushes against the simulation. And these perfectly choreographed schedules
do put more power into the player’s hands. JAKOB: If you know, as the player, that something
will happen, then you can build a plan on that knowledge. If you know that, hey, the fashion show’s
gonna end so Viktor Novikov’s gonna be on stage at some point. If you know that up front, then you can make
a plan for that and it will work. But they can also create headaches. ESKIL: Of course there’s the time aspect. You set some stuff in motion and now you know
“oh god, that guy is...” You go into instinct and you just see this
little red dot and you know this is gonna take forever. So we do actually have them sometimes running
just to speed up. So, IO finds ways to deal with that. The running characters are one way - another
is a starting position that starts the mission with the race nearly over. And you can also find ways to speed things
up yourself. JAKOB: So often we try to make situations
where you can shortcut the entire thing. One example in Miami is that you can disqualify
Moses Lee and end the race, and then getting Sierra on the stage. And you can also disqualify Sierra and get
Moses on the stage. So instead of trying to make it a thing that
you have to wait for, or a limitation, then we try to turn it around and then make it
something that you can also control to some degree. So that’s the high concept design. The location, the targets, and the dramatic
moments. Now, let’s talk about the nitty gritty of
the level design. So, Miami is basically split into two halves. On the one side is the stands, the food trucks,
VIP bars, the paddocks, a medical tent, and a motel. On the other is the multi-storey Kronstadt
building, the podium building, and the marina. For the most part, you can see the left as
Robert’s domain, and the right as Sierra’s. The two halves are separated by the track,
where various racers are driving around. JAKOB: Having a race track that cuts your
level in two is a really bad idea if you want to make a level where it’s easy to get from
A to B. So the level designers spent quite a lot of time on finding as many ways to cross
the track, spread all out throughout the level, up and down the track. That’s why there’s two overhead walkways,
and a number of subway passages that link up to an underground parking garage. Now, IO describes the design of some of the
best Hitman levels as being a “snail house” with “Swiss cheese”. And i think the best way to explain these
terms is to look to a place that should totally be a Hitman DLC level… IKEA. This Swedish furniture store tries to pack
as much stuff into one location as possible, and - ideally - it wants you to look at everything. So the store’s layout provides an obvious
and easy-to-follow path that takes you from the living room stuff, through the kitchens,
into the bedrooms, and through the children’s area before leading you - naturally - to the
market hall and checkout. That’s the snail house. This Swiss cheese is all the holes between
the rooms that create shortcuts - so seasoned IKEA veterans and staff members can bypass
entire sections and get to where they’re going more easily. In the world of Hitman, the snail house allows
the designers to fit everything in to a tiny footprint. An entire race track that feels credible,
with all the expected amenities and hundreds of NPCs can be squeezed into a tiny area that’s
optimised to run on consoles. However, the area still feels pretty enormous
because the windy pathways mean every major landmark takes considerable effort to get
to. And IO guides you to those locations, using in-universe navigation like
lines on the floor, helpful signs, and maps. However, the Swiss cheese effect allows for
dozens of secret ways to get to places more quickly. Fences you can scale, windows you can sneak
through, elevator shafts you can climb, back doors that open onto new areas. These create tiny shortcuts between the major
locations that give you a feeling of mastery as you find them. Where a novice hitman player is schlepping
it from one side of the map to the other, a veteran player can almost teleport around
the map. Here’s another level design technique. JAKOB: We try to avoid dead ends. Though typically toilets are dead ends. But most other rooms actually have at least
two exits. So you’re never stuck stuck. There might be some challenge or some things
you have to overcome, but you’re never at a dead end where you have to turn around. Multiple exits also means multiple entrances. So the obvious way to get into the Kronstadt
building is through the front door - but you can also enter via the parking lot, find a
route via the podium building, walk through this door up on the walkway, and more. This gives the player more options, and lets
them feel like they’re making their own decisions - and not following a set, scripted
path. With these locations designed, IO also thinks
about how the disguise system will work. Hitman, of course, is a unique stealth franchise
because the game isn’t really about hiding behind walls or in cardboard boxes: it’s
about hiding in plain sight. So you can knock out a guard, take his uniform,
and then wander about in the security offices without much worry. In Miami, Agent 47 can freely explore the
stands area and most of the Marina section unobstructed, as a member of the public. But he’ll need a VIP badge to access these
areas. And he can only explore these areas when dressed
up as a security guard. And it gets even more complex than that - you’ll
need to be one of the Knox’s elite guards to get into the hotel area, and each racing
paddock is locked off unless you’re dressed up in team colours. But often in Hitman, areas are built in tiers
of escalating security clearance. In the Kronstadt building, anyone can enter
the lobby and visit the showroom. But you’ll need an IT guy uniform to explore
the second floor, and a guard’s uniform to visit the top floor. JAKOB: When we design the level, early on
we map out: what people would be working here? What kind of disguises would be great? And then we have to figure out how are they
layered in terms of what gives you access to when. And then also how early do you meet them in
the level because if the first disguises you meet is the best one then we’re wasting
a lot of gameplay for no reason. For the smaller moments in a level, IO actually
learned a lot when making Hitman Absolution. This was a much more linear game in the series
with more traditional stealth moments like needing to distract some guards who are standing
in front of a door. For the more modern and open-ended Hitman
games, these microscopic stealth moments are simply scattered all throughout the level. So in the pit building for Moses Lee’s team,
this engineer needs to be distracted, probably by messing with a generator. And getting to this guy in the medical area
for one of Sierra’s challenges means dealing with this doctor, who can also be distracted
by a nearby generator. And now, there’s one last thing to do. JAKOB: And then from that point on, we iterate
like crazy. The more times we can actually boot up and
start the level before we ship it, typically the better it gets. We get smarter all the time. The developers definitely try to find moments
that make the game too easy or too hard, and rearrange elements until it feels right. For example, they fixed a section in Paris
in Hitman 2016 because Viktor Novikov was alone for too long, and became an easy kill. The designers also think about other challenges. Sniper Assassin requires IO to not giveaway
the sight lines too easily. The challenge is often about luring a target
into a good spot to take them out - not simply waiting around for the target to wander into
the perfect location. And suit only requires some more tinkering
- but not much. JAKOB: Suit only is interesting because we
don’t really have to do that much to actually make it work. No matter how hard we make this game, no matter
how hard we make it, they will always find a way to beat it. ESKIL: I remember thinking that in the beginning:
“this is impossible. There’s no way you could do suit only, and
then I remember Jakob just saying “no, don’t worry…” And that’s a Hitman level! But, these rules might not work for every
stage. JAKOB: I’m personally very opposed to rules
dictating how things should be, because then everything’s going to be the same. So I prefer that we use them as guidelines,
because we need to challenge ourselves in this thing. Indeed, IO tries to make each level different,
with different levels of verticality, different densities of people, different sizes. And even and thinks about them in terms of
being in a chain. So the mission before Miami - Night Call - is
dark and claustrophobic. And the level after Miami - San Fortuna - has
an enormous fortress that takes up most of the map, leaving agent 47 very few places
he can explore safely. So the Hitman games have all sorts of level
design techniques - and I think they can be applied to all sorts of games. This idea of characters moving on a schedule
as a way to let players make plans, and make the world feel alive. This IKEA-inspired language of snail houses
and Swiss cheese. And the multiple tiers of safety. This is what makes Hitman levels so good,
so replay-able, and so much fun to master. And I think lots of designers can learn from
this. Hey, thanks for watching! And cheers to Jakob and Eskil for their time. All of my backers can watch the full interview,
over on Patreon... ESKIL: This is crazy where the one game where
you cannot drive a car, and the first thing we wanna do is show cars - is everybody gonna
go “ooh, you can drive in the new game!” Patrons on the behind-the-scenes tier also
get a look at the process of making this episode. Special thanks to everyone who supports GMTK
and keeps the show going, month after month!
I really like the point about making levels with no dead ends. Hitman's sandbox nature opens the game itself to more advanced methods of directing player's flow of progression, and making sure that players never stuck in any place requires both a creative and logical process. Maybe a room doesn't have to have two doors, but rather a window that leads to a ledge or a pipe that goes down or up one floor, or ventilation (which the new Deus Ex games heavily abused) that leads to other places. These new paths might be opened freely or require a tool/key, and the other side might have barriers for player like a camera or special identification system or restricted area. All of these sound so damn fascinating and level designers still have to find a way to put those together in the most natural manner possible.
If there's a game that I wanna brainstorm about, Hitman would be that game. There are so many possibilities and levels of subtle interactions presented inside sandboxes that work with immersive sim-like rules, I feel like thinking about what you can come up with in Hitman is just as fun as straight up playing the game.
The reason I love this series is because each level is a significantly sized hub world playground where you are an assassin that can kill either in the most simplistic clean ways, or creative bombastic ways and lots of ways in between. There is just a lot of freedom that goes a long way. On top of the fact that each level itself feels like it’s own character and is generally really well constructed.
It is kind of crazy to think that this is the only series that does this kind of thing and has generally been successful at it.
It was so cool that he got to interview some of the people at IO responsible for the level design. They even referenced one of his previous videos, so that must have felt pretty good for Mark.
All these Hitman levels are masterclasses in level design. Glad to see this kind of analysis applied to them.
The IKEA comparison was so apt!
The snail house + swiss cheese design explains all of Hitman's levels (and maybe in other stealth games like Dishonored). Building/Areas of Importance have more than one entry/exits (with specific conditions) and each of it's rooms/sections are interconnected, allowing for multiple ways to navigate.
Io should make a co-op heist game using (a modified version of) this level design language. The stealth mechanics don't need to be limited to just killing a target. Having a teammate or two distracting guards while you empty out a vault or download some designs from a computer would be sweet.
Especially if you are intended to replay the levels like in Hitman, you could start out gunning like every guard down when shit goes bad (and getting away with a 5 dollar bill you found on the floor), but several restarts in you could be stealing the crown jewels right out from under the guards' noses.
I love being a Hitman fan, the brilliance and minute detail on display with how each and every level is constructed in the games is just staggering. No matter how many hours you pour into the games (and some people pour in a LOT), there always seems to be something new you learn on each run through them.
I remember being doubtful prior to H2's release that IO-I could top their previous work (Sapienza, Hokkaido, Paris, all being some of the best levels in any game ever up until that point), but I've just been blown away by Hitman 2, its missions are so, so, so much larger and intricate than the previous ones, and it's hard to grasp to just what extent until you actually sit down and play it. If Sapienza was a good recreation of a coastal town, then Hitman 2's Mumbai is like a city, my head spins when I think about just exploring all of it.
And I love videos like these, because I feel like it just goes underappreciated by the overall gaming audience, and people should see the quality present in these games. People know of 'Hitman', they know Agent 47, and probably think the line ends at simply being a stealth game, as it feels as though few actually sit down and give it chance enough to see its purposefully-built sandbox nature, where all of this becomes so immediately apparent through a single playthrough of Miami, or Paris, or what have you. I think people see 'six levels' and they immediately connect that to a lack of content, when that's simply not the case, even without replayability it's a damn long game, and it's certainly built to be one of the most replayable singleplayer games out on the market today.
This was a fantastic video. I'd love for Mark to do more highly focused videos like this. The developer interviews added a lot too, although I understand that that's not always feasible.
Hey, so I've never played a Hitman game before, which one would be a good starting point for the series?