i’ll make a slightly longer post but right now having just played each level 1/1.25 times i pretty much love it. i don’t know how sold i am on character development stuff etc, but i don’t really understand the criticism of linearity, i didn’t feel that way about any of it other than the spoilered bit above, which doesn’t really apply
i do think the 3 levels feel different than the season 1/2 levels, there’s nothing here with the kind of maximalism of miami or marrakesh i don’t think, but i don’t mind that, and there are a few big experimental swings here i think are great
i know it’s likely to be mostly 3 stuff but i’m hoping they roll out escalations/elusives over levels from all three over the next year or whatever, i suspect these levels will only start to feel better as part of the whole
actually yeah is it weird they haven’t said anything about elusive targets yet? it seems weird to me, though i wasn’t paying attention the first few weeks of 1/2 launch i guess, maybe it’s normal
I think they were asked about Elusive Targets and were…evasive about it? It’s kinda hard to tell what their post launch plans are, which feels very different from the past games.
I hear ya though. There’s definitely a place in this series for tighter, less sprawling levels. I also haven’t replayed as many of these levels as I ought to have (Dartmoor is a ton of fun that first time through, but I’m curious how a non-detective run plays out).
Also neglected on my part to mention Mendoza, which seems downright colossal.
edit: maybe worth mentioning that I played this on PS4 Pro, and it felt fine. Heck, load times seemed snappier than they’ve ever been, which I guess might be part of why the whole entire trilogy fits in a smaller overall package.
Only “ah damn wish I had a beefy PC/PS5” moment I had was walking around Chongqing. If you like neon lights on wet surfaces, yowza. That level has ya covered.
Also worth mentioning in Chongqing - a whole row of washing machines failed to load their exteriors when I played the level. Just a guy leaning against dead air and some hovering metal drums. Only real bug I’ve seen!
i think maybe that washing machine thing is around for everybody, i reloaded and still had it, as well as a different issue with one of the lantern things hanging from above on the way to the laundromat
i had been thinking i’d be able to get a ps5 before this dropped and it didn’t pan out, but i was also real pleased with how it ran on ps4 yeah. i had actually just been playing some 1/2 levels before 3 dropped and the load times are definitely better in 3, particularly just opening the save/load menus, lol
No really neat or exciting unlocks, from what I’ve seen digging around in the Mastery menus.
A lot of it is necessary revisions of gear from the first two games (poisons, lockpicks, certain kinds of guns), operating on the assumption someone might own this game and not ever own the first two. So that I get.
I just want some fun goofy stuff to mess with. You took away my electrocution phone…let me have something
That last mission in that story, though…I just couldn’t do it. It’s an incredible way to end that plotline, but unless you know who exactly is the first infected in that level and beeline for them, it’s a fucking nightmare.
I’m sure it took me a lot of retrying but I found the best starting point is to try removing the nurse at the top of the entrance to a stairwell? My memory’s a lil fuzzy but it seemed to give the most time stopping the main culprit.
Have thoroughly played around in mendoza, berlin and dartmoor now. They are all so fucking good. I am so bad at berlin and constantly find myself shooting dudes when i shouldn’t be. Maybe part of it is that there’s the nazi biker gang and i dont really mind killing those dudes, and another part of it is i want to do the cool movie thing where you shoot a dude in the back in a club and nobody notices, which it seems you unfortunately can’t do.
I do find that the long winery tour + secret basement meeting path in mendoza has a couple variations that don’t play out as well as id hoped. Like the first time i did it as the chief winemaker, then became the sommelier and thats clearly the intended path. Then i tried doing it as corvo black and then cortazar or whatever his name is, but the sommelier never gets the wine out! So you have to do it. And then if you do bring it up as cortazar you dont get to be the guy to shoot tamara vidal which is kinda sad. And i was also hoping you could poison the whole bottle, but you have to poison all the glasses individually. The absence of a glass for Diana makes it so tempting to poison everyone else. And why doesnt vidal get any poured in her glass? I guess cause yates already knew he was gonna shoot her? Also 7 glasses of wine from one bottle is already pushing it so maybe there just wasn’t enough for her lol.
Oh its also bs that the lady on the berlin comms can tell when her men die but has no idea when theyre knocked out. Makes no sense and makes the puzzle of killing all of them way less interesting.
chongqing is too weirdly easy coming in between berlin, the best hitman level, and mendoza, a great finale level. and considering you’re burning the ica.
