Since it rebooted its Hitman franchise in 2016, IO Interactive has been putting on a level design masterclass. Each of the missions the developer rolled out in what it calls its World of Assassination series has contained a huge, intricate collection of scripted and free-form systems that create harrowing moments, presented elaborate puzzles to solve, and allowed the player to orchestrate ludicrous and often hilarious situations. Levels are designed to be played over and over so you can explore, understand, and eventually master all their moving parts, and it's impossible to see everything one has to offer in a single playthrough (or in most cases, even two or three).

At first blush, Hitman 3 appears to be more of the same. It makes no drastic changes to the underlying formula, instead adding a few graphical upgrades and quality-of-life improvements to the existing Hitman framework. But Hitman 3 improves on the World of Assassination through consistently excellent level design--which is saying something, given how strong all the previous missions are. Hitman 3 is full of fun and fascinating ideas, many of which play with the concepts underpinning the last four years of Hitman levels.

Presumably knowing that players have spent all sorts of time mastering its many settings and systems, IO throws in some brilliant curve balls that require you to use your assassin skills and knowledge in clever, challenging new ways.

Since it rebooted its Hitman franchise in 2016, IO Interactive has been putting on a level design masterclass. Each of the missions the developer rolled out in what it calls its World of Assassination series has contained a huge, intricate collection of scripted and free-form systems that create harrowing moments, presented elaborate puzzles to solve, and allowed the player to orchestrate ludicrous and often hilarious situations. Levels are designed to be played over and over so you can explore, understand, and eventually master all their moving parts, and it's impossible to see everything one has to offer in a single playthrough (or in most cases, even two or three).

At first blush, Hitman 3 appears to be more of the same. It makes no drastic changes to the underlying formula, instead adding a few graphical upgrades and quality-of-life improvements to the existing Hitman framework. But Hitman 3 improves on the World of Assassination through consistently excellent level design--which is saying something, given how strong all the previous missions are. Hitman 3 is full of fun and fascinating ideas, many of which play with the concepts underpinning the last four years of Hitman levels.

Presumably knowing that players have spent all sorts of time mastering its many settings and systems, IO throws in some brilliant curve balls that require you to use your assassin skills and knowledge in clever, challenging new ways.

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Ninja Theory’s upcoming psychological horror game, dubbed “Project Mara,” will take place entirely in a single upscale apartment, with some serious technology being utilized to create incredibly realistic textures, lighting, and more.

In a four-minute video, Ninja Theory chief creative director and co-founder Tameem Antoniades explained how the studio attempted to “capture reality obsessively.”

Ninja Theory’s art team utilized a real-world apartment (seen in the video), took numerous samples from walls, floors, and other objects, and photographed and scanned everything. With that reference, Ninja Theory then recreated the materials (such as a bit of leather) and generated procedural shaders and detail maps to make the materials as true to life as possible.

“A funny thing happens when you get that close to a material, when you get as close as a human eye can possibly see,” Antoniades said. “Things that seem flat from afar become 3D. You start to see details, you start to see edges, edgeware, you see lint, you see dirt. You see all kinds of stuff that is 3D geometry.”

To give you an idea of what Antoniades means, Ninja Theory shows off in-game renders of a carpet with countless individual bumps and curls in its threading, and hair and dust scattered along a wall. Side by side, the in-game renders certainly give the real world a run for their money.

Watch Ninja Theory's previous teaser trailer, which shows off some minor story details.

Ninja Theory also utilized the skills of Clear Angle, a 3D scanning specialist company, to scan the entirety of the apartment. This allowed Ninja Theory to have a working “point cloud” of the apartment, allowing the team to ensure everything has a proper sense of scale and shape.

Perhaps most impressively, Ninja Theory’s artists used procedural generation to create this level of detail across the apartment, a task that Antoniades says would have been impossible by hand. You can see their work in the images below.

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Project Mara was announced in early 2020 alongside Ninja Theory’s Hellblade: Senua’s Saga. Ninja Theory is now a part of Xbox Game Studios, so expect to see its titles release as first-party Xbox exclusives on consoles and PC. From what we’ve seen so far, Project Mara appears to follow a young woman plagued by “mental terror” based on real accounts and research.