Making Hitman 3's Best Level

If there’s one thing you can say about Hitman 3, it’s that it’s not afraid to mess with the franchise’s established formula. In Dartmoor, you swap from assassin to detective, in an Agatha Christie-inspired murder mystery. In Mendoza, you need to take care not to harm your handler, Diana. And Dubai really amps up the Bond-style cinematic flair. But another level has, I think, the most daring twist in the entire trilogy.

So, welcome back to On the Level: a series about gaming’s greatest stages. And this time, we’re looking at Apex Predator, aka Berlin. ♫ Dance Music ♫ So this level takes place in a nightclub, hidden in the depths of an abandoned nuclear power plant. If you manage to get inside, you can strut across a packed dance floor. Or, you can sneak behind the scenes to find a secret biker hangout and drug lab. And, okay so far, so Hitman. But it’s the targets that make this one different. Instead of having one, two, or even three targets… there’s eleven. That’s right, in this one, eleven ICA agents are tasked with hunting down Agent 47, and are dotted in and around the club. And so it’s up to you to find them, and take them out.

This ends up giving the level a completely unique feel. Like, typically, you know everything about the targets in a Hitman level. You’re given a glitzy mission briefing about them, and their exact location is shown on your map. As if you’ve dropped an AirTag in their pocket. But Berlin is very different: on your first playthrough, at least, the targets are not initially identified, and not highlighted on your map or in your instinct vision.

So you need to scope out the level, look for suspicious characters, and wait for them to call into their handler to confirm they are an agent. AGENT THAMES: "Thames here, no update. Target probably bailed". Okay, so the fact they’re all enforcers - you know, the guys with white dots over their heads - does give the game away a bit. But it’s still an excellent twist on the formula that prizes careful observation. We first saw something like this as one of the objectives in Hitman 2’s Mumbai level - but expanding it to cover every single target makes it even more exciting.

Also, it’s usually your job, in Hitman levels, to work your way through tiers of escalating security… until you breach the level’s inner sanctum, and find a way to dispatch your target from within their tightly-locked fortress. But Berlin is different - the agents are tourists there, just like you. So every part of the stage, from highly public areas to secure back rooms, could potentially hold a target. This really rewards thorough exploration of the entire level, because you never know where you might find a target.

Another big change for Berlin is a move away from mission stories and highly scripted assassinations. Sure, one of the targets - Agent Montgomery - does have a small storyline that ends in a shootout. And there are some of the excepted scripted kills - like electrifying Agent Banner with dodgy DJ equipment. But most of the guys are more low-key affairs. Which is cool: there’s plenty of elaborate, point-and-click-style puzzle kills in Hitman, but Berlin’s agents put a stronger focus on 47’s more routine tools, and the systemic sandbox that underlies every Hitman level. Things like guns, distractions, poisons, and traps. Offing these dudes feels less like solving a puzzle, and more like solving a problem.

Another big change for Berlin is just how open-ended the level is. Hitman always puts a huge focus on replay-ability and player expression, but you’re still having to kill the same targets every time you play. In Apex Predator, though, you only need to kill five of the eleven targets in one go. Making for, what, over 400 different combinations? So, the level is going to be different, every time you play. Plus, after taking feedback from Hitman 1 and 2, IO Interactive lets you skip the linear story section after your first playthrough.

You can also pick different targets for different playstyles. So, five are well-placed for the sniper assassin mission. Another five might be best suited for suit-only. A further five might be great for speed-running. An extra wrinkle is the way each target drops a useful item - like Agent Tremaine, who drops a key for the radio tower. This can make certain targets more useful than others, depending on your goals. Finally, this set-up changes the way Hitman feels. Typically, the targets are unaware of your presence, as you slip through security unnoticed and then leave without a trace.

But in Berlin, they’re actively hunting for you. And as members of your old organisation, they’re... somewhat formidable foes. They’re all enforcers, they’re all armed, and - like mini Agent 47s, they’re disguised as bikers, club technicians, and party goers. This cat and mouse game puts you on your toes - and makes it even more satisfying when you show them who the real agent is. Now, it turns out that changing the Hitman formula so dramatically wasn’t an easy thing to pull off.

For this video, I spoke to two level designers on Berlin - Bjarne Kristiansen and Håkan Almer - who talked me through the many iterations and design decisions they made on the way to the final stage. So, for starters, the level was originally supposed to be more like a typical Hitman stage. Håkan: “In the beginning, we were aiming to have a primary target as always. Montgomery, the only one with a body guard in this level. And then having the other as optional. But then in the end we kind of found that… let’s just make everything optional so you have more freedom as you explore and do the level as you wish”.

They also wanted to have all the targets show up in your instinct vision from the drop. Bjarne: “We tried out earlier where all of the targets were marked from the beginning, but the first time you ever played the level it could actually feel really overwhelming. Like you had this big level, and you could see ten marked NPCs that were several floors below you, they were several floors above you. So you’d come out in this area and just be like ‘okay, there’s so much going on’. It felt really overwhelming. So that’s why we also wanted to go with this you have to find them and identify them”.

The designers also had to figure out how to introduce more dangerous targets than we’re normally used to. Bjarne: “I think Berlin is actually the first level that tried working with armed targets that would fight back. Which was also a big thing to figure out: how would we make that work and how would we design for that? You wouldn’t have them running into lockdown, right? They wouldn’t have bodyguards as such. They would just immediately start trying to kill you”.

Håkan: “We tried out at one point, as well, to have them very aggressive. When they saw you, just pull out their gun and instantly shoot you. But that was not great. Super punishing”. Bjarne: “It was just so difficult, like they spotted you once and you were just dead”. “In early versions, I think they were walking around in pairs, as well, trying to protect each other so you had to deal with two targets at any given time.

But I think that felt like it was a bit too much. Right? You got busted by two people…” Håkan: “And you got two targets, almost always, at the same time. They didn’t protect each other.” Bjarne: “You might also expect that if one target starts engaging with you, that he would call all the other targets to come to one place. I think we prototyped that as well at some point. But that was just like, well, one target sees you and then suddenly you have all the targets in the same location and you’re done with the mission”.

Håkan: “It kinda comes back to that stealth trope, in a way. Like, that guards stand down. Feels silly on paper but it kinda works”. Bjarne: “Because there’s also one of those blueprints for a Hitman level is that there are many ways that everything can break. But the level always needs to be able to find its way back to being functional. The machine needs to be able to keep running, no matter what happens”. The team also needed to figure out how to introduce players to this new concept - which was partly the reason for this introductory sequence where you get to kill one agent for free.

The designers describe him as a “snack target” intended to tutorialise the concept. And then, how to update the player with information in a level with no handler? Well, you pinch the first goon’s earpiece, and can listen in on their handler. Good work, 47. So, there we have it. In the first two games, Hitman had some incredibly memorable levels. I highlighted my favourites from those first two games - Sapienza and Miami - in videos on this channel. But rather than just dropping in a bunch more standard stages, IO Interactive decided to mix things up for Hitman 3, with twists and escalations on the formula. It didn’t always work - but when it did, we got some of the best stages in the trilogy. Like my favourite level from Hitman 3, Apex Predator.

Thanks for watching. This video contained just a small snippet of my conversation with Bjarne and Håkan - we actually played through the whole level together, and chatted about everything from crowd technology to cut content. GMTK Patrons on the video tier can check it out, right now. Thanks so much for supporting what I do here.