The Vatican level is a worst experience of 2024.

[jackar4444]

Before we start the main text, the opening part borrowed from Raiders was a very well-worked tutorial that introduced the game, gave a sense of what the game would look like, and showed what skills it had, and

The level before entering the Vatican was also a decent level that explained the game's system that changed from the opening and started getting interesting.

However...

Vatican level, it only left me with the feeling of overall horror from my experience.

The poorly animated Half-Life 2.5 level of NPC face modeling. The NPC face modeling was so low-quality that it felt like a different game from the opening part borrowed from Raiders.

The 'doors that can be opened from the other side', which can always be carried around half-covered, completely blocking the view and at the same time not achieving the original purpose of the tool at all, and even the map system where you have to go into the journal tab to see a full page and at the same time cannot understand the structure at all. The existence of this system and the intention of the developers who created it felt like cosmic horror.

The interaction with NPCs was at the level of 'Hey, this is an NPC in this game and it's just a background to make you think you're in the Vatican, don't expect anything more', and taking pictures of the Sistine Chapel with the camera was understandable, but Indy's dialogue, which took pictures of the NPCs' trivial actions and commented on them, was cringe. It felt like the developers were making me experience an attention deficit disorder simulator.

Unlike the Raiders part of the opening, this game was made with a development philosophy that aims for a poor immersive sim, and the shortcomings of that poor development ability are maximized in the Vatican section, which is filled with only a few things like combat, sloppy animation, technically outdated textures, meaningless detours, and trivial puzzles, which maximizes the confusion. The scariest experience I had in 2024 was playing the Vatican part of this game.

In many parts of the game, there are parts where the developers have vague ideals and are suspected of developing without a vision to realize them and without an important part of the brain. One of the parts that feels repetitive in the Vatican level is when Indy returns to his acquaintance, a priest, with four photos of inscriptions and talks to him. Indy has to hold a magnifying glass and move the mouse cursor to each point of the photo and press the fingerprint that pops up there. The control feel and the part where the cursor and target are not in sync made me neurotic. It makes me mad to the point where I wonder what kind of crazy bastard made this.

The developer seems to have never played a movie or other game while living in the 22nd century, and the connections between cutscenes in the playable action parts seem to have been done by the world's most insensitive editor, and most of the cutscenes have meaningless dialogue and a rhythm that ruins immersion, and are impossible to skip.

Even in actions where you have a key to open a door or just grab the doorknob and turn it, you have to perform two actions: one to focus on the doorknob and the other to turn the doorknob/key. I absolutely cannot understand the meaning of this second action. I can infer that the developer's philosophy is that they tried to increase user immersion by having the character perform even the smallest actions themselves, but this is an action that has no understanding of the rhythmic elements that help with game immersion. This kind of inducing immersion through actions would be an editing technique that would be helpful in situations where the action itself would be worth focusing on if it were a movie. By attaching small actions only in these places and not including the distance to perform such detailed actions in other actions, the consistent projection of the development philosophy itself is not established, and instead, it feels like an unnatural sense of discomfort and the discomfort of having to double-click a simple action unnecessarily. What did the developers really want to do?

[bshock]

Some of the best level design I've played in a game. The Vatican is Machinegames showing the rest of the world how to design an intricate and compelling open world hub.

[Ransom]

Originally posted by jackar4444:

Before we start the main text, the opening part borrowed from Raiders was a very well-worked tutorial that introduced the game, gave a sense of what the game would look like, and showed what skills it had, and

The level before entering the Vatican was also a decent level that explained the game's system that changed from the opening and started getting interesting.

However...

Vatican level, it only left me with the feeling of overall horror from my experience.

The poorly animated Half-Life 2.5 level of NPC face modeling. The NPC face modeling was so low-quality that it felt like a different game from the opening part borrowed from Raiders.

The 'doors that can be opened from the other side', which can always be carried around half-covered, completely blocking the view and at the same time not achieving the original purpose of the tool at all, and even the map system where you have to go into the journal tab to see a full page and at the same time cannot understand the structure at all. The existence of this system and the intention of the developers who created it felt like cosmic horror.

The interaction with NPCs was at the level of 'Hey, this is an NPC in this game and it's just a background to make you think you're in the Vatican, don't expect anything more', and taking pictures of the Sistine Chapel with the camera was understandable, but Indy's dialogue, which took pictures of the NPCs' trivial actions and commented on them, was cringe. It felt like the developers were making me experience an attention deficit disorder simulator.

Unlike the Raiders part of the opening, this game was made with a development philosophy that aims for a poor immersive sim, and the shortcomings of that poor development ability are maximized in the Vatican section, which is filled with only a few things like combat, sloppy animation, technically outdated textures, meaningless detours, and trivial puzzles, which maximizes the confusion. The scariest experience I had in 2024 was playing the Vatican part of this game.

In many parts of the game, there are parts where the developers have vague ideals and are suspected of developing without a vision to realize them and without an important part of the brain. One of the parts that feels repetitive in the Vatican level is when Indy returns to his acquaintance, a priest, with four photos of inscriptions and talks to him. Indy has to hold a magnifying glass and move the mouse cursor to each point of the photo and press the fingerprint that pops up there. The control feel and the part where the cursor and target are not in sync made me neurotic. It makes me mad to the point where I wonder what kind of crazy bastard made this.

The developer seems to have never played a movie or other game while living in the 22nd century, and the connections between cutscenes in the playable action parts seem to have been done by the world's most insensitive editor, and most of the cutscenes have meaningless dialogue and a rhythm that ruins immersion, and are impossible to skip.

Even in actions where you have a key to open a door or just grab the doorknob and turn it, you have to perform two actions: one to focus on the doorknob and the other to turn the doorknob/key. I absolutely cannot understand the meaning of this second action. I can infer that the developer's philosophy is that they tried to increase user immersion by having the character perform even the smallest actions themselves, but this is an action that has no understanding of the rhythmic elements that help with game immersion. This kind of inducing immersion through actions would be an editing technique that would be helpful in situations where the action itself would be worth focusing on if it were a movie. By attaching small actions only in these places and not including the distance to perform such detailed actions in other actions, the consistent projection of the development philosophy itself is not established, and instead, it feels like an unnatural sense of discomfort and the discomfort of having to double-click a simple action unnecessarily. What did the developers really want to do?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThJcHjCI9j4

Originally posted by bshock:

Some of the best level design I've played in a game. The Vatican is Machinegames showing the rest of the world how to design an intricate and compelling open world hub.

exactly! the map is designed like a souls like castle from fromsoft itself

[jackar4444]

if you guys who reading this article, for your information, the good example I can refer is the level designs of game 'GloomWood'

[Agent4Seven]

The Vatican part ruins pacing and is way too long for the beginning of the game.

[Sharkon]

I liked the Vatican. there are worse places like Sukhothai for instance.

[Swamp Fox]

I'm thinking when they detonate the dirty bomb on Christmas that will probably be worse

[katzenkrimis]

Originally posted by jackar4444:

You have to perform two actions.

One to focus on the doorknob and the other to turn the doorknob/key.

I cannot understand the meaning of this second action.

Sounds like you are new to gaming.

These are the intricacies of video game design that many people like, or are not at all bothered by.

Video game design is an art. Opening your front door in real life is not.

[FuryX]

For me that level was a huge step back in the NPC's. The faces look odd, and it felt like WOLF3D when it comes to NPC variety.

They have a bout 4-5 'guard' type npcs and they are tthe red shirt guy, the blackshirt/brown pants guy, and the soldier, later with a 'captain' type, and they are the same. Same face, same look, same open shirt.

Textures on non animated objects are fantastic and path tracing is looking solid, but wtf happened to the NPC's faces, and just variety?

[Origami]

Originally posted by bshock:

Some of the best level design I've played in a game. The Vatican is Machinegames showing the rest of the world how to design an intricate and compelling open world hub.

I especially enjoyed the part where I had to search the dig site for someone, who was nowhere to be found until I found the specific note telling me where he is, which made him magically appear where there was nothing before.

Or the same thing with a key magically appearing in a previously empty room, simply because I talked to a NPC which triggered it to spawn.

This is absolute rubbish design.

[JammyGuns]

I feel the Vatican and Giza sections are both too bloated especially if you have a little fomo over grabbing everything... The story has a decent pace in and of itself but can somewhat lose momentum with Indy (the player roleplaying as Indy of course) running around everywhere picking up notes and magazine etc - never mind deciding to enter an underground fight club for some reason... I'm all for some collectables / hidden secrets but generally less is more with these things.

[HeideKnight]

The Vatican is the first open world like area in the game and for me it is also where the real game starts. Because you can move around everywhere (except the enemy's camps, of course) and there are even a number of vertical levels where Indy can climb on rooftops and such. I really did like the exploration in this game, that is, looking around for hidden secrets without any guide or without using the map.

But when I needed the map to find certain locations I thought that this has been implemented quite well in the game. Because you can open the map, but still walk at the same time. A far better design than if you would have to pause the game every time when looking at the map. And also better, I think, than using a minimap, which would have spoiled the immersion that is created through the 1st person view in my opinion.

[HeideKnight]

Originally posted by jackar4444:

Even in actions where you have a key to open a door or just grab the doorknob and turn it, you have to perform two actions: one to focus on the doorknob and the other to turn the doorknob/key. I absolutely cannot understand the meaning of this second action. I can infer that the developer's philosophy is that they tried to increase user immersion by having the character perform even the smallest actions themselves, but this is an action that has no understanding of the rhythmic elements that help with game immersion. This kind of inducing immersion through actions would be an editing technique that would be helpful in situations where the action itself would be worth focusing on if it were a movie. By attaching small actions only in these places and not including the distance to perform such detailed actions in other actions, the consistent projection of the development philosophy itself is not established, and instead, it feels like an unnatural sense of discomfort and the discomfort of having to double-click a simple action unnecessarily. What did the developers really want to do?

???

[Supermarine]

Originally posted by Origami:

Originally posted by bshock:

Some of the best level design I've played in a game. The Vatican is Machinegames showing the rest of the world how to design an intricate and compelling open world hub.

I especially enjoyed the part where I had to search the dig site for someone, who was nowhere to be found until I found the specific note telling me where he is, which made him magically appear where there was nothing before.

Or the same thing with a key magically appearing in a previously empty room, simply because I talked to a NPC which triggered it to spawn.

This is absolute rubbish design.

Yes, I agree. Those two are awful examples of bad design. If a game is open-world (or open-area) some extra attention should be paid. It was superbly done with some doors and secret areas, but the two situations you mention are just bad.

[Irvandie]

While it can be quite disorienting and limiting with all the verticality and locked door, Vatican is also the most fun map in this game.

Sukhotai for me is the worst map of all. The use of water really slows the game down.

Gizah is the most straightforward one. It's basically your standard adventure map. Easy and simple.

[Ted]

TLDR but I had no problem with this level, it was easy to understand and traverse and I don't understand why someone would feel it was so bad they had to write a novel about it