Can we talk about the level design?

[Ritual Magick Lad]

I love the message of this franchise, don't get me wrong, but I was shocked at how poor the levels were put together in this game. It's not up to the standard of even the other games in this franchise. And what's with that main menu? Did you run out of money? It just seemed like air duct, hole in floor, air duct, hole in floor, like a bad half life 1 fan mod.

[nailernforce]

Completely agreed on this. The level design is really dampening the quality of this game. It's like all the rest of the game is made by people way more skilled than the level designers. I'm going to finish it, but am finding the individual levels very boring.

[Abyssrocker]

I've played through a few times now, and I'll tell you that the only thing that gets better is the sense of direction on where to go.

Otherwise, the levels themselves are really just not all that fun. Gunplay is amazing, especially since it has a surprisingly high ceiling for learning the industry and outs, and it's also very flexible for what little is really there (ahem, gun variety...).

However, making the most out of the gameplay is hard because sooooo many of the levels/missions are not suited for the game's own design.

For example, the Manhattan harbor side mission is basically a coin flip on whether that patrolling ubersoldat sees you, and once the alarm is raised, you could find yourself hunkering down for several minutes waiting until the nearby enemies stop spawning as you pick them off.

A big, BIG part of this comes down to how the bratwurst is made in Wolfenstein 2. You ever feel like once the alarm is raised that there are *more* enemies than there should be, with soldiers even flanking you from areas that there is no way they could have come from? That's because there isn't, and the game "cheats" by just plopping enemies down in spawn points until they're all dead.

You can see this by disabling the fog in the unofficial New Colossus Tweaker program, especially in Roswell's bunker. Enemies literally just spawn like in a multiplayer game, which would be fine, but the spawn points weren't given any logical placement, like being by a presumably sealed off door that you couldn't clear, or going so far as to roll in a troop transport to unload them (like in the New Orleans campaign with the panzerhund).

That only exacerbates already poor level design, such as being in the Texas farmhouse and being killed by a guy who materialized behind you.

It's really a damn shame because the better levels are like the bunkers where enemies can't spawn in ridiculous places or prevent you from moving forward because the waves won't stop in a level that lacks enough cover or otherwise interesting design to keep the fighting more engaging.

This has become a huge problem for the game's replayability because you already have to revisit the same, dull locations to get enough enigma codes, and far too few of the levels seem to get better as you replay them ; typically, you'll just realize how bloody small the game is and how much artificial padding they did to keep you from running through the entire game in half the time.

[Ritual Magick Lad]

I absolutely agree

[Tifu]

My biggest beef with the level design is that I was really psyched when the game offered you three mobility upgrades at one point: climb high, crawl in small vents or smash through things. Cool, so the game is going to encourage replayability by making it so you can choose differently ways to get through each level? wow cool...

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1240699111

Or... they could all just lead into the exact same room I guess, that works too ._. got a few examples of obstacles like this, with all three options in one screenshot.

I wasn't expecting completely different areas, but for that example, the stilts could have taken you to a damaged fire escape leading to the top floor so you can work your way down the level, the charge could have got you in here at the front of the building, and the crawl space could have taken you down a passage to the other side of the room. Sure, one of those options would be a lot easier to get through than the others, but you make the other levels favour the other two options, and then i feel like my decision made a difference to my game.

It's a lot of missed potential I feel :(