Architect Address - February 2021 (Patreon)

The second video was Why Hitman Isn’t a Stealth Game… or was it? Eagle-eyed viewers might’ve noticed that I actually changed the name from “How Hitman Teaches You To Be Creative” which, it’s just a bit boring right? That title could come from anyone but the line about it not being a stealth game is a statement, it challenges your expectations and promises some sort of critical angle which is what I always try and bring in.

Well, it’s been a little while since I’ve done one of these, apologies! Between Christmas and the last two videos being…. Uh… long and time consuming to make, I’ve not had the chance, my bad! Hopefully I’ll be able to get the next ones out a little faster. I think in general we’ve had a pretty slow start to the year and whilst that is mostly the result of me taking a two week break, I’ve also stopped and started on a variety of projects I’ll get around to finishing over the next few months I think!

The first of the videos that have come out recently is all about Immersion, what it means, what it is, and whether we should care about it as much as we do. This is a topic that has run rampant through gaming circles in the last couple of years, in particular surrounding high budget narrative games like cyberpunk, the last of us, bad rats, you know those kinds of games. Ultimately, immersion has been diluted and co-opted so many times that it’s sort of lost all meaning, but there’s utility in distinguishing games that break down the fourth wall as much as they can and create a unique sense of enjoyment through their verisimilitude.

Games like papers please, in other waters and even ones I didn’t mention like death and taxes aren’t traditional entertaining, but the way they put you in the shoes of a particular character and setting should be noteworthy. I guess the thing that bugs me about the way bi companies have stolen the term immersion is that it’s become synonymous with production values, when in reality it’s quite a specific experience that can often be achieved better with minimalist graphics and simplistic gameplay.

All in all, I’m pretty pleased with how this one turned out, even if I was hoping to talk about In Other Waters some more. It’s a really fantastic game but it’s just a bit… unwieldy to talk about - the UI’s lack of readability means that other waters doesn’t translate well to video essay format either, hopefully it was interesting enough to look at that you might want to try it out for yourself, I think it’s a real sleeper hit that people are going to suddenly discover one day. Plus, you know, the extended pun of talking about a lot of watery games whilst on the topic of immersion was too good to pass up.

THe second video was Why Hitman Isn’t a Stealth Game… or was it? Eagle-eyed viewers might’ve noticed that I actually changed the name from “How Hitman Teaches You To Be Creative” which, it’s just a bit boring right? That title could come from anyone but the line about it not being a stealth game is a statement, it challenges your expectations and promises some sort of critical angle which is what I always try and bring in.

THe video itself was an interesting one to research, part of the reason why it took so long was because I originally intended to be a bit of a retrospective on the hitman franchise and for me to go back through all the games to see how the design process had changed. Unfortunately the first few games are… kind of… baaaad? The first hitman in particular is borderline unplayable with these INSANE solutions to levels that are old-school point n click levels of obscure and just awful controls and really horrible communication - they’re bad.

The world of assassination games are, however, awesome, so I decided to focus on them and show what hitman’s really all about the whole time - it’s clear from the way the hitman team essentially retold the blood money story and revisit a lot of the same level themes that this is the game they really wanted to make all along and I think that’s great. I wish I’d talked about blood money a little more because it’s a really interesting middle step of the evolution process but as you can see the video is already really long already. Yikes.

All in all I think the video turned out pretty well… unfortunately that hasn’t translated into views. I’m not sure whether that’s because it just doesn’t interest people or because it took so long and youtube forgot I existed or some other algorithmic weirdness but worrying about that stuff is a recipe for madness so I’m not too bothered.

Right, I’ve got to get to work on the next video which hopefully will be a little less time consuming, which I feel like I say a lot. Anyway, bye!