Video games have a real challenge when it comes to their opening levels. The opening must set up what the game will be while also not showing off everything the game can become, so the player has a chance to experience that escalation later. The first level must also be simple enough to grasp without becoming so easy that it feels boring or fails to sell the later gameplay. I think it can be summed up as “an opening must show the promise of the later game while not using later game aspects”.
The Hitman series has always been in a great position to deliver a solid opening because of its set-up. Every level is a contained map, with self-contained characters, themes, objectives, and pitfalls. This means every Hitman level can be designed around a different difficulty or challenge, such as assassinating a target who walks in the open, or carefully sneaking into someone’s private office to poison them.
Hitman Blood Money: A Vintage Year is the first proper mission after the tutorial, making it the player’s first real introduction to the game’s open level design. I’m Jambuckett, and I’m going to be analyzing every level in the Hitman series, but this one is really confusing me. A Vintage Year works as an opening to the game, but not really as an opening to a Hitman game. It’s a little weird, so let’s get into it.
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The Hitman Formula
Levels in Hitman revolve around the player entering an area, learning the target’s routines, and then messing with those routines in some way. This is what I would call the Hitman Formula, and it’s what makes the series unique. Other stealth assassination games have the player staying out of sight, manipulating guards by creating distractions, and then finding their target alone and eliminating them.
Hitman is unique because disguises allow you to become part of those routines. You could become a janitor and gain access to the ground floor, which won’t take you the whole way but gets you into the building. Or you could become a bodyguard and follow the target more closely, giving you access to their private room and maybe even some alone time with them.
A good Hitman level uses a combination of both approaches. You’re still trying to find the most efficient way to assassinate your target, but you do that by manipulating their routine. This could mean replacing one of their personal guards or causing a fire evacuation so they head to a safe room which you’ve already rigged.
Hitman Blood Money was IO Interactive’s fourth Hitman game, releasing 6 years after the first, meaning they’d had some time to perfect this formula. A Vintage Year therefore has the difficult task of introducing that style of Hitman level design without immediately showing the player everything later missions can do.
A Vintage Year Sets Up a Routine… Then Never Uses It
A Vintage Year has 2 targets, Don Fernando Delgado and his son Manuel Delgado, and the Don is great, but Manuel is a real letdown. Which is weird because the guy is active.
Manuel Delgado starts in the courtyard, has a drink, meets a client, ties his shoes several times, shows him the naughty lab, then does naughty stuff himself in private. None of these actions can really be interacted with or manipulated, which becomes a problem because the mission has already created what looks like a useful target routine.
He spends most of his time in the wine cellar and a smaller amount of time in the lab. Both are restricted areas, which makes them important. You need a disguise to get there, and then there are patrolling guards, a walking tour, and the client, all of whom could potentially become witnesses.
Since you can’t really manipulate Manuel, such as by poisoning his naughty stuff, assassinating him becomes a challenge of finding him alone and maybe dealing with a guard. That doesn’t really use the Hitman Formula, and it takes something away from the level because there are only 2 reliable places where this can happen: when he’s doing naughty stuff or when he’s tying his shoes underneath the wine crates. The most straightforward method for a Silent Assassin rating requires you to take him out in the naughty stuff room, and there’s even a crate there to hide his body.
Manuel Has People Around Him, Who Don’t Make a Difference
Taking out Manuel in the naughty stuff room is a fairly simple task. He goes to the desk, stands there for maybe 20 seconds as he does his thing, and then continues wandering around. There is 1 guard who stands by the door and closely watches… a bath of wine… not sure why, but fun fact: you can push him into the wine. This guard won’t see you behind Manuel at the table, but he eventually turns around when he stands in the doorway, meaning you’ll have to deal with Manuel and hide his body within about a minute if you want a Silent Assassin rating.
This is where I think there’s missed potential with the kill because despite Manuel being surrounded by potential witnesses, none of them are ever really a problem. I think the walking tour is the biggest missed opportunity because it’s a group of civilians who aren’t a direct threat. They first have to find and alert a guard before you’re in serious trouble, giving you time to hide or get away. This could easily have been improved with a few stragglers. We already have the couple making out in the corner, and 1 or 2 more people hanging around different parts of the cellar would have required more sneaking for a perfect rating.
There is 1 guard who occasionally walks into the room, but this guy patrols the entire wine area and is never nearby when Manuel is, making him someone who might discover an unhidden body rather than a direct threat during the assassination. The other method of stealthily killing Manuel is to place a bomb on the mechanism holding up some wine crates and detonate it while he’s tying his shoes underneath. This kill is a little more interesting because it pulls everyone towards the stairs, including guards from the courtyard, and requires some preparation. Manuel is always going to head there anyway though, making this more of an opportunity kill than something the player has caused through manipulating his routine.
And I think that makes Manuel Delgado a really boring Hitman target. He’s surrounded by potential witnesses but rarely interacts with them in ways that make assassinating him more difficult. Imagine if he spoke to the walking tour or followed them while talking with his client. That would force players to follow the group and wait for the right moment to separate Manuel from everybody else, but instead you’re mostly waiting for him to stand still so you can take him out.
Why A Vintage Year Is Like This
Before I get into Don Fernando Delgado, I want to share a theory I have about the opening structure of Hitman Blood Money because I think it explains some of the problems with A Vintage Year, while also helping explain why Curtains Down works so well afterwards.
The opening of a game has to teach the player how everything works without immediately revealing everything it has to offer. It’s a difficult challenge, but then we’ve also got to throw in some meta-slash-real-world factors. I think of the opening 2 Hitman Blood Money missions as the full tutorial for the Hitman Formula, just split between separate levels. A Vintage Year teaches the player to infiltrate a location, avoid guards, find a master disguise, and escape, while Curtains Down teaches players more about target routines and becoming part of them. Later missions combine both approaches; Flatline, in particular, is an excellent example of infiltrating a location and then becoming part of the routine, but all of that has to be taught first.
I therefore think of A Vintage Year primarily as an infiltration level. The player must figure out how to reach Don Fernando, who sits on an isolated upper floor of a mansion surrounded by locked doors and guards. Manuel suffers because of this focus though. Whether it was intentional or not, his routine has barely anything the player can interact with, which makes him quite boring.
Don Fernando Delgado Is Static
Don Fernando Delgado sits on his chair playing the cello, walks into the other room to… look at the sleepy guard… then stands on the balcony, drinks some wine, and heads back to his cello. That’s his entire routine, and while it is quite static, it’s surprisingly slightly deeper than Manuel’s because it can actually be manipulated.
A Vintage Year presents 3 obvious methods to take out the Don. You can assassinate him while he’s playing the cello, push him from the balcony, or, with a bit of set-up, poison his wine. No guards enter his room, mostly because many of the surrounding doors lead to dead ends or are locked, so killing him inside usually means his body is never discovered. The main challenge is dealing with the sleepy guard, which can easily be done with a quick coin throw. It’s not complicated, but it’s a nice extra step when going for Silent Assassin.
The real challenge of assassinating Don Fernando comes from actually getting to him. Taking him out can be done with almost no problems once you reach his room. Nobody else goes inside, and the guard rarely creates much trouble, which reinforces my theory that A Vintage Year is primarily an infiltration test.
And it’s not an easy one.
Don Fernando moves between 2 rooms in the mansion, an area where only elite guards are allowed, and stays behind several locked doors. The mansion itself sits at the end of an open courtyard with guards and staff walking around, making it difficult to sneak through without the correct disguise.
There are a few different ways into the mansion, but none takes you the whole way. You can sneak around the back of the compound, climb over some boxes, and enter a back garden, where you need to sneak past a sleeping guard and then climb a drainpipe when nobody is looking. This takes you to a guard room where you can acquire an elite guard disguise, but from there you’ve still got to reach Fernando’s room.
The hallway outside his room is filled with locked doors and manned by 2 guards, with one standing in the middle of the hall and another patrolling across it. Picking any of the locks while they can see you causes an alert, so you can try to time the guards and pick the lock when neither is looking. Another approach is to head towards the left side of the courtyard and climb a drainage pipe, which is about 90% safe. You still have a chance of being spotted, but it’s significantly easier.
The A Vintage Year Map Is Great, but Unused
The map for Hitman Blood Money: A Vintage Year is great, featuring several distinct areas both above and below ground. It’s a relatively small space, with many hallways being quite narrow, but that adds some interesting gameplay when passing guards. I’ll likely bump into the guard outside Don Fernando’s room, causing him to turn towards me and meaning I have to wait a little longer before picking the lock.
The map being a single compound also creates some interesting gameplay because you can legally enter through the main gate or move around the outside to find another route. There is a storage area to the right where workers don’t have an issue with you being there, although the guards apparently do, and this gives you access to the side of the mansion. There are several “box” rooms around the compound which can be good or bad. They make the mansion feel more believable, but also create a lot of dead space with very little gameplay purpose. The garage probably suffers from this the most, alongside several dead-end rooms in the mansion.
One area where the compound layout works perfectly is its sightlines, which you might not even notice during your first playthrough. The A Vintage Year map is basically 2 buildings and 2 courtyards sitting beside each other, creating several locations where you can be spotted from across the level. The main example is the back garden of the mansion, where climbing the drainage pipe puts you in view of guests standing in the opposite courtyard. You need to time the climb, normally around when the tour begins and the nearby guard turns his back towards the wall.
The back garden also has a really nice level-design trick where the leaves on the trees are ridiculously large, making it difficult to see what is happening while standing on the ground. Before entering the area, you climb some boxes and look over the wall to see a guard heading into the building, but once you drop down you lose most of that visibility. This can cause you to miss the sleeping guard beside the fountain, who wakes up if you run past him. There is also a chance another guard can see you through the alleyway at the side, adding extra danger and forcing you to carefully sneak through an area containing only 1 sleeping guard. That’s great Hitman level design.
The Underground of A Vintage Year Is Wasted
The underground wine cellars and naughty factory are great environments but unfortunately go mostly unused. They are often just spaces you move through without much restriction or challenge, and there is very little to actually do within them. They look interesting, but most of their potential ends there.
I think the amount of unused space is why A Vintage Year feels more static than it actually is. There’s an incredible environment with tons of rooms and NPCs moving around, but the targets only travel through a handful of those spaces, and there’s barely anything that can be interacted with despite all the varied locations. The NPCs also have very little connection with the targets. Manuel meets with a client, but this never takes them into a private setting together and you can never become the client yourself. NPCs and targets feel like separate entities, which makes much of the mission feel isolated.
There are plenty of ways these locations could have been connected to Manuel’s routine. You could distract a few guards and push him into the bath of wine, have a worker prepare and deliver a stash which can then be poisoned, allow the player to manipulate the various consumables Manuel uses, or, if we want to get fancy, create some sort of rigged explosion in the lab that can be triggered while Manuel and his client are inside.
Given my earlier theory that A Vintage Year is designed to teach infiltration, I also think restricting the lab entirely to lab workers could have worked nicely. This would force the player to find the correct disguise before entering and teach them that one Hitman map can contain several self-contained restricted areas. The elite guard disguise could still provide unrestricted access, but the player would learn that different disguises can solve individual problems around the same level. This idea is expanded on much more effectively a few missions later in Flatline.
The Ending Reinforces the Infiltration Lesson
An interesting choice that I think supports the idea of A Vintage Year being an infiltration-focused opening mission is how the level ends. After assassinating Manuel and Don Fernando Delgado, Agent 47 has to make his way down into a cave and escape using a seaplane. You can reach the cave by taking an elevator from the lab or walking down a makeshift route at the back of the compound.
The only way to get past the guards here is to have the correct uniform, which can affect your final rating because your suit needs to be retrieved, or sneak past them while they smoke or sleep. That’s 3 sleepy guards now, by the way. Sneaking through requires sticking close to the cave wall and throwing coins to make the guards turn away while you move past.
This is entirely a stealth section. If it appeared earlier in the mission, such as somewhere around the mansion, then you could argue that it’s another smaller challenge within the level because you would eventually need to return for your suit. Since it appears at the very end, that argument doesn’t really work. The mission finishes the moment you reach the plane, meaning whatever disguise you arrive in is what you finish the level wearing.
For what it’s worth, the section does teach the player how Blood Money’s stealth works, so it has a clear place in A Vintage Year and is a nice final lesson before the level ends.
Conclusion
So is Hitman Blood Money: A Vintage Year a good Hitman mission and a good opening level? I’m mixed on it. I understand the level much more when viewing it primarily as an infiltration lesson, but there are several missed opportunities that leave the mission feeling surprisingly static.
Manuel Delgado’s movements are especially disappointing because several objects and consumables that would become assassination opportunities in later Hitman missions are effectively just set dressing here. Don Fernando fares slightly better because reaching him becomes the challenge, but even his section feels fairly simple when compared with similar targets later in Blood Money.
A Vintage Year succeeds at introducing disguises, restricted areas, stealth, alternate routes and infiltration, which explains why parts of its level design work so well. The problem is that the mission only demonstrates part of what makes Hitman interesting. Once later levels begin connecting infiltration with NPC routines and target manipulation, Blood Money becomes a significantly more interesting game.
But what do you think of A Vintage Year from Hitman Blood Money?
