What's your favorite level?

Warning: Minor spoilers for The Last of Us 2 and Titanfall 2

We like our media broken up into consumable bites. Books have chapters, television has episodes, movies have scenes, and video games have levels.

When I say video game level, what do you think of? World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros? The Narrows with only rocket launchers in Halo 3? The Pittsburgh chapter of The Last of Us? Video game levels present in many different ways depending on what kind of game you’re playing. Platformer levels are usually more self-contained and are connected thematically within certain sections of the game (There are numerous different sections of a world the player visits in Super Mario Odyssey, but those sections generally contain the same enemies and similar obstacles). Multiplayer levels often strive to deliver a large variety between each level so that a player can have many different experiences as they play over a number of hours while also facilitating diverse styles of play. Story-driven games have levels that are usually chock full of details that help immerse you in the world of the game, and they are often paced so that action rises and falls at a pace that allows the player to both be enthralled with the gameplay as well as able to consume the story that is being told.

The OG of Levels

One thing all levels (good ones anyway) have in common is that they seamlessly guide the player along so they can progress through the game in ways that the player doesn't realize. Great levels communicate to the player how to progress through the game without holding their hand.

I was playing The Last of Us 2 with my girlfriend and she asked me how I knew where to go in the level, which in this case was the section where Ellie travels through a fairly suburban neighborhood being patrolled by the WLF. I’m usually quick to answer any of her questions about video games, but this one gave me pause: how DID I know where to go? There’s no signs in The Last of Us 2 that say, “Go here to get to the next story beat,” no waypoints on your map or routes highlighted like your character has a GPS embedded in their brain. Instead, The Last of Us 2 relies on human psychology to pull the player through its levels. They use lighting to draw your attention to areas of interest: a very bright area is likely an area you are meant to travel through or maybe a beam of light is hitting something of importance that would otherwise blend into the background. The game also uses movement to give you a sense of direction: in certain sections of the game there is flowing water that you can follow to get to your destination. The game also uses perspective to help guide players to areas that they might be far away from: if you see a large tower that sticks out in the distance, you are more likely to travel towards it in order to investigate that area. And then, of course, there are things from real life that help guide you: players are more likely to follow roads or paths than try to walk through thick forest or building rubble, they’re likely to see large piles of debris and know not to go that way. By expertly using all of these tools, the level designers of The Last of Us 2 were able to guide players through their levels without resorting to UI shortcuts such as waypoints, highlighted routes, or mini maps. The result is an immersive experience rivaled by few other games.

Dark Souls is a great example of a game that utilizes the concepts I’ve mentioned to give players an immersive experience that empowers them to navigate the world without the aid of any UI tools. What’s amazing about Dark Souls games as opposed to The Last of Us games is that it is more of an open world type of game in that you frequently need to return to areas you’ve already visited either because you died and need to repeat a section or because it leads to a new area that you were previously unable to reach, and yet it still empowers players to traverse the world without utilizing UI tools. Dark Souls greatest strength in level design is their use of landmarks that players will recognize as they pass through each area. Landmarks can be anything from a building to a statue to a sign to a geographical feature and far more, and by giving players tons of landmarks to take note of in every location, players don’t need to rely on a map or UI to help them navigate through the world of Dark Souls.

Landmarks that include this dragon that won't let you cross his bridge

Of course, using UI doesn’t immediately make a game’s level design bad, some game worlds are so large that it would be almost impossible to get anywhere without the aid of waypoints or a mini-map. GTA V is a great example of a game that uses all of the tricks we’ve been discussing (landmarks, lighting, perspective, movement, etc.) to help pull the player through the game world, but is so massive and often has players travelling large distances in a short period of time, so it utilizes waypoints and GPS routes to help the player navigate the world. I’d juxtapose this to a game world like Horizon: Zero Dawn, which, while it’s a great game, has a game world that is largely devoid of landmarks or even much guidance of where the player should travel beyond providing them with roads to follow, and therefore requires players to frequently check the map and set waypoints, often relying on mini-map icons to help them find areas of interest.

Multiplayer level design is a different challenge as narrative elements become less of a concern and creating a map that facilitates gameplay between multiple players or multiple teams is paramount. Multiplayer level designers need to take some things into account when designing a level that singleplayer level designers don’t because, as opposed to single player games where the object of a level is for the player to complete it, multiplayer levels are usually meant to be played in for a set amount of time/until an objective is completed, and they are meant to be revisited over and over again throughout multiple play sessions.

Multiplayer level designers need to make sure their levels are a precise size and have a layout that forces players to interact with one another with a frequency that enables the game to be fun. Among Us is a great example of this: the ship is big enough that it’s possible for the traitor to kill someone without being seen by any of the remaining crew, but also small enough that it’s totally possible that someone happened to witness the murder as they were on their way to their next task.

Is this room big enough for two people?

Multiplayer level designers also need to design areas where players on opposite sides can interact with each other in a way that doesn’t necessarily give an overwhelming advantage to one side or another. Think about an Overwatch level where the offensive team needs to push the payload while the defending team needs to stop them: there are spots on any section of the map where either team may find themselves at a positional advantage due to the structure of the level, but there’s never a point where that advantage can’t be overcome by good strategy from the opposing team.

They also have to take into account all of the different strategies players might utilize in their level. Using Valhalla from Halo 3 as an example: the map has caves and a few tight corridors that gives players who prefer using close range weapons an area to excel in, rolling hills give snipers plenty of room to pick off players running across the map, and vehicles like the Banshee, Ghost, and Warthog give more vehicularly inclined players options to move around the map quickly and utilize hit and run tactics.

I think that, much like a good soundtrack, good level design goes largely unnoticed when you’re playing a game. Being seamlessly guided by an invisible hand allows you to immerse yourself in a game so deeply that you forget that the game world was designed on a computer by a handful of people, not crafted over tens, hundreds, or maybe thousands of years like the environments we may find ourselves in in every day life.

I’d like to finish this post by talking about two of my favorite levels, one single player level and one multiplayer level.

While there are tons of single player games I’d put above the Titanfall 2 single player mode in terms of overall greatness, Titanfall 2’s campaign has a level that I haven’t stopped thinking about since I played it. It’s fairly early in the campaign, just far in enough for you to have mastered your jump-jet parkour skills and some basic combat, and you are put into a massive factory that is assembling prefabricated homes. You must travel along the assembly line, jumping from piece to piece as you parkour and occasionally shoot your way towards the end of the assembly line where you reach an entire pre-fabricated town comprised of these prefabricated homes that’s used to combat test war machines. I think two elements really stand out in terms of how the level handles navigation for the player. The first is movement: the player knows that their destination is the end of the assembly line, so they know that whatever direction the prefabricated house parts are moving is the direction they should be moving. The other is size: you know that you are getting further in the level because the prefabricated homes are becoming more complete. When you start the level the prefabs are little more than a floor and a couple walls, but as you continue through the level the assembly line adds more walls, a second story, furniture, and ultimately a roof. The challenge of the level comes from timing your jumps perfectly and landing in a spot that enables you to stay on the assembly line and not fall to a previous section of the level or, worse, your death. There is occasionally combat during the assembly line section, but it mostly focuses on traversal which relies on players being patient and precise. Your reward for completing the assembly line is an all out melee where you take on dozens and dozens of enemies in a town designed specifically for this purpose. It’s one of the most perfect levels I’ve ever played, and I’d argue it is the single best level in a single player campaign for a game that was designed to be multiplayer.

I don’t play a ton of multiplayer games, but I was big into Overwatch for many years and my favorite Overwatch level is Eichenwalde. Overwatch is a game of position and strategy, and while perfectly executing a plan based around positioning and team synergy is always a great feeling in Overwatch, I have the most fun when things get chaotic. By my estimate, Eichenwalde has about 6 areas where teams can find themselves brawling for over a minute without one side gaining much of an advantage, and that’s when the game is at its best for me. The map has at least 4 choke points which are generally favorable for the defense, but if the attacking team breaks through it generally causes the defensive team to scatter and frantically fight as they attempt to either regain the choke or figure out where to regroup for their next hold. Many of my favorite characters to play really benefitted from the castle in the middle of the second stage of the map, as it was easy for ultra mobile characters like D.Va and Winston to quickly jump to the top of the castle and either use it to ambush players on the other side/on top of it or to get out of a bad situation before rejoining the fight at the opportune moment. Most Overwatch maps that include a payload push end in an area where the defending team has a strong advantage because they can reinforce much more quickly than the attacking team, but in my opinion the Eichenwalde ending is the most climactic because it basically starts at the beginning of the 3rd and final section of the map. The attacking team starts out at a choke point which gives the defenders a small advantage in terms of positioning so the defenders are usually willing to push up much closer to the start of the map section than they would be on other payload maps, meaning there is likely going to be fighting for the entire section. The attacking team then must push the payload around two corners and into a throne room which is a totally open room with nothing to use for cover or positional advantage apart from a few pillars, a balcony, and the payload itself. The result is a chaotic fight that often sees almost every player use an ultimate ability and usually ends only when one team is able to string together a series of big plays. Eichenwalde never lets players rest or let their guard down, most characters are able to utilize the map in unique and thoughtful ways, and its paced so that it ends in a crescendo of action. Almost all Overwatch maps are super well designed with few exceptions (looking at you, Lunar Colony), but I think Eichenwalde is near perfection.

So what is your favorite level of a game? What makes it so good and memorable for you?