Sam Howels

The intent was to create a tense, stressful, slow paced relationship with the sniper as the player edges closer to taking them out. The blockout reinforced this by creating sniper sightlines that players would have to use timing, traversal and different stances to bypass.

Whilst being a mostly linear sequence, we also added a few small branches to ensure the player didn’t feel completely at the mercy of the designer. User testing for this section was great to watch - lots of gritted teeth and near-miss expletives.

Other notable details - the orange blocks in the first image represent the blockout location for artillery firing in the background. Taking these out was mission objective so we wanted to use this area to reinforce the player's goal after the more chaotic sections beforehand.

The space next to the bunker was also deliberately somewhat mazelike - we wanted players to feel slightly overwhelmed here so we used narrow corridors with enemies running out of sight to keep the player checking their flanks for threats.