Table of Contents

1. Game Summary
2. Game Features
3. My Work – Summary
4. My Work – Details

New Bordeaux, a Reimagined 1968 New Orleans: A vast, diverse and seedy open world ruled by the mob and corrupt officials and richly detailed with the sights, sounds and emotionally-charged social atmosphere of the era.

An Unintended and Lethal Anti-Hero: Be Lincoln Clay, an orphan and Vietnam veteran hell bent on revenge against the Italian Mafia for the brutal slaughter of the black mob, the closest thing to family he’s ever had.

Revenge Your Way: Choose your own personal play-style, from brute force and blazing guns to stalk-and-kill tactics as you use Lincoln’s military training and gathered intel to tear down the Italian Mafia.

A New Family on the Ashes of the Old: Build a new criminal empire in your own unique way by deciding which of your lieutenants you reward and which you betray…

In “Ain’t Nowhere Safer,” the climactic final mission for the “Faster, Baby!” DLC, the player is ambushed at the De Costa Family Farm safehouse by the corrupt small-town sheriff, Slim Beaumont. Slim and his goons are prepared to kill Lincoln Clay but with a little help from their old flame, Roxy Laveau, the player is able to turn the tables and put Slim on the run.

The mission features an intense gunfight through a burning farm, an epic spectacle event in which a grain silo collapses after being driven into, and a white-knuckle car chase through the rural country-side involving speeding trains and catching lots of air.

This was a really fun mission to work on. I got to do a lot of my favorite stuff: one-off gameplay, scripted events, environmental destruction, fire, and an awesome car chase sequence – which was really the highlight since we had much improved enemy car AI tech for the DLC that enabled us to do some really cool stuff we couldn’t do in the main game.

My Responsibilities

• Designed and drove level from pitch to gold.
• Scripted combat and non-combat gameplay, events, checkpoints, objectives, waypoints, and VO.
• Created the initial greybox level geometry.
• Collaborated with Level Artists to iterate on the geometry and assemble visual scenes.
• Worked with writers to develop the high-level beats and iterate on the narrative script.
• Implemented and maintained the path network, cover objects/markup, and gameplay pickups.
• Optimized content to meet performance targets and fixed level design-related bugs.

In “Burn Like Napalm,” the final mission for the Southdowns district, the player goes undercover as a bare-knuckle brawler in an underground fight club in order to get access to Tommy Marcano, who runs the Marcano family’s counterfeiting operation.

The mission features experiential gameplay, a custom melee brawling sequence, a unique escape-from-near-death mini-game that finishes with the player deciding how Tommy meets his end, a gunfight through a burning boxing arena, and an explosive spectacle event.

Out of everything I worked on, I’m most proud of this mission. The original brief for the mission said it was to take place in a newspaper printing warehouse but we had so many other missions that took place in warehouses of one kind or another that I wanted to do something special – especially because this was mean to be a big set-piece mission. I pitched 7 different ideas for more interesting mission settings and scenarios to my lead and he picked the underground boxing fight club. Once that was approved, I worked with the narrative team to come up with a far more interesting set of gameplay beats than just enter space, kill enemies.

I’m a big proponent of letting the player do the cool thing rather than seeing them do it in a cinematic and I was able to make the deathblow sequence a lot more interesting too. Originally, you were just supposed to shoot the baddie in a cinematic. But by brainstorming and collaborating with other designers and departments, I was able to set it up such that after the boss fight, the boss is wounded, the room is on fire and the player can do one of three things: shoot the enemy live, perform a custom melee kill, or exit the room leaving the boss to catch on fire (which happens off-screen but is heard). I was particularly pleased that I was able to change the original idea so that the player got to do the cool thing and got to have some agency in how they did it.

My Responsibilities

• Designed and drove level from pitch to gold.
• Scripted combat and non-combat gameplay, events, checkpoints, objectives, waypoints, and VO.
• Created the initial greybox level geometry.
• Collaborated with Level Artists to iterate on the geometry and assemble visual scenes.
• Worked with writers to develop the high-level beats and iterate on the narrative script.
• Implemented and maintained the path network, cover objects/markup, and gameplay pickups.
• Optimized content to meet performance targets and fixed level design-related bugs.

In “Pray On the Way Up,” the final mission for the Delray Hollow district, the player has to sneak or shoot through Baron Saturday’s amusement park in order to take down Ritchie Doucet, the leader of the Dixie Mob and a Marcano family associate.

The mission features a series of encounters (approachable via stealth or combat) in an atmospheric amusement park and ending in a chase with Ritchie through a creepy bayou-werewolf ride.

In addition to layout improvements, the big thing I did with this level was to redesign the end. The original design featured a fairly standard A to B to C progression of encounters that culminated in a boss fight. This level was set in an amusement park. I wanted to make the culmination of the level a bit more memorable and interesting so I got the idea to turn it into a scripted chase sequence (with some bits of systemic combat in between the chase bits) through a Pirates of The Caribbean-style ride that was themed on a New Orleans werewolf (a rougarou). The level writer and I worked together on this and came up with a bunch of cool moments and a long, creepy narration that plays over the top of this chase and the gun fights. It really jazzed up the level and was a ton of fun to work on. I also worked on setting up stealth patrols for the enemies throughout the level and the opportunity for overheard enemy conversations that establish who the boss is and what his men think of him.

My Responsibilities

• Drove level from pre-alpha to alpha.
• Re-designed the end of the level to incorporate an atmospheric amusement park ride combat sequence and boss showdown.
• Scripted combat and non-combat gameplay, events, objectives, waypoints, and VO.
• Redesigned, heavily modified, and iterated on the level geometry to better support gameplay while keeping the existing high-level flow intact.
• Collaborated with Level Artists to iterate on the geometry and assemble visual scenes.
• Worked with writers to develop the high-level beats and iterate on the narrative script.
• Implemented and maintained the path network, cover objects/markup, and gameplay pickups.
• Fixed level design-related bugs.

In “Everyone Will Notice,” the final mission for the Downtown district, the player has to infiltrate The Royal Hotel to get to Tony Derazio, the Marcano family’s bookkeeper, who’s holed up in his penthouse suite.

The mission features multiple routes and gameplay approaches (a stealthy approach through the garage or a more direct approach through the busy lobby) and a high-stakes show-down with Tony.

This level had a bunch of work that had been done for vertical slice but no longer functioned. My first step was to restore functionality and update outdated designs and scripting. The next big task was to make the level more interesting. Being an open-world game that had some emphasis on player choice, I came up with the idea to give the player multiple approaches to reaching the boss as the original design had only one. I worked with the art and narrative team to make that happen. I also worked with the narrative team to build in more opportunities for overheard conversations and scripted moments.

My Responsibilities

• Drove level from pre-alpha to alpha.
• Re-designed the level to accommodate multiple routes in and out of the mission space and to support stealth gameplay.
• Scripted combat and non-combat gameplay, events, checkpoints, objectives, waypoints, and VO.
• Modified the level geometry to accommodate additional routes in and out of the space and to better support gameplay.
• Collaborated with Level Artists to iterate on the geometry and assemble visual scenes.
• Worked with writers to modify the high-level beats and iterate on the narrative script.
• Implemented and maintained the path network, cover objects/markup, and gameplay pickups.
• Fixed level design-related bugs.

In “Brave New World,” the final mission for the Pointe Verdun district, the player has to hold off an assault on Burke’s Scrapyard by The Butcher, one of the Marcano family’s top-ranking goons.

The mission features a defense scenario in the scrapyard with carloads of goons arriving amidst stacks of wrecked cars and assaulting the player, Burke, and his daughter. Explosives litter the grounds.

This mission was conceived of as a defend scenario (which we didn’t have many of). The setting for the mission was a junk yard, with stacks of cars creating limited visibility and forcing the player to move around as enemies came in from tons of different directions. My original pitch for the mission was to have a mini-gun attached to a non-working jeep and to require the player use the mini-gun to fend off large enemy waves and when there were lulls take cover behind the jeep and slowly push it forward to the big crane in the center so that your buddy could then use the crane to lift the jeep and mini-gun with you on it into the air so you could have better visibility and use the mini-gun to mow down enemy cars as they entered the space. Then a scripted explosion from an enemy RPG would drop the jeep and force you into a more intimate combat. Sadly, this was out of scope due to the technical constraints of our still WIP proprietary tech. I settled on being able to drive a forklift with explosive barrels about between waves as a means of giving the player some ability to plan the defense. Ultimately, this was scoped down to static explosive barrels that the player could shoot. While the scope reductions were a bit of a bummer, I was still able to achieve a fun and frantic defend scenario with player choice to hang back and snipe or get up close and personal.

My Responsibilities

• Designed and drove level from pitch to alpha.
• Scripted combat and non-combat gameplay, events, objectives, waypoints, and VO.
• Created the initial greybox level geometry.
• Collaborated with Level Artists to iterate on the geometry and assemble visual scenes.
• Worked with writers to develop the high-level beats and iterate on the narrative script.
• Implemented and maintained the path network, cover objects/markup, and gameplay pickups.
• Fixed level design-related bugs.

In “There’s a War Goin’ On,” the penultimate mission for the Frisco Fields district, the player has to go to the ruins of a civil war fort on a hill overlooking the district to infiltrate a meeting of the Southern Union, a white-supremacist hate group, and kill their leader, Remy Duvall.

The mission features a nighttime, fire-lit gathering of the Southern Union at a hilltop-location overlooking the city and an opportunity for the protagonist to interrupt Remy’s speech and mete out cathartic street justice.

This mission was simple and straightforward. Kill the Southern Union leader. We set it during the leader’s hate-speech with a big crowd of the Southern Union members gathered. My main focus was to give the player options through layout and enemy position and patrols. They could drive a car through the crowd, lob grenades, go guns blazing, stealth kill their way to the podium, or ghost their way to the podium.

My Responsibilities

• Designed and drove level from pitch to alpha.
• Scripted combat and non-combat gameplay, events, objectives, waypoints, and VO.
• Created the initial greybox level geometry.
• Collaborated with Level Artists to iterate on the geometry and assemble visual scenes.
• Worked with writers to develop the high-level beats and iterate on the narrative script.
• Implemented and maintained the path network, cover objects/markup, and gameplay pickups.
• Fixed level design-related bugs.

In “Yet Here We Are,” the final mission of the game, the player has to sneak or shoot through the Hotel Paradiso (a partially constructed luxury hotel and casino) in order to confront Sal Marcano, the head of the Marcano crime family and the architect of the betrayal that resulted in the deaths of the protagonist’s family.

The mission features a showdown with Giorgi Marcano, Sal’s son and Lincoln’s supposed friend, and a final reckoning with Sal Marcano in his office overlooking New Bordeaux, which ends with the player deciding how Sal meets his end.

This mission had already had some work done on it. I worked to improve the encounter scripting as much as I could – allowing players to go in quiet or loud and to once again give the player some choice in how they dealt with the boss (the final boss of the game). I worked with the narrative team and other departments to give him a custom melee death sequence (in addition to the standard gun takedown). The special melee death features the player kicking him out the window of a casino penthouse. Once again, I tried to focus on letting the player do the cool thing.

My Responsibilities

• Drove level from pre-alpha to alpha.
• Re-designed the level to accommodate stealth gameplay and to incorporate a custom melee finisher on Sal Marcano where the player kicks him out of a window on the high-rise’s top-floor.
• Scripted combat and non-combat gameplay, events, objectives, waypoints, and VO.
• Iterated on the level geometry to better support gameplay.
• Collaborated with Level Artists to iterate on the geometry and assemble visual scenes.
• Worked with writers to iterate on the high-level beats and the narrative script.
• Implemented and maintained the path network, cover objects/markup, and gameplay pickups.
• Fixed level design-related bugs.

In “Caroline,” one of the possible betrayal missions for Lincoln’s lieutenants, the player has to infiltrate the Haitian village (a location used for a mission earlier in the game) in the Bayou and deal with Cassandra, the leader of the Haitian Mob and a former ally who’s turned against the protagonist.

The mission is a short combat-focused resolution to Cassandra’s betrayal, which can come about as a result of neglecting to give her turf and giving it to other lieutenants instead.

My Responsibilities

• Drove level from pre-alpha to alpha.
• Scripted combat and non-combat gameplay, events, checkpoints, objectives, waypoints, and VO.
• Iterated on existing level geometry.
• Worked with writers to develop the narrative script.
• Iterated on existing cover objects/markup, and implemented gameplay pickups.
• Fixed level design-related bugs.

In “Bounty Hunting – The Out-of-Towner,” a side mission from the “Stones Unturned” DLC, the player must track down, subdue, and capture Irish mobster, Brian O’Malley. O’Malley’s hiding out in the Double Barrel Bar, located in the Louisiana Bayou.

The mission is a short combat-focused side mission that allows the player to approach and complete the mission in full stealth or guns blazing.

My Responsibilities

• Drove level from pitch to gold.
• Scripted combat and non-combat gameplay, events, checkpoints, objectives, waypoints, and VO.
• Worked with writers to develop the narrative script.
• Iterated on existing cover objects/markup, and implemented gameplay pickups.
• Fixed level design-related bugs.