

This is an important lesson to designers and artists.

Even Milan, the nearest match I could find, looks nothing like whatever is outside the window of Leland's office.

Definitely not the neon lit futurescape that surrounded Halbech Rome. So yeah, no skyscrapers, no real high-rises. Despite the fact that this level had originally been intended to go into Rome, no one on the team had ever actually been to Rome. The skyline is generic, but looks something like Hong Kong. I can't speak for anyone else as to why they passed on this level, but I personally passed on it because it's set in a high rise, with other high-rises visible from all the windows. When the story was redrafted and the four hubs, Saudi, Rome, Moscow, Taipei, were reassigned to new designers, all the existing levels were reassigned too. As it turns out, skylines are important: What eventually killed this level was the story re-write. Mills has updated his blog with a post dedicated to some cut content in Alpha Protocol, specifically a level in the Rome hub, and the reasons he decided to drop it.
