Any game that lets you to shoot Nazis in the testicles and then watch as an X-ray cross-section of their undercarriage unfolds to show their plums popping in slow-motion has no right to be a good-looking as Sniper Elite 5. Nevertheless, I was consistently surprised by how detailed and lifelike the miniature open-world environments in Rebellion's gratuitously gory snipe-em-up could be.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the game's Spy Factory level, which is set in and around a stunning recreation of Normandy's famous tidal island, Mont-Saint-Michel. The approach to this island is littered with photo-realistic rocks and sand dunes that feel like they've been plucked straight out of the ground from the actual location. Then there's the level's twisting network of meticulously crafted passageways that run around the lower portion of the island, which are draped with lush green ivy and covered with period authentic WW2-era advertisements. The real show-stopper however is the Abbey that acts as the centrepiece to the island. Its exterior is so highly detailed that the thought of someone creating that in a video game boggles my mind, and that's before you go inside it to see the towering stained glass windows, expansive marble floors, beautiful painted ceilings and the myriad of rooms cluttered with incidental props and rich environmental story-telling.
One of the reasons why Sniper Elite 5's levels look so damn good is down to a process called environmental photogrammetry (https://80.lv/articles/rebellion-capturing-photogrammetry-assets-for-sniper-elite-5). Rebellion's in-house artists used environmental photogrammetry to create most of the assets for the game, and that's why everything from trees to tanks to simple textures looks so sharp and exact. But, as marvellous as this method is, it wasn't actually used for what quickly became my favourite little detail in Sniper Elite 5 - the charming, personality-filled paintings that lined the walls throughout each level.