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HITMAN, the new episodic Hitman - GOTY Edition

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
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Joined
Mar 27, 2016
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Disco Elysium
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
i am having so much fun even in the tutorial.

just finished the first mock-up assassination on the fake miitary base, completed all the challenges too.

so many variables. this is just tutorial too. i cannot imagine what the real missions are like.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
Patron
Joined
Jan 12, 2004
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11,542
Location
Black Goat Woods !@#*%&^
Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Does anyone know if people can be found in them?
In Blood Money, killing people in a messy way (eg, knife or gunshot instead of fiberwire) and dragging them anywhere would leave a trail of blood NPCs could follow and discover the body, but I think I recall the help stating that bodies stashed in closets etc would NEVER be found.
I don't know, but Absolution conditioned me to believe that a stashed body is hidden forever.
I've only played the tutorial levels where people don't patrol around much so I can't be sure ... but it feels like things work the same way in HITMAN™.

Come to think of it, I don't do messy kills so I'm never going to find out :)
 

Mr. Pink

Travelling Gourmand, Crab Specialist
Joined
Jan 9, 2015
Messages
3,042
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I hope that in season two, there will be less body closets in the level and that unconscious people will wake up after 10 minutes or so.
About body closets:

Does anyone know if people can be found in them?

In Blood Money, killing people in a messy way (eg, knife or gunshot instead of fiberwire) and dragging them anywhere would leave a trail of blood NPCs could follow and discover the body, but I think I recall the help stating that bodies stashed in closets etc would NEVER be found.

I usually only kill my targets, so I don't know if this is true or not, but if it is, it's a major :decline:.

As the tip says, bodies stashed in boxes and closets will never be found.

Amusingly, there doesn't seem to be a limit as to how many bodies you can dissolve store in the acid vats in the sapienza lab.

If you use a bladed weapon, there will be a blood stain on the floor, but there is no trail when you drag them. NPCs should react to the blood stain the same way they do to dropped weapons, either run or investigate.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
5,871
I view hitman games as a kind of 'the incredible machine' - you plan a route, tweak it in a few test runs, and then you execute it. Arbitrary challenges can require different approaches, which is half the fun. But you very rarely do something spontaneous and just go with it.

This isn't a reactive game at all and I don't think people should expect it as such. Given those limitations, it's excellent. I just wish they imposed saving limits - but Escalation has that. You can't save your game during escalations. I think it's the best way to play the game.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Messages
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Black Goat Woods !@#*%&^
Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
The first level seems less fun than the tutorials. Seems there's very little room to discover "opportunities" unless you have the "do this do that" notifications turned on.
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
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Disco Elysium
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
it'sa bit overwhelming imo. just gonna take it slowly. i spend 30 minutes just to scout the areas, then followimg the target. no helper on ofc
 

DJOGamer PT

Arcane
Joined
Apr 8, 2015
Messages
7,357
Location
Lusitânia
It's not to be time restricted right? Since the map is "retouched" it has to be a free bonus mission like the one in Sapienza where you kill the Icon.

The Santa suit is hilarious with the beard and spectacles. +M
 

Vibalist

Arcane
Joined
Jul 21, 2008
Messages
3,583
Location
Denmark
It's not to be time restricted right? Since the map is "retouched" it has to be a free bonus mission like the one in Sapienza where you kill the Icon.

The Santa suit is hilarious with the beard and spectacles. +M

Pretty sure it isn't time restricted. It's the third bonus mission that they promised way back in the beginning.

They wouldn't redesign a whole level like this only to make it disappear again after a while. The time restricted missions only take place in levels that are already there.

Still no briefcase :negative:

We'll never see that briefcase. Or the dual silverballers. It's quite astonishing they seemingly don't know how to program in these things.
 

PowerTorment

Io-Interactive
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Developer
Joined
May 1, 2013
Messages
680
Location
The Ninth World
Pretty sure it isn't time restricted. It's the third bonus mission that they promised way back in the beginning.

Not time restricted. And no it is not the 3rd bonus mission - that is coming later. The Christmas thing was something extra we cooked up along the way; just for fun.
Keyholes would be fun.

Lots of new stuff will appear in Season 2. I am not allowed to comment on specifics, but rest assured that we are listening to the community.
 

Cadmus

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2013
Messages
4,264
Pretty sure it isn't time restricted. It's the third bonus mission that they promised way back in the beginning.

Not time restricted. And no it is not the 3rd bonus mission - that is coming later. The Christmas thing was something extra we cooked up along the way; just for fun.
Keyholes would be fun.

Lots of new stuff will appear in Season 2. I am not allowed to comment on specifics, but rest assured that we are listening to the community.
You're not getting any medals from me for un-shitting the game. Can't you just friggin patch it in like tomorrow? I want to play the game without any of the new gayness.
 
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Sentinel

Arcane
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Messages
6,633
Location
Ommadawn
Pretty sure it isn't time restricted. It's the third bonus mission that they promised way back in the beginning.

Not time restricted. And no it is not the 3rd bonus mission - that is coming later. The Christmas thing was something extra we cooked up along the way; just for fun.
Keyholes would be fun.

Lots of new stuff will appear in Season 2. I am not allowed to comment on specifics, but rest assured that we are listening to the community.
Please Lord let it be a briefcase. Or human shields.
If so, :incline:
If it's more shitty explosives
:decline::outrage:
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
Patron
Joined
Mar 27, 2016
Messages
9,176
Location
Disco Elysium
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
You're not getting any medals from me from un-shitting the game. Can't you just friggin patch it in like tomorrow? I want to play the game without any of the new gayness.

Aww. I like medals. Shiny ones. Pretty please.
the game needs free camera mode / photo mode. the levels are pretty and i want just to explore and take shoots
 

Immortal

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Sep 13, 2014
Messages
5,062
Location
Safe Space - Don't Bulli
Lots of new stuff will appear in Season 2. I am not allowed to comment on specifics, but rest assured that we are listening to the community.

The engine is amazing..The maps are okay, Colorado sucked.
But the Japanese spa was one of the better maps I've ever seen and same with the Hotel map.. Really enjoyable.

I just really wish you guys would stop with the episode bullshit and the OMG WE ADDED AN NPC TO THIS LEVEL - WHATS GONNA HAPPEN!!! NEW CONTENT!!!
.. Also more naked strippers...?

Throw your weight around - Don't cowtow to the Manveers and Anitas of the world.

I know you can't reveal anything. Can you just blink twice if Square Enix is forcing this Episode shit.
This is the trial run to see if it will work for FF7 and beyond. R-R-Right senpai?
 

Urbanolo

Augur
Joined
May 12, 2014
Messages
320
Game is really fucking good, was expecting another embarassment like Absolution, but it's surprisingly high quality with open sandboxy levels. Definitely a highlight of 2016, and third best hitman to date (after Hitman 2 and Blood Money).
 

spectre

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2008
Messages
5,382
So I caved and bought this at -50%. clocked some 30 hours on it in the meantime.

Overall, I am quite pleasantly surprised. The whole episodic model and DRM has been discussed to death, and I understand it might be a deal breaker for some.
I thought the same, but in the end I feel that the devs deserve the money for decent effort, regardless of the shit that were most likely forced by the publisher.
With that out of the way...

As said, the game is much better than the Absolution train wreck, but how good is it exactly?
The game makes a pretty good impression from the very first tutorial mission. Multiple points of entry, multiple ways of elimination - a pleasant surprise, given that the training areas are quite small.
It's a nice touch that them made them look like a movie town placeholder.

I was also quite impressed by the engine being able to handle crowds of people, it made the plywood structures seem so much alive.

Turned out that killing the tutorial targets was just scratching the surface. There were plenty of other achievements that would put the same old level in an entirely different perspective.
A special case are the escalation contracts which allow no saves and when beaten once, you are able to bump the difficulty up a notch. The target is different from the main mission,
and usually needs to be taken out in a specific way (wearing a specific disguise and a specific murder weapon). Higher escalation levels also give unique challenges, like not allowing any knockouts,
invalidating some of the disguises, etc.

Completing challenges increases the "mastery" for that particular level, allowing you to change the insertion point, starting disguise, and get a new agency pickup point.
Some masteries unlock new gear that can be used for other levels. This gives a sense of progression and serves an an ersatz for Blood Money's upgrade system.

All in all, the game feels like it's in a good spot, you get plenty of opportunities for exploration and I get the same vibe of blending in, observing how the level's mechanism works, and throwing a wrench into it.
I am reminded of my time with Blood Money, and it is a good feeling. There are nice touches all over the place, conversations you can overhear, secret achievements with vague descriptions,
I was pretty glad to see that professional guards are slightly harder to knock out than civilians if you don't approach carefully.

And time for a bunch of bad things.
The controls and movement are slightly crude, but that's actually a problem with the entire Hitman franchise for me.
No biggie, but one cannot avoide a bit of eye-rolling when the highly trained killing machine has problems jumping over a 0,5 wide gap.
I'm not a big fan of QTEs, thankfully they don't happen outside of hand to hand combat, and if you do get into a brawl in this game, it usually means you fucked something up anyway.

It's a shame the rifle case is no longer with us, I mean assembling your rifle scope and barrel just before shooting isn't very realistic in itself, but it was better form than the current situation,
where I am allowed to tote around a sniper rifle anywhere I go because I am disguised as security. I hope this makes a return, and with it we can get back our classic shotgun-in-boquiet and thompson in violin case moments as consolation.

Taking hostages in no longer an option, although it was mostly used for convenience - to move the guy to a good KO location, so I now have to be more choosy as to where I whack people.

I also noticed, pretty much by accident as I am used to making "clean" kills, that NPCs do not seem to react to blood at all. This omission is just sloppy, in my view.

I am also missing gun customization. Although this is partially solved by mastery unlocks, it's a shame that I cannot put armor piercing ammo into my silverballers.

The AI sometimes behaves weirdly. When I tried to shoot an exposed target with a suppressed pistol, even though I was hidden and crouching, all the security would instantly home in on my location,
firing their pistols at nearly full auto. Ok, I get the message, bring a sniper rifle, no more cheap kills like that.
The AI is also pretty sharp when it comes to discovering bodies. Likie in Saudi Arabia, an exposed ankle is enough to get you busted, doesn't matter if that patch of grass should totally cover it.

I didn't see any other major fuck ups, and the game is usually pretty decent at communicating what went wrong.
 

spectre

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2008
Messages
5,382
This game has probably the shitties main menu screen I have ever seen in my entire life. Holy shit.
Yeah, took me by surprise as well, I thought this metro bullshit had already died.
What's especially cretinous is that it would be totally possible to put all those shitty tiles on one screen, but they had to make it scrollable.

I am,doing holiday mission and cannog find the santa help!
He teleports around, havent' figured the pattern yet as I've yet to take on this mission seriously, but you have to follow the "jingle bells" sound.

***
Anyways, I'm past the 60 hours mark, so time for an update in case anyone's interested.
I managed to "finish" the game at around 50 hours mark, and by finish I mean I played through the story, made Silent Assassin on all maps at least once and played around the ones
I liked the most until I got the majority of non-hidden challenges and 20 mastery.

At this point I grew slightly weary with the game, but I keep coming back and there is still quite a bit of content that I'd be happy to come back to at some point in the future.
I've yet to do the bonus maps and the bonus christmas mission, and there's a few escalations and the weekly elusive target to keep me on the hook.

Generally, my initial assessment still stands. The game works as a hitman game for me, to an extent that I no longer feel an itch to fire up Blood Money.
My expectations were pretty low, so perhaps that was a factor.

I really like the levels, with the exception of Marrakesh, it made a bad first impression and I didn't play it a lot. I really enjoyed Sapienza and Hokkaido, followed closely by Paris. I didn't like Colorado at first,
but once I've done a few challenges, I began to appreciate its little quirks.

Escalations are a surprise hit for me, they start out small, but as you go up in difficulty levels, you really need to start to learn the lay of the land and think carefully about your tools.
They usually focus on a smaller part of the level, which is a good thing as it lets you appreciate the various nuances you would miss otherwise.
The mutators they apply to the level also do an excellent job in keeping it fresh - a simple change in guards schedule is often enough to make me approach the map from a totally different angle.
No savegames also cranks up the tension. Brute-forcing some of the escalations can be a freaking challenge (hello Mallory Misfortune, I think I wasted way too much time with you) even if you're not going for Silent Assassin.

Here's an example:
Escalation level 1 - kill the hospital director - easy peasy, start on the cliff whip out sniper rifle, boom headshot.
Escalation level 2 - kill the hospital director, rob the safe. Complication: you need to get the safe first, then off the director within 60 seconds - now it gets tricky, but is still doable - bring a lockpick, KO the guy and tuck him away for later, find the quickest route to the safe, backtrack to break a neck. Done.
Escalation level 3 - as above, but this time you also need to kill a morgue doctor, all kills must be done with shuriken or katana.
And that's not even its final form! There are two more levels.

Also, fuck those [REDACTED] challenges. I mean it was pretty easy and logical to figure out Hammer Time, but how in gob's name was I supposed to figure out Rep Tires? Had to look it up online and it was hilarious when I got it done, but...
1. I need to start a custom contract in Colorado, otherwise I won't be able to use an alternative exit strategy.
2. I need to find 10 apricots scattered all over
3. I need to get me some hallucinogens
4. I need to find a dinosaur toy which has suddenly become interactive
5. I need to feed it apricots until it roars
6. I need to complete the original contract to unlock the exit
7. I need to notice that the quad is replaced with a dinosaur push-bike,
8. I need to get the quad key nonetheless.

Damn, that shit was trippy, but you really need to be an unemployed sperg to figure it on your own.
 
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