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HITMAN, the new episodic Hitman - GOTY Edition

Cadmus

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I just finished the last mission. What the fuck am I supposed to do now? Replay the levels to get new stuff to replay the levels with?
It's fucking boring, waiting for the NPC schedules for forever just to drop some shit on them.
 

spectre

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Try the escalations, stick with the missions you liked the most. (I remember the one in Colorado was pretty goddamn tedious).
They are more contained and focus on less prominent parts of the level letting, which can give you a fresh perspective sometimes.
Not to mention, they can get quite challenging as you move up the difficulty.

The game's built around replayability and making challenges, if you can't get behind that it's possible that you might be wasting your time here.
 

Carrion

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It's pretty damn sad that this looks like one of those rare instances where developers actually seem to learn from their mistakes and make a game that is a massive improvement over the previous entry in the series, and then they slap some unfathomably awful DRM on it that makes the whole thing seem about as tempting as infecting yourself with leprosy. It's as if the game being episodic just wasn't enough to turn people away from this.

Always online DRM (doesn't matter if there's an offline mode if it's a horribly gutted version of the actual game) in a singleplayer game is where I draw the line.
 

Zombra

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Always online DRM (doesn't matter if there's an offline mode if it's a horribly gutted version of the actual game) in a singleplayer game is where I draw the line.
Well - again - "horribly gutted" is putting it way too strong - in fact it's outright wrong, unless the high score board and unlocked guns are among your primary reasons to play the game. If you want to be a guy hunting targets in huge dangerous sandboxes, that's 100% there in offline mode.

Basically you [not you Carrion, the generic 'you'] have to be honest with yourself: do you play Hitman to kill targets in fun ways? Or do you do it to level up, log achievements, and climb the leaderboard? I've admitted I like the dopamine treadmill, so I'm not cool with offline mode; but I don't see how purists can have any legit complaints about it. If HITMAN™ is an incomplete game in offline mode, then Blood Money was an incomplete game, period.
 

Cadmus

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Always online DRM (doesn't matter if there's an offline mode if it's a horribly gutted version of the actual game) in a singleplayer game is where I draw the line.
Well - again - "horribly gutted" is putting it way too strong - in fact it's outright wrong, unless the high score board and unlocked guns are among your primary reasons to play the game. If you want to be a guy hunting targets in huge dangerous sandboxes, that's 100% there in offline mode.

Basically you [not you Carrion, the generic 'you'] have to be honest with yourself: do you play Hitman to kill targets in fun ways? Or do you do it to level up, log achievements, and climb the leaderboard? I've admitted I like the dopamine treadmill, so I'm not cool with offline mode; but I don't see how purists can have any legit complaints about it. If HITMAN™ is an incomplete game in offline mode, then Blood Money was an incomplete game, period.
Wrong and wrong.
BM allowed me to tune up my character with different gear to approach the objective as I liked. TM allows me to headshot my targets with a screwdriver but if I want to shoot them with a sniper rifle (a reasonable request I would think) I need to replay the level 5 times to get the right rating. Good fucking luck doing it with the challenges turned off, by the way. If I want to access any of the features that supposedly increase the replayability (which is in fact tied to the XP treadmill) then I need to be online.

Because the thing is, I'm no longer going through a story, visiting various locales and interesting small stories as a killer for hire, I got 6 fucking gamey sandboxes in which to fuck around. Then my toys are inexplicably taken away from me and I have to dig through the sand with my bare hands to find my little shovel, then use the little shovel to find my bigger shovel. This here is supposed to replace the story missions, and more linear missions with a story. Well then fucking let me do it as I like. I don't feel like a professional if I need to unlock "start in a shed dressed like a gardener" by looting every corner of the map and playing it 3 times over.

It's not a complete fucking game, it's just six big missions where you just do whatever you like. Fine, but that's not it.

I don't know what a purist is, I think I'm not one. I want a game about a hitman, not a beta version of a do-it-yourself playground.

By the way, if the shooting mechanic didn't suck worse than in Hitman 2, getting the various guns might have been way more fun.
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

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The DRM has only been an issue for me a handful of times.

My overall feel on this is that I wish it didn't feel like half a Hitman game storywise. I can't imagine the frustration the people who bought it all, one episode at a time, in real-time felt waiting for each successive installment. Hitman 2 and Bloodmoney are still the best Hitman games in terms of story and gameplay, but this one did a decent job of scratching the assassination itch too - albeit in a far more casual way.


Really though, the whole assassination genre desperately needs to move beyond linear schedules and on to actual AI stuff. That's when you start getting into emergent gameplay and real fun. E.g., your target has the personality of a white collar computer geek. He hears a scream and his first response is to hide in the closet and start crying when he realizes his cellphone is jammed and he can't call the police. Or you randomize the level and suddenly your target has the personality of an ex-mercenary, so he picks up the lamp and waits for you behind the door.

That and little touches like everyone needing to eat and use the bathroom at some point and people noticing when others go missing. Nothing quite like killing off half of the enemy and none of them noticing a thing being wrong.
 
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Carrion

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Well - again - "horribly gutted" is putting it way too strong - in fact it's outright wrong, unless the high score board and unlocked guns are among your primary reasons to play the game. If you want to be a guy hunting targets in huge dangerous sandboxes, that's 100% there in offline mode.

Basically you [not you Carrion, the generic 'you'] have to be honest with yourself: do you play Hitman to kill targets in fun ways? Or do you do it to level up, log achievements, and climb the leaderboard? I've admitted I like the dopamine treadmill, so I'm not cool with offline mode; but I don't see how purists can have any legit complaints about it. If HITMAN™ is an incomplete game in offline mode, then Blood Money was an incomplete game, period.
I never found unlocking new guns all that important in the Hitman series, because in general you should not be using them (especially if you want to be a silent assassin, i.e. the way you unlock new guns in the first place), but HITMAN seems to be built around replayability, and not having access to new stuff seems like a huge downer. Screwing around is fun for a while, but you need some level of long-term motivation that keeps you playing. I also might've misunderstood your point about not being able to save your progress in offline mode, but it surely doesn't sound good. I can very well believe HITMAN to be fun game to play even offline, and the online content seems like something that I generally dislike anyway, but you said it yourself that online is the way to go unless you want to feel like you're second-class.

But it's mostly a question of principle for me. If I'm presented with a choice to play a good game with terrible DRM, or a slightly less good skeleton of the same game with only a little DRM, I'd rather not choose at all and instead go play something else, because I don't want to send the message that it's okay to do that.
 

Zep Zepo

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Seriously...What kind of HITMAN does not own his own SNIPER RIFLE.

Game was boring as fuck.

Zep--
 

Dzupakazul

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I never found unlocking new guns all that important in the Hitman series, because in general you should not be using them (especially if you want to be a silent assassin, i.e. the way you unlock new guns in the first place)

47 iconically has guns for a reason
 

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Too much tryhard negativity around here and "problems" sucked out of one's fingers. I bought the game during some sale, I think in December, and I have around 36 hours in it. Played through all the missions except the alternate take of Sapienza.

:mrpresident:

It's great folks. It's amazing. The only things keeping it from being the best Hitman game I've played are 1) the lack of Silent Assassin-style orchestral soundtrack, and 2) why the fuck do people all over the world speak English instead of their native languages?! Silent Assassin is what got me started on the series (only played the demo of the original game, found it on some magazine's accompanying CD). The third game kind of disappointed me with its spooky/surreal atmosphere. In addition to Silent Assassin, I've played Contracts, Blood Money, and the first couple of missions in Absolution, but didn't finish it. I was too annoyed by the consolisation and cartoonish villains.

In general I'm yearning for a game that lets me play a spy/hitman, but in a fully realistic setting with believable non-action movie-cliche premise and no overarching "save the world" plot. Hitman has always entertained me in how it pays homage to those low grade spy thrillers of the 1990s. I wish for realistic missions with plausible hits, with the atmosphere of something like Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. I've enjoyed HITMAN very much and I intend to keep buying episodes (during sales).
 

Cadmus

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all the hitman games on sale now
had some trouble getting contracts to run or it bugged out, had to edit ini to get Hitman 2 to run but now it seems fine
 

Melcar

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Is the always online DRM still a thing here? Not a huge fan of the series but I like stealth/assassination games. It's on sale and it has been ported to Linux now. However, if it has that always online requirement I will pass.
 

TripJack

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just finished this, colorado was kind of an odd man out but I loved all 6 of levels

didn't get too much replayability out of it though, escalations got old quick and the unlock system isn't much of a carrot

looking forward to 'season 2' :mixedemotions:
 

Icymad

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Feb 9, 2017
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Game finally got cracked, for those worried Square will shut it down in the near future. Goot timing tho, recently finished Hitman Absolution. I rate Hitman games this way: Hitman:Agent 47<Hitman:Silent Assassin<Hitman absolution<Hitman:Contracts=Hitman:Blood Money. And yes, i liked contracts and blood money the same and i'll preemptively defend myself for Absolution, since in all the best Hitman games you get a map with all NPC's and points of interests but apparently X-Ray vision pointing enemies and points of interests is bad. The first Hitman i'll find to outdated to be enjoyable. We'll see how Hitman (tm) will fare on my list
 

Sentinel

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You probably can't unlock shit in the cracked version, which does nothing for those worried that square will shut it down in the future.
 

spectre

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And your guess is based on what exactly?

I'm actually tempted to download this if only to see if and how they did the elusive targets, I missed quite a few.
 

Sentinel

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And your guess is based on what exactly?

I'm actually tempted to download this if only to see if and how they did the elusive targets, I missed quite a few.
Based on the fact that pirated versions most likely can't sign in to SE's servers due to client authentication errors.
It also depends on how IO did the unlockables stuff (and elusive targets). If all the files were in the game already, then the pirated version most likely has access to all of it, but if they came in through patches then they're either gonna have to connect to SE's servers or find a work around.
However, I have heard that there's already a fix in the works for unlockables in the pirated version, so this discussion is moot.
 

AwesomeButton

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https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/03/24/how-hitmans-hokkaido-level-was-made/
How Hitman’s Hokkaido level was made
Alex Wiltshire on March 24th, 2017 at 9:00 pm.
hitman_mech_1.jpg


This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the inner workings of their games. This time, Hitman [official site].

Hitman developer IO Interactive is really good at making believable environments. Did you ever play Kane and Lynch 2? Seriously, its Shanghai is something to behold, a city of broken pavements, back alleys crusted with air-conditioning units and construction sites littered with cellophane-wrapped pallets. It’s a masterpiece of observation, one of the best representations of cities in videogames.

The latest Hitman doesn’t go anywhere so gritty, but it upholds the same values. Its levels are a jetset tour of places you believe could exist, but these aren’t just credible environments, they’re also machines for killing in. And the first season of Hitman closed with one of its best. Hokkaido is at once compact and expansive, melodramatic and credible, and I talked to IO about how it was designed.

THE MECHANIC: There isn’t really one tbh. Actually, maybe that’s the point here? That Hitman’s level design is a holistic marriage of function and form? Anyway, read on!

Hokkaido takes place in an exclusive hospital in the snowy mountains of northern Japan. On the upper levels, its patients enjoy the amenities of a luxury resort. There’s an exquisitely maintained formal garden and a fine sushi restaurant. There are hot springs and its perfectly appointed rooms look out across a valley as lanterns drift by. Beneath lies its clinical underbelly where surgery is performed and the staff live, and where, in its bowels, a morgue sits.

hitman_mech_2.jpg


Lead game designer Jesper Hylling and lead level designer Torbjørn Christensen agree that it’s a somewhat nonsensical location. The idea of building a high tech hospital somewhere as remote, only accessed by gondola, snowmobile and helicopter, is less than practical. And that’s one of Hokkaido’s strengths.

“In a fantastical location like that we’re more free to imagine what it would be,” says Christensen. “If we had to put it in Tokyo we would have to have the Tokyo Tower in and all that. Putting it in a fantastical place allows us to be more crazy with what we want to have. We basically just have to imagine it ourselves. We’re not constricted by any real location.”

hitman_mech_3.jpg


So this luxury hospital can have a creepy morgue underneath simply because it adds to the experience of exploring. IO describe the different discrete locations in Hitman levels as biomes, areas with different feels and functions, and early on there were suggestions that Hokkaido would be simply a hospital. “But getting some more twists and more biomes, where you feel something different happens, really helped, I think,” says Christensen.

The different biomes also help the levels feel more expansive than they really are because they emphasise the contrasts between them. “That’s one of the reasons we have a morgue,” says Hylling. “We have the high tech and a very stark contrast with the underbelly.” The spa is just near the lounge, and it even shares many of the same textures, but the use of unique animations, NPC costumes (or the lack of them) the water and steam, make it stand out.

hitman_mech_4.jpg


The biomes aren’t arbitrary, though. “If you step into a biome that’s completely weird and makes no sense and you don’t explain it, it gets strange,” says Christensen. There’s a room in the staff’s living quarters with a dance mat game, but being set in Japan, it makes sense. The luxury restaurant fits with expectations of where rich patients would pay to recuperate. The more functional side of the hospital is served by storage rooms, staff quarters, kitchens, the helipad (the patients have to get there somehow), a snowmobile repair room.

Some biomes come from the needs of servicing a good kill idea. And some come from needing to help players navigate the level by giving them something memorable, such as Hokkaido’s snowmobile garage, which also made sense as providing Agent 47 with an exit point. “But it’s never an option for us to do something just because it makes sense for the environment, or, on the other hand, to do something just because it makes sense for gameplay,” says Hylling. “It needs to fit together, because we require our players to spend a lot of time in these locations.”

hitman_mech_5.jpg


Much of what helps the areas fit together is in their attention to detail. Hitman levels often represent genuinely great architecture and interior design: places you want to be in; places that sit well in their settings. And yet IO’s research is mostly just Google: Image Search, YouTube and Street View. “Me and the artists that did Sapienza, we never went to Italy, but it’s based on Vernazza and some other towns down there on that shoreline,” says Christensen. “Then we read Italian players saying it’s pretty close, and that’s really cool of course. I guess we should have just traveled down there to actually see it.”

But still, they stress over details that most never even perceive, such as the thickness of a medieval wall in Sapienza. Agent 47’s animation for throwing someone out of a window just couldn’t accommodate how thick a proper medieval wall is, and, reluctantly, they had to slim them down to make them work. Though almost no one will explicitly notice this, IO knows it all counts to players’ overall impression of the space. “If a structure looks like it can’t hold its own weight then people will start noticing,” says Christensen. “Maybe they can’t put a finger on it and think it just looks a bit odd, or maybe they feel insecure and they’re not really happy being there. A lot of subliminal stuff.”

hitman_mech_6.jpg


What also helps is that IO practice simple good design. A bad flow through a room is bad design whether it’s for physical or virtual space. “A lot of this stuff is designed running around, going into cover, looking around corners and stuff like that, so we get the feet on the ground from day one,” says Christensen. “Then you discover lots of things like if you go into a room then that door is hidden from most players because they look to the right. Many of these things, if you test them enough then the flow won’t get stuck and players will notice things without thinking.”

You can look at each Hitman level and see a theme to its form and structure. Paris is a vertical level. While it occupies a wide horizontal area, your attention is usually fixed on going up and down it. Bangkok has the same feel. Colorado is more horizontal, Marrakesh, too. But Sapienza and Hokkaido are different. “They’re basically spirals, or a snail house, we call it,” says Christensen. They wrap around themselves, with their layers interconnected with slopes and stairways.

hitman_mech_7.jpg


“One of the reasons why all these levels feel larger than they maybe are in terms of square metres is that you can keep moving ahead all the time,” says Hylling. “There are no dead ends and you never need to backtrack, although you can.”

Hokkaido differs from Sapienza in its pacing, though. For one thing, it’s much smaller, but its more dense with objects to use and dramatic events. Hitman’s levels have a limit of 300 NPCs, not counting crowds, which meant that it had to be set during siesta time to explain why its public areas are relatively unpopulated. But for Hokkaido the limit (which it doesn’t reach) means its tight space is much busier.

hitman_mech_8.jpg


The snail house structure is related to one of the key ambitions IO had for the level. “One of the things you wanted to do, Torbjørn, was to twist the target a little bit, so in this level we wanted to have a static target to see if it would be interesting,” says Hylling.

One of Hokkaido’s two targets is Erich Soders, the ex-head of Agent 47’s agency, who is undergoing gene therapy in the operating theatre on the level below the public areas. Unconscious and unmoving, the concept echoes one of the hits you have to make in the Sapienza mission, where you have to destroy a virus located in a lab in the caves beneath an idyllic Italian town.

hitman_mech_9.jpg


Christensen also worked on Sapienza, and the Soders hit is in part a reaction to the virus hit’s limitations. “The virus is a static target and there’s only a few ways to kill it and we knew it was not a good thing, so we tried to make [Soders] interesting and many ways to kill him,” he says. Being strapped down on an operating table, Soders can’t be lured anywhere or pushed off a ledge. The answer was having Soders resuscitated unless you can prevent various failsafes kicking in.

The way he’s resuscitated is through the controlling presence in the hospital of an AI which manages not only Soders’ operation but also the entire building. This lead to the defining characteristic of the Hokkaido level, which is that doors only open if you’re wearing disguises appropriate to them, all controlled by the AI. The idea is that the clothes are fitted with RFID chips, and it gives this final level a distinct feel and a strictness that provides extra challenge.

“It had lots of problems and issues and it was kind of a struggle to get it to a final product,” admits Christensen.

hitman_mech_10.jpg


“Once you get it, the logistics of the disguises is pretty cool, but if you don’t, it’s a big source of frustration,” says Hylling. Aside from teaching its fundamentals at the level’s start, they worked iconography for the different access levels into the clothing design. And they also had to grapple with emergent problems of players locking themselves out of areas by leaving the disguise that gave access to it behind them when they exited.

The final thing bears little evidence of the trouble, though, just as it also feels like a credible place. That’s the magic in Hitman levels, achieved though balancing game-serving fun and place-serving verisimilitude.
 

Zep Zepo

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Shit game is shit.

Enjoy your grind "unlocking" hitman things.

Because this hitman is like some kind of nub with no gunz.

Zep--
 

AwesomeButton

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You can't close the leads you're given, you can't close shit - YOU are shit, hit the bricks, pal, and beat it, cause you are going out!
 

AwesomeButton

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PowerTorment , a couple of questions. I've fallen into a HITMAN mood lately and I've been playing Sapienza a lot, after the last time I reached Mastery level 20 in Paris. There is this spot are a few spots where you can hear some bodyguards people speaking something in Italian, and that seems to be an exception to the general rule that everybody now speaks English. Why the exception? Was this some kind of experiment you made during development or what was the reason?

Second, I checked the square enix forums, how come there isn't a thread for player suggestions for mission locations? :D I have at least a few good ones, I'm sure lots of players have theirs too.
 
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Icymad

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This game seems to be made based on fan feedback from the best levels in Hitman games and yet i feel like something is missing. Now all the levels are big sandboxes, but OTOH there is just 8 missions total (absolution and silent assassins got 19 and 21 missions each). Funny thing absolution seems to be more challenging in normal difficulty compared to this one.
Gotta hand the DRMception to the devs, they could have made the game online only but designed a botched offline mode so pirates could try it out eventually. Would have prefered more levels instead of just 6 levels to be played endlessly in online mode.
 

AwesomeButton

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You do get two bonus missions (without additional payment) in Sapienza if you own the complete 1st season.
 

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