The Hitman Retrospective Anthology Definitive Edition

[Music] thank you with Hitman 2's release recently along with the fact that codename 47 became 18 years old on November 19th I thought it would be cool to take a look back at the humble beginnings of one of my favorite series ever from its Inception all the way to the release of its largest game yet [Music] if you are someone like me trying to play this game on a Windows 10 PC you are probably going to run into a few issues oh what the fuck the game doesn't have much for options especially when it comes to resolution and if you have multiple monitors it's probably going to shit itself like it did for me but there is a way to make it run properly what you're gonna need to do is edit the ini file I'm going to have what you need to say in the ini files in the description below along with links to their steamform threads for any possible questions you might have for the people who came up with these Solutions there is also a draw distance unlocker that I'm going to include which is going to be very helpful for a lot of the later levels that are extremely big since you might start to get lost in them because they are very samey looking like the jungle of Columbia or the docks of Rotterdam but in making the game Run in higher resolutions like 1920x1080 it makes the fov be slightly more zoomed in than normal and it doesn't scale the HUD so I hope you have good eyesight because it's going to be pretty fucking tiny many fans and critics alike praise Blood Money the fourth Mainline title in the series for its score by Jasper Kidd but Jasper kid has been the composer for the series since the beginning and while I don't think the score is as strong as blood monies I still think it is incredibly good and A Cut Above the Rest when compared to what was being released at the time and to some of the games that are coming out now the only issue with it is the very noticeable hard cuts and the few seconds of Silence before the songs Loop once you get your hands on the gameplay you instantly feel how awkward these controls are this is prime example Euro Jank for those who don't know what eurojank is my favorite explanation is from this game spot thread saying that eurojank is games developed by European teams that usually have incredibly ambitious ideas with a strong focus on gameplay depth rather than presentation but usually lack polish due to their tight budgets or inexperienced teams most people usually attribute eurojank to games like stalker or the gothic series but I think the first Hitman game is a perfect prime example of Euro Jank it's like aged wine or a fine cheese I'm going to rebind the controls to something a little more modern you can pause the video here and look to what I set them to if you want to copy them because I find them far more comfortable and playable compared to the game's default settings compared to what the series would eventually become codename 47 is a fairly grounded and straightforward experience there's not much when it comes to Crazy creative and Goofy ways of killing your targets to make it look like accidents rather than feeling like a contract killer tied to a secret society organization you come off more like a mafia Hitman for most of the game with only a few of the levels making the player really feel the scale of what 47 is involved in with the other levels being far more simplistic and straightforward having you just run to a location kill the target with a gun and then leave back in the day codename 47 received a ton of praise for its Ragdoll and cloth physics which are instantly visible just from walking 47 around and you can see his tie flowing in the wind the mirror Reflections are also pretty impressive like the fourth level having three Reflections at the same time hell some games nowadays don't even have Reflections and this shit was looking crisp in 2000 the tutorial is pretty standard for what you would expect it to be but it does give you a small taste of the amazing voice acting to come you are looking for will be eating at the restaurant you have found golden statue very nice I can't find my book very nice book and now it has gone like petals in Autumn of all the things I've lost I've missed my mind the most and do not Drool on the floor too bad and with how it constantly Cuts itself off with new lines depending on where you're standing in the room the first level also feels like an extension to the tutorial having the player need to go to the top of one of the buildings for a vantage point to snipe the red dragon negotiator the first four levels of this game are still a holdover from what the original title was going to be like a more fast-paced third-person shooter styled after John Woo films like the killers in hard-boiled Jacob Anderson one of the lead designers of the game would later reveal in a press reader article that it wasn't until Idols interactive became the publisher for the game appointing Jonas eneroth as the producer that the studio would make the Bold genre shift it was actually eneras that pushed the team towards making the game slower having you hide the bodies of those you killed to complement the ragdoll physics of the glacier engine it's crazy to think that without eneroth's input the game in the series as a whole would be completely different maybe we wouldn't even have a series you can easily imagine a future where that John wu-like third person shooter ended up coming out with the only thing of note about it being its Ragdoll in cloth physics a game that would be written off and remembered as only a generic third person shooter and possibly even retroactively thrown in with the ocean of soon to be Max Payne clones with Max Payne's release the following year maybe down the line IO could have made the Stranglehold an actual John Woo video game killing the limo driver in the second level so you can take his disguise to place a bomb in the car gives you your first taste of how awkward it is to try and hide bodies in this game since codename 47 doesn't have an in-game mechanic for you to stole away bodies and trash cans or closets like in later games what you have to do in this game is either drag a body to a sewer great that is open and just awkwardly grind against the edge of it until the body falls in or drag them to a room where the AI does not look in this level also introduces something that I'm not entirely sure is either a feature or a bug but when you go up behind an armed enemy to strangle them they will Auto detect you every single time in that press reader article I mentioned earlier Jacob Anderson remarks how they weren't able to get a few of the bugs and misbehaviors of the AI out of the game so this could be possibly what he's referring to this in turn requires you to go into sneak mode by pressing four it's basically just a toggled Crouch the issue with this feature is that you move too slow to actually sneak up on people with it so you end up having to walk up to the normally get behind them enter sneak mode for all of two seconds pull out your weapon and then kill them this game also has features like a leaning mechanic which you can use to peek out the bathroom to shoot the police chief without anybody seeing you and then Escape out the window the lean mechanic is a pretty cool feature that is missing from the later games that I think could be cool if they brought it back and tried to experiment with with it but with the game's clunky controls and if you're using the resolution fix that Zooms in the fov the mechanic ends up feeling never fully realized Mission 4 is the first level of the game that starts to really feel like the Hitman levels we have come to know and love today with large open-ended areas leaving a lot of planning for the player to do the only issue with these large open-ended levels is the game has no Mid Mission saving or checkpoints there is a respawn system where you get one to two respawns depending on the level but if you died because you alerted somebody they're still going to be alerted when you spawn back into the level so there's really no point of using it so you may as well just restart from the beginning this becomes very frustrating to the player especially when they get caught or compromised due to the Jank of the game and not the fault of their own mis-execution while I do like this level for being far larger compared to the previous three and actually being more open-ended and having multi-steps rather than just being go here kill a guy and leave it does feel like such a ramp up of difficulty and complexity compared to the previous three levels that it would end up scaring off in frustrating newer players it's not really an issue for me since I've played the entire series at this point and even if you get stuck now you have the infinite access of the internet but back in the day nobody had that luxury so unless you knew somebody who beat this game you're just stuck and this is really reflective in reviews of this game around its release guess you gotta sell the strategy guide somehow this is the level that starts to show the value of the knife over the Fiber Wire as much as I love the Fiber Wire and think it's a really cool weapon and the animations are really nice those animations are long and unskippable so when you have narrow Windows to kill somebody to get their disguise like one of the waiters in the bathroom before another waiter or a guard potentially walks in the knife just ends up being League Superior since its animations are quick and its kills are instant this again shows you that you need to hide bodies in rooms that NPCs don't go into because even if you take these bodies and pose them in the Stalls to look like they're taking a shit people are still going to find them alert the guards and make your target flee this level also introduces a design choice that I think has no place in this series and I do not like at all and that is Randomness in this level you need to find a jade statue in a safe and bring it to the herbalist on the first floor next to the bar in order to trade it to get a poison to kill your target the catch is that this statue can be in four possible locations in the level I understand why they do this it adds variety and increases the replay value of these levels but in a game all about planning especially this one where it's not exactly clear what you're supposed to do a lot of the time you should really want to keep as many random variables out of your game as possible to minimize player frustration the thing that is really cool about this level that goes hand in hand with the randomness is that there is multiple ways to gather information about the location of the Jade statue let's say you didn't go to the brothel and talk to the prostitute if you keep talking to the bartender eventually he'll mention that if you hear screaming coming from the basement it is the last white guy who tried to run away before pain is being which informs you of the CIA agent they have trapped in the basement if you go rescue him he'll give you the Jade statue's location if you do end up helping the prostitute Escape it gives you one of my favorite 47 reactions in the entire series foreign this game's tone is more in line with B-movie action schlock rather than a dark serious story that the later games would adopt this ends up helping this game's cutscenes which are really broken [Music] oh they're trying their best Mission 5 takes place in the jungles of Colombia and is by far the worst level in the whole game while the rest of the levels are pretty janky and some have aged worse than others this is just awful there's a reason why this level never came back in contracts to put it simply the level is needlessly Big about five times too big since it's a jungle it's basically just a copy and paste of the same hundred feet over and over again if you don't have the draw distance unlocker installed you are probably going to get lost in this level due to the fact that everything looks exactly the same this level has potential to be really cool but due to the simplistic nature of this game not having the mechanics introduced in later titles like distractions by sound or stolen away bodies it just feels Barren as hell most of this level is just going to be you walking back and forth between objectives the only thing you want to make sure you do in this level is pick up one of the snipers and take it with you since Mission 6 is a continuation of mission 5 and mission 7 is a continuous Mission 6. this is why I think they could have cut down the level size and made it all one creating a far more interesting Compact and well thought out level like level 6 is just you getting through this secret passageway taking you directly to the drug lord you're trying to kill that means you have to get past the locals god of death which just involves you killing a guard and dragging his body from the other end of the map all the way over to their altar the level is maybe five minutes at most which a vast majority of it is dragging said body I mentioned another AI Quirk that I ran into in mission 7 is that if you end up readying your weapon while holding a sniper rifle all the guards will attack you which makes no sense since the same guards had no problem with you doing it in Mission 5 or 6 along with the fact that you stole it from one of their own sniper nests this is their gun mission 8 is my favorite level in the game I think that hotel levels are always the coolest in the Hitman series just so many little details that do it right for me like being able to walk past a room that a housekeeper is cleaning and steal a key that they left in the door so now you have access to every Suite in the entire building or stealing a do not disturb sign and putting it on one of the doors so you can hide a dead body in a room and then never have to worry about an MPC stumbling on it accidentally there's even a Terminator reference where you can go to the florist and give him a message and he'll give you a box of roses with a shotgun in it there is so much to this level this is Peak Hitman if they had one level to show potential investors or Publishers that if you gave us more money we can make more like this Mission 8 is the level that I would show them up until now I've been talking about how the AI is pretty stupid and really buggy so this level takes you by surprise where if you talk to the guard first in your normal outfit and then change into a bell hops or any of the other employees costumes you'll see right through your disguise it's a shame that this is the only instance that I've ever come across of this happening in the entire game it shows that depth full AI that adapt to what you do are actually possible in this game and could have been put to use elsewhere I believe that mission 8 is also the only level in in the entire game that utilizes the jumping between ledge mechanic they showed it off in the tutorial but I don't believe that there is ever another level that allows you to do this Mission 9 suffers from the same issues that mission 5 6 and 7 suffer but to a lesser degree yeah the level is too big ending up making it pretty empty but it does not feel as monotonous to walk around in because there are clear objectives and things to do right from the get-go this level also has some Randomness to it needing you to follow the gang members to a rendezvous point where they're trying to buy guns so you can get LED back to the gun supplier the catches that the Rendezvous Point can be in three possible locations and since the gang member's car seems to be able to phase through Gates and you can't you have to realign the track so a train crashes through the fence allowing you to follow them mission 10 is a level that is held back by the limitations of this game in order to get past the entrance guards and go through the fence you need to either kill them or find someone who knows the password and walk with them simultaneously as they go through the fence because apparently that doesn't bother the AI AI at all instead of having something like finding out the password for yourself and telling them because it's not enough that you have the same clothes as everybody else and everybody in this entire compound seems to know the password you have to walk in with them simultaneously if you try to go by yourself you're just going to aggro them again it's just something that is a missed opportunity once you get onto the boat this is where the level starts to really pick up in difficulty you have to keep in mind all of these weird angles of the ship so people don't possibly see you while killing some of the guards if you're someone who's going back to play this game after first going through 2016 Blood Money Hitman 2 or even Absolution you might be taken aback by how much of this game has you going loud sometimes your best course of action is just pulling out a machine gun and gunning dudes down like in the engineering room where you need to kill everybody in it in order to disarm a nuke Mission 11 has you going back to the start of the game where the tutorial took place at Dr ortmeyer's sanitarium I've yet to really go into any detail about the story of this game so let's start doing it now that all the pieces are in place Agent 47 is the 47th clone of Dr ortmeyer who's trying to make the perfect killing machine your previous four major targets that being Lee Hong and Hong Kong Pablo Ocho and Colombia Brands folks in The Budapest Hotel and Boris and Rotterdam are all former Associates of Dr ortmeyer throughout the game when killing these major targets you had the chance to pick up a letter from them referencing the connection between each other all meeting in the French Foreign Legion eventually these five men would come together to form a group called The Five fathers donating part of their genetic code towards the creation of Agent 47 the four previous targets would go out on their own to become major crime Lords throughout the world while ortmeyer stayed in Romania opening a sanitarium which would function as a disguise for his cloning Labs underneath it after 47 killed the other four fathers ortmeyer would be able to create the number 48 line which is pretty much identical in power to 47 except they have no conscience of their own now having the 48's ortmeyer sees no reason for 47 to exist anymore because he cannot control him so bringing 47 back to this sanitarium was all a setup having the Romanian Special Forces flood the building which you will either have to fight your way through or take the disguise of one of the doctors and sneak into the labs underground mission 12 meet your brothers is an excellent final level in Climax to the story of codename 47 having you fight an army of agent 48 clones the only real downside for this level is the fact that it's pretty difficult which will result in you dying a bunch and you're going to have to listen to the same speech of ortmeyer on Loop over and over and over again and this shit gets incredibly old really fast celebration fighting the agent 48 clones is incredibly fun there are a ton of options for weapons you could find scattered throughout the lab like a minigun after killing every agent 48 you can finally meet your maker you come face to face with Dr ortmeyer shooting him in the chest will trigger the final cut scene where Agent 47 leans over him snaps his neck and the blood from his gunshot wound will form the Hitman Insignia as the credits begin to roll thank you foreign codename 47 released to overall mixed leaning towards positive reviews it's currently sitting at a 73 on Metacritic most people citing that it was a good idea but the execution was a little off due to questionable design choices along with the fact that the game leaves you to your own devices for a vast majority of it which led to player frustration because they did not know what they needed to do for a small team like IO interactive starting out originally as only seven people and this being their first game codename 47 showed the immense promise of this studio the game also sold incredibly well for a new IP only being on the PC selling a little over half a million in 2000 IO would take this Victory and move on to further improve their critical darling with the next title Hitman 2 Silent Assassin foreign [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] with codename 47 being a great success IO quickly got to work on their next title in the series Silent Assassin now with even larger Ambitions this time having the PS2 and Xbox original SD Focus for development during the creation of codename 47 IO were unable to get their hands on developer kitsense why the game was a PC exclusive so now being able to develop Silent Assassin for consoles IO felt more at home since most of the team prior to the creation of the studio were console devs codename 47 really showed that we were console developers we didn't consider save options on consoles at the time you were given codes that would allow you to skip levels that you had already completed also the keyboard layout was all messed up still one of the good things that was brought over from consoles was the third person perspective like codename 47 it's going to take some work to get this running properly on Modern Hardware in 16x9 although it's going to need a few more steps like last time you're going to need to edit the ini files but if you stop there you run the risk of characters losing textures Mid Mission along with some other bugs I ran into like cutscenes not playing or the game running at weird speeds so you're going to need to download these two files and place them into wherever you have the game downloaded to Simply drag and drop and you should be good to go like the quote mentioned earlier this game has a far more conventional control scheme so you don't have to mess around with it at the beginning unless you really don't like it codename 47 I would consider is a diamond in the rough so with Silent Assassin I really stepped up their game with mechanical Innovation fixing issues with design choices making excellent quality of life changes new stealth implementations include crouching and Crouch walking so you can now hide behind medium-sized objects like crates or behind doors and doorways to abuse the game's AI so they don't spot you the ability to look through keyholes allowing you to peer into rooms and hallways ahead to see where the guards are looking or if they have left the area the ability to pick locks which allows for more non-linear and interesting indoor level design anesthetics allowing for non-lethal takedowns leaving NPCs unconscious based on the amount of Pips in the top right corner you use maxing out at the total of five minutes of unconscious business a first person mode giving you better accuracy with aiming for headshots with pistols and smaller Firearms the first person mode really reminds me of the FPS mode in Star Wars Battlefront 2 and how while it's usable it does feel a bit awkward clearly showing that this game wasn't being made as an FPS in mind first a suspicion meter so you know how close you are to causing an alert the faster it pulses while turning red and filling up the entire bar means that you're being closer and closer to being discovered the way disguises work has also changed previously in codename 47 once you are in Disguise enemies would never detect you but now in Silent Assassin if you act too suspicious your cover will be blown basically if you run around in your costumes or bump into people you're going to be discovered while a neat idea to add a layer of complexity to stealth I find it more infuriating than anything else due to the game's AI which I will go more in depth with in just a minute other editions include Diana now being voiced instead of you just reading the mission description before a level the now iconic end of mission rating system that grades you based on your skills in overhauled inventory system with 3D models to display your items along with an in-depth description of them a real-time map which allows you to see enemies moving around on the floor which kind of invalidates looking through keyholes for the most part except when you're trying to check enemies postures in the same spot to know if they would see you if you open a door like this room in Shogun Showdown the church where 47 lives in Sicily now functions as your Hub allowing you to test and use weapons collected on missions freely on the dummy in the yard this is where you will be picking out your tools to take each time you change locations for Missions so make sure you pick everything you think you will need before going because you won't get another chance again sadly some of the randomness and levels has stayed over from codename 47 like in the mission invitation to the party where the safe can be in multiple different areas compared to codename 47's 13 levels Silent Assassin is sporting 21. now while on paper more levels is a good thing but a lot of them fall into the same trap of level design that I feel is really holding this game back like I mentioned in my opening statement the game is far more ambitious than its predecessor so the game doesn't only have almost double the levels most of them are double if not triple the size but this is the Sixth Gen we're talking about here it's still gonna be another 10 years before massively populated levels with tons of active NPCs in many moving Parts with Absolution or four years if you're being generous with the Mardi Gras level in blood money so while some of these levels are impressive in size for the PS2 they end up being very Barren the Russian and Japanese levels are an excellent example of this in Saint Petersburg you need to find a vantage point to sniper General in a war meeting but when you start in the Subway and then make your way through the town you run into maybe two or three NPCs and most of the buildings are just for show functionally just big Square rocks to get in your way or work as cover the contents in the level themselves never really justify this size of them this issue is even more noticeable after finishing the Japanese levels having you go through massive snowy valleys to going to a hotel in Malaysia which are way more Compact and filled with things to do the contrast here is so night and day between the first and second halves of the game it's astonishing a lot of the levels have cool ideas in theory the market of Afghanistan is a cool setting but again it's so needlessly big that I feel like if it was more compact with higher amount of things to do it would leave a larger Lasting Impression just having the market squares and maybe a few streets around it would work far better because as is it's just a big maze with two empty lots in the center the other issue that goes hand in hand with the oversized level design is The Game's AI I've alluded to it up until now but replaying this game for the video the AI seemed worse than I ever remembered they just do random shit for no Rhyme or Reason and most the time I couldn't even discern why ranging from enemies alerting for no reason guards from across the map would hunt you down to check your ID or somehow see a crime you committed when you're in an isolated room guards would come up to kill you for no reason guards would stop their walk cycles and stand in one place forever so you need to either close the game or reload it enough times to when they're starting to walk again enemies would see you through walls or be trapped in walls so they can see into two rooms at once and clip into either or at any time the Japanese levels were a nightmare for this Hidden Valley is probably the worst level in the entire series excluding anything from Absolution because that's its own can of worms I honestly struggle to think of any level off the top of my head as bad as this level not only is it a massive empty Canyon that you either need to run through or go through the underground tunnel to get to the other side but it's chock full of bugs there are snipers and towers that will spot you from far away so you need to use the forest to your advantage waiting for them to either turn around or check their gun but even then they still somehow spot you on occasion now for these videos I try to perfect every Mission getting silent assassinating killing no one except for the targets but this level broke me of ever trying to do that and just made it down right impossible to do so where in the underground tunnels trucks will be driving and one of them will hit one of the guards killing them and giving you an alert there is no way to stop this from happening to my knowledge you just have to get lucky and hope the truck doesn't kill one of the tunnel guards on patrol but there's also another bug where the trucks will just stop driving making it nearly impossible to finish the level since you need them to disperse the guard's checkpoint the final mission of the Japanese section Shogun Showdown also is another level that shows off just how buggy this game is this level must have taken me 50 attempts to try to get Silent Assassin before I realized it was impossible and just gave up this level has tons of NPCs that will chase you down from across the map my theory is because this level has a gimmick where you have to be careful for squeaky floorboards that will alert guards so possibly all guards are programmed to hear this and are affected by this in this level it's the only reason I could come up with for why random guards and the helipad would somehow hear me drop a gun in a stone-lined hidden hallway to come kill me when I mentioned earlier that guards randomly would come to kill you when listing off all the bugs this was the main level that this would happen to me you just have to get lucky that they won't aggro as soon as they lay their eyes on you walls also don't exist to NPCs in this level since they are able to just walk between them whenever they feel like it and it's the main reason why this level cannot be completed with a solid assassin rating this ninja here is supposed to be on the banister above but for some reason he's stuck in the wall below and will automatically aggro as soon as he sees you and try to kill you giving you an alert seriously fuck these levels I know this must seem polarizing with the title of the video being realized potential but there are some really solid levels in the game that I would come back to to play from time to time if only the AI was fixed the biggest issue with the game would be no longer there and admittedly this isn't much of an issue for people who use saves and don't OCD try to play the game perfectly when realistically they're all acceptable methods of playing this game following the ending of codename 47 killing his creator Dr ortmeyer and his army of agent 48 clones 47 has retired from the ICA and now lives a quiet Life as a gardener for a church in Sicily run by father Vittorio after learning about the origins of his creation 47 has become confused and conflicted and confides in Vittorio being created as a weapon to kill people he can't find a place in this world for himself meanwhile Sergey zavortgo the brother of one of the founding fathers of the cloning project so that technically makes him 47's uncle is investigating the death of his brother so this leads him and the mystery man to the Romanian Asylum from the last game they discover footage of 47 killing members of the SWAT team and they realize that the legend of Mr 47 is very much real and begin to concoct the plan to bring him out of his early retirement for their own gain after 47 finally opens his heart to Vittorio he is kidnapped and held for ransom of five hundred thousand dollars 47 doesn't have that kind of money anymore due to donating most of his to the church so he has no other choice but to turn to the ICA to ask a favor getting back into contact with Diana they're able to strike a deal having him work contracts for the ICA and in return they will get information on the whereabouts of where Vittorio is being kept now sprung back into action 47 travels the world following orders of the ICA hoping that this Mutual relationship will bring him closer to saving his one and only friend the location choices in this game are all great the varying locations have always been one of the standout features of Hitman your journey brings you to the snowy town of Saint Petersburg a snowy Valley of Japan a massive skyscraper in Malaysia and multiple markets in Afghanistan as well as multiple medical facilities in India though the game upon release did receive criticism for its depiction of seek holy land where in 1984 hundreds of people were massacred so subsequent releases of the game censored all depictions of Shiva and were replaced with the face texture of the cult leader you were hired to kill after finishing your final hit in India during your Escape you run into an assassin that looks just like you but that can't be right you killed all the agent 48 clones back in Romania during the last game it turns out that all of your contracts up until now have been made by Sergey see this whole time you were killing people that were involved with him buying a nuclear warhead along with the materials you had been recovering for Missions like in the Malaysia hits where software that would allow the nuclear warheads to bypass the American anti-missile systems but the cult leader ended up betraying Sergey and stealing it for himself which is why you were hired to kill him and why during your escape from the island you ran into what appears to be another clone so he could tie up all the loose ends now the ICA has tasked you with killing Sergey having you travel back to the start of the game in St Petersburg but when you get there turns out to be a trap and you end up killing agent 17 a clone that predated agent 47's creation so he has none of the physical enhancements along with no will of his own now for your final mission you are taken back to Sicily to finish off Sergey while he has father Vittorio held hostage in the confession Booth trying to stealth this mission is actually really hard since you only start with a Fiber Wire but you're able to make your way to the shed and use all the weapons in Your Arsenal that you have collected on your missions up until now it's a great way to end your game allowing the player to use everything they've learned thematically I think that the end of codename 47 with you fighting on the agent 48 clones is better but mechanically I think this is the better ending after saving futorial from Sergey 47 says he must leave and Vittorio gives him a Parting Gift of a crucifix to always remember the good in people but as 47 leaves the church he hangs up the crucifix saying that the only thing that he will take with him from this is the memories of those who betrayed him and those who never failed his trust he accepts that he has no place in this normal world and will never be able to find true peace for himself returning to his life as a contract killer saying he will follow his own path now and create his own justice as the shot hangs on the crucifix and the credits begin to roll [Music] foreign assassin is still the best critically received game in the series sitting at an 87 on Metacritic reviewers citing that it fixed most of the issues present in codename 47 although it is still weird that the story just completely left out who the mystery man was only ever reappearing in the background of hitman's sniper Challenge which was a pre-order demo for people who pre-ordered Hitman Absolution on steam or at GameStop while it may not be my favorite game in the series I can still see the Merit in the game's ambition and achievement the only thing truly holding this game back is its AI with what IO learned here they continued to march on to the creation of the next installment in the series Hitman contracts [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] success that was Silent Assassin IO got to work on Hitman 3 which was originally intended to be the final entry in the series leaving it off as a Trilogy we seriously thought that the world would have grown tired by Hitman after the third game in March of 2004 idos would buy IO interactive for 32 million British pounds nearly 59 million US dollars at the time eight months into the development of this Hitman 3 IO came to the conclusion that their ambitious finale would not make idos's a pointed release window so the team held a meeting with at the time idos CEO Mike McGarvey after some discussion on what the team should do they came to the decision of making a Hitman 2.5 as mentioned in the previous episode Ayo was unable to get their hands on developer kits during the development of codename 47 so it ended up being a PC exclusive with silent assassin's sales far surpassing codename 47s maintaining itself as the best-selling title in the series as of 2009 research told them that less than 10 percent of Silent assassiners had played codename 47. this Hitman 2.5 would remake levels from codename 47 allowing the console players to experience them for the first time so I O split development between Hitman 2.5 which would eventually be known today as Hitman contracts while another part worked on the proper sequel which would eventually become Hitman blood Money and another project mercenaries which eventually down the line would become Kanan Lynch this small skeleton crew working on contracts would then get the game made from the ground up in just nine months making a game in and of itself is already an incredibly difficult task but the fact that they made this game in such a small time frame even with half of it being a remake is genuinely astonishing and I deeply respect and commend this team for the stressful work they must have had to go through especially considering the comments of their working conditions made by Tor blistaden art director of blood money and game director of absolution like their lack of air conditioning and how the building automatically opened its ceiling windows at 2 am leaving the overworked employees shivering at their computers contracts opens to a wounded 47 stumbling through what seems to be a hotel or apartment building before collapsing unconscious in a room the rest of the cutscenes in this game play out as 47 is losing his tenuous grasp on reality where scenes in this room merge into fever dream-esque flashbacks of previous missions music make you lose control music but you lose I love these cutscenes their creative transitions are so engaging and always has you wondering what is real and what is in 47's mind going haywire as he believes out on the floor the score by Jesper kid accompanies these scenes perfectly the opening when you first boot up the game could honestly be put into a silent hill game and it wouldn't seem that out of place [Music] laughs [Music] it might be reading too much into things but I see the overworked devs in these cutscenes I imagine this is what it was like when they were working their 48-hour shifts in 100 hour work weeks [Music] we're finally out of the woods was trying to get these games to run on Modern Hardware so no more mini tutorials in the middle of these videos as for new additions to gameplay there really isn't that much syringes have now replaced anesthetics which I think is a welcome change because the syringe is far less awkward to use especially thanks to the fact that walking speeds and sneak mode have been greatly increased the now iconic circular inventory was introduced in this game which is one of my favorite item menus and games but it wouldn't be until blood Money where we get the wonderful whooshing sound as you cycle through the items the HUD has been redesigned again and while it looks good I do wish it was at the top of the screen and if you're playing this on an average size modern monitor it's not going to scale that well leaving the prompts for actions kind of small disguises were pretty much identical to how they were in South assassin with only bumping into guards or running really close to them and acting suspicious will blow your cover for the most part foreign the AI is better than Silent Assassin at least from my experiences but it still has the ever Charming Jank that you come to love as a fan of this franchise like I said a few minutes ago half of this game is remade levels of codename 47 so let's compare and contrast these levels in this game and their codename 47 Incarnation mission 1 plays out the final minutes of codename 47. we get to see 47 kill ortmeyer and the actual level itself is the aftermath right away you can see that the cloning lab has been redesigned and looks awesome it is also now filled somehow with all the mental patients from upstairs if you time it right you could even see one of the patients carrying the minigun used in codename 47 the other biggest change is now the SWAT team storming the building has been moved to as you were trying to leave where it was originally before you were getting into the underground lab to start the final level other than that the building upstairs looks generally the same in layout but is far grosser with the texture work to portray just how horrible this place is like it was most likely a originally envisioned this is the type of stuff I love from remakes where it allows them to enhance the atmosphere which was once held back by Hardware limitations since this level is supposed to be after the events of codename 47 we don't get to fight the Clones which I think would have been a really cool Mission given the new layout of the laboratory Mission 6 is the next mission that is a remake which actually fuses both of the Rotterdam levels together I wish all the remain levels were like this one because while it keeps the base the same it's different enough that you could consider it its own unique level it brings back stuff like getting the dancer to distract the driver with a blowjob so you can place the tracker on his car but unlike the original they added multiple scenarios for how you can play this level out so it's no longer a mandatory thing to do with new additions to this level they ended up cutting a lot of the fat from The Originals and in my opinion makes this a far more enjoyable single level than the bloated 2 from the first game with the redesign level layout it removes pretty much all of the tedious walking from objective to objective which was by far my biggest qualm with your original game the randomness of where the car goes leading you to track it down to intercept the gun deals so you can move the tracker from the car to the case of money which would then lead you to Boris where the second level has all been removed disarming the nuke is also no longer a mandatory aspect of this level making the tracker again not as important allowing for wider variation to take place even if Boris arms the nuke in this version you can kill him and complete the mission without it going off you also don't need to drive the ship out into international waters like the original as for other new additions the police actually play a huge role in this version as they raid boris's ship killing all of his henchmen and you could even join them with stealing a disguise by knocking out a SWAT member before their assault begins allowing you to use their helicopter to escape but it's potentially bugged depending on the version as noted on the wiki and I ended up running into this bug and my playthrough for this video mission 7 is pretty much a one-to-one recreation of my favorite level in codename 47 the hotel it added on a small wing where there is a murder and you can see ghosts which is is one of my favorite little details in this game and the only other notable change is that they changed the level from day to night which will be a theme with the rest of these remade levels to fit the more muted tone of this game I struggled to find any differences other than you can now kill thrawns in the pool instead of only the sauna the remaining levels are remakes from the first four levels of codename 47 the Hong Kong gang war assassinations and here is where the game kinda starts to fall flat see the first half of the game was all new missions then halfway through the game it's just remakes with only slight variations due to level layout and maybe one new addition the issue with this is that these Hong Kong levels are the first levels of codename 47 and work as your introduction to that game's mechanics and world now having them halfway through the game it feels like a dip in complexity compared to the original levels which by comparison had way more going on within them Mission 8 of this game is the first level of codename 47 and takes all of two minutes to complete Lee Hong's assassination actually takes more away than it adds no longer is there the old shopkeeper who gives you the poison after retrieving the Jade statue instead you get laxatives from the bar and you put it in the suit that Lee Hong's guard drinks instead of getting this wonderful scene from the original foreign [Music] is gone the Jade statue has been reworked into just something that you need to complete the mission the game also pretty much abandons the cool fever dream reality Transitions and just throws you right into missions like uh we don't really know how to transition into this level organically so bam you're here now I think this issue could have been mitigated if these levels were the opening of this game and the actual new levels were the second half after 47 recovers but maybe repeating the start of the first game would have been more of a faux pas at the very least I wish they were more like the Rotterdam Mission blending them together with new elements or bring back even small segments of Colombia because those were the levels that I think needed the rework the most as for the original levels they're great anyone who is a hardcore fan of this game usually has the meat King Mission as their favorite level and for good reason it's one of the coolest settings in the series this scuzzy meat packing plant is housing the sturric brothers who kidnapped and killed your client's daughter the cold impressive blues and harsh oranges used to color this level along with Jasper kids score create this wonderfully unsettling atmosphere the only original level I have any issue with is sadly the final level because it doesn't feel like a final mission you have made the SWAT team storming the building and killed the detective who shot you before the game starts and you get away you run into Diana on the plane and you get briefed on your next mission which is a sequel Stinger for the next game it honestly feels like the penultimate Mission leading to your final Hit That Never Comes the second half of this game is what's holding it back and its Rush development of seven to nine months really shows in its closing act receiving only slightly better scores than code name 47 sitting at an average of 74 for PC 78 for the original Xbox and 80 for the PS2 on Metacritic Anderson's Claim about people getting sick of Hitman would be partially proven right with critics saying while contract was a competent stealth game it didn't bring much Innovation and was more of the same some sites praised the remade codename 47 levels saying it fixed a lot of the issues from the first game While others found it a lazy rehash the game would go on to sell 2 million units by 2009 and was the eighth highest grossing console game of April 2004 making 4 million dollars but due to licensing issues with the song Immortals by clutch that played during the Rotterdam Mission the game didn't make its way onto digital storefront steam until 2014. even with the 4 million made during its launch month idos reported profit warnings on May 26th due to expecting 16 million dollars in Hitman reorders on a more positive note just for kids soundtrack for the game would go on to win a bafta in 2005 for best original music with the completion of contracts this Skeleton Crew would rejoin the main team and continue to work towards their magnum opus Hitman blood Money oh my mind [Music] everything up until now has been leading to this moment iOS darling their magnum opus the gold standard the unrealistic expectation Setter Hitman blood Money now that contract was released idos in IO interactive put everything they had into making this the best game they possibly could putting more resources into this game than any other previous title with making a new engine from the ground up which would allow for things like a full 360 degree motion camera to let players make their kills as cinematic as possible and in the process IO became the 10th largest game studio in Europe with 140 employees with the knowledge of making the previous three games and developing Blood Money alongside contracts this gave it the longest pre-production of any of their titles or blistad noted that because of this they had quite a detailed level design guide so they had a good idea of what would work and what wouldn't after reading multiple interviews from a variety of people on the dev team the idea of a complete understanding of their IP was really apparent when Outlets would ask them how they plan to have the gameplay out gameplay wise they all had very similar answers how the hits are executed have always been up to the player we simply give them the tools to play as they please one thing that really stuck out to me was in the Eurogamer interview with the game's producer Adam lay who said they listened to their hardcore fan base when designing this game instead of trying to appeal to as many people as possible and end up appealing to no one they got feedback from their most dedicated fans on various forms and message boards which helped influence their decisions for locations in overall game design for example the game director recounted how they screenshot from the game was shown online with 47 holding a gun behind his back at this point in development this wasn't a feature or anything it was simply just made for a promotional image but then they noticed how fans were speculating how this would factor into gameplay and then they realized this was something that they needed to have even if they had no idea how to implement it on the topic of game design unlike contracts with critics complaining it had little mechanical Innovation Blood Money added a ton of features to spice up gameplay you can now scale and interact with tons of areas in the environment adding a lot of verticality to levels after climbing up a hatch in an elevator you can strangle someone from the top with your Fiber Wire and pull their body to the top of the elevator to hide it you now have the ability to hide it in creates in closets along with being able to store bodies and crates but in doing so takes away your ability to hide in them while wielding the game's plethora of small Firearms you can take people as a human shield this makes it super easy to bring people to where you want to hide their body since you could knock them out by hitting them over the head with your gun unlike the previous two games NPCs being knocked out for whatever reason stay knocked out for the entire duration of the level unless they're interacted with by a guard or another NPC so you're no longer on that five to seven minute time limit when using the chloroform or the sedative NPCs will now also tell you to leave restricted areas instead of just becoming instantly hostile melee combat is introduced so you can disarm people and bonk them over the head with items like the hammer fire extinguisher and screwdriver fighting people with your fists is still really clunky and I would not recommend doing it Crouch and sneak mode have been combined so when you're standing you will Crouch and when you're moving you will sneak the speed of sneaking has also been increased when compared to contracts you can now throw items to distract people and weapons like the knife can be thrown to kill someone but you're unable to retrieve them after this with the introduction of throwing items and causing distractions comes the most broken item to ever be introduced to Hitman the coin I'm not joking either this is the best item in your entire Arsenal in my eyes this is the golden standard of a skill expression item a new or low skill player may only get a limited amount of mileage out of this item potentially forgetting it even exists or rarely finding instances where it's applicable but a high skill player can use this item to work the game's systems to its limits and take advantage of its AI I honestly recommend watching speed runs for this game because they are so fascinating to see how players will use things like the coin to maximize their effectiveness and break the game game yes you can look at it as the coin breaks the game because it admittedly does but I wish more games had things like this allowing for skill expression in your game through its systems opens up a world of possibilities for the player and in turn keeps your game effectively living as long as people are interested to try to discover new tech it's why things like character action and fighting games are so beloved this at its core is what Hitman is all about and what I love about this series a low skill floor but a high skill ceiling [Music] the three major systems added to this were the accident system the notoriety system and the weapon upgrade system weapon upgrades are really straightforward receiving money for completing levels has made a return from codename 47. how much you receive is based on how well you do in a level before each Mission you can pick what weapons you wish to bring with you for your hit your selection includes a silenced pistol a submachine gun a shotgun an assault rifle and a sniper as you progress through the game you'll be able to buy new ammo types and parts for your gun like a better suppressor extended mags grips or stocks and Scopes you can also buy miscellaneous upgrades for yourself like better body armor extra explosives medicine and a briefcase that allows you to take your sniper rifle through metal detectors the only upgrade that has me on the fence about the whole thing is the improved lock pick upgrade it's why I'm always hesitant to have an upgrade system like this in a stealth game because all the upgrades do is make it so you could open lock doors faster so you can potentially see this as the early game has to suffer so it can give you something to upgrade afraid but in practice it isn't that big of a deal in this game and it isn't as dumb as something like the upgrades and Splinter Cell Blacklist with their sneakier boot upgrades that make less sound the new accident system allows for you to make targets look like they had died in an accident this of course plays into how you're rated at the end of a mission admittedly a lot of the time it's just having Things fall on them like chandeliers or crates being suspended in the air but there are still a lot of rather creative ones within the game and even if they can be rather repetitive at times it's another Avenue to experiment with gameplay to see what you can get away with with making it look like an accident the most infamous one of these of course is swapping out the prop gun at the play in the mission Curtains Down I remember this Mission being talked about for years people who didn't even care about Hitman or stealth games at all would bring up this Mission and how cool it was the final system added was the notoriety system and honestly it was kind of a dud the idea behind notoriety is that the worse you do in a mission by getting caught at a scene getting caught committing across time or recorded on security cameras without destroying the evidence will lead to an increase in your notoriety meaning that people in future levels can spot you easier through your disguises and the like in all the years I've been playing this game I have never noticed this actually affect gameplay in the slightest and even if it did have a huge effect you can easily make your notoriety go away by spending some of your reward money on stuff like hush money and the destruction of evidence I commend them for trying something like this because this could lead to some interesting gameplay variety and added replayability but to even engage with this system it requires you to play in not a really fun way in order to get your notoriety up you have to play worse you have to not be an assassin and because of this I often forget this mechanic is even in the game with Hitman 3 announced for a January 2021 release maybe they will go and give it another crack again and try to implement it better now that technology has advanced the last thing of note they added to this game was the end of mission newspaper this is basically a recap of what happened in the level presented as an article for a local newspaper of current events yes they are really formulaic especially if you are consistently getting things like Silent Assassin but I just absolutely love these these newspapers are such a campy video game concept that you don't see anymore especially in games that are for the most part pretty self-serious this game has my favorite tutorial ever not only does it function as a regular Mission admittedly a rather restrictive one in the context of the rest of them but it teaches you everything you need to learn about the system mechanics and all the new things introduced that I just talked about I remember before I ever even owned the game that this was the demo on Steam and I would play through it so many times in my parents laptop with no more than a 20 to 50 frame average and I loved every single second of it I never felt like I didn't understand how any specific mechanic worked after finishing this tutorial originally when this game was being made as Hitman 3 the story was supposed to be a parody of the George Bush election campaign and having the game released into 2004 it would have been perfectly timed but as we know how things played out contracts came out in 2004 in its place and Hitman 3 was transformed into Hitman blood Money as it was being developed alongside contracts so this story was shifted to the vice president attempting a coup with the help of a rival agency called the franchise led by the former director of the FBI also like contracts the story is told via flashbacks but this time around it's from the perspective of the former FBI director to a reporter it's pretty fine to see how he stretches the truth at times to suit his own narrative to downplay how much of a perfect killer 47 is due to being a clone who actually killed him that's the most delicious irony of all he stumbled coming over the compound wall severed his spinal cord on the rocks the world's most nefarious assassin died of clumsiness the franchise's goal is to wipe out the ICA and Destroy 47 so no one can possibly use his DNA blueprint to make their own Army of clones similar to the agent 48 line that you fought at the end of codename 47. since the president is pro-cloning he also has to go and the whole reason for the interview with the journalist is to sway The public's opinion against the use of cloning and to get it outlawed like I mentioned earlier thanks to how the development panned out and with the prior knowledge of making three previous games they had a pretty concrete and thorough level design guide while this is still one of my favorite games of all time up there with Ratchet and Clank going Commando and near I fear this game's age is starting to show the level House of Cards was really starting to get under my skin during this playthrough it's not even that bad of a level there is a decent amount of things to do in places to explore in the casino hotel but this level just takes forever to do anything in it since two of the three targets aren't in the level at to start and you have to wait for them to arrive it takes up to 10 plus minutes for the final Target to even arrive which then prompts the second target to leave the bar until then you can just be stuck with nothing to do and just aimlessly walk around if someone made a mod to make Al Khalifa either start in a level or show up much sooner this would be a far better level the other thing that makes this game really start to show its age in this playthrough is I've ran into a lot of technical issues that I've never had before animations would break while walking causing me to lose speed and would result in me just gliding downstairs if I tried to crouch during this it would cause horrible screen tearing recording won't even pick up half of how bad it is in the mission Flatline you're supposed to inject agent Smith with a serum to make it look like he dies so they'll take his body to a morgue and you can bust them out for some reason the AI just freaked out and glitched so when they were supposed to take his body from the underground facility to the morgue by the exit they just didn't do it for 20 minutes I had nothing to do and I was effectively trapped in the level another bug was that I kept running into invisible walls in death on the Mississippi so not only is this my least favorite level in the game wishing that I could rip it out and replace it with one of the original levels from contracts but then I couldn't even do the normal Strat to get Silent Assassin on this level the worst bug of all I ran into while recording is in the final level the last place you want to run into a game breaking bug is the climax of your game during 47's funeral there's supposed to be a gaussian blur over the background But Not only was it gone but the mouse cursor was stuck on my screen and originally I wasn't able to wake 47 up no matter how hard I mashed without vsync on at the time I couldn't get him out of the casket I didn't run into any of these issues the last time I played the game which had been only a year prior but it was on an older PC so I fear that it's starting to get the old game on a new PC bugginess which I never had up until this point at least Hitman has a dedicated fan base and if issues start to make the game completely unplayable hopefully people will make fixes or by some miracle i o would release a patch but that seems really unlikely when blood money came out it really felt like a game changer bringing tons of new people into the series unlike contracts iOS reported to Gamespot that it exceeded their expectations selling 1.5 million units just in the first two months of its release Jasper kids soundtrack was nominated for best video game music at the MTV Music Awards in 2006 only losing out to Oblivion tore blistaden remarked that it was a happy accident that Ava Maria was even in the game as it wasn't even part of the OST it ironically enough it has become the most iconic and synonymous song with Hitman the game would go on to receive plenty of glowing reviews from Publications with it currently sitting at an 81 for the Xbox original in 82 for the Xbox 360 and PC and in 83 for the PlayStation 2. with many praising the game's music and level design but Jacob Anderson's suspicions were starting to realize with people getting tired of Hitman with this being the fourth game in six years IO wanted to take a break and like the ending of this game the curtains closed on the story of Hitman n47 for a while IO would then move on to explore other avenues releasing games like mini ninja and Kanan Lynch dead Men it wouldn't be for another six years before the unrealistic expectations set by Blood Money would be inevitably let down with a divisive release of Hitman absolution foreign [Music] nothing stays at the top forever and that was certainly the case for Io interactive post the release of Hitman blood Money IO had released four Hitman games in the span of six years struggling together crunching together dedicating their lives together to make some of the best stealth games the industry has ever seen somehow making a bald guy in a suit with little to no emotions in Industry icon But as time moved on so did IO and its staff with an exodus of Old Guard like the director of Blood Money Rasmus I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce his last name leaving to become director of design at nyc4 four of the Seven original founders of IO leaving the company to reform Roto Moto the company that created IO interactive as a joint venture with Nordisk film back in 1998 and in April of 2009 Square Enix would buy Idols for 84.3 million pounds having all of idos's previously acquired Studios like IO interactive to follow under the Square Enix spanner members of IO did remark though that they lost no Freedom with this acquisition unfortunately in November of 2010 IO did face layoffs as they restructured it was never disclosed the actual number of said layoffs but it was a sad event nonetheless IO would also explore other Ventures releasing new IPS like 2K and Lynch games and Mini Ninjas as more time passed it seemed like they lost sight of what made their Series so special just listen to the contrast between this Dev diary with the director of Hitman blood Money and this interview with the director of absolution we made some screenshots at a very early stage where where Hitman was having a gun behind his back and that weren't really a feature in the game at that point and then people really um really you know wow we're talking about it on the fan sites and all that so we so I just had to put that in and we had no idea how to do that but we we felt that the trial and error gameplay of the old games was it's kind of it's not that fun to play it anymore while you always have to like you try a level and within seconds you'll get killed and you have to re replay and replay so that's why we've been we've been making the game in a way that you can more the game is more forgiving so as you play through the levels you can kind of learn and use the Instinct feature to kind of predict what will happen rather than having to experience it and and kind of die and and restart in the dev diaries for blood money they prided listening and interacting with their hardcore fans to make the best game possible closely listening to feedback and implementing some of their ideas but now in interviews with Absolution it sounds like what people loved is old and outdated after playing this game when it came out back in 2012 I always had this thought that the game was designed the way it was because it was trying to appeal to a more casual audience as Hitman and stealth games as a whole are an acquired taste either like him or you don't and their trial and error nature to master levels can turn off potential players of course for years all I can do is speculate that this was the reason based off industry Trends with how other Studios were following the dumb down to appeal to the Call of Duty audience formula but after watching noclipse documentary interviewing io's current CEO slash co-owner and Studio creative director my suspicions were more than confirmed and I recall back then sort of the mission briefing if you will what we were trying to achieve was to make Hitman very playable because up until that point stuff like you know basic controls of the character getting the camera getting combat stealth Action all that stuff to really just fuel like you could pick up and play the game like you would pick up and play any other console game there's nothing wrong with the idea of making a game more pick up and playable on paper I just personally disagree with a lot of the ways they went about doing it the other really telling thing is what influenced them and in my opinion was a misread on The Meta so to speak of the game industry and their place within it at the time and back when absolutions original Concepts were kind of formed it was the heydays of Max Payne and Gears of War kind of thing and that's where the trend was going and that's what we created and wanted a back then Absolution is the first Hitman game to be made on their new Glacier 2 engine which allows for far more active NPCs in any given level this was something that they really pushed and showed off at events with the Chinatown level as the market is sprawling with people but in reality this increase of MPC numbers and other features didn't get utilized nearly as much as we would have hoped given what they pitched would be doable on this Cutting Edge engine the biggest departure with Absolution is its level design the levels are very linear compared to the sandboxes of old but as I've said in previous videos linearity isn't the core issue for most games even if that's what people say it is linearity is the symptom not the disease the linear level design of this game with going from point A to point B is definitely a problem but I think it's everything around it that makes it an issue the root problem is the watering down of mechanics and the poorly implemented new additions so first let's go over what mechanics were removed from this game and how they affect the overall gameplay loop as a whole the removal that gets me the most heated anytime I play this game is how the circular inventory has been replaced with a horizontal bar of seven squares instead of being able to hoard tons of items that could be used for different things everything now has to fall into these five types so they can go into these specific slots you have slot one for your Silver Ballers Slot 2 for your Fiber Wire slot 3 for a melee item that can be thrown for a distraction or hit people with it Slot 4 is for a machine gun or shotgun slot 5 is for other pistols slot 6 is for explosives and slot 7 is for rifles because everything has to fit into these very restrictive formulas nothing can be too different from the other options if they are then when you pick them up they aren't a part of your seven slots like medicine for example which I think ruins the puzzle aspect of this game since it removes the thinking aspect when going into killing Targets in the old games you can walk past some random items and pick them up like an aphrodisiac or chloroform in blood money and then you'd have no idea what to do with them requiring you to run around the level and and see what they could be interacted with now if you say pick up some sleeping pills then it obviously goes into the pizza that's downstairs that only the target can touch but the game gives you a prompt when you walk by it this also changes how large weapons work since they no longer need to be concealed within a level and can just disappear into 47's code so where you used to have to have a suitcase or carry the rifle in your left hand you no longer have any issues with that and can just be a walking weapon cachet syringes have been removed so you can no longer sedate or poison people directly or the items they interact with they have been replaced with very scripted items that you find in the world which have become very obvious block into square hole puzzles the ruap mines have been removed and replaced with remote C4 and proximity mines the most you're ever really going to get out of them is finding them in the world and arming them so an unsuspecting Target can walk past them and Trigger them by accident first person mode has been removed and while it isn't the end of the world it's a shame to see go even if I found myself regularly using it in blood money since the weapons felt far less accurate in comparison to contracts or Silent Assassin the coin and the ability to throw weapons that aren't your melee items have been removed the coin was incredibly broken in blood money but with its removal and the ability to throw weapons makes the bottle the only option in previous games sometimes you can create openings by leaving weapons lying around so guards would come and pick them up and take them to their security room like in the White House Mission and blood money for example lock picking is only in the game at the end of checkpoint exits there is only one single door in the entire game to my knowledge that you could lock pick that isn't an exit and it's right next to the exit so who cares this greatly restricts the level design since it results in very little reason to explore around and the ability to Branch off of levels in any meaningful way they still have key cards in this game but key card doors and lock pickable doors serve different functions in the previous titles e-card doors required you to sneak into restricted areas so you can make progress in other more heavily restricted areas whereas the locked doors that can be picked were roadblocks that were while easy to overcome still posed as a risk versus reward for the player and worked seemingly as the Invisible Hand of the level designer to show you this is a restricted area so you don't just open a door and walk in only to instantly get in trouble because it was a restricted area but you had no way of knowing which is a massive issue in this game in the previous games there were tears to the type of restricted areas that corresponded to the type of door locks low risk areas could be lock picked but they didn't instantly get you to anything meaningful they usually required you to time yourself correctly as well as being able to sneak past guards to get to said door either by getting a disguise or by being in their blind spot as well as being able to sneak past whatever comes next since whatever's Behind These locked doors wasn't your goal but the path to it key carded areas were usually heavily restricted areas that contained Mission important things like a Target or something you needed to collect like 4 for example in blood money this key card door in the rehab leads to where agent Smith is being held captive or this door in the opera house which is a very important vantage point for the player to either snipe the opera singer or to see the targets aligned with a chandelier to explode it and drop it on top of him when he trips looking through keyholes has been removed which is incredibly annoying because like I mentioned earlier there is no way to tell what a restricted area is and if you open a door to one without even stepping inside of it in some instances you will be spotted which deducts points and loses you sound assassin the obvious replacement is to use the new Instinct wall hack that lets you just see where everybody is but that doesn't give you all the information you need that's like just looking at the map in the previous game and that's it Instinct doesn't give you an idea of the layout of the room which I find just as if not more important than knowing where the people are in the room it doesn't give you finer details like is there Vision being obstructed by something within the room like a shelf for example the full level sized map has been removed which in most cases due to the level design of this game it really isn't a problem but in the few levels that are more like the old games like the Chinatown missions it is sorely missed other removed things come from the change in level design since even if you could still do them there would be no use for them as the game is now like the elevator kills from blood money or concealing weapons and things like crates or other items since there are no guards that Frisk you in this game it's either a restricted area you need a certain type of clothes to be able to walk freely in or there is nothing these are the major mechanics removed from the game so let's get into what the game added and with how much I feel like this will inevitably be ripping into the game I want to start out on the positives and the quality of life changes movement for the most part has been made more fluid with it becoming more in line with modern Third Person cover Shooters this aspect really shows their idea of making the game as approachable as possible so anybody can pick up and play it with no problem the only issues come in with the wonky cover detection invisible boundaries constantly getting caught on shit in the environment weird lag and sluggish movement when coming out of cover crouched or walking crouched through doorways when you Fiber Wire someone you can now instantly drag their body after killing them this adds to the fluidity of movement and is a welcomed addition along with the fluidity added from Fiber Wire kills they also made it much faster to dump bodies and dumpsters and crates in blood money you had to open the lid then get the body near it then dump them in and close the lid but now you just drag them near it and the animation does all the work for you you can also now store two bodies and crates along with the ability to now hide bodies in closets and if there is only one body in a crate or a closet you could hide along with them you can now toggle dual wielding and these silencers for your Silver Ballers instead of being stuck with your choice for an entire Mission like in Blood Money I really like that you could just take off the silencer whenever you want so you can cause a distraction or confuse the AI even if it rarely comes up as something worth doing since you no longer have sedatives you can now subdue enemies by putting them into choke holds which either puts them to sleep or kills them by snapping their neck while this is nice sometimes no matter how hard I mashed knocking them out takes fucking forever it never feels consistent which drives me insane okay it's time to talk about the bad like the clip I showed earlier the dev team was really inspired by modern game Trends and boy does it show in a lot of the poorly executed inclusions now I'll preface this by saying that I'm the type of person who would rather other games just copy or innovate on a solution that one game did for genre conventions or limitations rather than just ignoring the proven solution like how I bitch about every jrpg that has random battles but doesn't have the Bravely Default and counter rate slider but a lot of the design ideas lifted from other games either doesn't fit the Hitman formula or are just straight up bad and Force the game design down a certain path which I think makes this game a worse product let's start with Point shooting the mark can execute thing from Splinter Cell conviction and Red Dead Redemption on paper it's a fine idea that I would personally never use since it seems more combat oriented which I try to avoid when playing these games the most important thing about it is to make sure you turn off the Cinematic Point shooting camera angles in these settings because time doesn't stop during the execution of Point shooting so with it on I ran into a ton of instances where the camera just froze at an angle but all the guards reacted to me killing their comrade which a caused a higher alert and B they started shooting at me and I was taking damage since I have no control over 47 until Point shooting is finished and if you're playing on a higher difficulty you run the risk of dying during this I have no idea why they do not mention that this is a setting that can be turned off and why it even comes on to begin with but what I hate about it is how inconsistent it can be you can shoot at a car regularly all you want and it'll take up to three clips of the ICA assault rifle and a full clip of two Silver Ballers four to explode but if you shoot daycar once with Point shooting it blows up no problem it doesn't seem to matter either where you shoot it as long as you hit the body of the car and not just shoot the roof or one of the windows the explosion radius also is a little wonky and leaves a lot to be desired instinct is your 7th gen detective Vision that makes important things and people in the world glow piss yellow I talked about it a little earlier but since you have no full-sized real-time map or the ability to look through keyholes anymore this is supposed to be a replacement for them and the thing that you're supposed to be using to solve all of your problems but this gives you incomplete information as it only shows you where they are in the room but nothing really about it sure they're in the room and they're looking towards the door but is there something inside that could be obstructing their Vision in a lot of the interviews and Dev commentaries released before the game they mentioned that a mechanic like this needed to be implemented because as they made the AI more complex the game became too hard without it I see this as being a Band-Aid for game design issue use sure you can make the AI the most complex and realistic thing possible that any and all movement will be noticed and alert them but does that make the game fun does this in turn not just force players to avoid certain types of approaches because the AI does not allow it sure the AI was dumb as fuck at times in the previous games but being able to abuse the AI with things like the coin was really fun the biggest reason I call Instinct a Band-Aid is because it covers for a lot of lackluster level design due to the removed features I mentioned earlier and with how the AI reacts and with how the levels are structured there are so many instances where it would be impossible to do anything without it or end up just being caught so many hallways with awkward viewpoints so many open area buildings that have sprinkled chest High cover around the edges to allow you to Dart around without causing suspicion as much as I hate Instinct because it always feels like why not just permanently leave it on to have Wall hacks 24 7. without it I think the game would be far more annoying with Instinct came the change to disguises which everyone I've ever talked to about it has unanimously hated it now when you Dawn Of Disguise you can no longer move freely around with it anyone who has the same uniform as you will start to become suspicious of you as their cone fills and they start to suspect you and ask who you are and if they examine you long enough then your disguise will be compromised the way to counter this is to Drain Your Instinct meter by tipping your Fedora or scratching the back of your head like you just saw someone you went to high school with at the local dollar store and you're wearing your Smurf pajama pants and you just remembered some really cringy shit you said in front of them and do you hope to God that they didn't see you I hate this change so much it basically makes it so the player never wants to interact with an entire game mechanic you know the game mechanic that is Iconic and synonymous with the series you're more often than not just better off darting around Vision cones than interact with the disguise system and the Instinct meter also when spending your meter to slip past guards the delay for your HUD to fade back skin can be so slow that sometimes you will miss the fact that someone is becoming suspicious of you and their suspicion cone is about to completely fill this happens all the time on higher difficulties where they spot you incredibly fast since the suspicion meter seems to be based on Vision there is little to no reason to actually walk upright and not just go everywhere crouched since it makes it harder for them to spot you and you can now Sprint while being crouched there's honestly almost never a reason to be walking upright I have such a little amount of footage of me not just walking Crouch because it is always just so useful there are so many instances where I was just about to be spotted but because I was walking around crouched and because their sight line of me broke for a millisecond I was not spotted sure NPCs will comment on you being weird or tell you to stop sneaking around but that doesn't actually do anything all that matters is the little yellow pyramid around the center of your screen another mechanic that goes hand in hand with Instinct the modernized movement and disguises is the blending in mechanic similar to the one you would find in Assassin's Creed you can now find things to blend in with which for some reason makes you completely free of Suspicion what's that the cop who is on the lookout for 47 who is on the run from the police is getting suspicious of me while I'm in a cop uniform well if I lean on this crane game then I'm completely fine this doesn't look more suspicious that one of your co-workers isn't looking for the guy who is running away from a crime scene of a burning hotel and ran away from an attack helicopter shooting at him nah it's perfectly fine plus you get a little bit of instinct back for doing this too hand-to-hand combat has been reworked again this time it's turned into qte events on PC it is an absolute nightmare especially when you're playing on the higher difficulties on consoles you get these bright big colorful buttons but on PC you have these tiny prompts that appear randomly all over so your eyes are darting around the screen trying to find them all and at first glance they all look exactly the same so good luck on professional or expert where you will die in three hits also bonking people over the head with melee weapons now instantly kills them no matter the item which is kinda weird the worst inclusion is by far the rating system this thing is Turbo fucked there is no nice way of putting it it's fucking awful and I wish it wasn't in the game there is so much wrong with it that it's hard for me to think about what to talk about first okay so people discovering dead bodies doesn't actually matter as long as they don't see the bullet connect with the target's head or see you choking them out or however you end up killing them then it doesn't dock points and the AI won't get hostile but if they do see the bullet connect with the target's head even if they have no idea where you are and they have no vision of you and you snipe them from across the level they will instantly know where you are even if it doesn't make any sense but this qualifies as being a Silent Assassin thank you [Music] [Applause] the biggest flaw with the rating system if it wasn't already obvious enough after my previous example is nonsensical logic and inconsistencies inconsistency in your game about Precision is a death sentence to its quality in my opinion the biggest inconsistency is the ratings themselves in checkpoints where you can kill a Target the highest rating you could get is Silent Assassin but there are plenty of checkpoints throughout the game that don't have targets so your max rating is Shadow but there is also checkpoints where there is no targets and no evidence to get so the highest rating is only specialist why make it like this Hitman 2 South assassin had plenty of levels where you just had to go from one point to the other and the highest rating in that game was still South assassin even in those levels the game also doesn't explain the differences at all and the biggest head scratcher of them all is the fact that there are sections in this game where there are no rating system which begs the question to be asked why include the rating system at all then what makes this section needed and this section not in some levels with targets you need to eliminate you'll have an objective to locate them first if you don't bother to locate them and instead run to set up an accident for them to die to or get in a position to kill them later then when you do kill them then the rating system will say both Target kill and non-target kill making it impossible for you to get Silent Assassin if you don't swing your camera over him for a nanosecond while he's in the club and just run to the room to shoot him through the mirror then you will not have located him apparently this isn't locating the target you have to see them in the wild because apparently looking through a one-way mirror where I can actually identify him doesn't count let's not forget about the issue of being spotted because you couldn't tell an area was restricted and you open the door and this counts as trespassing while they may not aggro this still docks a shit ton of points not to mention the weird restricted area boundaries where leaning against certain objects in the perimeter of the restricted area counts as being in it there is probably even more issues and dumb things about the rating system that I don't even know that others have pointed out I just really hate how the rating system further pushes players to ignore certain game mechanics like pacifying or disguises you can knock somebody out and hide the body where no NPC will ever look but if it's not in a crate or a closet then you're not going to get the points back that you lost for pacifying them okay to talk about the last bat Edition that requires to get into discussion about level design so let's talk about the two meth editions of the game that don't really add anything positive or negative and then we'll loop back around and start talking about level design challenges are rather self-explanatory each checkpoint has a set of challenges you can do within them to unlock stuff the only reason it's in the meh category and not in a good addition is because I find that they are pretty non-existent in this game each level has the same cookie cutter options and then a handful of others that are checkpoint specific but a lot of the time it's just a name and a pun in an actual description I'd be willing to bet that most people that are interested in doing said challenges will just look up how to do them on line or at least a description of them so they can get an idea of what the game wants them to do instead of just a stupid pun that leaves you no idea what it actually wants assassin techniques are basically perks or Buffs or Stat increases you could categorize them a few ways but you unlock these things for completing challenges and missions I'm going to be completely honest that I never noticed these until this playthrough for this video they are so irrelevant that I've never noticed their changes in actual gameplay which I guess is a good thing because I think having stats widely modify and very gameplay would be far worse than a system that could go completely unnoticed for eight years seriously these assassination techniques are shit like seven percent faster running speed or improved rates of firing while dual wielding pistols to be completely Frank I am convinced that these things do not work properly or are so irrelevant that you could completely miss them mashing through the post-level screens there is no way that this perk makes subduing targets faster that shit is at level 3 and it still takes fucking forever to knock people out on Experts sometimes like I said at the start of this video the level design has taken a much more linear approach compared to the sandboxes of old instead of having a mission given in a single location this time around the story is structured in segmented base levels with most of it going from point A to point B this game has 20 levels two of which I hesitate to even include because they last 30 seconds with a total of 53 checkpoints 35 of these checkpoints which function as their own levels are 47 going from point A to B single entrance single exit corridors only 16 of these checkpoints contain targets to kill originally the game didn't have any at all but after the negative reception of their first E3 showcase they had to course correct which is why a bunch of the targets feel completely arbitrary having zero build up or intimacy for why you're killing them in the previous games you would have a briefing about these wannabe Bond villains but now you just kill someone because they're in your way or because the notebook gives 47's loose reasoning on why he targets them where and how did you find out about this guy's irrational hatred for pigs due to Childhood trauma 47. the worst one in my opinion are these three scientists in Dexter's dead Factory you just get inside and the game tells you that these are your targets I could easily see this level having three completely different targets or even just being another A to B Mission and nothing of value would have been lost that final bad new feature I said we'd get into once I started to talk about the level design is checkpoints so instead of being able to save anywhere at any time in a level like you could do in the past three games you now have glowing bat signal checkpoints that you can activate along with automated checkpoints that trigger which are seemingly placed at random when I think of saving at a checkpoint I think that means everything goes back to as it was when I saved and just kicks me back to that game State well that's it's not how it works in Hitman Absolution the game has a set layout when you reload a checkpoint this has become a feature used in speedrunning the game as when you've reload a checkpoint in certain segments it reshuffles the NPCs to be in a more advantageous position but for most people you know this is not how they want checkpoints to work why would I want to reset things I had already interacted with why would I want to change locations of targets and other NPCs in the world the game also doesn't save your actual progress for these checkpoints if you are playing a level and made it through a few of the segmented checkpoints not the bat signal checkpoints the actual selectable checkpoints in the menu I know this is confusing but stay with me for a second so you've played enough for your current session and want to take a break if you exit the game and come back later it will reload you to that point but it will not have saved your current inventory in Disguise and instead will give you a pre-made Loadout for the level I found this out during the level Hunter and Hunted in the second checkpoint you go through a strip club and you can get a sounds pistol in the security room on the second floor now this pistol is really useful since it is the only silenced weapon that I know of that you can get before you get your Silver Ballers back later in the game so I made it to the final segment when you need to kill three guys in Chinatown again but since I don't really like the game I could only play it in short bursts so I decided I had played enough for a while and wanted to take a break and close the game it gives you a prompt saying all unsaved data will be lost okay I just got to this segment and saw the auto save icon on the corner and if you reload this checkpoint I get kicked back right to where I was standing but when I come back later I had the basic Loadout of this segment but the devs I guess assume you would have so I no longer had the silenced pistol which I needed if I wanted to do one of the accident kills without putting everyone in Chinatown into an alert or Panic State the thing that really makes no sense about this is if you go to the main menu and hit continue you still have your equipment this only happens when you fully close the game and I have no idea why it is like this a lot of these levels contain nonsense invisible walls in terrible Collision boxes which snag 47 all the time if you open a door and try to go through it too fast enjoy the invisible wall trying to sneak through a Minefield enjoy this invisible wall reload a level to a previous checkpoint enjoy sometimes not being able to move at all and having an invisible box around you so you can't move forward and you end up missing your window to sneak past things since the area is on a timer seriously fuck this stupid Motel level on Expert even in levels that feel more like the games of old that try to have creative puzzles the solution is often right next to them like in shaving Lenny this wire can be loosened with a wrench so when the guy comes over and pisses on it you can zap him oh wow it's mighty convenient that not only did the game tell me what to do with a tutorial prompt but the wrench is laying right next to it do you guys see what I'm getting at when I say that everything around the linearity is the real issue there are plenty of games that are huge successes and dearly beloved that were linear just look at re4 plenty of areas in that game are just a line this game's problem is being incredibly dumbed down to the point of no substance I look back at the level list and I wonder what did I even do in half of these the answer is nothing so much of these levels push you to be as uninteractive with the game as possible further helped by the mechanics and the systems of this game that I complained about earlier this is also the course corrected version mind you the game was originally even more quote-unquote linear cinematic experience which makes me wonder what the fuck were you even going to be doing in that game and the biggest cluster fuck of it all is there is no simple solution each aspect builds and informs how the other functions it is an interwoven blanket of shit this is why this video has been so difficult to write because it's constantly requiring me to tangent about how one thing negatively influences several other features even if I haven't actually explained the other features yet it's why I fear this video will inevitably no matter how much I tried to prevent it feel all over the place jumping from one thing to the next if you just fixed slash changed one thing like making the levels all sandboxes for example then they would just feel empty with little to interact with due to the lack of tools and watering down of mechanics making their sandbox nature unjustifiable and if you only just added in the removed features from blood money you'd have nothing to use your tools on leaving them to inevitably be forgotten or result in players frustratingly trying to use them despite the game's constant fighting you not to the game is fundamentally flawed and there is no way of fixing it short of just making a new game using some of the ideas and learning from the failed implementations of this game the basic plot of this game is that Diana has betrayed the agency and gone Rogue leaking tons of important information about the agency so it's up to 47 to kill her as he fatally shoots her she tells him to take care of a girl she helped Escape as it was the whole reason why she went rogue because all the experiments they did on 47 is be being done to this girl and Diana doesn't want another kid to end up like 47 so now it is up to Agent 47 to save her and travel across the country as a mass serial killer with a Band-Aid on the back of his head let's take a moment to focus on 47 as a character in this game I think this image perfectly encapsulates everything wrong with this game's story and especially its interpretation of 47's character 47 is a horribly inconsistent emotional wreck throughout this game that gets guilted into taking care of a kid he just met he's vindictive he's angry he's vulnerable and he's filled with self-doubt while 47 has always shown signs of not being a complete robot like in Hitman 2 for example this feels like a completely different direction from everything established it feels like a different character given 47 skin these emotional shifts are too sudden and a lot of it is off-screen changes further adding to this feeling of Disconnect originally in this scene with 47 in the apartment across the street from the church was much longer and you could really see that Max Payne influences here with 47 getting drunk and unstable even if attempts to kill himself now this scene in the final product has 47 sitting in the chair and a picture of Diana is at 50 opacity over him then there is a distortion of all the removed parts from this cutscene ending with 47 cutting his barcode okay I'm going to try to be as Fair as possible to this game giving it the benefit of the doubt when I can but why did they make it so he doesn't just fully cut off his tattoo it looks really stupid when you can clearly see it sticking out over the Band-Aid in close-ups he just slashed through it with a straight razor like he's a member of the Akatsuki it makes even less sense that he did this at all in the ending of the game when it reveals that Diana's death was a fake out in all the events of the game where planned from the start with 47 in on it thanks to a letter from the beginning the plan was to flush out Travis and the other members of the ICA that were doing their own experiments and basically going rogue themselves for their own self-gain which makes the apartment scene make even less sense as well because 47 knows she's still alive so why is he acting distraught why was all of 47's dialogue and internal monologues in the notebook all acting like he's carrying out her dying wish oh I know why all these events and acting is a front to fool the players so they can have a Twist at the end of the game which then makes everything said and done to orchestrate this twist nonsensical and dumb in retrospect it's like when in heavy rain spoiler for the 10 year old game that is Heavy Rain skip to this time code if you don't want to be spoiled wear Scott Shelby's thoughts actively lie to the players so they didn't know he was the Killer 47's level of Competency also widely varies throughout the game so the plot can move forward and get 47 from one situation to the other he has to fail to Fiber Wire Sanchez to get knocked out so the entire Hotel sequence can happen only to easily beat him in the ring later in the game if you choose to fight him using the wrestler disguise remember me he has to be tased and knocked out so he could be captured and tied up by the sheriff and Dexter only to easily Escape minutes later going back to the hotel scene after all these years I still don't really get what Dexter's goal was here it makes sense that he doesn't want to kill 47 because he doesn't want the attention of the ICA for killing their top agent and he has no idea that 47 has quote-unquote gone Rogue but I don't really get what he planned to do with killing the maid and then putting the knife in 47's hand despite holding it himself so his fingerprints are all over it anyways and it's also his hotel room did he think he was framing 47 for murder and this would somehow slow him down and not something that he could easily walk away from or that this would scare 47 the legendary bald killer clone I guess it did spook him based on his reaction when he woke up and then In the Heat of the Moment he goes one second thought and pours liquor onto the floor and lights it on fire does this mean he completely changed his mind and is now 100 on board with going up against the world's Illuminati we have to assume that he's the one that called the police and showed up knowing that there was a body in the room so 47 has to escape out the window and scale the ledge to the fire escape in the front of the building and while he's doing that an officer on a megaphone is calling up to him to remain calm and stay where he is completely ignoring the fact that the building is on fire and now exploding their first assumption is the fact that he's moving to get away and not the fact that the building is collapsing somebody else they don't acknowledge the huge neon sign exploding off its stand and falling into the street they're just pissed that 47 is getting away and after all this effort the police are a non-issue for the rest of the game and these events are posed as at most a minor inconvenience for 47 and didn't stop his hunt for Dexter at all Dexter didn't even bother to make sure the job was done and is surprised when the legendary Hitman is still after him did he really think the person that he called a ghost and a myth would stop by putting a knife in his hand while he was unconscious and calling the police at that point why not just do the same events but then shoot 47 in the head and make it look like a murder-suicide the obvious reason this doesn't happen is because there would be no game then so they need to write this stupid event so the plot can move forward the other big issue I take with the story of this game is its depiction of the ICA or at least the part of it we get to see as the higher Powers within the ICA are just referred to by name but never shown I always thought of the ICA as the Illuminati of this series's world which is why I call them that a few sentences earlier the only thing you had to attach to them was the name and the mission briefings you got before hits the only tangible piece of them was Diana's voice and then my favorite one from blood money was the messages left in locations that 47 had to go get himself in envelopes like in a random high up shelf in a library book somewhere or the one that was hand delivered to him and because the Courier saw his face he had to kill him they felt ever-present powerful yet invisible similarly to the Patriots and Metal Gear Solid while it is revealed by Jade that Travis has been lying to upper management about what he's been doing it still doesn't negate the bad taste of my mouth that is given from seeing how the ICA is portrayed for the entirety of the game as this reveal only comes in the final 10 minutes I'm 90 sure that upper management did know the entire time what Travis was doing because of Diana's plan from the beginning to flush him out but then that just makes all this feel like a really roundabout way of getting rid of him despite the Revelation at the end of the game the ICA bill with or without Travis's acting and self-interest operates out of a stock market war room on a yacht in Morocco which I just find really lame and ruins the magic and mysticism of the ICA the wiki says he is the head of division for the ICA I'm not really sure what that actually entails or how accurate this post is but as we are shown in the game he is running the ICA to a decent extent while there are shadowy figures above him that are funding the agency the mysticism of the ICA is really de-elevated when you see them doing things like the mass shooting of everyone at this Motel again to give them the benefit of the doubt and try to see what they were potentially going for with these scenes maybe they're trying to really reinforce the idea of how powerful the ICA is the fact they could kill all these innocent random people that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and cover it up with absolute ease along with taking over an entire town and having this stupid fucking group of Assassins with machine guns and rocket launchers the most unsubtle group of Illuminati Contract Killers imaginable I hate the Saints so much everybody got so worked up over them leading up to the release of the game and this is what we got they're literally nothing you could remove them from the game and it would make no fucking difference they do not impact the plot in the slightest I'd probably like them if they had some weird suda 51 style group of personalities or something literally anything but they are so nothing all the controversies and outcries from Publications and the apologies from IO for this hey where'd you go IO released an app on the iOS store called Hitman Absolution full disclosure they put out the app in 2013. a year after the game's release to show some behind the scenes revealing a lot of early Concepts scrapped ideas and cut content it's where I got the Max Payne style cutscene of drunk suicidal 47 from it has since been delisted from the App Store so all I can go off of are these uploads on YouTube and people talking about it on forms and the Saints aren't really brought up other than this one unused dialogue of their leader so that leads me to believe that they didn't really cut their inclusion down due to the controversies they were intended to be these nothing of characters from the start being introduced in one cutscene and then get killed in the next level with ease with a total of maybe 10 minutes of screen time the final story aspect I think holds this game back from what it sets out to achieve is the centerpiece herself Victoria I have stated in multiple videos that I hate kid characters they are the fucking worst they're usually incredibly annoying and get in the way of enjoyable aspects of the plot and they are almost always there as a conflict creating device to move the story forward and get the main characters to the next plot beat after thinking about it some more I don't even really hate Victoria the issue I have with her is she is in so little of the game yet the entire thing is framed around wanting to protect and save her I can't hate her because she has nothing to hate she has no character she has an idea to push 47 into this ham-fisted Arc that goes nowhere she is just a MacGuffin for about 85 to 90 percent of the game having conversations with 47 only in a handful of scenes it probably would have been way worse to constantly have Victoria tagging along with you or have to constantly check in with her but the game as is gives no reason do care for this kid other than being told you should care about her because she was in the same position 47 was as a kid which 47 had no say in and it was Diana's request to protect her Hitman Absolution released on November 20th 2012 to mostly positive reviews scoring a 79 on Xbox and PC and an 83 on the PlayStation 3. while scoring high marks from The Usual Suspects like IGN Destructoid and Game Informer there was definitely a noticeable divide on the game and it quickly became the most divisive in the series both with fans and reviewers alike in March of 2013 it was reported that while Absolution did sell 3.6 million units since its release not counting digital sales it did not meet the sales expectations and played a role in square enix's report of 105 million dollars in losses for the fiscal year and in June as a result IO was hit with another round of layoffs this time almost half of its staff at the company and had other projects canceled in the noclip documentary they said that since the game took seven years to make because the tech just wasn't there at the time the industry moved away from linear experiences back to more open games and I will respectfully disagree since there were plenty of successful linear games before it and the following year The Last of Us came out to critical Acclaim and was a mega hit Absolution in fact does a lot of the things people lauded Sony first party titles for doing before them but the gameplay became the vehicle for the story unlike the previous titles where the story was a vehicle for the gameplay and when your gameplay isn't that fun and in fact is quite bad in my opinion when it's made in service of this lackluster plot it's inevitably going to be criticized I really think they lost sight of what people wanted and expected from this series the industry was still in a perfectly fine place for a game like this to be huge success the formula is fine it's the game that isn't with or without the Hitman IP I think if this game came out as is it still would have been pretty divisive because of all the issues with gameplay I've listed earlier while the game was panned by fans and didn't make the mark sales wise IO did notice something a dedicated fan base still coming back to play contracts mode the new quote unquote multiplayer feature for this game players could load into a level and create their own custom targets by killing people and setting rules for how to kill them now you may be wondering why I left something that is arguably the second half of the Absolution package and to some the only redeeming quality of the package to the conclusions section of this video that's because the server sadly went offline in 2018 as IO doesn't own the servers they were hosted on so I have no way to access this game mode for myself to get footage so the only thing I could go off of is memories of when I played the game in 2012 and other people's let's plays in 2013 Square said due to the financial losses they plan to re-evaluate their strategies with a focus on mobile games this was during the Great era of Japanese Studios shitting the bed and then running to mobile gambling to print their money in 2014 Square Enix Montreal would release Hitman Go a game that recontextualizes the Hitman and formula to work as a board game and even recreate some of the most iconic levels along with releasing Hitman sniper which with how little I have admittedly interacted with it it seems to be more of the sniper challenge mode that came as a pre-order bonus for absolution when getting it at GameStop or on Steam both of these games are available on IOS and Android stores originally I had planned to do a retrospective on Hitman Go as I like the game and I'm glad that 47 didn't get the Sam Fisher treatment or got shipped off to gotcha hell but then I realized there really isn't much to say about the game it's a fun little puzzle game on your phone that was probably the only game on phones that I ever really like even if I have no reason to ever touch that version again now that it's out on PC after all was said and done it honestly looked really Grim for the fate of Hitman and IO it seemed like maybe 47's time was over and we'd never see him again but in 2014 IO released an open letter to Hitman fans saying that they were making a new game for PC and next gen going back back to their Roots taking what they learned and the best aspects of absolution and with large inspiration from blood money and contracts they were going to make the ultimate Hitman fantasy I for one remained very skeptical that they could actually do this after the Colossal disappointment that Absolution was for me but after another two years IO and 47 would return to form in a New Direction with Hitman 2016. [Music] foreign [Music] Absolution from the outside looking in as a fan the situation looked dire layoffs canceled projects and failed sales expectations meant that IO was not in a good position not to mention the feeling of disappointment felt by fans due to the complete departure of what made the series so special with the release of absolution it was going to take some work to win back the fans I'll admit that I was extremely skeptical reading their open letter that the next game would be a return to form bigger and better than ever but I am more than happy to say that IO came back swinging and hid it out of the park with Hitman 2016. I think they called me 47. that's not a name so make it one one all right agent 47. [Music] [Music] thank you when going into making Hitman 2016 their goal was to make a successor to blood money that the fans had always wanted this was quite the tall order and it was going to be a major uphill battle for them as they hadn't made a Sandbox game in over 10 years and that was on their previous Engine outside of development issues the next large hurdle was to win fans over with their new format this time around IO wanted to experiment with how their game could be packaged having a smaller and cheaper entry point to get more customers in at the start and then once they had them hooked on the content given they'd be able to convert this to more purchases than they ever would have been able to with a complete sixty dollar game and then once everything was all said and done for those who wanted the full package at sixty dollars they would be able to buy it in theory this would allow IO to have less work up front so they wouldn't have to crunch and could plan and space things out better while also getting funds to further keep the game and the studio afloat while also listening to feedback from people with the releases of previous content and improving the next release Killer Instinct had a similar idea and approach with how they try to revolutionize how games could be sold in a way that both makes fans and developers happy allowing people to download the game for free and using whatever free character was on rotation then after they played it if they enjoyed it they can buy any character they want for five dollars without having to pay sixty dollars to just play as one character so if you say liked saberwolf all you had to do was buy saberwolf and then you technically own the entire game but if you are familiar with Killer Instinct you'll have already known the Public's response now while there wasn't anything wrong with the format because it would allow players to get what they wanted without having to commit sixty dollars it was marketed in the most confusing way possible that it was doomed to fail as a fan of both Killer Instinct and Hitman and even a supporter of this format if your initial announcement leaves people confused and requires explanations and infographics that explain what people will get and for how much it's never going to work and people will think you're trying to nickel and dime them it also doesn't help that they format our release was changed from its original plan after the game was delayed from its December 8 2015 release date to March 11 2016. the original plan was to release half the game for 35 dollars giving the players the first three locations while IO worked on the other three which could be bought for another thirty dollars once it was complete or if you wanted you could pay 60 up front and receive all the content as it was coming out with a physical version being released once everything was all said and done in January 2016 Iowa then announce that they were Shifting the game to be fully episodic now having the launch in March come with just the prologue in the first location Paris for 15 the other two locations that were planned to come in the intro pack would then come out in April and May and the other three locations would come out later in 2016. I'm not sure if it's just because how few Studios actually attempt this format but episodic games always seem like a hard sell to players unless your name was Telltale or don't nod at the moment I really can't name any other Studio that is doing episode like games and have them actually be successful it's also an even harder sell on the episodic format when what came before it wasn't and while I can't say for sure that this was a factor I would imagine how famous kickstarters and Early Access games had turned out before this would have also poisoned the proverbial well I bet most of you watching right now can think of at least 5 to 10 Early Access or Kickstarter games that were abandoned for one reason or another or that the final product when everything was all said and done was a major letdown now is it fair for people to assume Aya would do the same no but I can't really blame people for being wary and skeptical after being burned so many times after the format change came the next difficult cell a tough pill to get consumers to swallow always online due to some of the features we'll get into in just a bit the game required a constant connection to the internet in order to really experience the game while offline you are still able to play the game it would gate off a ton of content and progression eventually they would make content already unlocked available to be accessed when offline in an update in November 2016 but progression items still locked was something they seemed to have a Firm Stance on I love this game I really do but this is one thing I cannot and will not defend I do not understand why they can't just gate off the actual content that requires the internet connection when offline and not the progression system as a whole we have seen it time and time again that always online is not a viable option it never works at launch when you're going to have the most traffic to your game people just simply do not have stable Connections in large parts of the world even in places like North America and Europe your core audience's location and worst of all servers aren't permanent just look at Absolution the service for that went down in 2018 so you can no longer play the contracts mode in that game it is a legitimate worry and fear about the preservation of people's games they bought with their hard earned earned money the amount of games that are unplayable now due to D listing servers going down or legal disputes is immeasurable this is not a baseless fear just earlier this year when the pandemic lockdown started and everyone began working from home the internet was by far the slowest and most inconsistent it's ever been it was a legitimate problem for the entire world and during this period this game was simply unplayable me and a bunch of friends around the world just could not play this game because our connections would just go out due to the influx of traffic and strain on our isps to add to everything working against this game came the last thing to leave a sour taste in fans mouths system exclusive content that's right the PS4 version of this game has an entire extra campaign of six targets which the Xbox and PC never got I could not comment on the quality of this exclusive content as I own the PC version and I see no reason to buy a PS4 version just for this when your game is centered around assassinating bond-esque villains gating an entire six part story even if it's taking place in the already existing locations is not going to make fans of your game Happy in fact it will probably turn off people from buying it since they will perceive this as getting a worse deal if they are on other platforms this content is also locked to a now out of date version of this game since you can play all of Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2 but according to the wiki these missions aren't carried over to the PS4 version of Hitman 2. realistically this was probably a decision made by Executives at Square Enix or Sony and this was a deal in order to get extra money for Io like I said earlier in spite of everything working against this game it came out amazing it really is the love letter to the series I always wanted celebrating its history with a montage of iconic kills from previous titles and even references Absolution when I talk about giving your players options to tune the game to how they want to experience it this is the game that comes to mind allowing for as much guidance or lack thereof as want this game feels like a proper modernization of the original game's formula sandbox levels have made a triumphant return along with being larger than ever the level structure is where the largest Divergence come from with this reboot instead of small to medium-sized sandbox levels that take place in varying locations around the world this game has six where the game lacks and location numbers it makes up for with how content Rich each of these six locations are each target has multiple opportunities to follow these are pre-constructed ways to kill your target you can select which one of these to follow or overhear it from NPCs in the Overworld if you find that these are way too handholdy you can just turn off opportunity markers in the settings and simply rely on figuring everything out for yourself or relying on what people say then try to go from there without a waypoint this is the right way to do accessibility and difficulty in my opinion not to simplify the game's system and mechanics but give players more help and guidance if they need it and if they don't want it then the game isn't too cryptic so they can turn off all the hand-holding and figure everything out for themselves challenges have made their return but they are far more varied this time around due to the openness of this game sure there are still some of the generic ones for each Mission but almost all of these challenges are unique and out there with only a few that don't give you an idea of what the game wants you to do and just say redacted but even then most of those are fine since they're usually Easter egg oriented but as a result people are just going to look them up online progression was something really focused on for this game with each location comes location Mastery you gain points for completing challenges opportunities and overall how well you did through a playthrough of a mission as you level up you'll unlock new equipment to use and starting locations with the return of mission planning comes the ability to choose how you start an assassination with higher Mastery of a level comes new starting locations with different disguises so for example you can start a level as a waiter or a chef or a guard opening the floodgates to the variety of ways you can approach a kill sat sadly the only flaw with this progression system is a major one and it's that it's tied to being always online if your connection goes out Mid Mission your options are to just lose all of your progress requiring you to either Exit out or just keep playing the mission knowing that you're going to get no rewards for completing any challenges or opportunities or you could sit around waiting hoping that your connection comes back while you're looking at a menu attempting to reconnect like I said earlier it wasn't till November of 2016 nearly eight months after the game had been already out did it allow players to play a partial offline mode allowing them to use previously unlocked things while offline so before the update you were basically set back to level 1 if you ever played offline since planning is back so are loadouts allowing you to select your pistol your clothes your equipment and a smuggled in item in ICA crates while I'm very happy that loadouts are back I think they are too small this time around you only get two equipment slots and in things like the lock pick are now an equipment that you need to opt into taking you are no longer defaulted with the Fiber Wire poison sedative mine and coin like in Blood Money I find it ends up being too restrictive and because of it pushes me away from using certain items like the Fiber Wire in favor of something that's more all-around applicable like the lockpick I really wish they had either given us more slots or made things like the Fiber Wire and lock pick not take up one of said slots so you'd be free to use some of the more out there items like the phone bombs without feeling like you're limiting your options without them the other issue with loadouts is that the briefcase didn't return for this game so you can only get sniper rifles from the ICA pickups and you have to carry it on your back so if you're not dressed as someone who is fine with openly carrying a large caliber rifle then you will be drawing a lot of attention to yourself and will end up probably leaving the item behind when you are done with a level I'm not entirely sure if this goes towards leading evidence or not if you exit a level without taking the rifle with you but if it does I am not a fan of this syringes have made a return but this time around you can only seem to stab people with them and poisoning drinks and food is either now context sensitive or requires a different item this is why I wish we had more equipment slots or some defaulted to come with 47 since it always feels like it's out of the way in an unsatisfying way to use these syringes and poisons the map has also made a return but this time around it's not in real time while I like the map we got I think it would have been really cool to give the players the option to choose between a real-time map and a paused map but due to the size of these levels and the amount of moving Parts maybe it didn't work in testing and that's why we only have the paused one you still can't tell if an area is restricted so for some areas without signs or guards to tell you to leave if you open the door and take a single step inside you will get spotted for trespassing and since looking through keyholes hasn't come back this is the same issue Absolution had I really wish they made the map have restricted areas highlighted in red depending on the disguise you are in if there is a way to tell on the map I'm honestly missing it unless the game just really wants you to use instinct which I prefer not to at the very least saving and loading is back so if you do fuck up and get caught trespassing while annoying you can still reload a save or an auto save instead of being at the mercy of checkpoints if you're a fan of my channel and have watched other videos of mine you'll often notice how I give a seemingly cop-out answer at the end of reviews saying I hope slash wish we'd see a sequel to insert game here to see if they can refine and improve some of their systems or mechanical ideas because with player feedback and some more experimenting they could make them good this game is the reason why I always say this in Hitman Absolution using disguises suck due to having the horrible Instinct meter in having everyone being able to see through your disguise unless you are rubbing the back of your head like you were embarrassed or tipping your Fedora it basically pushed players to never interact with one of the most iconic gameplay systems of the series for this game game they could have easily just dumped the idea completely and went back to how it worked in blood money but instead they thought well we have a good foundation let's just tweak it a bit till it's better instead of everybody being able to see through your disguise only a select view of people who are in charge can the game justifies it pretty well and even as a player you can just think to yourself oh well maybe the basic workers and soldiers might not recognize a new face but a manager or a leader would it's a happy middle ground of the original idea so players can still freely use disguises but there is still an added layer so you aren't just mindlessly running around it still has some of those semi-immersion breaking moments like when you get told that the target has hand-picked all of his crew members so he will see through your disguise but since blending in his back you can completely slip under his nose by standing in front of this mini drink bar the only thing I think is really missing from this game is a hideout where you can mess around with all of your equipment it was one of my favorite features from Silent Assassin through blood money but without it I don't ever really see myself using any of the more aggressive weapons like to this day I still have not used an assault rifle I have no idea how they feel like in this game I also wish they brought back the feature where you got to keep weapons you exited the mission with so you'd be able to use previous Target's unique weapons in future hits your main story targets aren't your only missions this game has to offer escalations work similar to the contract missions you could find in Absolution and in this game but like the name implies they get more and more complex as you finish levels so at first they may need you to kill a target with a specific weapon but then in the following level you'll need to kill them in a certain disguise and then the level after that you'll have some restrictions like if you go into a certain disguise you will auto fail the level these are personally not my cup of tea but there are a bunch of them so there is no shortage of side content the other side content and the whole reason for the always online aspect of this game is the elusive targets these are targets that were only available for a limited time during specific dates from 2016 through 2017. you need to kill the Target in a single attempt or else you would fail the contract and they would be gone forever originally these were only available for 48 hours according to the wiki but it seems later in 2016 they decided to make the window larger a novel Concept in theory to make it feel like a real contract with a narrow time to eliminate your target but when you remember that people have real lives outside of playing this game and aren't going to schedule their lives around it because that's just silly the idea really falls apart this is where the big point of contention comes for this game since this is content that most people will never play like the widely marketed Gary Busey vs Gary Cole Mission I attempted maybe one or two of these when I had the game installed by chance before I gave the game a full shot in 2018 once they are done they're gone forever with only a few being brought back in 2019 according to the wiki but I believe those were in Hitman 2. a lot of people understandably criticize this as the game's content depreciating and that it was really unreal reasonable to have to constantly check back in with this game I personally never did many elusive targets because it's simply too much of an inconvenience to constantly have to keep either reinstalling this game or keep it installed when it's nearly 70 gigabytes this is an even bigger problem in Hitman 2 when that game is almost 200 which is about two-fifths of my SSD it's surprising that it took this long but Hitman 2016 was actually the first game in the series to have DLC that wasn't just weapons while both of these take place in the same locations already in the base game they have been reworked or completely changed so they have a fun spin to them like in Sapienza or it is now a movie set and you need to kill the main actor bass Sapienza was just a regular town in Italy with shops and a church and a large Mansion but now you have tons of movie props to mess around with to create accidents for your Target to die to or the final mission of patient zero in Hokkaido where your main target has infected himself with a bio weapon so you can't approach them by normal means due to the bio weapon infection being incredibly contagious and the longer you take to complete this Mission and kill the target the more people will become infected which will then become additional targets you need to take out and if you're not in a hazmat suit and they come into contact with you within a certain range you will be infected too wow IO really ahead of the times with the social distancing concept I criticize the writing in the Absolution video for how it handled things like the ICA and 47 as a character it's genuinely impressive that they were able to turn around the narrative so fast with just a single game and I think it's because of how simplistic the game's story is with a lot of things left up to your imagination in a show don't tell manner it is also helped a lot by the mission briefings with their Motion Graphics and typography whoever made these good fucking job because they are amazing and really sell this International Spy Thriller aesthetic that this game is going for the dialogue has also taken a massive leap from Absolution when it comes to actual plot relevant characters talking they perfectly nailed Diana and 47's dynamic in this game and nothing really sells how powerful and scary the ICA is than in the final mission where you destroy the Rogue ICA board members replacement heart and no hope of getting a second right-sided heart in time you have effectively killed him without laying a hand on him this should be a clear message to anyone considering following in his footsteps though the general voice acting of this game is where the limitations of time and budget really start to show it's got the same issue that games like Oblivion have with having so few voice actors that sometimes you'll go from one guy to the next and they'll have the same voice actor Yuri lewinthal is like half of the NPCs in this game but if you're going to have to cut Corners due to tight budget and deadlines then the voice acting was the thing that was inevitably going to take the hit Hitman 2016 released its first episode on March 11th and completed the first season with its sixth episode on October 31st like promised they released a physical version of the game once the season was over in January 2017 as Hitman the complete first season the game would go on to score an 83 for PC and 84 for the PlayStation 4 and an 85 for the Xbox One on Metacritic IO had hoped their risky new strategy would pay off and getting more people through the door at launch with lower commitment costs but it turned out not to be the case in the physical version and completed bundles sold far more we don't know the exact numbers of sales for this game but we do know that the game underperformed expectations as in March 2017 Square Enix would drop IO as one of its developers Square thankfully didn't just drop io on its head they actually tried to secure them a new publisher for the company president of Square Enix yosuke matsura said that while he really liked the game and wanted to have IO continue to work on making a season 2 and 3. he thought it would be for the best if they made it under a different publisher as the scale for investment would be quite challenging as it would conflict with resource allocations for other titles news sites speculated that they were referring to the Avengers game as it seemed like they were putting all of their eggs into that basket and oh boy I hope that works out for them what the fuck whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa what the fuck this split with IO and Square Enix resulted in a 43 million dollar loss for Square Enix but in doing this management buyout IO was able to keep the rights to Hitman as well as going independent in an industry where it's commonplace for Publishers to fuck over developers and then sit on an IP while doing nothing with it or parade its corpse around in some sort of bastardized manner it's really surprising and nice to see that square took this route as a result of this though there was sadly another round of layoffs but in April 2018 Iowa would announce that they are partnering with Warner Brothers and would release a definitive edition for the game it's really sad that this game didn't seem to hit the mark that IO and square really wanted and needed it to but frankly the deck was stacked against them it may be anecdotal due to how small of a sample size but it seems like when a Series has a dud especially if it widely varies from what came before it even if this sequel that followed is amazing said game will sell less than the critically pan title they effectively Poison the Well losing the trust and faith of fans I was definitely one of them in this instance it took me two years before I really gave this game a shot but if this game proved anything it showed that even with the staff coming and going iconic faces leaving the company the heart and spirit of Hitman lives on carried by those who really care and put everything they have into their work IO would take everything they had learned up until this point and try and give the complete package release another shot hoping that this time around they would be able to secure the audience they knew this series was capable of so in June of 2018 Iowa would announce their sequel to their underrated and misunderstood the darling with Hitman 2. [Music] while IO said that Hitman 2016 was overall a success the episodic format wasn't they ended up parting ways with Square Enix because of it but in the end they did get to keep the IP IO wanted to try again with what was supposed to be the second season but this time as a fully completed 60 dollar game they would partner with Warner Brothers who would then become their publisher and in November of 2018 would release Hitman 2. [Music] thank you [Music] yeah that title will inevitably lead to some confusion and verbal discussion now that there are two Hitman twos in the series I really wish they just went with an actual subtitle like the world is your weapon or something technically it does have one on the start screen but the only thing that is differentiating the two Hitman twos is that one has the Silent Assassin subtitle which already caused confusion due to silence assassin being the highest rating in the ranking system and the new Hitman 2 is just in all caps this episode of the retrospective is going to be a little different see the original plan for this was to get all of the retrospective episodes finished and then lead up to a review of Hitman 2 which had just come out when I started this back in 2018. yeah I'm not the best when it comes to consistently working on a long multi-game overarching project stay tuned to the end of the Yakuza retrospective in 2025 right before the release of Yakuza 13 where you will be playing as 80 year old Mercure you on his deathbed where he has to whip some sense into the Tojo Clan For One Last Time featuring a mini game where you have to make sure you're taking all the right water pills before bed and changing your colostomy bag so this video is going to be more review-like since there isn't really much to look back on in retrospect as the game isn't even two years old at the time of writing this it also doesn't help that this game has this awkward middle game vibe to it since it is the second game in the trilogy but we'll get more into that in just a bit if this video title wasn't obvious enough if you've played Hitman 2016 or seen my previous episode in this series on it then you know what you're getting into I hope the title of more of the same doesn't come off as negative as I fear it might it may be following the formula of the game that came before it but I really liked that game and I love this game even more but since it's technically season 2 it still has a lot of the same issues so let's go over those first the always online problem is sadly here to stay it seems and it's still as unjustifiable as it was in the previous game nothing takes me out of this game more than planning my hit and Bam I'm disconnected from the internet because spectrum is horrible and we are in the middle of a global pandemic elusive Target are also still as divisive as ever and it's even harder to justify keeping this game installed compared to 2016 when this game is fucking massive it's nearly 200 gigabytes you still run into the same issue of not knowing what is a restricted area and after just taking one step into it you can end up getting spotted and lose your silence assassin rating seriously I wish that restricted areas were colored red on your minimap depending on what the skies you're in the confusion for customers is still an issue when the game first came out I was hard chilling this game as much as I could and I had a ton of people come back to me asking what version of the game do they get because all of the additions were confusing them it's honestly not that bad it takes like five minutes at most to figure out everything but in reality there shouldn't be any confusion in the first place on what people should buy I think if you need graphics and spreadsheets and I'm getting multiple people coming back to me asking what to get then there's probably still a problem the steam page has been cleaned up now and I don't really remember if and how much worse it was but I don't think the explanations were under the bundles back in 2018. I tried to look at the steam page on the way back machine but it kept me in an age verification Loop so I really couldn't see for myself all you need to know now is that the starter pack is free and it allows you to play the tutorial level this is about on scale with one of the smaller levels from the original four games it gives you a taste of what the game is like and if you'll like the formula standard edition gives you the entire base game and Gold Edition gives you the entire base game and all of its DLC I believe that standard edition is a reworked version of the silver edition that was available at launch which was what was causing all of the confusion there is still the silver 2 gold upgrade DLC and it has a little notice telling standard edition owners to not buy this and instead buy the expansion pack see what I mean when this shit is more convoluted than it needs to be most people are going to think you're nickel and diming them even if that's not the case or they're going to get too confused and get turned off and not buy your fucking game the big thing to note is that you can actually play all of Hitman 2016 in Hitman 2. you could either buy both of the Legacy upgrades so you get all of the base game and the patient zero DLC but if you already owned Hitman 2016 and its DLC you would get this for free so the most cost efficient method in my experience and what I've recommended to people in the past is to get Hitman 2016 and its DLCs on sale usually when there's a steam sale or from one of the reputable websites it's usually around five dollars when it's on sale and then buy Hitman 2. that's pretty much all the issues with the game other than the potential fact that some people who played 2016 didn't like it because the formula felt very achievement hunting focused with all of the challenges and story opportunities if you are one of those people then you aren't going to like this game at all since it's more of that but better since this was originally supposed to be season 2 there isn't much in the way of gameplay Innovation realistically there didn't need to be too much to begin with but one thing that sets this game apart from 20 16 and makes it the far better experience is the long-awaited return of the briefcase [Music] foreign [Music] two Targets remaining so that's Stephen Bradley taken care of well done the other big addition was io's attempt at multiplayer in Ghost mode two players will be loaded into a world where they will have five targets to attempt to kill in whoever scores five kills first wins I was surprised how much I ended up liking this idea at launch I played it with a few friends and had a blast the only issue that I really saw with it is that since both players are in separate worlds and just see a phantom of the other running around theirs the worlds aren't identical simulations so a lot of rounds ended up being lost or won due to RNG of AI placement sometimes people would just get a massive head start because the first Target was surrounded by nobody for one player and they were easily just able to kill them in the first five seconds of a match starting now for those who watched the last episode of this retrospective you'll remember me talking about depreciating content and the non-permanence of always online servers while making this video the servers for ghost mode actually went offline I tried to find a few matches of my own for some gameplay but I couldn't find any so then I tried to ask a friend to play it with me but he was going to be busy until September 13th which the servers went offline 13 days prior thanks Kane so yeah that mode is just completely unaccessible forever now it's gone forever if you didn't get to play it then you'll never get to play it because IO said that they aren't bringing it back for Hitman 3 which is a shame because I think they could have tweaked it a little and made it even better but as proof of me trying to find matches just before the servers went down nobody was playing this so it was probably an operating cost not worth paying despite only being a two-year Gap from Hitman 2016 Hitman 2 looks even better that's not to say 2016 looks bad by any means but just loading into the tutorial level Hawkeye Bay you can see the graphical leap at times it's easy to forget the Dire Straits of the company has been in and these seemingly tight budgets these two games have been working on this game Sports some of the largest and in my opinion best levels in the entire series Miami might just be my favorite level in the entire series it's really hard for me to decide a bunch of these levels are so good when this game first came out I put 18 hours just in Miami trying to fully Master it before moving on to anything else because I enjoyed it so much I wanted to see every nook and cranny of this level the only place that the budget restraints are really felt to me is in the cutscenes no longer do we have the amazing CG cut scenes by plated image this time around they're mostly still images that pan or Zoom similar to something you would find in a history documentary that you'd watch in school some of these do have effects going on in them so they aren't a hundred percent still images but I can't help but wish we got more of what was in 2016 because they were amazing maybe this was their artistic vision for the story being told in this game and I'm just talking out of my ass but I'm led to believe I'm not because the DLC locations had in-engine cutscenes while they don't look nearly as as good as the pre-rendered one by plated they are still nice while talking about the cutscenes I guess now would be as good as time as any to talk about the game's story I want to preface this by saying I don't think it's bad but it runs into the issue like I mentioned earlier with being the middle game in a Trilogy so the plot doesn't really go anywhere near as far as I wish it did in the last game Diana and 47 were looking into the shadow client and found out that the Illuminati patriot-esque organization called Providence does indeed exist at the end of the game Diana was convinced by a soft-spoken man to hunt down the shadow client who had been employing the ICA to kill Providence operatives if Diana and the ICA agreed to this man's conditions she would be given the information of the Lost past of agent 47. this plot setup is paid off in Hitman 2 with Lucas gray ended up being a part of the ortmeyer experiments as subject 6 so he knew 47 as a child but at the same time I can't help but feel like we're still at Square One by the end of this game we capture the constant the guy who is supposedly running Providence events but at the end of the second DLC location he escapes which it clearly sets up for him being the big bad of the third game with the exception of contracts and even then depending on how you feel about that game you could play all of the games even Absolution beforehand and get a complete self-contained satisfying narrative without feeling like you have to now wait for a sequel it does set up one thing that I'm really interested in and worried about for The Narrative of Hitman 3. to find a lead on the leaders of Providence 47 is given a serum that will resurface the erased memories that he lost due to the ortmeyer experiments this seems to have also given 47 back some range of deeper emotions so I'm curious if they will play this as a gradual return or relearning of long-lost feelings or will it be a very immediate feeling for the player in three or maybe they aren't going to do this at all and I'm just misinterpreting 47's body language and facial expressions in the cutscenes the potential worry that I have for where they will take 47's character stems from the wording that they use in the Hitman 3 trailer because it feels vaguely similar to all the things said in the lead up to Absolution but I will both give them the benefit of the doubt and have some Faith because in the last two games they've proven that they know what they're doing this is overall an issue that I think will be resolved in time once the next installment is out similar to games like Halo 2 which suffered the same feeling during its initial release but despite my issues the game's narrative does have some Shining Moments like during the final level of the base game where you infiltrate a secret society's party and you can walk around and listen to the insanity of these billionaire Doomsday Preppers and their secret fallout shelter in Antarctica this is exactly what I want for my International Spy thriller or how one of your main Targets in Colombia Rico Delgado is the nephew of Fernando Delgado one of your targets from The Vineyard level in Hitman blood Money you could even hear him talk about how he wants to find and capture the man who killed his family members this is the fan service that I love just little nice touches like these that are there for long time fans Hitman 2 seriously made me consider which is my favorite in the series before this game's release I would have said blood money without any hesitation but now depending on the day I may say Hitman 2. it is a little hard to compare them since they are different in structure and it really comes down to which do you prefer but man does this game have some really high highs and give blood Money a run for its money [Music] Hitman 2 released two great critical receptions scoring an 82 for both PS4 and PC and an 84 for the Xbox One on Metacritic now we don't know the exact sales numbers so I can't say for sure if it was a success or not as I don't know what io's Break Even points are or their sales goals but just using steam charts you can see that the all-time Peak players for Hitman 2 is leagues higher than Hitman 2016 and if that game was considered a success by IO I think it's safe to say that this one probably was too at the time of recording this IO has just announced that Hitman 3 is going to be a year-long epic game store exclusive I feared this will inevitably hurt the initial PC sales numbers and possibly future ones after it comes to steam as the epic game store has a massive stigma to it especially with how many basic features it still lacks I would much prefer to just own Hitman 3 on Steam but if being an epic game store exclusive means that IO can remain independent and self-published comfortably I am more than happy for them and hope the company does nothing but succeed because what they have made is something really special as of right now we have reached the end of the Hitman retrospective it has been two long years working on this granted I have not been working on this completely for these entire two years as I have made plenty of other projects in the meantime this has been a great and really fun learning experience as I have not done anything like this and I felt like it gave me a lot of the much needed know-how for tackling something like the Yakuza retrospective and all I can do is hope that Hitman 3 really lives up to the hype and is a bombastic finale in Climax or the rebooted trilogy [Music] I do not understand why they can't just gate off the actual content that requires the internet connection went offline and not the progression system as a whole we've seen it time and time again that always online is not a viable option it never works at launch when you're going to have the most traffic to your game it never works at launch when you're going to have the most traffic to your game [Music] I am a broken record at this point but it's an issue that sadly has not gone away so let's get this out of the way right up front so we can move on to the meat of this review the lead up and launch of this game was a mess from questionable business practices to the save file transfer site for PC not working for days so that meant if you played the game before you transferred your progress from the previous game to three it would delete your current progress to integrate twos I didn't even bother attempting to play this game for a few weeks since I was busy with games for the game of the year video and I knew that shit wouldn't work and needed to be sorted out even after the site was supposed to be working properly it still took me at least an hour for it to actually work since it struggled to link my accounts this video was originally going to have a VR section of the review since a friend was going to let me borrow their Quest 2 for it unfortunately VR for Hitman 3 is an exclusive feature only for the PlayStation 4 VR headset gee this really makes me want to invest in a 500 Quest 2 or a one thousand dollar valve index One games I actually want to play in VR are exclusive to a console with underpowered Hardware I really fucking hope that this doesn't become a precedent for game companies to buy exclusivity to VR because this will effectively kill the platform since the original release of this game in video Hitman 3's VR mode finally made its way to the PC in January of 2022. I dabbled with it for a bit but after a few crashes I'm going to call my time with it and just give my thoughts on it it's enjoyable enough to try out but it certainly isn't Hitman it tries its best to adapt the gameplay we've all come to know love and get tired of but it's really Jank feeling I do have a very limited experience with VR games and I do not have the space at all to get the most out of it sadly but no matter how much I fiddled with the settings I could not find something that didn't feel somewhat awkward I was never happy with the movement of my head and body maybe if my character's arms stayed with my head as I moved it and turned around it would feel better but I don't know Hitman 3's VR feels like it would be one of those things that would be posted about a lot on social media as funny memes because it does look Goofy and fun but that's about it because in actuality it's not something that is enjoyable to play in large settings aiming your guns feels weird but maybe that's just my inexperience with VR gun games but considering the game does have an aim assist I'm leaning towards that not being the case how the sniper controls is by far the most disappointing of the guns maybe I'm being completely unrealistic and how I expected it to feel but going in I thought I would just be able to free range move my head in controller in order to move around when aiming down the scope instead of like how it actually is where it relies on the analog sticks far too much for my liking foreign and as you can see here the detection for how close the controller is to your headset to register that you're aiming down the scope isn't the best at least in a cramped setup like I have navigating through the menus does not feel very good since you have to use the analog sticks and there appears to be a noticeable amount of delay unlike other VR games and interfaces that I've interacted with where you just use the controller's pointers in order to click menu buttons the detection to pick up things was super off from my experience the game struggled to allow me to interact with certain prompts just even in the tutorial it didn't get picked up on my recordings but there was a lot of visual glitching and artifacting my hands disappeared here and inside my headset there was huge broken artifacts that looked like missing though before the game just crashed or closed itself it's nice to see that despite not touching this game for two years there still seems to be connection and server issues so it locked me out of testing more levels than I liked this feature is not a game seller I would not buy a VR headset to play this game nor would I buy this game to play it in VR mess around with it if you have access to a VR or headset of any kind but to me I can't help but feel like this is just a gimmick that gives VR a bad impression but once all of these factors melted away the game finally got its chance to shine foreign [Music] I'll be honest though that I found myself far more burnt out on the Hitman reboot formula than I expected to be for the 2016 and Hitman 2 retrospectives I did pretty much everything there was to do in those games but for Hitman 3 I struggled to find myself even getting the motivation to wanting to do all the story missions in each location which there are less per level compared to the previous two games it has been a few months since I finished the Hitman retrospective and I thought it would have been enough but I did put at least 150 to 200 hours between playing writing and editing the final four episodes of the retrospective just last year so I wanted to bring this up because while I like the game I feel like I'm not liking it nearly as much as I should maybe the formula has finally run its course for me and I'm starting to get sick of it but I keep looking at this game and go yeah this is really good probably the best yet but I don't find myself feeling the wonderment anymore I never felt completely blown away it was very close at points why like with the second location having an amazing murder mystery subplot that you can take a part in where you can disguise as the detective and then search the house for Clues talk to the family about their Alibis and then choose who was the murderer and then use this information as leverage to get the Intel you're after for as creative and imaginative as the trilogy has been after a while you start to notice the pretty rigid formula they follow you overhear something about a story Mission from a person in the environment then you go investigate the said place they were talking about then you disguise yourself as a key unique NPC or a worker then you'll get an opening to interact with the Target and then finally there will always be a reason for all of the guards and everyone around the target to either leave or turn around so you could kill them without being spotted this murder mystery segment feels really unique and breaks that mold but I'm not sure down the line it won't just get really annoying and in the way on repeat playthroughs and even after finishing this murder mystery subplot I did just turn around and kick the Target and to her grave after dressing up as the Undertaker who she somehow didn't notice it was me even though she saw through my disguise as the detective not five minutes earlier so Goldstar for trying while a lot of the formula feels the same I really stepped up and experimented with the presentation for Hitman 3. IO managed to make this game look even better than Hitman 2 when I didn't think there was anywhere else for them to go visually the rain effects in this game look especially amazing with how the Raindrop was glisten on 47's Bald Head the mission briefings are the best yet and always managed to Hype me up for the next hit the game employs some amazing camera movement and sound cues to help sell these really hype moments and build scale for these levels [Music] what's up good to see you how lovely to see so many friendly and familiar faces here today honestly this game has me more excited to see IO Branch off into other genres I would love to see their take on a survival horror game after playing the opening of apex predator they perfectly captured the atmosphere with 47 walking around the abandoned gas station [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] the China level perfectly captures what the ICA headquarters should look like not a stupid fucking stock war room on a yacht in Morocco but a futuristic underground base a place hidden in plain sight with contingencies if they were needing to destroy it and leave no Trace they were ever there something dystopian cold calculated having plans and contingencies for every possible scenario from being compromised to leaking information being almost completely autonomous to keep this well-oiled machine running with no issues with an AI algorithm attempting to predict every single outcome ever along with monitoring and analyzing the ICA employees health to make sure none of them go into unstable mental States it's uncomfortable the amount of detail and forethought the leaders of the ICA have put in place in order to maintain their organization they added a camera to 47's Arsenal that allows him to hack open specific security roadblock scan people and in the murder mystery in the Mansion search for evidence this is all pure speculation but it feels like some experimentation for io's upcoming James Bond game so if that ends up being a case I'm excited to see if and how they potentially build off it from its current iteration because as of right now it's pretty basic with just pointing at things and making them open they also added some new additions to the level design that I really like there are now locked doors that can only be opened from one side and there are ladders that require tools to break open and use meaning that there is now even more layers to the level design making it more honeycombed which I see is a good thing even if at times it feels like it's underutilized the big issue I had when it came to writing this review besides burnout was figuring out how I felt on this game's story as of right now this is the end of Hitman the cynic in me tells me that eventually down the line we'll just get a reboot of a reboot series or something because video game creators will not just let their IPs sit there and fester unless they're Konami I hate to say it about this story but it left me feeling nothing not good not bad just nothing I would say I'm leaning towards positive but when this is supposed to be your bombastic finale and send off to the franchise I feel like I'm supposed to be feeling something maybe if this game had smaller levels with a larger level selection akin to the original four games this final level would have been better but as is it feels like an Absolution level somehow snuck its way into being the finale of this Trilogy it has some really amazing visuals to start the level off but it's just a straight line I just can't muster up the feeling of any strong opinions about it I look at tons of moments and I go I feel like I should be feeling hype or think this is satisfying but I felt nothing Lucas gray giving his life so 47 can get away nothing killing the founding families of evidence the dynasties that have been fucking the world for Generations nothing getting betrayed by Diana nothing injecting the constant with a serum that'll seal away all of his memories effectively erasing his existence from the face of the Earth since nobody else knows he ever existed with Diana taking over as the constant controlling Providence and steering the world to hopefully a better place nothing and I couldn't tell you why maybe the scale of these games got too big to ever feel like it would have a satisfying conclusion the massive global scale that they've created these villains for works great as the setup to them and interacting with the world because so much of it is left up to your imagination and filling in the blanks but I don't think it works well when you're supposed to be toppling them and defeating them because these changes that the world is supposed to be having feel almost invisible and intangible we get two maybe three cutscenes after the lid has been blown on the ICA in Providence with news reports talking about these organizations along with mass resignations of big company CEOs and stepping down of powerful leaders but the spotlight is never held on these moments long enough to feel satisfying to me I would have loved to see more of how Diana and 47 are now shaping this world but I guess that is left up to our imagination and the more I think of this fact the less this seems like an ending and more like a new beginning which I think can and will work if we do see an eventual new installment following this story but for now this is the end I know this section is ending off on a rather negative to Bleak note but I do think the game is pretty good something that is still worth playing if you're someone who's trying to get into the series you should probably get this game and just play the previous two in this one there is one thing that I am curious on testing I want to go back to this game and replay it once I start working on my game of the year video for 2021 after having 10 months away from the game and then replaying it maybe then I will finally be able to come to a conclusion that I feel satisfied with maybe after enough time has been removed I will be able to Stew on and think about how I feel on this game's story I am personally optimistic that I felt leaning towards positive on this that maybe with more time I will be able to come to love it because I never want to hate any of these games Hitman is one of my favorite franchises ever I have so many good memories of this series and hell I even have good memories in this game for as much as I was lukewarm on this game game it still does a lot of things well and has refined the formula to probably its peak Perfection but this is the third time it's done it and I could only be amused so many times by the same tricks we have already had a cut in earlier in this segment to talk about the VR mode that was added Post Release to the PC version but there are still some other things worth coming back to and talking about once again the store page for these games has been reworked now Hitman 2016 threw Hitman 3 have been repackaged as one complete game Hitman world of assassination for seventy dollars this is only going to make it even more confusing for returning players who own the previous two games and not their DLCs or Hitman 3 since 2016 and Hitman 2 have been de-listed if you own Hitman 2 I guess your only option is to get Hitman 3 in the upgrade expansion bundle for Hitman 2 and that if you want to play the DLC you don't own I really do not get how IO continues to make this a confusing nightmare for everyone involved initially I wanted to say that this was a good deal since you get all three games in the first two's DLCs until I realized that for some reason in this 70 bundle it only gives you the base for version of Hitman 2 and the DLCs for that game are a separate 10 bundle Hitman 3 received a single DLC called the seven deadly sins it was an episodic release of escalation challenges for thirty dollars I had held off on getting it since it was 30 and being piecemeal to you as a season pass type deal I had planned to just get it once everything was out its episodic nature was perfectly fine but the price when it was just costumes and some challenges did not seem worth it and sure enough everybody including IO thought the same as the bundle on Steam for all seven of the sins is now going for 9.99 the game also received a single new location and a free update again like everything I've said since Hitman 2 and 3 it's more of the same if you are someone who is still in love with the formula of the reboot Trilogy then it's more good content with some fun set pieces and events like a Dana White simulator there seems to be more things to do compared to some of the levels from the base game it's good fun but but not doing anything insane or Reinventing the wheel the final addition to this game is freelancer mode which was added in a free update giving you access to a whole new roguelike type gameplay they could have easily charged for this and I don't think anyone would have complained that's just how much content there seems to be in this this segment is really hard for me to write about because at this point I have just accepted that roguelikes are not a genre that appeals to me and I actively dislike them the game mode is basically the final evolution of the contract system from Absolution and the escalation system from the reboot Trilogy you are given contracts of crime syndicates to hunt down and kill depending on the contract you choose the bonuses will be geared towards a different method of killing like this contract right here was based all around poison after each successful hit when returning to your base you are given a reward in the actual levels themselves you can find a vendor to spend the points you have accumulated to buy new gear there are also crates sprinkled throughout the areas that you can open up and take one piece of equipment out of that will usually be geared towards the type of hits that your contract wants the things that I dislike about this game mode comes down to its main appeal so I completely understand if I'm the odd man out here as I fully acknowledge this is not something for me and I normally would not engage with it outside of covering it for a video I dislike initially having no gear and having to build up Your Arsenal It Feels So limiting and depending on the contract you can't even do the bonus challenges because you don't have access to the items you need like this one here where it wanted me to poison my target but since this was my first mission I had no items so I just could not interact with the major facet of this scenario the other aspect comes from all of these non-story scripted targets that these games have where it picks a random NPC in the level and they are who you need to kill in this same level where it wanted me to kill my target with poison that I did not have the Target in question was the shopkeeper in the middle of the market and since I had no gear it felt like there was nothing I could actually do the only reason I was able to stealthfully kill him was because he randomly walked up to me and started talking to me endlessly then I just led him to an isolated area right next to a box so I could dump his body into it and stabbed a scissor into his skull Point Blank and killed him I do really like the new camera during The Showdown matches where you have to find The Syndicate leaders via process of elimination from a group of suspects while there are other assassins trying to kill you I imagine this is them feeling the waters for eventual mechanics in their James Bond game and if that is the case I'm really excited for whatever they're cooking up with that I think the game mode is well made and well put together and if you are someone who likes procedurally generated content and the challenges found in the last three games then this will be right up your alley but for me I will stick to the story missions and maybe occasionally mess around with this the final thing I want to end this on is my feelings towards the third game and people wondering if they've changed at all in the two years since this game has come out the answer is not really I still think this isn't really that good of an ending and feels like it is just open enough to continue on if they wanted to with an eventual Hitman 4 after taking a break from this series I hope that for an eventual Hitman 4 or a reboot they change up the formula because at this point I am sick to death of the checklist second job nature that these games give off there is so much limited time content that I just ended up missing out on because I don't want to keep this game installed and keep playing it like I am checking in with my psychologist twice a month because there are some new seasonal events I just want to play a game that is completed with all of its content there that isn't going to go away when it's done being supported I do not want a single player game that has all of the features and aspects and functionality of an MMO the series is still good I highly recommend playing all the games except Absolution but if a new game is to come out I want something closer to Silent Assassin through hit man blood money I hope that IO will abandon the always online crap and all of the other weird aspects that the Revival Trilogy has contracted like an STD even if they don't end up doing this I imagine the next Hitman installment whatever it may be like will most likely be a very competent and good game at the very worst just more of the same for the fourth time it'll probably still be good even in spite of that as IO has shown that they are some of the most talented devs currently in the industry if you've made it this far into the video I just want to say thanks for watching as always if you really liked the video please leave a like and comment and don't forget to subscribe and pass the video around if you really like these videos and want to see more like it then maybe consider becoming a patron on patreon it is the best way to support the Channel all patrons get access to videos a day early along with a seven dollar tier that allows you to view rough cuts of upcoming videos I'm now going to shout out all of my five dollar and up patrons who really help support the channel bully denture Lucy the fox salt and sweet rum sir newtonute scary dinosaur Curtis Harris Elliott Morton kohai Carmen Lotto Medi not the bad guy nemphy Corner quartz Samuel Egan Saiyan Hagee simply Aiden slump tingle swimming Walkman BBF in bloxburg NM Revan Cosmonaut Cola rovit Ben Johnson buckets burgnut chachometrios cursed void rtgc EK fraso filthyfinger 69 fishkami hard leg Joe kazmark chick Kevin Velasquez lazy Titan Megan Nick Sean the Berserker Fighter starcasters the worst this guy apple juice 426 William Moore and David Roberts thanks so much guys as for what's coming out next I'm not really sure I have a ton of videos still in the middle of production things a varying degree of completion I'm also slowly chipping away at armored Core but who knows whenever that's going to be out because there's 15 games I have to cover I think so if you really want to help support me as videos take really long to make then the patreon really helps out I also have a nordvpn affiliate Link in the description below using my promo code and I also have a TCGplayer affiliate Link in the description below any purchases you make while checking out using that link will give me a small kick back and I think that's pretty much it so I hope you guys enjoyed the video and as always thanks for watching and see you next time

Channel: Cvit

Views: 197,304

Keywords: Cvit, agent 47, hitman, hitman codename 47, hitman 2 silent assasssin, hitman contracts, hitman blood money, hitman absolution, HITMAN 2016, HITMAN 2, HITMAN 3, IO Unteractive, hitman review, retrospective, hitman retrospective, HITMAN 3 review, HITMAN 2 REVIEW

Id: U2f-NxlBuJU

Length: 167min 7sec (10027 seconds)

Published: Sat May 06 2023