Why Hitman Isn't A Stealth Game

in the year 2000 a small danish studio released their very first video game a gritty stealth action title inspired by john woo action films and games like thief the dark project they called it hitman codename 47 and it's all you playing as get this a hitman tasked with exploring a semi-open world and disguising yourself to infiltrate various locations and kill your target hopefully without being spotted unfortunately for us hitman codename 47 was pretty terrible yeah it's not a good game the camera and ui are awful it looks ugly as hell and any solution to one of his levels that isn't just going in guns blazing is invariably so arcane and poorly explained that you'll never figure it out without a walkthrough i do not under any circumstances recommend playing it that's probably not how you expected me to open a video all about how much i love hitman but it's true the original game and kind of even its sequel are really not that great but what they are is ambitious and utterly unique while the early games might not have been very much fun it's a testament to just how compelling hitman's core fantasy is that they sold well regardless even if you can only really see the outline of what the franchise would one day become it wasn't until the fourth entry in the series beloved money that the vision of hitman finally became clear although not completely while the level design of blood money is much stronger featuring densely designed locales in interesting settings and much greater freedom and how to plan out your hit the game was ultimately held back by technology blood money has clunky awkward controls and its missions feel too small and simplistic to come across as anything other than tiny primitive glimpses of the game io interactive truly wanted to make it wouldn't be until 10 years two horrible movies and one game of which we do not speak later that they finally got their chance in the form of the world of assassination trilogy a soft reboot of the hitman franchise concluding with the recently released hitman 3 that truly capitalizes on everything that i think hitman was meant to be following the release of the confusingly named hitman 1 in 2016 hitman went from a franchise that i could never really understand the appeal of to my favorite stealth game series of all time so with the announcement that i o interactive are giving agent 47 a well deserved break i thought that now is the time to take a look at all three world of assassination games to pick apart what makes the best hitman levels tick and trying to figure out what makes hitman so unique so what is that i hear you ask what makes hitman special compared to other stealth games like dishonored metal gear solid or deus ex well buckle in because i'm about to say something that sounds weird but it's gonna make more sense the more you think about it okay that is that hitman isn't really a stealth game it's stealth mechanics and god ai have always been fairly basic and it's definitely not a shooter the game goes out of its way to discourage getting into firefights what hitman really is is a problem-solving game like factorio polybridge or basically any zachtronics game some of my most fun experiences playing hitman have been solving fun puzzles and finding creative solutions to self-imposed challenges for example how the hell you can infiltrate an eyes-wide shot party without wearing a disguise figuring out the best route to transport a sniper rifle past guards and civilians up to a rooftop in marrakech and masterminding a plot to trick this guy into blowing himself up with an explosive golf ball i think hitman is at its best when its levels facilitate this kind of abstract experimental play and the game is at its worst when it either forces you to play in a particular way or doesn't appropriately reward you for being clever and understanding the game's systems don't believe me to explain how well most hitman levels encourage you to think on your feet and plan your way around problems i need only show you one of the few hitman levels that doesn't namely the infamously terrible colorado from hitman 1. colorado sees you taking down a group of four domestic terrorists all hiding out on a farmhouse alongside their buddies the targets are shaun rose the leader of the bunch ezra berg who has a funny face penelope graves who's quick and nimble when she needs to be and maya pavanti who's one tough kong i mean militia person all four targets are incredibly difficult to approach and the whole level is well guarded by a small army of soldiers with very few ways to infiltrate the compound and almost no means of creating a distraction or an accident without getting spotted colorado is a well-constructed stealth game level and that's exactly why it's terrible for hitman colorado gives players no room to improvise or have fun because every disguise is just another soldier and the base is so well knocked down that there are no fun kill methods to try and incorporate like feeding people to a hippo or getting their wives to push them off a balcony because there's no margin for error colorado forces you into repeating the same boring tried and tested tactics over and over again even trying to think outside the box is grounds for getting your face filled with bullets and having to start over i thought i could smuggle a sniper rifle up to this water tower and pick off all four targets before making a quick getaway but even after the painstaking effort of actually sneaking up there it turns out that sniping anyone instantly aggroes the entire base and the water tower is the first place they check rendering this strategy all but moot hitman might have all the trappings of a stealth game but ultimately the actual execution pun intended is just the icing on the cake and it's in the experimentation exploration and the figuring out how you can kill a bunch of people dressed as a clown where the real fun lies but how does hitman do this how is it possible to design a game that actually promotes creativity rather than by design restricting it one of the major ways the hitman team does this is in the way they approach level design specifically by seeing each location not as a single tailored challenge but a complex interwoven network of systemic problems created by the environment and npcs some of the biggest inspirations for the hitman team come from the world of social philosophy specifically from pierre bordue and irving goffman who pioneered the theories of dramaturgy and social spaces respectively this might seem like an old field to draw from given that agent 47 barely talks and isn't exactly the most personable guy but sociology and hitman go hand in hand to quote goffman we are all just actors trying to control and manage our public image we act based on how others might see us in other words our identities are defined not by who we think we are but by those around us and the rules of the place we're in by applying this logic to hitman we see the origins of some of the game's most interesting emergent puzzles drawing attention to yourself in hitman by not adhering to say the social rule against brandishing a scimitar at random people won't just lower your score it's also usually suicide so you have to learn to play smart each disguise you don will grant you access to different locations but they will also change your social identity altering which opportunities you have available to you and how the npcs will react to your actions for example in mendoza your experience walking around the big central party disguised as a guest is vastly different to your experience disguised as a guard as a civilian you'll be constantly barred entry and angst for your invitation but it will be much easier to blend in as a guard however you'll be able to walk in wherever you like without getting frisked and openly carry most weapons however because you appear to be a heavily armed mercenary away from his post people are naturally going to be much more suspicious of you the bodyguards of one of your targets will outright ignore you if you're just another dude in the tux but they'll be highly suspicious of you when you're dressed in military getup this constant change in agent 47's relationship with his environment extends to the yearbook those theories of the front stage and backstage in short his theories are based around the idea that in public settings we are constantly performing but in private settings or backstage we reveal who we truly are the hitman team uses this idea to create nice level design arcs that set up and then pay off fun moments and storylines in public spaces you'll see your targets and the world as they want to be seen usually visually impressive and with the veneer of impenetrable security but by skulking around we can pick up on rumors and gather tools that we can use to make our way behind the scenes where we're rewarded with fun character moments of the bad guys being horrible the opportunity to mess around with the level and pick up on story details that are much more rewarding to find because it feels like we're not supposed to be seeing them expanded to the scope of a whole level these concepts of public and private spaces create the overall landscape of a hitman location and the proportions of each as well as their configurations within a level can drastically change how each feels to play in fact the layout of public and private spaces is such a big deal that the hitman team have come up with two different terms to describe the extremes of their design process first we have snail houses which are levels that are supposed to look like snail shells yeah i don't really get it either in essence what the term means is that a snail house is built around spiraling layers with no clear divisions between public and private locations snail houses are usually made of pathways and shortcuts that all fold into each other in a way that makes the level feel much larger and more complex than it actually is a good example of snail house design can be found in the mission the ark society which has massive semi-public spaces but also a lot of different entryways into various layers of security basically all the battlements are clearable there's a variety of massive crowds to get lost in and you can even crawl through the sewers like a giant bold rat rather than the challenge coming from how you'll infiltrate security and remain hidden snail houses present a challenge of improvisation and navigation with you working out the most effective route to your target and the fastest escape method while dealing with a lot of events and systems that all bleed into each other in an interesting way the other kind of level is a fortress defined by being more or less the exact opposite a fortress level is one with strict divides between public and private space and as a result has a much more clear a to b structure with you starting in a completely public area and your target hanging around somewhere heavily guarded for example the mansion in dartmoor is a classic fortress with the grounds being fairly open and accepting of a variety of disguises but the house itself being under heavy guard and with multiple layers of security all stacked on top of each other meaning you'll either have to carefully manage your disguises or find some way to lure the lady of the house down to ground level in order to reach and then kill her obviously these two fall on a spectrum with most of hitman's strongest levels finding a sweet spot somewhere in the middle sapienza and mendoza start as snail houses but flow into fortresses giving them a great dramatic arc of rising tension and miami one of hitman 2's best levels is literally half snail house and half fortress being split right down the middle by a racetrack in fact it's when a level veers too far in one direction the problems start to occur i've already mentioned colorado but colombia from hitman 2 also commits too hard to fortress level design being effectively three different fortresses split by vast gulfs of essentially nothing with little interaction between the town mansion and drug plant this creates a level that feels kind of stilted and the lack of freedom in approaching these various areas can limit their replayability and how much they reward thinking outside the box going too far into snail house design on the other hand can just lead to players getting lost mumbai is so interspersed with ladders sneaky shortcuts different disguise zones and security checkpoints all of which have the same rundown aesthetic so i don't think i could navigate the place without checking the map at least once and i've beaten it at least 10 times a similar dichotomy can be seen in romas and dwellers the two different kinds of target as you might have guessed dwellers mostly stay in one place and need to be assaulted or somehow drawn out and romas need to be ambushed or isolated and these two types play very differently depending on whether they inhabit a snail house or a fortress for example in whittleton creek the suburban neighbourhood's many witnesses make dealing with nolan cassidy aroma quite difficult encouraging you to draw him in doors or into a garden for a sneaky kill but when killing old man janus a dweller who never leaves his house these densely packed domestic settings actually work against you and infiltrating up to his room where he spends a lot of time and can be poisoned it's very hard work by designing levels that are open-ended yet constrained enough to push you into encountering a variety of interesting emergent problems hitman ensures that no matter how good you are in the game you'll never be completely sure how to deal with the constantly evolving sandbox of each playthrough of course each level's elements are merely the tools players have to work with if hitman doesn't do a good job of encouraging you to use them and rewarding players for finding new solutions to levels they've already played then all that effort setting the stage for creativity will be for nothing mission stories and challenges are the game's solution to this problem the former are essentially highly scripted quests that direct players into a situation where they can easily kill their target in paris the very first level of hitman won new players just wandering around the level will quickly bump into this guy helmut kruger and will be prompted to knock him out take his place and then go to a one-on-one meeting with one of the targets leading to a great opportunity to poison her drink she even gives you some poison it is really not difficult mission stories serve a dual function they're both a nice simplified version of a playthrough for casual players or for those who aren't confident playing completely alone but for more experienced players they're also an overview of each level and a way of highlighting all the interesting mechanics that you have to play with for example in chongqing one of the mission stories involves you impersonating an inspector who's looking around this secret base and in doing so you get a lovely guided tour of the facility and how all the security measures work introducing you to some fun systems you can play around with when you come back in your next playthrough and try your assault from a different direction once players have scoped out the level and have been introduced to the themes of each location however they're going to need an additional incentive to keep experimenting this is where challenges and mastery come in when mission stories give new players a helping hand challenges encourage experts to broaden their horizons and test their limits for example in dubai one particularly interesting challenge asks you to eliminate both targets while they're parachuting prompting most people to ask wait the targets can parachute what the hell beating this challenge requires players to know the level inside out and how to manipulate both targets into trying to escape fire parachute as well as knowing exactly where to stand in order to shoot them down or where the parachutes are stored so they can be sabotaged another fun challenge in haven island hitman 2's second dlc requires you to kill all three targets with poison not only does this require a comprehensive knowledge of the map to even know how to do this it also means you'll need to figure out how to get enough poison to pull it off hint you're going to need an accomplice or two really though challenges and mission stories are just the build up to hitman's end game challenges suit only sniper only and silent assassin which require you to beat the mission without ever putting on a disguise making all kills with a sniper and without being spotted these extra bonus challenges put all the things you've learned to the test and cause you to fundamentally re-evaluate how you play each level most mission stories are off the table easy messy kills on an option and previously safe areas will now be totally off limits without a disguise the final challenges of each level are an ultimate test of your creativity because they strip away all the training wheels and force you to engage only with hitman's most fundamental mechanics as well as your knowledge of the map design one of my favorite attempts of the hat-trick of sniper suit and silent happened in hokkaido and forced me to rely on some very creative tactics in order to take out mob fixer yuki yamazaki and eric sodas who's under heavy guard in an operating room first i had to make a death defying run into the guard station to steal the map's single keycard hacker then i smuggled a sniper rifle down to the morgue and using knowledge of a mission story i'd done in a previous run took a daring shot into a secured room to kill a replacement heart destined for mr sodas killing him without having to brave the deadly hospital what followed was a nail-biting game of cat and mouse as i made my way outside and up to a scenic overlook to wait for yuki to go and smoke some cigarettes i planted earlier before popping around the head and making my escape before anyone wised up to what happened hitman levels shine when they tread a difficult line between freedom and restriction and judging from interviews with the developers much of the design work that goes into levels is less about figuring out the locations and targets and more about getting this balance right if we look back at why the older hitman games didn't see the same level of love as the world of assassination trilogy it's in many ways because they're either too restrictive or don't give players enough direction the early hitman games as well as absolution have very narrowly designed levels with only one or two solutions meaning that players never really have to get creative and they're left with a fairly middling stealth game with a bunch of vestigial mechanics mounted on blood money and hitman contracts on the other hand drop you into a level with no help and actively punish you by increasing your notoriety score or reducing your end of mission cash for trying to explore an experiment conditioning players to restrict themselves to only safe reliable strategies it takes a great deal of confidence in your level design and your players to let them off the leash and allow them to make their own fun and while many other games have tried only io interactive have managed to completely master the formula and have been willing to totally commit hitman 3 is essentially one giant flourish as io interactive acknowledged that after 21 long years the technology and expertise is finally in place for them to make the perfect hitman game if you needed any more proof that the hitman team have an unshakable confidence that they know what they're doing just look at how they mess with your expectations in berlin there's this big sniper tower that should instantly catch your attention but it's full of proximity sensors and under constant surveillance what about the mission story where you impersonate the club owner well for the first time ever your targets call your bluff and trap you in a tense shootout these little jokes at the player's expense work because hitman has trained you so well that you know everything you need to to be a master assassin including the fact that there's always another surprise around the corner hitman has seen a rocky road to 2021 between iowa interactive getting abandoned by square enix uncertain financial prospects as well as a couple of games that were just flat out bad but after a long journey things are finally looking up for the hitman team maybe when they're done with making a trilogy of james bond games they can revisit agent 47 once more and put him through his paces once again i know that i'll certainly be waiting for the silent assassin to make his oh [ __ ] [ __ ] god damn it where's my last normal safe all the way back there [ __ ] up hello and thank you for having this in the background for the better part of 20 minutes while you do something more interesting this is the part of the video where i give a shout out to a cool internet thing my lovely patrons as well as any suspiciously bold assassins who've managed to infiltrate the list this video's cool internet shout out is a double whammy first i'd like to give a plug to hitmaps which is a ridiculously comprehensive website detailing all of the world assassination maps and it was an incredibly useful resource for both editing and writing this video please do check it out if you need it and second i'd like to recommend a podcast called dungeons and daddies which no is unfortunately not a bdsm podcast most of the time it's actually the only dnd podcast that i can stand to listen to featuring a hilarious cast dynamic some genuinely emotional story arcs and perhaps the only good use of the deck of many things in dungeons and dragons history i've recently spent a week catching up on it and if you're looking for something to listen to during lockdown please give it a check aruni but what you're really here for is for me to thank my top tier patreon supporters who are beautiful lovely and have excellent taste in youtube videos they are alex the loch alex vieira andrew lebrano assaran ashley shade ausa kav big chess brian atariani constantinapunkt cosmix360 daniel medjes david setzer dirk jan karen beld ekton edward franklin woods eugene bulkin evie philip magnus gazco george sears greta hannason jacob dylan riddle jesse rein joey bruno jordan gear joshua binswagger kai gillespie lee berman lucas slack mace window 54 max philippov nate graf nwdd patrick romberg philby the bilby prospero peter sasbo daniel reddadex regal regex rey's dad samuel vanderplatz sheldon hearn simon jacobson steve reilly strategy in ultima tyler duncan zurkane and chao okay thanks for watching and hey wait a second you're not supposed to be here target down good work 47

Channel: Adam Millard - The Architect of Games

Views: 159,163

Rating: 4.9257517 out of 5

Keywords: Games, Video Games, Gaming, PC Gaming, Adam, Adam Millard, Architect, AoG, Architect of Games, Review, Analysis, Game Design, Hitman, Hitman 3, Shadow of War, Hitman 2, Blood Money, Best Hitman Levels, Hitman Targets, Level Design, Hitman Guide, Best Kills

Id: TIu8eEdCovk

Length: 20min 47sec (1247 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021