These past few days I took a break from updating the site and my Grandia Game Journal due to some health stuff (Don't worry, I'm fine). I took this resting time to give myself an early christmas game present. I chose Hitman because I was in the mood for some light-story, immersive sim kind of game. Also recent events have made the premise of 'Rich person Offing Sim' particularly enticing. I played through the tutorial missions and was instantly hooked by the 'hiding in plain sight' approach to stealth the game seemed to encourage. Then I hit the first proper level: 'The Showstopper'. It took me over 15 hours of gameplay to start the second level. Let's talk about that a bit.
First of all: this is my first experience with the Hitman series. Despite my favorite game series being Metal Gear, I have not played many other stealth games. I enjoy the gameplay design of MG, In fact I love it, but I haven't felt the need to seek out more like it. I have played Dishonored. I loved the hours I've spent on Deus Ex and Thief despite not finishing either yet, however I'm no hardcore stealth fan by any means. The main reason why I choose to spend my money on Hitman of all games is because I really felt like playing something MGSV-ish. I just was in the perfect mood for a third person sandbox/immersive sim. I wanted to be thrown into a level where I could aimlessly fuck around and find out until out of the sewers of my brain emerged some self imposed challenge or other. I had a vague idea of the modern Hitman Trilogy being just that so I went and got it.
My expectations were realistic to be honest. I expected to mess around each of Hitman's levels, complete the first game in about 20 or so hours, take a break and then repeat until I beat all three. My game time counter is sitting at almost 20 hours now and I just started the second level. I'm not kidding when I say that this isn't some inflated platytime derived from endlessly doing the same thing again and again until I got a perfect score or something like that. I'm completely serious when I say that the first level of Hitman has enough content to constitute as its own game. It's kind of fucked up. I just spent around 15 hours of my time in one level of one video game and it never felt repetitive or boring.
After a great set of tutorial levels that introduce the general concept of the game both in terms of play and story, we are given our first real contract: 'The Showstopper' which is set in the fictional 'Palais de Walewska' in Paris. A fashion brand by the name of SANGUINE is holding a fancy show/party in this palace. The company is run by CEO Viktor Novikov and his business partner: former model Daria Margolis. Turns out these two rich people... are actually evil! Who would've thought? They run a spy ring which sells information to world leaders which is in turn used for a plethora of nefarious exploits. The fete we are set to attend is actually a cover for an auction in which the global elite can bid for this information. Our goal? Kill Novikov and Margolis and get away from the show. The method? That's up to you.
Hitman is a murder sandbox. Hitman presents you with a situation and lets you handle it. The situation Hitman presents you with is one of cornucopious detail. A situation filled with things; things that the player can directly or indirectly interact with. A first playthrough of that situation will see the player getting a feel for the land: you walk around and learn things. For example, walking around during my first playthrough quickly led me to a little terrace where people were drinking and chatting. On one corner is a man talking on his phone. I overhear him talk about meeting Novikov and a pop-up (Which I'll explain later) appears. An obvious idea strikes: Use this guy to isolate my target and do The Murdering™ . This is one of many examples of the sort of thing you'll encounter. You'll probably end your first run feeling like you accomplished your goals out of damn luck. You'll also probably accomplish a first completion in about 20-40 minutes max unless you really struggle or take your time.
So you have finished Hitman's first level.. that was fast! If you were paying attention at all your first thought will be 'Hmm.. I should do that again.' Not only because your performance was probably sloppy, but because you might have already seen a few things that seem interesting. It's not that I can't conjure a person who upon first completing a level of Hitman decides to go immediately to the next and so on and so forth, It's the fact that that person is someone I can't hang with. Upon finishing a level you don't only get a score; you get to see which 'challenges' you have and haven't completed. The game even explicitly tells you in the tutorial that you can't see everything a level has to offer in one run. We'll talk about those challenges in a bit, first let's talk about the situation at topic.
The first thing I noted was that this place is both huge and beautiful. This is the first time this year I have played a new (to me) game with modern graphics, so I was very impressed by that department. The graphics aren't there just for show though, they are there to show one thing in the designer's mind: attention to detail. The environments are filled with tiny elements that immerse the player in the current scenario; this scenario being a big fancy party. Whether it's seeing all the crew's vans with equipment thrown around, or the backstage filled with models getting ready, it all adds up to give a certain sense of verisimilitude.
That leads us to the second thing I noticed, the amount of NPC's. We arrive at the soiree via the red carpet and already there are tons of people walking around, talking, taking photos, etc. It's a big contrast with the usual stealth games in which there tends to be few enemies and the design theaters in balancing those enemie's positions and behavior with the environment and the actions the player is capable of to create tension. Look at your average MGS screen and you'll see that often the enemy quantity doesn't even reach double digits. One can then surmise two theories to explain this design quirk: 1) Kojima is a cheap fuck. 2) This gives each enemy a level of individualty and power that creates more tension; if you fuck up just one of them you fuck up your entire run through the screen. I'll let the reader decide the truth.
In Hitman however, there are dozens and dozens of people from the get go, and these characters aren't generic Genome Soldiers. NPC's are just people. Fancy folk attending a fashion show, the security staff, the stage crew, reporters, etc. This is the kind of crowd that sells you on the idea of the place you're in. They aren't all just there to serve as set dressing either. They are like extras in a movie set. You don't just expect an extra to stand there to fill space, if an extra is dressed as a waiter you expect them to well, move around the place and serve people. If an extra is a fancy party-goer you expect them to drink and talk to other rich people about their crypto wallet or whatever rich people do nowadays. The difference here is that in Hitman you can interact with these extras AND you can be the extra yourself.
Hitman is not the classical idea of stealth, it's about blending in. It's about making the people around you think that you're just 'some bald guy' and then going out without a soul suspecting you just murdered some people. It's about the cops coming to check out the crime scene and you're sitting on a bench holding a comically large newspaper with eye holes cut into it. In Hitman you don't get away from it, you get away with it. You can knock someone out, steal their clothes and walk around like you were them. This area is only for kitchen staff? Well let me hit a dude with a hammer, hide his body in a trash can, steal his clothes and voila! I'm Mr. Chef here, doing Chef things. It's cartoonishly entertaining. It makes me grin like an idiot. I'm looking at these NPC's like 'Ha ha... they don't know I'm not just a Chef.. I'm a rich people murderer!'
Of course this has a few counters or the game would be too easy. You have to learn which people you can steal clothes from, formulate a plan to steal them without being noticed, and know which areas those clothes give you access to. There are also special characters called 'enforcers', which are guys who are good at faces. They know their crew and your disguise won't fool them even if it includes a mustache, glasses and a big plastic nose. You can learn where they are and plan around them, but most times they take you by surprise and force you to improvise. There are certain spots that give you the opportunity to 'blend in' with a button prompt, that is to say, perform an action that goes along with your custom (Sweep the floor as a Kitchen Aid, stand around with a mean face as a Bodyguard) and during the time you perform that action, not even enforcers will able to see through your disguise.
However, you don't rely completely on disguises to make your way to an objective. You also have a varied set of tools. These tools range from your run of the mill silenced pistol and explosives, to coins to throw and distract enemies or poisons to put in people's food and drinks. These gadgets and doodads aid you in your quest to give hell new tenants as well as giving you new ideas of how to do it. Maybe you are walking around and find a wrench, later you might find a speaker hanging from the ceiling and a prompt to unscrew it from where it hangs. A new plan formulates: How do I get someone I have to kill to be here. Maybe you find some rat poison and notice how one NPC's path can lead them to drink from a particular glass or eat from a certain plate. How can I get the poison in their food without someone noticing? Can I maybe get a waiter's costume so people don't think it's weird that I'm adding something to the food? These are the kinds of situations you'll find yourself in constantly during a run.
You don't only find items though. There is a loadout that the player can customize before each mission. You are allowed three items to start with, plus a special item stashed away in the level for you. As you complete challenges you upgrade your 'Mastery' of a particular stage and unlock new items, stash locations and new entry points to the zone (e.g; Starting already disguised as a Chef, or an Auction participant). So let's talk about the challenges that earn you Mastery exp.
Once you do reach an objective the ways of killing them are as varied as the paths to getting there. The game has a few ways to counteract this overwhelming amount of things-to-do and guide even the least explorative players towards the fun. First are mission stories: Say you are walking around and hear someone talk about how the light fixtures for the runway (This is a fashion show after all.) are flimsy and a prompt appears. Push a button, in my case the Dualshock's 4 touchpad, and our handler, Diana, will talk a bit about how this can be useful. Now it's where you have a few options. If you need guidance you can leave the default setting as is and the game will give you both objectives and markers showing you how to progress. If you prefer to figure it out yourself you can either choose minimal guidance (objective without markers) or no guidance at all. I prefer the minimal setting myself. I like that this system allows the player to choose how hand-holdy they want the game to be. Even if you are in a story mission you will never be fully guided, you can still experiment with different ways to achieve the mission story challenges. Mission stories allow designers of the game to play with more purposefully constructed paths of doing The Murdering™, especially in the narrative sense, since often it is during these stories that we learn new things about our objectives and the situation they are in. They are also fun, cinematic, completely optional and often lead to special kills like the aforementioned making the lights of the runway fall over Novikov while he models.
The second way the game aids the player in choosing a method for The Murdering™ are the Challenges, which are divided into Assassinations, Discoveries, Feats and 'The Classics.' Available at the pause screen and the start of the level, they can give you all sorts of prompts to end someone's subscription to life. From finding all costumes in a level to finishing a mission equipping nothing but a hammer, the variety had a girl entertained enough to sink 15 hours into a single stage without ever feeling like just 'checking boxes' for the sake of completionism. As you can tell by the name of the Challenge categories, they ask the player to either kill targets in a special way, discover a secret or do something noteworthy. Some give you exact detailed instructions, others give you a title and an image and expect you to think for yourself.
By the time you have them all completed you'll feel a sense of ownership of the stage. This is my palace, you'll say while walking around dragging endless piles of guys with stealable costumes into endless trash cans. Is at this point that you do one of 'The Classics.' These are special varieties of challenges that test your knowledge of a level. The ultimate challenge being a suit only (no costumes) unspotted run. Doing one of these runs makes you feel like you're in a heist movie. It's glorious.
As a Hitman player you exist in this constant cycle of experimenting, getting an idea, formulating a plan, rubbing your hands together like a devious little goblin, executing that plan, failing, replanning, and so on until you manage to do what you wanted to do. Hitman levels (If the two I've played are anything to read from) are so masterfully, intricately designed that this loop remains immensely entertaining even after you complete all of a level's challenges. I have 100%-ed ' The Showstopper' by the game's metrics and I still feel like there might be stuff I missed, new entertaining possibilities, inspiration to fill a white canvas with digital bourgeois blood. One thing is figuring out the most efficient way to clear a level, but another is the little devil inside my brain coming up with new and increasingly dumb plans to clear a level. This is aided by how fun it's to fail on Hitman. The game's cartoonish humour contrasts with its realism and it's delightful. I'm always pushing how stupid I can be while still clearing the level unnoticed. It is, as I say, like a movie set, and you're an actor that's told to just improvise. You can make Agent 47 engage in a Buster Keaton series of looney accidents, you can make him the protagonist of a badass heist movie where your plan rolls out elegantly and perfectly, or you can just try whatever out and see where that leads you.
So yeah. Hitman OWNS and I'm delighted I just got my hand in one of those games I can play on and off knowing that it will be a long while before I run out of games. Hell I didn't even talk much about the storytelling aspects. Hitman's writing is funny as hell; I'll get into that maybe some other time. I'm now mid-way through 100%-ing the second level.. which is a whole TINY ITALIAN SEASIDE TOWN?! If for some reason this game seems interesting to you, I'll give you one piece of advice tho (And i'm not shilling, whatever method you use to get the game is up to you, buddy. What am I? A cop?) because the worst part of this game is buying it, so I'll keep it simple: Do you want a short short demo? Buy Hitman World Of Assasination: Part One. Do you want the whole trilogy? Buy Hitman: WoA. Do you want the whole trilogy AND all the DLC? Buy Hitman WoA: Deluxe Edition.