9 Reasons To Be Excited About Hitman: Absolution

Although most have been waiting with bated breath for the new Hitman, here are some reasons to get excited if you've been living under a rock. Via GamesRadar

It's Open-World Assassination On An Unprecedented Scale

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This is Hitman on a scale you’ve never seen before. While the series has always revelled in the emergent, Machiavellian murder opportunities afforded by its miniature open-worlds, everything is dialled up in Absolution. In terms of size, opportunity, variety and freedom, the new game looks positively decadent. If you need a worked example, check out the video playthrough of the Streets of Hope level. Where before 47 did his killing in mansions and opera houses, here he has an entire chunk of town to play with.

Any of the sub-locations in the Streets of Hope map would almost have been big enough to carry a whole level in a previous Hitman game. Chained together though, they not only allow for a much greater and more coherent sense of place, they also provide a vastly increased number of options and gameplay beats within a single level’s emergent narrative. Hitman now looks to demand a much cleverer mastery of action and consequence, with way more inter-linking situations to play with and way more potential repercussions to manage.

Instinct Mode Makes You A Truly Professional Predator

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Hitman is about being a shark. Not literally, obviously. A gun-toting land-fish would be easy to see coming. But in essence, that’s what Agent 47 is. A powerful, silent hunter. A huge slab of invisible death cutting a path through his surroundings with the utmost capability. And it’s hard to balance that sort of empowerment in a genre that’s inherently about evasion.

Absolution’s Instinct ability though, looks to have that balance nailed. Feeding information about NPC positions, predicted paths of movement, and useful environmental features directly to 47’s eyes via a nice flaming X-ray effect, it’s a smart and effective way of allowing him to remain pro-active rather than reactive. Instinct gives him enough of an upper hand to avoid the panicked surprises and embarrassing bouts of running away suffered by so many video game stealth professionals, but crucially doesn’t dumb the game down. Being a rationed ability, there ‘s no chance of players using it all the way through the game, as happened with Arkham Asylum’s Detective visor. You’ll be able to stay one step ahead, but only one.

It's Another Visual Landmark For This Generation

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What is it with Scandinavian developers and beautiful, winter-themed game engines? First DICE blows everyone away with Frostbite 2, and now IO are running Hitman on the painfully pretty Glacier 2 engine. Hitman: Absolution is one of those rare games that looks so good in motion that you’d claim you were looking at a flick-book made out of artificially touched-up promotional art if you didn’t know better. And what’s more, Glacier 2seems versatile enough to create images worthy of framing in any sort of level conditions.

Whether it’s the rich, dense, inky black shadows of the early library level, the vibrant, hazy, sun-bleached streets of small-town America, or simply the shimmering rain pouring down the sides of Agent 47’s highly polished head, Hitman: Absolution looks to represent a hell of an exciting visual leap forward. And at this stage of the current console generation that’s no small achievement.

Infiltration Is About Being Cocky, Calm, And Clever

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Agent 47’s ability to change outfits in exactly no seconds flat has been instrumental to many a creative killing solution over the years, particularly when deep infiltration has been a prerequisite. But despite being a standard Hitman trope, disguises have never been balanced quite right. In Hitman 2 for instance, they barely worked. And in Blood Money, disguises could almost be too effective.

This time though, things are more cleverly implemented. The right outfit will help you blend in, but get too close to those you’re imitating and they’ll recognise you as an impostor. To blend in at close range, you’ll need to act the part as well as look it. 47 can obscure his face with a police hat. He can fool a guard by pretending to talk into a radio. He can even engage in environment-specific activities like using a doughnut-scoffing exchange to fool a quizzical cop. Effective disguises now need to be maintained and augmented with intelligent, nuanced interaction, which is exactly what really smart infiltration is all about.

Even The Linear Levels Bring Immense Creative Opportunity

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Hitman: Absolution’s early, linear, kill-heavy demos saw many fans fear that the series had strayed from its free-form roots. They needn’t have worried. Even when levels demand forward momentum, the game’s design remains open enough to allow 47 to play with the world however he likes along the way.

The library level is a great example, Do you avoid the cops outright? Do you go crazy and turn the whole level into one big cover-shooter? Do you go Predator and spend half an hour creatively picking them off one by one? The ecosystem of environment and AI look to allow ample opportunity for homemade mini-sandbox situations every step of the journey. You need not even stick to one approach, either. With more nuanced layers of enemy alertness this time, along with much slicker transitions between stealth and 47’s newly proficient all-out combat moves, Hitman no longer cuts the player loose to fend for themselves if they accidentally (or deliberately) unleash an all-out firefight. Hitman’s linear levels may follow a script of sorts, but the player is very much the director.

Agent 47 Is Killing His Way Through A Strikingly Real Place

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Ironically for a game that’s all about the killing, Hitman: Absolution looks to have one of the most living, breathing worlds we’ve seen in a video game in a long time. It all starts with the mission structure. Where before Agent 47 remained under strict guidelines for each job, this time around the internal story of each level is much more organically delivered. Without an external handler dishing out the orders, objectives can be added, developed and evolved in an instant based on 47’s own first-hand discoveries throughout each mission.

The extra scale of Absolution’s levels also affords much more scope for mini-narratives between the NPCs to be observed and manipulated. No longer simple walking action figures, even the most innocuous background characters now have personalities, relationships and individual motivations. The game is packed with (often darkly funny) incidental character moments at every turn, and characters with different roles and personalities will have completely different routines and reactions. Agent 47’s meaty toys just got a whole lot more interesting.

For the remaining 3 reasons sneak your way on over to GamesRadar.