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OK, Absolution post is done, the two extras posts won't take much time. Thanks for snagging that extra video, it will make the context of the Google plus garbage a bit easier to explain. edit: vvvv ???? Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Jul 9, 2018 |
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Jul 9, 2018 04:49
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Great now I wont be able to sleep this week. 
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Jul 9, 2018 05:07
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Bonus Infopost: Cosmo Faulkner's Google Plus Account Between November 15 and December 9, 2011, IOI ran a very special social media promotion for Hitman: Absolution: "Cosmo Faulkner," presumably one of IOI's writers, posted updates to a Google Plus account. The account was seen by literal ones of people prior to the game's launch. This might be the single most pointless and effort-wasting attempt at hype I've ever seen in a game, but it provides Deep Lore Insights (as well as a surprising amount of info about IOI's writing process), so I am replicating his posts here, as there's no way Google Plus is surviving all that long. Enjoy some noir blogposting and bad attempts at teasing content that doesn't make it into the game! Some posts from the same day may be out of order thanks to the wonders of Google Plus formatting. Nov 15, 2011 I am Cosmo Faulkner. This is me signing up for some online service I will soon enough forget the name of - all in the name of 'progress'. The only difference between speaking into the void of the internet and speaking to the bartender down at Marcello's is the whisky. Nov 15, 2011 I had planned a nice evening with Alice tonight. Didn’t happen, of course. Now I’m back in this place. This place... It’s a new hotel so I can’t say I’ve been in this exact place before but it’s the same as the last ten places. The art on the wall is a little different from the last place but that’s about it. I don’t know why they keep putting up these drat pictures. Nobody looks at them. So why am I able to figure out they aren’t the same as in the last place? Eye for detail, son. Same way I know the last guy in here was cheating on his wife with that coworker of his and that the maid who was supposed to clean the room had to leave early because her son was sick. Evidence is everywhere if you know how to look for it. [vox sez: the below are the only comments or signs that anyone read any part of this material at any point...and they're from after launch.] Jan 6, 2013 Mariano Carp Hi Jan 6, 2013 Mariano Carp Don´t kill 47 or i kill you Nov 21, 2011 It's late. Why the hell am I writing this? To be honest, I don’t know. At times, I feel like my mind is going to wash down the city drains with the constant rain that plagues this place. An hour ago I found myself talking to Phil, picking up a few issues of the latest rags he’d put aside for me. Good guy, Phil. I had hoped to get a room at the Terminus but after fire last week, it seems the owner decided to cash in on the insurance and sell the place to some bigger chain of hotels. I don’t know why but it made me feel old to hear that. I’ve been going there for the last twenty years and now it’s gone. Never did find a hotel better than that one. Despite the fact that the place had more roaches than actual paying customers, I guess the quiet was something I could relate to. Nov 21, 2011 Speaking of roaches, I've been trying to catch Birdy all day. That flying rat is never around when you need him. Nov 28, 2011 Still can't sleep. Driving does that to me. Looked after mother all day and I'm exhausted now and I know it's close to getting up again. I'm hitting the road again tomorrow so I really need some rest. This trip reminded me of something Phil said the other day. He said, “Cosmo, you’re not getting any younger to look at – but the good thing is, you’re not looking older, either.” I didn’t know whether to kiss him or punch his Irish face in, so I paid him ten bucks and left without saying anything. The thing is he’s right. I’m not getting younger or older. I feel stuck, caught in some weird eternal chase after a killer I am likely never going to catch. People around me tell me he doesn’t even exist. Bullshit. I know. How do I know? Evidence. This is my journal. These are my thoughts put down on digital paper. The department forced me on that IT course, claiming that I needed to get with the times, learn how to use computers and share information across departments. “It’s a brave new world out there,” they said. I’m not so sure it’s neither new nor brave. Just looks all kinds of ugly to me. Anyway, I've sent out the flyers. Hopefully that will bring something. I know it's going to bring all the weirdos out as well but I guess I'll have to sift through them to get the gold. Nov 30, 2011 Just wrote Alice an email letter. She wasn’t too upset with me when I left her a few days ago but I know these letters keep us alive together. I guess the Internet is good for something. I missed a lot of letters through the years, moving from hotel to hotel, chasing clues and killers all day. How she keeps up with that, I’ll never understand. There’s no word on the street. My sources have dried up quicker than that bottle of Jack in the captain’s lower drawer. My feet hurt from all the walking around so I’ve decided to embrace the future. It may not work but I was told by the boys in the IT crime unit that there are loads of virtual informants out there. I need help cracking this case and I don’t care whose lips I have to kiss to make it happen. Birdy’s not come back to me on anything yet so I’m going to have to activate the entire snitch network of Chicago. Someone MUST have seen this guy leaving the Terminus. I will be back in Chicago in a few hours. Tired. Very, very tired. Nov 30, 2011 Sleeping in the car is not fun. Road trips are about as romantic as going on a family picnic in one of the city’s alleys, eating from garbage bins and dodging muggers every ten minutes. I just plugged my laptop in at some hole-in-the-ground diner on the 66 just outside town to check in before heading home. The guy serving me looked at me like he couldn’t figure out whether to hit me with a second round of breakfast or drag me out back for a good beating because I disturbed him while reading. Turns out, he was in the corps at the same time as I was. Can’t say I remember him, though. Clive. He looked terrible, a wart-infested prize pig with a maw full of bad teeth, though he was pleasant enough to talk to. Cooked up a mean bowl of chili, too. Anyway, looks like the poster paid off. Lots of kooks writing me with all kinds of information but also some interesting leads tying the knot between the fire at Terminus and the incident in the library. Found a newspaper clipping from the incident, which I’ve posted in the photo section of this account and I'll dig out one or two reports from internal. Details in the article are massively exaggerated, of course. Journalists in this city never did bother too much with the truth. Only guy I’ve ever really trusted to try to reflect the real events no longer works for any of the big papers. I'm back in the office soon. May sleep on the couch for a while. Nov 30, 2011  Dec 1, 2011 I returned to Chicago last night. The week took a turn for the worse when the captain called me into his office earlier today. There had been some discussions among the powers that be that my budgets needed ‘refinement’, as he put it. No more spending money on informants. The Mayor had a “hard time justifying all those unaccounted for expenses” and we “really shouldn’t encourage criminals by paying them off”. We had a bit of back and forth about that. Eventually he saw it my way. A quick trip down five sets of stairs to pick up his chair and files from the sidewalk gave him some time to reflect on my arguments. He said there placement of the window would come out of my salary check. I told him to keep the change, buy something nice for himself. I am now working from the basement. I have also now given up sleep altogether. Dec 1, 2011   Dec 1, 2011 I’m still sifting through all the new information coming in from the various informants. It seems there are four options here. Aliens. Pretty sure this isn’t going to lead anywhere. Genetically engineered killer. I’m not sure how different this is from option 1. New world order conspiracy – in particular the UN. One guy wrote me a very long email detailing every injustice performed by the UN since its inception. While I’m in no position to disagree, I doubt the impact of this on this particular case. Some sort of ultra-trained contract killer. This makes the most sense, though it doesn’t provide me with any comfort. If I’m looking for some Jackal-type character, I need more information on him. Suspected previous targets, known hits, former whereabouts. Proving that such a character exists is difficult in the extreme. One informant told me there was a connection with Fernando Delgado, the Chilean wine-maker and suspected drug lord. I have no time to research this so may need to enlist some help. Another source mentioned Richard Delahunt, the former Massachusetts Governor and Vatican Ambassador who was killed at the Paris Opera. I don’t like this. I think I may be in over my head.If we can map out the killer’s movements and targets, maybe I can get more support from higher up. Hell, looks like the boys from Interpol might need to get in on this. Dec 2, 2011 “There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.” Dec 2, 2011  Dec 2, 2011 Busy day. The captain pulled me upstairs today. I remarked to him how delightful it was to see the redecoration of his office had come to an end and that the new window looked very good. He retorted by slamming the door shut and proceeded to yell at me for a good ten minutes. Somewhere, deep down, I have a great love for that man and his whisky-slurred speech, though his presence anywhere within 200 feet of me is about as wanted as a wet poo poo on a birthday cake. It turns out the Terminus case isn’t going away, despite the efforts of most of the department’s PR employees. What this practically means is that they are adding detectives to the case in some effort to try to crack it. The assumption that this is somehow narcotics related still holds and the mentioning of the elusive Hitman character is to be stricken from the files. This, it seems, is no longer the viable route, despite multiple reports coming in from my new network of snitches. I need to prove the existence of this man. Off therecord, and I’m sure this has to do with the fact that they can’t pair me with anyone else, I’m still on the case, though it will likely be a case of whisky if this crap keeps up. Anyway, what this means is that I need to step up. Nobody believes that the shadowy Hitman is behind all this so I’m going to need to prove it. I’m going to map out every known or potential place and killing the guy is connected with. I’m going to need help but it’s the only way I ca do it. Evidence. I also went to investigate Birdy’s bus today. Need to find something that can tell me where the hell that man has gone to. I’m worried this will be connected to this case but hopefully I’m just being paranoid. I took a picture of his place, a real dump, and grabbed a few tickets and other items from a desk-type piece of furniture. Maybe I can track his whereabouts through some of this. I will upload it here for my informants soon. Dec 2, 2011 Found some tickets and a torn out page from some city guide at Birdy's place. Significant? [vox sez: I'm merging another post that's just another copy of the first image, captioned "from Birdie's bus".]    1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  [vox sez: yep, it's a GODDAMN ARG. An entire social media campaign that no one ever touched! I...guess I'll let y'all give decoding these a try. This game is going to kill me.] Dec 2, 2011 Ma's sick again. Doc called. It's bad. I need to head back to visit her tonight. Dec 5, 2011 Back from Ma’s place. She’s not going to make it another year. I should be sad but all I feel is anger and desperation. I’m chasing shadows here – an international hitman, a disappeared informant, a cure for cancer. It’s ridiculous and yet I slave on through the darkness, the rain, the disposable bodies in the wake of all the destruction talking to me every night in my few precious hours of sleep. While I was away, the network has done some work on the items I found in Birdy’s bus. As I drove into town, I went to a bunch of the hangouts I knew Birdy could have been to. The girls at Pink Monkey haven’t seen him for weeks, which I find unbelievable. I know he had a regular there. Orso’s – nothing. BackRoom – nothing. Apparently, he’s been by Dinotti a few times last month – once with some girl but the waiter didn’t know her. Hell, I even drove by Navy Pier, the Fireplace Inn and Architectural Revolution where I first met him a few years ago – nothing. I’ve got to crack this! I know there’s something here. Just have to look hard enough. Dec 6, 2011 Progress! I think we're close to locating Birdy. I'm going to have a serious talk with that little rat once we find him. Had a small chat with a potential witness today. I have seriously lost count of how many dope heads walk through my door every week but I’m expecting a call from Guinness’ any day now. I am beginning to think the desk sergeant just sends them down here on a laugh. This sushi delivery guy comes in, doesn’t want to sit down or anything. Starts mouthing off the minute he more or less kicks down the door, flapping his cheese-encrusted gums about an elevator ride, going to the wrong floor, man in a suit, lots of shooting, making GBS threads his pants. I don’t know. I had central send over a patrol car but nothing came of it – either the sushi guy is a maki roll short of a full menu or the ghost is very good at cleaning up after himself. Not sure what to believe anymore. It’s extremely frustrating to know that most of my leads come in this way. Dec 7, 2011 It appears my network of informants located Birdy. Send a thief to catch a thief and all that. Good. I hope to get some answers from him soon. Why is he hiding? Dec 8, 2011 Rosewood. drat. [vox sez: merging three separate posts here, one with the text and one with each of the images below]   Dec 9, 2011 They're shutting me down. I went to talk to the captain about my findings today. He used a lot of big words and I took to using my fists. Suspension be damned! That incident at the Rosewood Orphanage cannot go down unavenged. Heading out the door, I grabbed all my files on this case. I'm doing this totally off the grid now. Birdy finally got in touch. Says he got his buddy 'Lenny' to cover some money for him to get out of town. I know this doesn't make a lot of sense to you all and I need to take a break from this online thing to ensure my own safety - rely on my basic training for a while. I'll leave you with a still from one of the surveillance cameras at the Rosewood Orphanage. You've been a big help so far. Your work on helping me with this case will not be forgotten. I'll get in touch when I can. CF  [Vox's commentary] To be updated after I finish slogging through all the whiskey references and disjointed, rushed "teaser" material. God, I thought I was done with this. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Jul 13, 2018 |
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Jul 13, 2018 14:58
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M6-C5 --- City Blue Apparel & Denim / Benchmark (Sports Bar) / Zanies Comedy Club (Comedy/Improv) / Compagnia della Belleza / Up Down Cigar / Old Town Oil / Dinotto (Italian) / Fireplace Inn, The (American) / Fudge Pot, The (Desserts) / O'Brien's (Pub Fare) / Pasticceria & Gelateria Palermo (Desserts) / Trattoria Roma (Italian) / Red Orchid Theatre, A M2-H1 --- Untouchable Tours M6-C5 --- City Blue Apparel & Denim / Benchmark (Sports Bar) / Zanies Comedy Club (Comedy/Improv) / Compagnia della Belleza / Up Down Cigar / Old Town Oil / Dinotto (Italian) / Fireplace Inn, The (American) / Fudge Pot, The (Desserts) / O'Brien's (Pub Fare) / Pasticceria & Gelateria Palermo (Desserts) / Trattoria Roma (Italian) / Red Orchid Theatre, A M7-D3 --- Alley, The / Jive Monkey / Sidetrack (Gay/Lesbian) / Blue Havana / Architectural Revolution / Taboo Tabou (Adult Gifts) [-A] M3-G1 --- Pink Monkey (Adult Entertainment) [-P] M6-D5 --- Orso's (Italian) M2-I6 --- IMAX Movie Theatre / Navy Pier / Harry Caray's Tavern-Navy Pier (Sports Bar) / Accent Chicago (Navy Pier) / Shoreline Sightseeing [-P] M2-H3 --- Allen Edmonds (Michigan) [-A] M2-E2 --- Fabbri Furs / BackRoom, The (Jazz)
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Jul 13, 2018 16:40
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Maybe it's the page numbers? Maybe the follow-up post about meeting locations is important. Maybe it's all bullshit.
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Jul 13, 2018 18:30
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Discendo Vox posted:Maybe it's the page numbers? Maybe the follow-up post about meeting locations is important. I was gonna collate the page numbers later, but I doubt it would lead to anything.
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Jul 13, 2018 18:50
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I'll try an A=1 with the page numbers when my wrists stop burning. "CAPS" May refer to capital letters? Yup, the "-P" refers to removing a letter from the destination name. I'll also see how this was meant to be a hint: quote:I went to a bunch of the hangouts I knew Birdy could have been to. The girls at Pink Monkey haven’t seen him for weeks, which I find unbelievable. I know he had a regular there. Orso’s – nothing. BackRoom – nothing. Apparently, he’s been by Dinotti a few times last month – once with some girl but the waiter didn’t know her. Hell, I even drove by Navy Pier, the Fireplace Inn and Architectural Revolution where I first met him a few years ago – nothing. Using these, we can narrow the likely spots for each of the entries with multiple stores. 1. M6-C5 --- City Blue Apparel & Denim / Benchmark (Sports Bar) / Zanies Comedy Club (Comedy/Improv) / Compagnia della Belleza / Up Down Cigar / Old Town Oil / Dinotto (Italian) / Fireplace Inn, The (American) / Fudge Pot, The (Desserts) / O'Brien's (Pub Fare) / Pasticceria & Gelateria Palermo (Desserts) / Trattoria Roma (Italian) / Red Orchid Theatre, A FI, D? 2. M2-H1 --- Untouchable Tours Page: 27 UT 3. M6-C5 --- City Blue Apparel & Denim / Benchmark (Sports Bar) / Zanies Comedy Club (Comedy/Improv) / Compagnia della Belleza / Up Down Cigar / Old Town Oil / Dinotto (Italian) / Fireplace Inn, The (American) / Fudge Pot, The (Desserts) / O'Brien's (Pub Fare) / Pasticceria & Gelateria Palermo (Desserts) / Trattoria Roma (Italian) / Red Orchid Theatre, A FI, D? 4. M7-D3 --- Alley, The / Jive Monkey / Sidetrack (Gay/Lesbian) / Blue Havana / Architectural Revolution / Taboo Tabou (Adult Gifts) [-A] Page: AR (minus A, R) R 5. M3-G1 --- Pink Monkey (Adult Entertainment) [-P] Page: 31 PM (minus P, M) M 6. M6-D5 --- Orso's (Italian) Page: O 7. M2-I6 --- IMAX Movie Theatre / Navy Pier / Harry Caray's Tavern-Navy Pier (Sports Bar) / Accent Chicago (Navy Pier) / Shoreline Sightseeing [-P] Page: Navy Pier. NP (minus P, N) N 8. M2-H3 --- Allen Edmonds (Michigan) [-A] Page: AE (minus A, E) E 9. M2-E2 --- Fabbri Furs / BackRoom, The (Jazz) Page: BR? 1 _ FI? D? FIT? 2 UT 3 _ FI? D? FIT? 4 R 5 M 6 O 7 N 8 E 9 _ BR? BRT? _ UT _ R M O N E _ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Note that I've ordered these, but they weren't indicated to be in order by the actual social media post. If we assume each of the mentioned locations is used once, it becomes: FIUTDRMONEBR or if the "The"s count, FIUTDRMONEBRTT That would leave unscrambling it. Am I missing anything here? edit: I've asked the devs if they even remember this on twitter. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Jul 16, 2018 |
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Jul 13, 2018 21:18
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Hitman: Fanficsolution Part 1: Mechanics Some Garbage Game Design Fanfiction By Discendo "I guess LP hijacking and effortposts about bad games are my posting schtick" Vox The changes outlined below are intended to keep some of the cinematic and more combat-oriented elements of Absolution, even if, in comparison to 2016’s game, they seem questionable. I’m not saying these mechanics are all good; I’m just aiming for “better than Absolution”, which is a bar buried a thousand feet below the earth’s crust. This is a salvage operation, not a reimagining. This post summarizes some of the changes I'd want to see made to core gameplay and progression systems; it's far from exhaustive. A second post will cover my proposed revision of the plot, where the real heavy lifting is needed. Instinct Instinct can still be used to go into slow motion and peg a bunch of guards, but it is no longer an expendable meter. Instinct will show which enemies are suspicious of your outfit. It also highlights interactable objects and hidden, significant details, like a gun being worn by an undercover stalker or civilian. More on that last bit later. Instinct does not hightlight or visualize enemies through level geometry. Enemy detection range Enemy cone of view is drawn specifically from their head. Some enemy archetypes (more on them later) may work somewhat differently. For the purpose of this rework, sound works the same as in Absolution. Guard response conditionals Guard AI works differently for different enemies, different levels and different difficulties; generally, better trained enemies respond differently to distractions, a function that mostly reflects what group they are working for. I'm not going to write a whole AI description here, but a rough order of AI "superiority" would map onto guard types over the course of the game, starting with guards at Diana's estate (for tutorial purposes). The following list of examples of how a guard responds to a thrown object serves as an example, though specific exceptions occur. This sounds unpredictable and horrible, but it's resolved by a) being predictable by enemy type, and b) having really explicit sound barks and animations to signify behavior. 1. Diana guard/gang member/beat police/Hope police Notices and paths to thrown object location, alone. 2. Dexter factory guard, SWAT team If the guard sees the object flying through the air for a sufficient period of time, they will path to the location the object is thrown from, rather than its destination. May move in a pair if the guard has a designated partner, with one NPC lagging behind the other at the suspicion point. 3. ICA/Dexter elite guards Checks behind themselves before entering the "I guess there's nothing here, someone choke me and dump me in a closet" behavior state. Guards assigned to cover positions will personally ignore the thrown object and will instead call for other "reserve" guards to check the object out. If the assigned reserve guards are depleted, the cover guard will move to the suspicion position along with several other assigned guards. Enemy archetypes may respond differently to suspicion than a guard will. More on them in the plot description. Some special targets also have unique AI responses, but they're all pretty obviously special (like Sanchez). Suspicion loop and state Where individual guard AI varies, the "map AI" of suspicion state is the same on all maps. A thousand accidents can occur and the normal suspicion, discovery, search, clear, resume pattern can occur. Getting into a firefight, however, can tip things into a permanent search/lockdown state, with a couple maps where this state can also be triggered by script events. "Backup" does not occur- guards on the map at the beginning are the sum total of enemies on the map at the end. Disguises No more like-detects like. 47 has to use instinct (or the suspicion meter, or, ideally, basic common sense, which will have to be baked into NPC responses and map design) to know who can see through what outfit. I’m not going to list all disguises or anything, but the mission descriptions provide some examples. HUD The map now only displays NPCs on the player's level. Walls and barriers are displayed, but there is no larger map option. The suspicion meter and state change signifiers for enemies are left unchanged (because let's be serious, otherwise I'd just copy HITMAN's). In instinct mode, however, an icon appears above an NPC's head when you are "spotted". Game modes: In Campaign Mode, the player can retain inventory and outfit across level transitions. Players have two active save files in any given difficulty campaign: one is an autosave and one is a manual save. These save files are like a bookmark in the storyline; they are separate from the player's overall save profile, which stores all information on things like completion progression. Level Select will drop 47 at the start of a given mission with a default loadout- his suit and any weapons appropriate for that point in the story. Challenges would work like in Hitman 2016, but would also unlock outfits and tools/weapons for use in contracts mode. The most onerous challenges would require “challenge” or restricted completions of the campaign, particularly carrying weapons from one map into another. Note that my changes mean that you can no longer carry weapons or items "back in time" in the game outside of contracts mode; this is necessary to preserve the larger-scale multi-level challenges. Professional mode adds more complex, challenging response behaviors and enemies, as well as slightly changing the geometry of some levels. Archetypes (more on those in the missions section) would be introduced earlier than they are in the base game, and may be combined in some targets. Additional targets will appear in some levels. A subset of challenges for very experienced players are exclusively available in Professional mode. Professional mode gets its own pair of save slots. Purist mode would retain all Professional mode changes, and also remove instinct. The HUD and suspicion meter would remain intact. A small number of challenges for Silent Assassin/Suit Only completions are available only in this mode. They would have purely cosmetic rewards. Purist mode gets its own pair of save slots. Contracts mode would work the same as before, but there would be no money system. The mode will instead have a series of challenges for creating, completing, and SA-ing more and more contracts or targets, some of them with various basic conditions. E.g. “Kill a total of 50 targets in Contracts mode”, “make an explosive accident kill Contract”, “Complete 100 Contracts without being spotted”. Conveyance and Plot Unless otherwise specified, all information is conveyed ingame using elements of the interface and the level. There are no cutscenes, per se, but full control will be taken away from the player in specific situations to direct their attention. 47 also will not provide internal narration, but the language of the objectives and information will sometimes convey information about his perception and mental state. Tune in for my next post, where I give a bunch of the game's missions the fanfiction treatment and try to put some lipstick on this dead sex worker bigotpig. It'll be more interesting than this, hopefully. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Jul 30, 2020 |
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Jul 27, 2018 03:34
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Mission 1: A Personal Contract 47 has been contacted, after months of silence, by Benjamin Travis- the interim director of operations for the International Contract Agency. Diana Burnwood has betrayed the ICA. She used her access to breach a hospital where the daughter of an ICA management board member, Victoria, was undergoing lifesaving medical treatment. Diana kidnapped the girl, killing several employees and nearly exposing the entire Agency in the process. Diana is now holding Victoria hostage and planning to sell the girl, and the ICA, to the highest bidder. Management has gone into hiding and Travis has been promoted from R&D to interim director of operations. He will personally be your handler as you work together to clean up this horrible mess. Benjamin Travis is very differently portrayed compared to Absolution- a leader for the Agency in a time of crisis, he’s everything you’d expect of an experienced trainer and handler. As your guiding voice for the game, he’s smooth, composed, and empathetic- like a good psychiatrist. Very trustworthy. Note that you don’t ever see Travis. You just hear his even, controlled, calming voice, telling you what you need to do. Objectives: Kill Diana Burnwood. Retrieve the girl. The intro mission is mostly the same, with the main difference being that Travis is now the voice in your ear explaining mechanics. There will also be no forced tutorial kills, although Travis will still encourage it. Diana will not be caught in the shower. She will be sitting on a bed in a Victoria’s bedroom (which has an IV drip), waiting for 47 to arrive. “I’ve been waiting for you, 47. Victoria is far away from here. Somewhere that Benjamin Travis will never find her.” The kill is not shown. Mission 2: King of Chinatown This mission serves as an introduction to social stealth and challenges, and starts off very similar to the mission in Absolution. Travis tells 47 to head to Chinatown, to kill the King, who has an outstanding contract on his head, and to meet with Birdie, an ICA informant who is one of Travis’s old “projects.” It’s entirely possible to just walk up to Birdie as 47 and find get the info: arms manufacturing king Blake Dexter is in town and is setting up a plan to get Victoria- along with info on the ICA, no doubt. Birdie is now an NPC ingame, and you can get more of a feel for his character. For someone who was developed by the ICA as the perfect informant, he will seem oddly neurotic, asking repeatedly about Travis (“Did he say what I should do? Was he angry? Did he sound angry? He wasn’t angry, was he?”) if he gets the chance. Objectives: Kill the King of Chinatown. Retrieve information from Birdie about the girl. The series of objectives that appear onscreen, however, will have one additional objective, glowing in red in a strange, smooth font: Kill Birdie. Disobeying Travis and the interface trick: from this point forward, 47 will have additional, and different, objectives than he will be told by Travis. These objectives will appear in differently styled HUD and menu interfaces that are sleeker than the typewriter font and hard angles of the normal menus. They will be directly prompted, and they’re not moral choices- 47 will not leave missions until he finishes them. Because we’re smart cookies, we know this is 47 following his own objectives, in collusion with Diana. This will be the big reveal further down the line. The player can just walk up to Birdie and go through dialogue, or kill him and get the intel from his bus. Mission 3: Terminus Terminus will be much smaller, a three story, super-shabby apartment building. The neighboring building, an abandoned library with some sort of commune occupying its upper floor, is visible, but not accessible at the start of the mission. Objectives: Kill Blake Dexter. Find the girl. The entry is a fairly easy social stealth romp past some of Dexter’s men, who look a lot like Wade’s men. The player is heavily railroaded to use a vent to reach the meeting room on Dexter’s floor. 47 will just begin to hear Dexter conversing with someone on the phone… A pair of hands tears through the vent, grabbing 47 and pulling him out of the wall, before he is thrown through another wall into the meeting room. 47 is surrounded by several of his future targets: Blake Dexter, Lenny (who replaces/is merged with Sanchez in this rewrite), Ed Wade, Layla Templeton, and Sheriff Skurky. 47 will appear unconscious during the set of NPC conversations that follows, but will actually be playing possum. Moving too much will cause Lenny to notice and kill him. Blake Dexter goes on a hillbilly rant similar to the one he does in Absolution, specifically mentioning that a) he was warned 47 was coming, and b) the Agency isn’t going to steal his meal ticket again, and c) his men are on their way to pick up Victoria from Rosewood right now. He keeps the Southern drawl when he instructs Wade to have his men make bodies out of the hotel residents and finish spreading the gasoline- he has to make a call to a friend in the CPD about a serial killer. (forewarned players on future runs through the level will know to approach from a different, much harder to find angle. Blake’s caller will warn him that 47 is immediately nearby. He will then undergo the same kill person/sabotage building/call police setup as before, but 47 will not be ambushed.) Either way, 47 is left in a burning building that is being invaded by SWAT teams. He can either go back the way he came (very difficult) or jump to the neighboring building and make his way down through the hippie commune and abandoned library to escape. Either way, he will wind up back at street level, which is now occupied a hastily cobbled-together command center that spreads into the library, patrolled by his new target. Objective: Kill Cosmo Faulkner. Cosmo Faulkner has been repurposed as the corrupt detective searching for 47 at Dexter’s request. I have no particular notes for him, but the general goal of the second, real half of the mission is to recreate, in miniature, the Hunter Hunted mission from Contracts, which was great. What do folks think of this? The radio silence is making me suspect this much  means I've basically wasted my time.
Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Jul 29, 2018 |
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Jul 29, 2018 01:00
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Discendo Vox posted:What do folks think of this? The radio silence is making me suspect this much I always appreciate your posts.
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Jul 29, 2018 15:34
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Discendo Vox posted:What do folks think of this? The radio silence is making me suspect this much
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Jul 29, 2018 22:33
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It certainly sounds better thought-out than the Absolution we ultimately got, both story- and gameplay-wise. I think you're right that a good game could have come from Absolution's "bones", but the team in charge of bringing it together made some, uh, peculiar decisions. I don't know a ton about 2016's development and why it turned out so much better than Absolution, but I imagine that getting rid of the weirdos/pervs was a good first step. It sounds like IOI has their act together now, and good on them.
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Jul 30, 2018 02:41
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I'd say keep writing, Discendo! The only thing I'd change thus far is making the choices branch, so that there's a Travis/ICA path, and a Diana/Renegade path.
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Jul 30, 2018 10:48
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Mission 4: Rosewood Rosewood is mostly the same, but is more of a hospice than an orphanage. 47 arrives at Rosewood too late: Wade and his crew have already shot up the place, and the girl is gone. Objectives: Find the girl. Kill Dom Osmond and Ed Wade. Dom Osmond is still a horrible sleazebag who works in the flesh trade. I’d love to axe the character, but he’s in the launch trailer for the 2016 game…in NPC dialogue he’ll mention that Victoria is being transported to Blake Dexter’s research facility, where she was “born”. This will be the first obvious signifier that Victoria isn’t normal. Osmond will periodically go to an interview room with one-way glass to taunt/torture a guard. This is an opportunity to recreate the kill from the Legacy trailer. Ed Wade is also the game’s introduction to the Archetype system for NPCs. In short, certain targets and guards will have unique traits that make them more difficult to deal with. Wade is an Operator, which means that in stealth he is much harder to follow- he checks behind himself at seemingly random times and takes a semirandom route (this is explained by Travis in voiceover when the archetype is first encountered). In combat, Wade takes advantage of modern game design and cheats by reading the player’s screen- he will attempt to dodge if the player is aiming at him, potentially even if he can’t see the player. Archetype NPCs are recognizable by common visual profile, model and animation elements, and by a symbol in instinct mode (that does not appear in Professional). After about 15 minutes, several police will arrive at the main entrance and begin to set up a perimeter. They will meet Wade, where it is made clear that they have been paid off to cover the gang’s escape. Wade’s men will begin to move toward the basement and utility areas of the building, leaving through a freight exit. Taking too long at this point will cause a target to leave and a game over. Mission 5: Dexter Industries 47 will arrive at Dexter Industries, which will be much smaller, but has the same general image as over the course of three missions in Absolution. The outside of the facility will appear to be a hardened, but run-down hangar complex, that inside is revealed to contain a fairly state-of-the-art bunker. There’s enough going on in this space that adding an additional target or two and splitting the level in half is certainly an option, but for now I’ll focus on the basics. (This is just fanfiction, after all.) This mission also introduces laser tripwires, mines and the Sniper archetype, which is just guards who are set up as snipers. They have a very long, wide range and an area of focus that’s only distinctly visible by carefully watching the sniper, or by using instinct mode (which lets you see their laser). Snipers in combat will attempt to use their rifle at any range, which is a great way to get almost instantly killed. They fire at regular intervals and an audio cue occurs just before they fire. Objectives: Kill Dr. Ashford and Lenny. Copy, then destroy, Ashford’s research on the girl. As 47 nears his target, Travis will reiterate insistently that 47 must not look at the research, which is ICA property. For the first time, for a brief moment, his composure will slip a bit. Lenny/Sanchez has largely gone undescribed until this point. He’s neither a racial stereotype nor the mix of offensive traits that the old characters were. Overly tall, overly strong and awkwardly proportioned, Lenny is a variant of the Anton’s Key scenario that trades mental functioning for superhuman ability. A lifetime of genetic and scientific abuse means he is more than a match for 47 in direct combat and has a normal IQ, but he is cognitively impaired and ultimately obedient to his creators. Lenny is undergoing medical testing in a lab, in between sessions in an open air killroom set up adjacent. Lenny is the game’s introduction to Brutes, which are archetype characters that are far stronger and more resilient physically than others. In stealth, Lenny cannot be safely killed with a melee weapon or fiberwire, unless accidents are staged that sap/sabotage his strength. Brutes generally move more slowly, with clearer advance tells when they shifts direction. Even more than other brutes, Lenny takes fairly absurd amounts of damage to eliminate in loud combat. Unlike other brutes, he also moves very fast. Dr. Ashford is a scientist of significantly less skill than Ort-Meyer, but is no less thrilled to get the chance to create abominations of science. It is indicated through dialogue that Lenny was Ashford’s crowning achievement until he received information and funding from…somewhere, to create Victoria. Ashford is written to be an intensely hateable character, including an interaction where he verbally abuses Lenny for slipping up and calling him “father.” This begins a theme that gets reinforced in the next mission, one which establishes 47’s motivations throughout the game. At the center of the lab, in a White Room with symbolic significance for series fans, Benjamin Travis tells 47 to copy Ashford’s research and delete it. When the player walks near, though, the input prompt will appear to “play file”. A video will begin to play on the lab screens. After a few seconds of watching the video alongside the player, 47 will begin to ignore player input and begin systematically, physically destroying the entire server array. The videos are the player’s first chance to see Victoria (aside from some crayon drawings from Rosewood). She is not Ellen Page. Instead, she resembles a ten-year-old oncology patient; underweight, with a shaved head, sunken cheeks and the million-mile stare of someone who has never known affection. Ashford’s voice gloats over footage of Victoria assembling pistols, cringing away from shock prods and suffering under dozens of needles about how “that man from the agency” gave him the information to create the perfect killer. When 47 tells Travis that the research was lost, he will briefly go berserk. “Is that so? Well, you know what I think? I think that bitch Diana is clearly still loving everything up for me,” before regaining his calm and telling 47 to leave town while the figures out what should happen next. Mission 6: The Saints That night, at a motel, Travis calls again. He states evenly that 47 saw Dexter’s research and knows what the girl is. Victoria represented an unprecedented opportunity for the Agency, and when one of Dexter’s men came to them with evidence of her abilities, it was only right that the ICA would intervene to “promote her development in line with her potential.” 47 does not respond. Maintaining a calm tone, Travis is revealed as a psychological manipulator, trying several different underhanded tactics to break 47’s silence- none of which succeed. Travis continues to try to reach 47, to help him understand the importance of the Agency’s mission, how vital it is to recog The room explodes. Objectives: Kill the Saints. The Saints are one of Travis’s signature projects. Where Dexter Laboratories represented Victoria’s past, the Saints, and this mission, represent what could become her future. These women have been warped by lifetimes of service under Travis, displaying a variety of signs of mental instability. While some are largely functional, all of them show signs of brainwashing and abuse. Dialogue-wise, the other Agency cleaners (guards/forensic techs) assigned to the Saints are seriously disturbed by them. Gameplay-wise, aside from the Mother Superior, the player will not encounter all of the Saints in a normal run of the mission. Instead, they get a semi-random selection of them in the motel and neighboring farm area. All of the Saints are Operators, but most of them are compromised by their trauma, giving them predictable behaviors that also provide kill opportunities. For example, one Saint might compulsively return to a sink to wash her hands, and another might periodically need to call Travis for reassurance that he cares about her. On Professional, all of the Saints will appear, and some will cross over with other archetypes. Again, I could go into detail with placement and layout here, but this ain't getting made. After the last Saint is dead, 47 gets a call from a new number. The style of the interface changes completely to the sleek, lined layout that used to only show up occasionally, when 47 was violating Travis’s orders. Diana is back on the line, and all is right with the world leading into the third act. From this point forward, voiceover material will be delivered by Diana and not Travis. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Jul 30, 2020 |
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Jul 30, 2018 22:17
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Mission 7: Hope Hope is set up in a Z shape, with one main street occupied by the annual harvest fair, leading into a second, shorter, less populated street, which dead ends at a turn into the Hope Police Department. Both streets are connected by a collection of small side paths and buildings (think broadly of Sapienza’s town layout, but built on a flat plane rather than a hill). 47 must pass through each of these areas, increasingly populated with police, to reach Skurky- his best chance to find Victoria. Objectives: Save Victoria. Kill Sheriff Skurky. Skurky is only defined by being a mercenary scuzzball. He is planning to sell information on Victoria and Dexter Industries to whomever will give him a ticket out of this mess. He’s got some sort of meeting planned, and in the meantime he’s locked himself in his office and is seeing no one. If the player takes too long to get there, they will arrive to find him dead, assassinated by the ICA agent who met with him. Whether 47 or the Agency get there first, once 47 reaches Skurky, the Agency and its soldiers will have set up shop in the streets of Hope, preparing a dragnet for 47 by posing as Homeland Security responding to rumors of a bomb threat. Objectives: Kill Agency Assassin 1, Agency Assassin 2, Agency Assassin 3, and Clera Davies. The three Agency Assassins will be in the map, and will be partly randomized across locations and appearances. Like the Saints, different assassins can spawn. For example: one can be set up as a Sniper in a vantage point overlooking one of the main streets, one can be a trigger-happy Brute dressed in a produce costume who periodically stops by a side area with a ready team of other Brutes. One assassin will always be a Stalker- a new and very rare archetype. Stalkers in stealth appear to be civilians mixed in with the crowd, their weapons mostly concealed. Instinct will help the player see through a Stalker’s disguise by highlighting telltale signs in their behavior and appearance that something is amiss. Stalkers have an extremely fast-acting alert range, and can attempt to close with the player and kill them in melee in seconds. When blending with a crowd, stalkers move at normal speeds, but in other situations they may run very quickly. The Stalker was the one who killed Skurky. They can be stopped in the act, observed as they leave the station and blend with the crowd, or even prevented from killing Skurky, if the player really hustles. Clera Davies is a handler Travis has brought in to oversee the operation (she actually briefly instructed 47 in Hitman 2, which she may mention). Her dialogue will indicate that she does not know what is going on, but that she believes Travis is “the future of the ICA.” Since Clera is directly controlling all of the other targets, it’s possible to listen in on her and learn where the assassins are. Killing Clera, especially loudly, before the assassins will cause them to behave unpredictably and may risk them “going loud”. If the level is cleared with sufficient stealth, the Hope fair will not be disrupted and its residents will not know that anything has happened. This is quite difficult- in addition to the assassins, some other agency guards and enemies are also in the archetype system. This will continue to be the case for the rest of the game (in Professional mode, of course, this begins as soon as Mission 1). If things “go loud”, the agency Brutes and soldiers waiting in side areas will flood the streets and all will become chaos. Mission 8: Blackwater Blackwater is now functionally a large modern mansion, fully betraying Blake Dexter’s identity: the gung-ho Texan stereotype is a façade masking his more accurate identity as a global arms dealer- who is, coincidentally, still a gung-ho Texan stereotype. Objectives: Save Victoria. Kill Layla Stockton and Blake Dexter. Layla Stockton will be managing the security on the lower level. She does not have a striptease scene. She is an Operator with a shotgun, body armor, and an unusually large escort of other operators. The lower level will also have a couple Stalkers blending in among the civilian workers. Layla’s body can be used to open the elevators, or security can be otherwise bypassed. On the upper level, every guard is an operator. In a campaign mode run, if you were knocked out by Lenny all the way back in terminus, your silverballers will be in Blake’s trophy room. Victoria will be locked in Dexter’s panic room, to which only he holds the key. Blake Dexter, who is still thoroughly enjoying all of this, will be parading through the penthouse with his escorts, wielding an LMG and openly taunting 47 to “Molon Labe, moron.” Blake’s got money to burn, so you killed some of his men, so what? “That kid’s the real prize. When one of your ICA eggheads showed up at my door with a suitcase full of secrets about the legendary Hitman, how could I not make a knockoff?” If 47 takes too long to assassinate Dexter after Layla is found dead on the lower floor, Dexter will drop his cowboy act and begin threatening to kill Victoria. Wait long enough and he and his escort will move the panic room to do so. If this happens and the player continues to wait before forcing their way in, they will find an unexpected scene: Victoria, in the flesh at last, crying, standing over the corpses of Blake and several of his men. This will end the mission successfully, but it’s a real downer. Don’t make her do that, come on. Have a heart. Kill the Texan. Mission 9: Absolution Absolution is principally a mastery test of the player’s knowledge of existing game systems, in largely the same setting as the original game. Travis is excavating a graveyard for no good reason, and it’s time to wrap things up. Objectives: Kill Jade Nguyen, Travis Benjamin. Jade Nguyen is an unfortunate stereotype in Absolution, and she doesn’t have much characterization. In this reworking she will be planning to seize control of the Agency, as Travis is cracking up. Dialogue from Jade and Travis will make it clear that the entire project to steal Victoria, as well as his other projects such as the Saints, were not approved by the Agency, but were part of larger ambitions of control and power. Travis tried to use Victoria’s theft and the resulting disappearance of management, 47 and Diana to take full control of the agency, and largely succeeded. With 47, Diana and Victoria alive, though, he could never feel safe. Gameplay-wise, Jade is unarmed, but is completely surrounded by agency soldiers-Travis thinks he is using her as bait, and she thinks 47 will only target Travis. The main location difference from the original game is that the graveyard is still in use. Jade’s part of the level is a final test of social stealth, as operators, brutes, snipers, a couple stalkers, and a lot of plain ‘ol guards are around Jade almost all the time, along with grieving family members, a priest, and the diggers, gardeners and goths you’d expect in an unfeasibly overbuilt cemetery. Once Jade is dead, quiet or loud, it’s time to head toward Crematorium Hill. The Praetorians are commonly believed by fans to be leftovers from the Franchise’s cloning program, because in Absolution they’re all albinos for some reason that’s never explained. Well, let’s make that canon. The P-men are either Franchise leftovers, or Travis’s own attempts to imitate the legend of 47. The big confrontation will involve dealing with the first team of three P-men, then dealing with several additional teams that arrive from neighboring areas or inside the crematorium- in stealth or in combat. In between and during waves, an increasingly unhinged Benjamin Travis will rant about how his creations should have earned him control of the agency, not some inhuman monster and his surrogate mother. “Dexter’s man came to me with Ort-Meyer’s notes! He knew I was the only one who could handle you! The only one who could replace you! The only one who could make you obey!” This setup is to intentionally mimic the layout of the final fight of the first Hitman game. The Praetorian teams will each represent different archetypes as a final test of non-social stealth or combat systems mastery. The exact composition and number of teams will vary by difficulty and be partially random, in a manner similar to earlier missions. The final Praetorian will burst out of the crematorium doors with a minigun. When all the Praetorians are dead, 47 will be able to enter the crematorium and kill Benjamin Travis, who is a disheveled slob with the combat skills of a bank guard. But you can actually fight him this time. Maybe toss him in an incinerator, or bean him with a shovel. The End The ending of fanficsolution is similar to the ending of the main game. The specter of human clones used and abused into living weapons has been prevented. Dexter Armaments is finished. Crime rates in Chicago plummet. Hope, South Dakota has resumed its slow rural decay. Diana is back at the agency, promoted to the board. 47 is working for her again. The ICA Board have closed their research division permanently. The threat is over. Victoria is on her way to recovery, with the opportunity to choose her own life, absolved of the sin of her creation. And the man who sent Diana a photo from a private hospital under the joint control of Travis’s division and Dexter Industries…who came to Travis and Dexter with Ort-Meyer’s notes…who played them against each other, who warned each of them of what 47 was doing, who briefly appears in the background of the video in the White Room at Dexter Industries? He disappears again, with the last surviving copy of the data on Victoria. Well, there you have it! I hope the gameplay and plot elements I describe above at least sound more appealing than what we got. I’ve done my best to shift the subject matter of Absolution, which was sexual abuse-heavy, loaded with stereotypes and grime, and incredisexist. Instead, I’ve tried to make the dominant themes revolve around metaphorical parent-child roles, power imbalances, the subversion of gendered roles in society, and the issue of nature versus nurture in normalizing violent socialization. Of course, I’m not a games writer…and this is a nine page, five-thousand-word fanfiction design document about a game where you play a blue-eyed skinhead who kills minorities with piano wire, so my ability to inject a social justice narrative may be somewhat limited. I have one last post to make, which is a sort of bibliography of links to sources and references I used in my infoposts. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Jul 30, 2020 |
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Aug 1, 2018 05:22
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Yeah, your version of Absolution sounds pretty excellent. I'm getting pretty major Eleven vibes from your incarnation of Victoria, but considering her role and archetype, that kind of resemblance was probably inevitable. Definitely an improvement over 'not Ellen Page'.
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Aug 1, 2018 23:11
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Fanficsolution sounds like a game I'd want to play.
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Aug 2, 2018 02:49
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Vox's Absolution Infopost Resources Infopost The below are the main resources I used in my infoposts, aside from simply playing the game much, much too much. I've left them here to cite my sources and for posterity, and in case others want to learn more about how much this game was screwed up. My many posts have only covered a fraction of all of the madness of development, so if you're the sort of person who enjoys cringe comedy or PYF-style mockery viewing, this post is a smorgasboard. Trigger warning: these links include material from every bit of offensiveness that IOI was ultimately forced to cut from the game, as well as a bunch of equally offensive material that they cut themselves for various reasons at different points in development. Basically everything from blood'n'guts to misogyny, up to and including an "inspirational" sketch animatic (with single-frame intercuts of the character that preceded Victoria being raped and killed) are all in here. Burning Hope: The Making of Hitman Absolution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ApmvNR_Il0 IOI hired a small documentary studio to film a glossy "making of" documentary, which was intended for use as both a deluxe version insert, as a separate marketed item, and as an indirect promotion of the Glacier engine to other developers. As befits a promo piece, this documentary is extremely positive in tone- at least as much as the devs can manage under the circumstances, keeping things bright for the cameras after the game has gone down in flames. In practice, there's a...noticeable...amount of excuse-making going on throughout the whole course of the thing. Regardless, you can still find some new information here, and get a sense of just how badly things went. Hitman: Absolution: Full Disclosure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeVZXzKBYXE Hitman: Absolution: Full Disclosure Videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCS7EORYHyg Full Disclosure was a promo app created by IOI for distribution on apple platforms- it's completely disappeared from those platforms, so I think it's fine to post these links. As far as I can tell, IOI created Full Disclosure because they thought that showing all their cut content would exonerate their original vision for the project, without a production timeline or budget. For our purposes, though, it's a relatively uncompromising look at just how messed up the development cycle was. The first link contains all the text material from the app, and the second contains test scenes, cut conversations and several cutscenes that were removed for various reasons. Together, these videos total a blistering 80 minutes of IOI's development garbage- a condensed, if thorough, summary of the excess, waste, and pure bad ideas that went into Absolution. If you truly want to go down the rabbithole and witness the full glory of Absolution's mismanagement, watch these two videos. I particularly recommend at least watching the start of the Videos link. It's a thing of beauty. In contrast, the main link is so stuffed full of....well, I tried to find some highlights to share, but I was having to pause and get a screenshot every five seconds. The main thing I'd note is that even these materials are selective, and censor some of the most unpleasant material that didn't make it to the final product:  The text in the image above is visible for a single frame in one of the videos where IOI's censor bar fails, and it's not referenced anywhere else. There's undoubtedly a lot more where it came from. ICA Files These early promo materials for Absolution were done up in the style of ICA internal documents. They use intercut teaser material from the plot of the game as it existed at the time, and as such they're fascinating because they contradict the final plot of the game. If you pause the videos frequently, you will also find a variety of fake internal documents from the ICA, filling in all sorts of unneeded worldbuilding. I suspect that IOI literally used the internal file format for their own design documents , or at least for their story bible. There are complete "profiles" for characters and missions from past games going right back to the very first, along with some intriguing spoilers about 47's origins tied to HITMAN 2- many of them used for one frame of pageflipping animations and the like. Correspondence from the first game is translated into the original language and put in fake aged typewritten format...it's clear the creatives had much too much time, and too much fun, producing all of this. IOI produced variants of the videos for different localizations, and their different runtimes are suspicious, but I don't want to spend any more time on them. Travis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbloLmVlCLo Diana https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP8T7-MGka8 Saints https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGJDoe62eNI Blake Dexter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ki-8WhUhvY 47 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8v2DcWyx4M Cinematic Trailers Debuthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU1Zkj2wNWk Personal Contracthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMaTEF0Q-t4 Attack of the Saints  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFZRszQuDjIThese trailers are in approximately chronological order of release. It's interesting to see what changed over time, and to see visual design elements that were kept for trailers for HITMAN, like the rapid switching between targets and settings while retaining a core animation. There was another set of trailers promoting ingame mechanics (the "introducing..." series, I linked them earlier) but these are the ones that saw broad promotion, and the most interesting. Cosmo Faulkner's Google Plus site https://plus.google.com/u/0/105518960862677728495 I've been over this in a previous post, here's the link again. I could spend another ten pages dissecting the material from the above links, but if there's a single common element to the whole thing, a single common failing, it's that the people involved in high level production of Absolution acted as if they were creating a big-budget franchise-produced movie, complete with tie-ins and an extended universe. All future game developers, please, please heed this warning: you are designing for a complex, interactive medium with a production pipeline that is many times more constrained and more resource-hungry than film, in a marketplace that is in many respects even less tolerant of error than film. Games aren't movies, and you're not Quentin Tarantino. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Aug 10, 2018 |
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Aug 5, 2018 03:08
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OK, that's my last infopost done. All post images other than a) the title cards and b) the ones in the Google plus post are also now hosted on lpix. Thank you all for your patience and tolerance. Now to find something else to fill my time...I hear Mega Man X7 is out on steam?
Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Aug 10, 2018 |
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Aug 10, 2018 02:06
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Discendo Vox posted:OK, that's my last infopost done. All post images other than the a) title cards and b) the ones in the Google plus post are also now hosted on lpix. Thank you ll for your patience and tolerance. Now to find something else to fill my time...I hear Mega Man X7 is out on steam? Godspeed Discendo Vox. May flights of angry nitpicky angels sing thee to thy rest.
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Aug 10, 2018 02:35
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Bumping this thread because I haven’t gotten around to prepping it for archival in the wake of HITMAN 2. We’ll probably do the bonus missions from this game over there.
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Oct 4, 2018 12:48
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Hitman 2016 is on Humble Bundle's November monthly games so you can pick it up for $12.00 along with a bunch of other games. And the game and it's DLC are on sale on Steam until the 22nd.
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Oct 19, 2018 03:12
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Edit: Good grief, fine.
Cythereal fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 12, 2018 16:21
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Could you edit that please?
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Nov 13, 2018 03:46
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Edit: Sheesh, you're sensitive about "this game exists" as a spoiler.
Cythereal fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 03:50
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Cythereal posted:Edit what? I don't think it's a spoiler that there's a mission in Miami that I did not know there was that, and Chaos has put in like... 5 minutes into the game. It would simply be appreciated, thanks.
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Nov 13, 2018 04:11
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I can't believe they not only brought Victoria back, but made her romanceable in new game plus
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Nov 13, 2018 05:28
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I can't wait for you guys to do the harem ending with Jade and Diana!
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Nov 13, 2018 10:05
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Still, re-watching this LP made me look up the Situs Inversus condition the guy from Hokkaido has, and it's actually a real thing. It's not even particularly rare for a genetic disorder, most people with it never know they have it and those who do typically only discover it when they're in the hospital for other unrelated stuff and doctors notice that hey, this person's heart is on the right side.
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Nov 19, 2018 00:48
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Cythereal posted:this person's heart is on the right side. Has anyone done a comedy bit about the condition? It seems a lot funnier than the "They're gone. No I don't mean dead, they've left" bit that always seems to pop up.
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Nov 19, 2018 04:47
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White Coke posted:Has anyone done a comedy bit about the condition? It seems a lot funnier than the "They're gone. No I don't mean dead, they've left" bit that always seems to pop up. I have no idea, but it did make me think of a good prank to pull on my players in a dungeons and dragons game I DM - have an NPC tell them they need to find someone with a right heart. Those exact words. 
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Nov 19, 2018 04:50
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Sorry to resurrect the thread, Jobbo, but I've been going through and fixing typos in my posts. Since it hasn't been archived yet, could I ask if you could also put the images from the Cosmo Faulkner Google Plus post on lpix? as far as I know they're not the single remaining source for this horrible piece of game promotion on earth.
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Jan 15, 2020 05:02
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Discendo Vox posted:Sorry to resurrect the thread, Jobbo, but I've been going through and fixing typos in my posts. Since it hasn't been archived yet, could I ask if you could also put the images from the Cosmo Faulkner Google Plus post on lpix? as far as I know they're not the single remaining source for this horrible piece of game promotion on earth. Also i'll punch chaosargate in the discord to get his butt koving on archiving this beautiful thread. Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Jan 15, 2020 |
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Jan 15, 2020 05:27
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Thanks I love you and hate absolution
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Jan 15, 2020 05:47
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Ya'll made me think you were posting a link to a hitman 2 lp or something, rude
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Jan 15, 2020 07:29
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Discendo Vox posted:Bonus Infopost: Cosmo Faulkner's Google Plus Account There, named all the files and uploaded them to Lpix. Thanks again for all the stuff you added for Hitman (And Absolution!)
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Jan 16, 2020 03:16
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| # ? Apr 17, 2024 00:28 |
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rezzing pointlessly for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbEalsUBj8o
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Feb 24, 2020 00:31
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