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ChaosArgate
Oct 10, 2012

Why does everyone think I'm going to get in trouble?

Jobbo please, you know you should never do major upgrades mid-project.



Says a guy who built a new PC between recent ETs, technically :v:

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Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Nalesh posted:

Also stereotypical texan dudes face reminds me of someone but I can't put my finger on it.

Whah Ah’m shore yew can!!

small bit of correction: I said that there were glitched items that made 100%ing the lost and found impossible. It turns out that sometime long after release, these items were finally patched out and the system can be 100%ed.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Jan 6, 2018

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Episode 3: End of the Line Notes

"I'm going to point out two things I didn't like about this":
The hotel room scenes are recut from the self-harm alcoholic 47 plot material- this is why some of the shots show empty liquor bottles, etc. Cutting off the barcode really, really doesn't make any sense, but it's meant to be some sort of symbolic separation from 47's past as a hitman. No, it doesn't work.

Voiceover shenanigans:
Birdie mysteriously tells 47 a hotel and room number over the phone in a cutscene, then ingame he has a bunch of additional expository "mission guidance" stuff. Why? Because the cutscene was set up way in advance of the game mission and the two were never clearly reconciled. A character like Birdie (or Diana) is normally used as a VO guide to tell the player what to do, a role that they sometimes play in this game, when 47 isn't monologuing to himself instead. This is an ongoing problem for pacing or explaining objectives in the game. It's made worse because the whole order of missions was scrambled, so they had to re-justify Dexter's insertion into the story at this point. Hence 47's search for Victoria's backstory leading him to the hotel for no reason.

Hotel Missions:
Hitman as a series is known for iconic missions taking place in hotels, and Terminus was meant to be one of the big setpieces of the game to reflect this. I suspect the dilapidated state of the hotel is meant to mirror 47's state, but that may be giving them too much credit. Without writing an essay on level design, big hotels are actually pretty crappy for social stealth (or most other gameplay purposes). This is why past and future hitman hotels have other defining features, like gardens, thermal baths, casinos, or recording studios in them. Terminus is just a hotel- specifically, a hotel in which 40% of the level is trespassing for all disguises because only guards are allowed, and guards see through other guard disguises. It's meant to act as a parallel to other later missions, but in practice it's just...bad.

Pink Flamingoes easter egg
The loud phone rant you witness contains several quotes from Divine in the John Waters film, Pink Flamingo.

"That guard never moves":
Scripted behaviors in Absolution are almost always triggered by player proximity. While 2016 levels are clockwork that partly runs on its own, the linear, more simple nature of absolution means you approach most behavior scenarios from one direction, and the level design is meant to reflect this. I'll point it out in other cases. In this one, the game doesn't anticipate you trying to get through the door from this direction, so the guard, whose animation is meant to have him conveniently facing away from another route, never moves. There's...a lot of this.

"This map kinda sucks":
The minimap in absolution is basically a transitional relic from previous hitman games. That's...about all I can say in its defense, though. The Z-casted arrows make every area with multiple levels an absolute clusterfuck to parse- as you say they fade to reflect people on even a slightly different level, but it displays all NPCs at all times, so it's a forest of arrows that provides no information.

"You have three guards right in front of you":
You're actually started on a floor that's not locked down, so your suit is safe in that area. You go up a floor to reach Dexter's room.

The projector:
The reel is in the room with the projector, as well as in a storage room on the 7th floor (down the fire escape). It plays a censored porn loop that gets reused in several places in the game. Because Absolution.

Evidence:
It's pure points and an extra challenge for the hardcore. Evidence in many levels is in a hub of enemy activity, to be as difficult to reach as possible without killing or subduing someone- sometimes, 12 or 15 someones.

"You still have to pick the lock, which is a little annoying":
Hitman loves lockpicking and keycard processing as an area transition. This is done to try to force the player to subdue guards or use a disguise, as well as to buffer the next area- enemies frequently patrol or stand practically on top of these transition doors.

Wait, we didn't kill anyone!:

Absolution is not the first hitman game to have transition levels with no targets you have to kill; it just has way, way more of them, with many functioning as glorified cutscenes. Of the 20 multi-segment "missions" in Absolution, 8 have no actual target kills- and in missions with targets, many segments are just transition areas, and the targets are just people who are along the route with a very weakly contrived reason for killing them. This is mostly notable because even in past hitman games, such "transition" stealth levels were already regarded as the very weakest in the series.

"How many times are we going to repeat that the story and tone drop the ball"?:
So, so so many times. Such as in the next cutscene!

A note on Hitman Absolution challenges:

Each mission in Hitman Absolution has some routine challenges: pick up all disguises, clear undetected, clear suit only, clear the mission, complete a set of other challenges/all challenges. There are also challenges for killing targets in various ways laid out through the level, some straightforward, some moderately obtuse or unhelpful.

Unfortunately, some challenges in Hitman Absolution also involve performing actions unrelated to skilled execution of core gameplay. Some are set in your path- all are designed to show off some "cool" moment the developers added that the player might otherwise miss. There's a challenge for pulling the guard receiving good health news out the window in the first mission, for example. Others are extremely obscure. These are made much worse because the requirement for completion isn't stated. The player just gets the title, an icon, and some flavor text. These "hidden" challenges can be fairly obtuse. For example, Terminus has "Housekeeping", a challenge for killing 10 goons without being seen. The hint is "It's time to take out the trash.", but hiding bodies isn't necessary for it. Many of these are very frustrating to identify without a guide. They're not the big problem in Absolution's challenges, though.

The big problem is the multipart challenges.

Each mission in Absolution has a multi-part challenge. For example, Terminus has The Electrician - Part I ("A tool of many uses") and The Electrician - Part II ("They never knew what hit them."). The latter can only be completed after the former, on a subsequent run of the mission. Here's what they require:

Part 1: Kill an enemy using the screwdriver, whilst wearing the Electrician Disguise and remaining unseen.

Part 2: Kill five enemies using the screwdriver, whilst wearing the Electrician Disguise and remaining unseen.

This is one of the least obscure of the multipart challenges. While missions with targets often use these challenges to try to signpost a particular approach (The King of Chinatown used them to show the player they could disguise themselves as the drug dealer), these challenges don't actually explain what they require, and in missions without targets, often require running around the map killing everyone, or doing something dumb you'd never want to do otherwise.

This is a general trend at several levels of Absolution's design. The producers/designers didn't seem willing to remove something if it seemed "cool". I'll point out some of the other really abusive ones.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Jul 4, 2018

Dabir
Nov 10, 2012

2016 has a few of those obscure ones too, though.

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.
That's fair, Dabir. I was just really frustrated by how many of them there are. A lot of them are just "kill several enemies undetected with X unhelpful weapon/disguise combo" with some added element at the final stage. It's almost, almost like they were trying things that would become escalations.

Boardroom Jimmy
Aug 20, 2006

Ahhh ballet

Discendo Vox posted:


Each mission in Absolution has a multi-part challenge. For example, Terminus has The Electrician - Part I ("A tool of many uses") and The Electrician - Part II ("They never knew what hit them."). The latter can only be completed after the former, on a subsequent run of the mission. Here's what they require:

Part 1: Kill an enemy using the screwdriver, whilst wearing the Electrician Disguise and remaining unseen.

Part 2: Kill five enemies using the screwdriver, whilst wearing the Electrician Disguise and remaining unseen.


You're slightly off on the requirement for Part 2 of this challenge. It's even worse. You actually have to kill five enemies with the screwdriver dressed as the electrician unseen but you have to throw the screwdriver to kill them. Yeah.

Those multi-part ones are the worst. There's one in a later mission that's downright ridiculous but that'll have to wait until they get to that mission.

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry
Computer is fixed and I can finally start recording again! :woop:

Not sure exactly when we'll be able to resume normal programming, but its in the pipelines, folks!


P.S. I loving hate the next level.

ChaosArgate
Oct 10, 2012

Why does everyone think I'm going to get in trouble?

Miz Kriss
Mar 17, 2009

It's only an avatar if the Cubs get swept.
Guy got a little handsy trying to get that drink from you

Weeble
Feb 26, 2016
"Hey dude let me put something in your drink real quick thanks."

Pretty funny actually.

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry

Hitman: Absolution 06 - Shitman Absolution (Commentary)
Hitman: Absolution 06 - Shitman Absolution (Cut Commentary)

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.
I’ Try to catch up with my write ups tomorrow, sorry for the delay.

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry

Discendo Vox posted:

I’ Try to catch up with my write ups tomorrow, sorry for the delay.

No need to apologize! I appreciate the writeups you do, no matter when they get posted :)

Conal Cochran
Dec 2, 2013

I feel like I have a very different relationship with Absolution than most fans do. That's not to say I don't understand the complaints, I totally do and I'm really liking this critical retrospective play through of the game.

As much as people deride Absolution for being more linear and "cinematic" the marketing totally worked in the exactly the way I think they intended it. I had finished with Uncharted 3 and as far as I knew that franchise was over. I was looking for the next big cinematic action game and that trailer with 47 narrowly escaping explosions and sneaking through the library promised exactly that.

Leading up to the release I played the through the last three games, and with the exception of Silent Assassin, really enjoyed them. Unlike most fans who had played these games so many times over, I wasn't waiting half a decade for the next Hitman game to come out. So when Absolution finally did come out and it was nothing like the previous iterations, it really didn't bother me.

I thought of it as basically Hitman: the Movie Game. It took all the themes of the previous games and brought them into the forefront in the form of a more linear narrative focused game. It is admittedly a very juvenile and mean spirited story, but one that's style and I appreciated nonetheless. And in the same way you would get from a film adaptation, sometimes they would even have segments that felt like a real Hitman game wedged between more story focused bits.

If I ever wanted classic Hitman I always had the option of going back to Contracts or Blood Money. They were still fairly new to me, and I was sure there was plenty in them I hadn't discovered yet. Absolution just served as a nice little side piece to the series for me.

And now that we have Hitman: Season One, in the same way the Batman Begins allowed people to look back at Batman and Robin from a more distanced, critical persepctive, I think we are able to look at Absolution in a similar way, knowing this isn't the fate for the rest of the franchise.

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry

Hitman: Absolution 07 - Angry Barfly (Commentary)
Hitman: Absolution 07 - Angry Barfly (Cut Commentary)

ChaosArgate
Oct 10, 2012

Why does everyone think I'm going to get in trouble?

Man I already forgot how lovely that level was. Here's something to wash it out afterwards.

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry
Also Chaos meant to say Colorado and not Sapienza, but I didn't point it out because I know he hates Colorado and tries to block that level from his memory.

ChaosArgate
Oct 10, 2012

Why does everyone think I'm going to get in trouble?

What? Ohhh poo poo you're right I legitimately forgot there were Kane & Lynch players in Colorado too. :ohdear:

Fish Noise
Jul 25, 2012

IT'S ME, BURROWS!

IT WAS ME ALL ALONG, BURROWS!
wait, so the bartender just

stays there?

bartending?

after you've mown everyone else down?

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry

Fish Noise posted:

wait, so the bartender just

stays there?

bartending?

after you've mown everyone else down?

Mhmmm!

David D. Davidson
Nov 17, 2012

Orca lady?
At the very least you can get some catharsis out of beating up everyone in the bar, it doesn't redeem the level but it is appreciated.

White Coke
May 29, 2015
The idea of sneaking through a bar in the middle of a fight is interesting, but when everyone knows to single you out if you so much as use a broom then the execution has failed.

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.


Episode 4: Catch and Release Notes:
Ugh, this and the next one are going to be really long. Much like the game's missions, these are going to be uneven in length.

"How do you feel about Danny Trejo?":
Danny Trejo here is not licensed. They also went all out with the Mexican stereotype with this guy, which you'll see eventually.

Getting caught in cutscenes:
Having the player character gently caress up and get knocked out/fail in a cutscene is almost always a sign of bad writing- it's particularly bad in games where the player avatar is both a) ranked on their performance and b) generally supposed to be perfect. This issue was really apparent during the period around when Absolution came out, as Thief 4, Batman Arkham Origins, and, of course, Absolution, traded in hamfisted cutscene failure as a plot progression mechanism. Note that what triggers this failure by 47 is that he blindly tries to kill a guard that's obviously inhumanly huge. 47, the perfect assassin, fails because he's suddenly an incompetent moron, even if you perfectly ghosted the whole hotel.

"By the way, if the game hasn't been offensive yet..." :
The casual sexual harassment, Not-Danny-Trejo, the hispanic hotel cleaner stereotype- these are all really, really mild compared to the stuff that's coming.

"If he's a ghost or a myth how does anybody know about him":
We actually do have a canonical explanation for this one. The "Hitman Sniper Challenge, a teaser game that was used to promote Hitman Absolution, stars 47 taking out the head of Stallion Armaments, a Dexter Industries competitor. According to teaser "ICA files" trailers, Blake Dexter was the client for that job.

A note on character:
Remember how Dexter's secretary behaves, and her characterization in this scene. It's not going to match any of her later appearances. Blake and Sanchez also change character and behavior over the course of the game, but Layla Stockton (the assistant) is by far the most egregious. I think this comes down to VA work being recorded at different times, and more importantly, the devs not bothering to keep their scripts coherent.

"The timeline here is not going to make any sense":
As you say, this scene (like most of the cutscenes) was really hastily put together to remix the entire order of missions for this game. They needed a way to justify the hotel being on fire and the police chasing 47. Everything else was just to get to that point.

The dude in the door:
Note that the african american figure in the door is a prominent character in the plot of Absolution- but his voice isn't heard coming from behind the door when the scene transitions to gameplay. Even more than Birdie, he's consigned to cutscenes. More on his IP-infringing rear end later.

Useless Disguises:
This level is a strong example of the like-sees-through-like disguise system in Absolution: Every single armed enemy and "guard" in the next several areas is able to see through the police disguise, which is also the only thing available for most of it. In principle, Instinct can be burnt to get past them, but it's not consistent or clear. It gets better, though: the whole like-sees-through-like? It's bullshit and it's ignored for many outfits. If you grab a SWAT uniform when it's available, all the police can still see through it!

"I try not to ask questions at times":
The library and following setpieces were another set of areas used to demo Absolution during the runup to launch. This is another particularly polished and atmospheric area, though the heavy scripting of the transitional bits is still really noticeable. The levels are ultimately a series of corridors, and if you're trying to sneak through there are a number of points where there's only one path you can take. In general, these were meant to be impressive setpieces, and making their existence coherent never occurred to the developers.

Mysterious frame drop:
I can't be sure, but the problem may be because the game is simultaneously trying to get all the police in the level to path into the back area you're in, which is also undergoing a scripted set of lighting flashes that do shiny, impressive atmospheric things to the light coming in through the windows, reflected off of every surface in the room. Under normal circumstances you'd be off on the edge of the room at this point, and there would be much fewer enemies here.

"So, what is that icon":
Hitman Absolution's developers used placeholder assets made out of concept art for their HUD.

"Not gonna go down that hole?"
Wow, I never knew that was there. It's not really possible to ever go to that side of the map while stealthing- there's no way forward over there. I think that hole must be for stashing bodies?

"That's kinda cool, but also why would you want to do that?"
Yes. Exactly.

"The Helicopter- hold forward, the level"
Gosh, that sure is a lot of cover being blown perfectly into place to avoid that helicopter! Well, there's a reason: in the demo, the helicopter is actually constantly firing at you (as police choppers come equipped with miniguns). In the final game, it only opens fire if it gets to detect you. If I had to guess, this level was originally going to tie in with Birdie somehow, seeing as how it's a pigeon coop. But who knows.

"Were they trying to make a stealth game, or what?"
I don't know, either. How many more segments- urggh, this mission is so lonnnnng...huh, I never knew that little vent was there.

Other people in the elevator
:
This was in the demo version of the level. It was cut because they couldn't get it to make sense- the missing person poster in the elevator depicts the elevator operator (who has a unique model and lines that the devs spent time on, for some reason) as an easter egg reference to that.

The Train Station:
This is actually my favorite setpiece in the game. You missed the tooltip, but the crowd is actually very strong cover for 47 as long as you're standing still. This creates some really nice social stealth, and the final wait for the train creates a great sense of escalating tension as police move through the crowd checking faces.

Trainstation Bonus Image


This image appears along one train platform, and in one room that the player never needs to go into, as far as I know. Again, a lot of characters, concepts and assets got generated for this game and then cut- then were positively fetishized by the devs in a thousand easter eggs and incidental references.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Jul 22, 2018

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry
The helicopter can shoot at you, but has to spot you first.

This means that you can beat that level, where a helicopter mysteriously flies at roof-top level simply to puah boxes and cages over, and not because its actually trying to follow you.

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.
Sorry, I actually knew that one, but I screwed up the description of the helicopter behavior. I'll revise.

I'll do a writeup of the Especially Horrible Episode this evening.

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.
Trigger warning: sexualized violence


Episode 5: 1 Forward, 2 Back Notes
Wade: He is indeed wearing braces, has a bunch of weird style elements (like his clothes and car) taken out of a Tarantino movie, and is intentionally unpleasant. Like most of the other male antagonists in this game, in earlier versions he would have raped and/or killed Victoria. As it stands, our friend here doesn't have enough time in the game to be well-developed as a character. Lenny...well, I'll leave Lenny for later. "It's a villain sure, but it's for the wrong reasons" covers a lot of it.

"I- I didn't like this guy"
That homeless man you knocked out for no reason (he doesn't even effect your ranking) was probably meant to be a recurring character based on some of the other cut material. He actually delivers a lot of exposition about the next few levels, Wade the Vixen Club, etc if you don't attack him out of the blue, you monster.

"I had completely forgotten about this level"
This sums up the material from this mission nicely. It manages to be simultaneously highly offensive, and ultimately forgettable. I honestly forgot this whole starting alley area, and I'm not sure I ever encountered that completely contextless shrine.

Setpieces, locations, moments, and Hitman
"what was the point of this level, then?!" Many games are largely constructed of setpieces and cool locations that are justified and strung together by a plot after the fact. The Hitman series does this a lot, and it's not necessarily a terrible practice if done well- HITMAN 2016 used this approach to some degree and almost entirely gets away with it. What makes Absolution "special" is that the effort to justify and include these setpiece levels fails so catastrophically, but the levels were still left in. The vast majority of the game is tiny significant pieces, characters, kills, and moments that the developers thought were cool, that were fully developed and built out, with no justification whatsoever, or only the barest minimum. The entire content of this video likely started with a meeting where "47 kills target through viewing booth at strip club" was added to a list, and then other things were attached to that single moment to pad out the level. This episode, even more than other Absolution sections, is a junkyard of abandoned concepts. I think that to no small degree, these abandoned elements had to be left in the game, because otherwise it would be about one sixth of its actual length. Many scored areas of the game have one or two flimsily put together pieces in it, and is otherwise a corridor leading to a door to be lockpicked. It's a bad look.

The Vixen Club
Note that the main floor of the club is completely useless as a game space. There's nothing you can do there because you're surrounded by people. It exists only to display the strippers, a really bad disco ball kill, and for an opening cutscene that I think was cut.

"I'm really anoyed by these lockpicks"
These were added to levels to keep the player from rushing out of the level by distracting guards. They also act as a buffering period for the area past the door. The problem with this is probably immediately evident- worse computer, longer loading time, longer lockpick, harder to actually clear the door in stealth.

"That seems really contrived and kind of stupid"
I'll not bring it up again, but just remember that every single element tying any level to the next one was created at the last second, out of whole cloth.

"Hawaii," writing, gender, etc
Other stealth games that have a female daughter proxy character being held in a pleasure house, like Dishonoured's Golden Cat level. The general writing trick is the same- here's your daughter proxy, here's her in danger, here's her implicitly threatened with the corrupting influence of this den of debauchery, and oh, we get to show scantily clad women in trailers. This isn't a particularly good way to go about writing a game- it's hamhanded and obvious, and sometimes it's vaguely exploitative of the sexuality of a character that's often a minor and also coded to be related to the player-proxy character (Bioshock 2 and infinite got criticised for the weirdly male gazey aspects of the daughter proxies in those games). Hitman Absolution, though, breaks bold new ground in its approach.

A large contingent of NPC conversations throughout the material in this video is about Hawaii- most of them are walked past or interrupted with violence in the video, which is just fine by me. You thankfully just shot all the police in the area after the scene with the safe, so I get to fill you in! These police spend time debating the voluntariness and morality of stripping as a job, discussing the value of the women who disappeared...meanwhile, in the abandoned area you were in is a room with a "Hawaii" photo backdrop, a chair with restraints, a video camera, and a collection of sex and torture instruments.


You can tell that someone was really happy and proud of the concept of a strip club where performers were being raped and killed for snuff films in a side building, with a euphemistic name. It appears extremely probable that at one point this was going to be what would happen to Victoria, too. I don't know if she was going to die there, or if that would come later, but the goal was to use the level to establish the revenge motivation and really make the player hate Wade and the other creepy male villains. Of course, the devs of Absolution are also trying to titillate the user with the environment. Kinda...hard to tell how that would work.

If you're stealthing all of this, you wind up going up some stairs. Shortly before the exit there's a set of police who are blocking your way- the guy who is "sure there's a dead body around here somewhere" and his team. While it's possible to just sneak past, your intended solution is to find the dead body of the stripper who had been raped, tortured and killed in this area, and drop her corpse immediately behind him from the upper level. This leads the police away.


Note the partial decay, bruises and ligature marks. Someone had to texture that.

I hate this game.

The fireworks
They fill the whole area with smoke, iirc. It's a similar effect to the smoke on the rooftop of the Terminus escape, and comes up a couple more times in similar "transition" maps further on in the game. That whole level is just there to show off that opportunity.

Chinese New Year
This is the other fairly sandboxy level with some amount of variety. The problem is that several opportunities are one-offs that are effectively on timers from when you enter the level. There are a few other maps with interesting/semi-fun design choices, but this is the last really large sandbox level where social stealth really comes into play. As others have said, the different opportunities are on scripts that don't sync well. There's also a lot of invisible border pathing that makes no sense.

By far the most egregious bit, though, is that the target with the gas leak opportunity pretty much solely hangs out in a small area with two entrances. Both entrances are right next to each other. both of them are watched, to varying degrees, but a chef and a police officer. The frustrating part? The entire area is considered trespassing for both outfits. The only way to get in cleanly is to abuse the fact that instinct gives you a degree of detection immunity if you're burning it while you enter a trespassing area, or to take advantage of a weird "spin in place" move that the chef does when his routine resets.

Paging Boardroom Jimmy
I'm going to guess that Swordplay - Part III is the challenge you were thinking of. Am I right? would you like to do the honors of explaining what it entails? I need to go take a boiling shower after this video.

Have you seen this duck
22:40.

"six maps!"
Seven, actually- this was the longest bit of the game, and it makes you feel every second of it. Like many ubisoft open world games, Hitman's first and second acts are interminable, and the last parts are tiny and rushed by comparison.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Jul 22, 2018

Boardroom Jimmy
Aug 20, 2006

Ahhh ballet

Discendo Vox posted:


Paging Boardroom Jimmy
I'm going to guess that Swordplay - Part III is the challenge you were thinking of. Am I right? would you like to do the honors of explaining what it entails? I need to go take a boiling shower after this video.


No, the one I'm thinking of comes much later on.

Angel of Death Part II in Attack of the Saints. Wait until you see the requirements for this one.

But since you offered, here's what Swordplay Part III entails. You can find a katana on the Chinese New Year map and the Swordplay challenges revolve around using it to kill the 3 targets. For part I, you just need to kill one of them with it and for Part II, you need to kill all 3 with it. It's a bit contrived but ultimately not that difficult to do. Part III, however, adds a really pointless caveat to the whole thing. You need to kill all 3 targets with the katana but you have to be wearing the ridiculous chipmunk outfit that you can find of this map. You also have to do all this completely unseen and without any of the bodies being found. Also, and I found this out the hard way, you can't sequence break the challenges and do Part III before Part II or have them count simultaneously. So I did Part II of the challenge in the chipmunk costume only to find out I'd have to do it again to actually get Part III to count. Yes, I actually did all the challenges in this game and no, I'm not particularly happy with myself because of it.

Boardroom Jimmy fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Feb 7, 2018

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Boardroom Jimmy posted:

No, the one I'm thinking of comes much later on.

:stare: well, reinstalling now to refresh myself on this and related stuff.

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry

Discendo Vox posted:

:stare: well, reinstalling now to refresh myself on this and related stuff.

Please don't :ohdear:

White Coke
May 29, 2015

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Please don't :ohdear:

He's doing it you monster, and it's all your fault.

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry
:suicide:

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.
I've got some more design notes, but mostly I just want to vent.

Since you can't see enemies aside from watching them directly or by burning instinct yo see their path, and since most disguises don't work, there's no way to see and know and respond to enemy movement patterns. Navigation of just about every single level in Absolution is trial-and-error. Infuriating, and especially so when paired with inconsistent behavior scripting and difficult-to-parse vision cones for enemies. I started into getting the challenge Boardroom Jimmy mentioned, but I ran out of patience pretty fast.

edit: oh god I just realized something terrible about that challenge, curse you Jimmy now I have to get it.

I'll preach about it when we get to it in the LP.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Feb 16, 2018

EagerSleeper
Feb 3, 2010

by R. Guyovich
I just want to say that I love all the excellent commentary on what a trash fire Absolution was. The game is a mess, but the behind-the-scenes facts and commentary is top tier. :unsmith:

CommissarMega
Nov 18, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER

What the gently caress? This has gone beyond grindhouse and into the horrible poo poo I tried to read while I was on a site dedicated to awful fanfic.

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.




Note the partial decay, bruises and ligature marks. Someone had to texture that.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Feb 9, 2018

Boardroom Jimmy
Aug 20, 2006

Ahhh ballet

Discendo Vox posted:

I've got some more design notes, but mostly I just want to vent.

Since you can't see enemies aside from watching them directly or by burning instinct, and since most disguises don't work, there's no way to see and know and respond to enemy movement patterns. Navigation of just about every single level in Absolution is trial-and-error. Infuriating, and especially so when paired with inconsistent behavior scripting and difficult-to-parse vision cones for enemies. I started into getting the challenge Boardroom Jimmy mentioned, but I ran out of patience pretty fast.

edit: oh god I just realized something terrible about that challenge, curse you Jimmy now I have to get it.

I'll preach about it when we get to it in the LP.

I feel so bad for being responsible for this. This is what Absolution does to people. I think I can guess what the terrible realization you had about the challenge is (besides actually doing it) but I'll save it until we get to it.

ChaosArgate
Oct 10, 2012

Why does everyone think I'm going to get in trouble?

Discendo Vox posted:





Note the partial decay, bruises and ligature marks. Someone had to texture that.

:stonk:

CommissarMega
Nov 18, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER

Discendo Vox posted:

Note the partial decay, bruises and ligature marks. Someone had to texture that.

...yeah, someone should ask the cops to look through the writers' basements :stonk:

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

CommissarMega posted:

...yeah, someone should ask the cops to look through the writers' basements :stonk:

I don't have the time to look up the whole credits set now, but if I remember correctly, there are something like 25 writer credits on Absolution. Like 3 of them, mostly working incidental dialogue, weren't fired and went on to do all the writing for HITMAN 2016.

Ah, here's the post. Don't go to its source, it has a bunch of Absolution spoilers and stuff I want to contextualize further down the line:

Discendo Vox posted:

Oh, they had a writer. Specifically, they had three writers, five people doing "additional writing", a scriptwriter, four people on additional scriptwriting, two people who wrote a "screenplay", and a separate dialogue writer. Only one of the dialogue guys, one of the scriptwriters and the third writer (who appears to have been brought in for damage control) is still with IOI. It looks like a publisher or a producer finally looked at it at the eleventh hour, :dogstare:'d and axed a ton of poo poo to get it out the door. The plot was rearranged several times, which is part of why it's so bonkers.

I need to emphasize that although it's in vogue to blame publishers, as best as I can tell all fault for Absolution belongs with IOI. Square-Enix were left holding the bag after the devs burnt through their whole schedule and budget, and had to cobble a game together from what was left. Think Kojima, but without the prior cultish body of goodwill to keep the project afloat and funded past any sensible limit.

edit: god help me I'm playing through again to get 100% completion. the sightline, pathing, animation design...it's all so, so, so bad...

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Feb 10, 2018

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Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.


I am trespassing, in a suit. This guard cannot see me. There are no special "it is dark, reduced sightlines" effects going on here.
I am completely safe.



Completely safe.

edit: sorry for posting so much, I'm just falling out of love/onto door handles with this game all over again here.

edit: I'm 100%ing Hitman Absolution. May god have mercy on my soul.


...just completing the weapon customization takes about 40 million dollars of playing contracts mode.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Feb 16, 2018

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