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It's more of a reboot stylewise / back to basics than it is one storywise. The post-tutorial montage pays tribute to a bunch of old levels.
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Apr 20, 2019 16:07
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Zedd posted:It's more of a reboot stylewise / back to basics than it is one storywise. The post-tutorial montage pays tribute to a bunch of old levels. That's what I was confused about  I thought it was a full reboot the first time I played, then I was like "wait I did all these kills". Once I met Smith I figured they just crowbarred Absolution out of the canon but never cared enough to ask.I'm just glad IOI got the IP back because god drat I love this poo poo
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Apr 20, 2019 16:14
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Absolution is still... there, they're just de-emphasizing the worst parts of it. One of the montage kills in the strip club owner from Absolution. I think the official explanation is the ICA dude trying to capture Victoria had gone really, really rogue? Like, killer fetish-nuns aren't on the ICA menu.
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Apr 20, 2019 18:09
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Wizard of the Deep posted:Absolution is still... there, they're just de-emphasizing the worst parts of it. One of the montage kills in the strip club owner from Absolution. I think the official explanation is the ICA dude trying to capture Victoria had gone really, really rogue? Like, killer fetish-nuns aren't on the ICA menu. I think the official explanation is "That one kill looked cool for our montage, but we're mostly just going to pointedly pretend Absolution never happened by never referencing it in text." like 47 cut the barcode off his head and now it's magically back and Diana's in her old position and all. I honestly don't even know why they put that kill in there other than being a decent visual. Midnight Voyager fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Apr 20, 2019 |
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Apr 20, 2019 20:42
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All of 47's exploits are just elaborate fanfiction Diana's been writing, partially to cover up her own exploits as a contract assassin. Absolution happened when someone stole Diana's login details for AO3 and started posting their own edgy grindcore take under her username.
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Apr 20, 2019 21:45
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So is the new ET bugged or something. He doesn't move on his own unless I start trying to coin his guards away. E: yeah gently caress this I just shot him in front of his bodyguards and ran for it. UnknownMercenary fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Apr 20, 2019 |
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Apr 20, 2019 21:58
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Hitman and Retcons It's...messy. Bear in mind that Hitman has, since Absolution, been weirdly parallel with novels and comics that ioi has also put out, and those outside media have been a) nebulously canon and b) terrible. None of the Hitman games have ever had good writing, though the incidental dialogue was often excellent. The series plot has, however, become worse as time goes on and the plots have become more complex. I really liked the start of Season 1 because it seemed relatively open and simple, and I hated Season 2 because it's a bad writing smorgasboard that contradicts the relatively straightforward plots of the earlier games in service of its bad fanfiction writing. My hate will bleed through in this summary post, for which I make no apologies. Spoilers, for anyone who cares. Old Hitman Originally, the ICA was explicitly nonpolitical. They frequently took contracts from groups like the UN or Interpol, the "good guys," simply because the general state of the world needed to be somewhat stable for them to function. This did not preclude hits ordered by criminal organizations, however. Hitman 2 introduced a nameless cutscene character who conveniently knew things about 47 and the asylum and who indirectly causes that game's plot to happen, and who never appears in-mission (though iirc he's just using a generic enemy model that doesn't appear very clearly in cutscenes). It's not clear whether IoI initially intended it, but fans decided this character was some sort of ultimate manipulator with secret knowledge and called him Mister X. I mention X because he was the only real character plot throughline for the series, though he barely appeared- his identity and motivations were the one sort of open mystery. When the Hitman novels came out, they changed how ICA works, making it absurdly complex and well-equipped, with private armies overthrowing governments, etc. Some elements of the novels introduce characters or things from Absolution, but Absolution contradicts these elements in various ways. The novels were one of the first bases for Absolution's plot, which underwent many, many, many revisions over its development. The novels are terrible. Absolution The plot of Absolution was always as follows: Benjamin Travis was a "division chair" at ICA whose work included a lot of sort of "assassin R&D". This included creating the Saints, who were canonically known and accepted by ICA leadership, but considered radical. The creation of Victoria, however, was secret and not approved by ICA leadership. In the final plot of Absolution, Travis abuses his authority over ICA's private cleanup army and other resources to target Diana/47 and try to cover up Victoria's creation. During the game, 47 cuts across his head barcode (this was leftover footage from a much, much worse plotline that got the axe). This was done for absolutely no reason- the devs were obsessed with filmic symbolism and there was money to throw at a revised 47 model, so it stayed in. 47 has super healing powers, which is presumably why the barcode is back and pristine. After Absolution, Diana gets her handler job back and also got a promotion in ICA's inconsistently defined internal governance structure. Victoria is in Diana's care and god willing will never appear again. IoI teased X's reappearance in the Absolution sniper game, but he never appeared again. We don't know the full scope of the cut content for Absolution, but it appears that Diana's horrible cliched backstory was a part of Absolution that was cut relatively late on- the graveyard that we see her parents die in is the final mission, and there are references to her family in cut content that indicates 47 killing her parents was always planned, but that previously, her brother had simply "disappeared", rather than died. Nu HITMAN Absolution and all previous entries in the series are, generally, canon, but massively deemphasized. The events of Absolution still happened, apparently, but conveniently there's no reason to reference the core plot at any point (small side references, like a new Dexter family member, still occur). ICA presumably still has a private cleanup army somewhere, but I suspect we'll not see them again. A lot of the twists of Season 2 were spoiled in a comic series that appeared after Season 1. It's clear that the whole plot of Season 2 was set up before Season 1 started, but a lot of it was less evident (and less evidently terrible) before that point. The plot of the comics is, regrettably, 100% canon as far as I can tell. In Season 2, 47's origins and childhood have been significantly retconned, and the new puppetmaster plot with Mister X also hasn't reappeared, and it's not clear that he still exists. His history doesn't match Providence or Grey. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Jun 16, 2022 |
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Apr 20, 2019 22:06
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I remember one novel I read in high school, the final chapter doesn't feature 47 at all but shows the main antagonist dying because his food was sprayed with peanut oil, and he's allergic. I really liked that book  Also I don't remember it being much of a thing before, but I like that in Hitman 2016, part of why Diana seems worried about the shadow client is because she respects the ICA's neutrality in that she doesn't want it to turn into a private army for the rich elite, rather she sees ICA as more of an equalizer and takes missions like the snow festival, where the workers pooled their money to kill their boss  . I really like that concept, and I like that 47 was just like " They're paying." until he realized just how bothered Diana was about it  especially when it turns out she was 100% right and whoops ICA's compromised!47 and Diana are fantastic foils to each other when the writers aren't trying too hard to jam a romance in there.
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Apr 20, 2019 22:20
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The sense I get is that the ICA will kill anyone so long as they're paid and their neutrality isn't tampered with, but all the really awful people are good at making themselves very hard to get to normally so they send 47 to ice them because he excels at that kind of poo poo.
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Apr 20, 2019 22:23
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Funky Valentine posted:The sense I get is that the ICA will kill anyone so long as they're paid and their neutrality isn't tampered with, but all the really awful people are good at making themselves very hard to get to normally so they send 47 to ice them because he excels at that kind of poo poo. Exactly, if I was being a shithead and someone wanted to kill me, they could just run up and shoot me since I'm poor as poo poo and who's going to stop them. On the other hand if someone wanted to kill I just really like that the back stories all ensure you feel pretty good about killing your target, and I like imagining that's because Diana's chill about which missions she takes on. If there were a mission where 47 had to murder an environmental activist so a corporation could raze a rainforest it would hopefully not be well received.
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Apr 20, 2019 22:32
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Your targets in some of the earlier games are explicitly for bad people, and sometimes make the world a much worse place, even if the targets themselves aren't necessarily good. Blood Money in particular is explicit about this a few times. I am worried and frustrated by how limiting the WAR CRIMES morality of Nu Hitman may be. Also they just employ it with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer - it's impressive that the writing has gotten less nuanced than the game where you kill Totally Not Saddam Hussein. I guess what I'm saying is you can make a game about killing horrible people, without making it a game about killing horrible people. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Apr 20, 2019 |
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Apr 20, 2019 22:49
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I like overly optimistic Hitman I'm admittedly a sucker for happy endings though
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Apr 20, 2019 23:01
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Danaru posted:I like overly optimistic Hitman WAR CRIMES rules
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Apr 20, 2019 23:04
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That's part of the reason why I was so bummed that they leaned into the Providence stuff so heavily. My favorite part of the Hitman games are when Diana explains who the client is and why they're hiring you.
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Apr 20, 2019 23:08
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I was hoping they'd interrogate ICA's supposed neutrality a little but I'm down for comic book capers too.
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Apr 20, 2019 23:10
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Grapplejack posted:That's part of the reason why I was so bummed that they leaned into the Providence stuff so heavily. My favorite part of the Hitman games are when Diana explains who the client is and why they're hiring you. I liked the mini arc in Blood Money where you kill that bayou crime family and the newspaper articles make it really obvious that the wife hired you.
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Apr 20, 2019 23:28
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Mantis42 posted:I liked the mini arc in Blood Money where you kill that bayou crime family and the newspaper articles make it really obvious that the wife hired you. IIRC if you perform the ceremony as the priest, then kill the groom, the bride is like "finally" and is the only one who doesn't panic  I only heard it second hand so I might be wrong
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Apr 20, 2019 23:33
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Danaru posted:IIRC if you perform the ceremony as the priest, then kill the groom, the bride is like "finally" and is the only one who doesn't panic i heard that as well and tried it, got gunned down for my troubles, and you can't hear the wife talking over all the gunfire
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Apr 21, 2019 02:41
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Danaru posted:I like overly optimistic Hitman Same. I like how this Hitman leans less into moral ambiguity and more into slapstick comedy and social satire. It feels less jarring than the old games that had more of a grimdark mood. I mean, this is a story about a white guy with a barcode on the back of his head who can dress up as an Indian Tailor and nobody bats an eye, who can carry a fish in a suitcase and then throw that suitcase and have it hone in on its target, and where I can throw a bomb concealed in a rubber duck that, on explosion, causes the victim to ragdoll into the stratosphere. I much prefer having a tone that complements that rather than clashes it. This reminds me of another game I've been playing recently, Yakuza 0. For a game that's all about a criminal underworld, it's entertaining and memorable because of how it tempers its soap opera melodrama with absolute goofiness. I mean, one of the characters has a fighting style that involves you literally breakdancing thugs into submission. I feel like there's something unique about this combination of goofiness and self-seriousness that it feels like only games tend to do well at. It's not quite camp or B-movie dumb goodness, although I don't know how exactly to describe it.
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Apr 21, 2019 03:13
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The tone in the new games is the best the series has ever had tbh. I think they'd be super loving tiresome if they took themselves seriously.
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Apr 21, 2019 03:38
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Agreed, new Hitman is my favorite Hitman and I want them to do more of that tone. I don't care about the retcons and such. 
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Apr 21, 2019 04:31
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I thought Absolution looked like total dogshit from the moment I saw it, despite having loving loved Blood Money. My reaction to Absolution was my reaction to the movie the moment I saw the first trailer and so forth, too. I'm entirely comfortable with their not having actually existed.
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Apr 21, 2019 05:29
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If I remember right, Absolution introduced the instinct mechanic? If so, then it wasn't a total bad thing. Just mostly.
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Apr 21, 2019 08:10
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I'll admit, I was really resistant to using Instinct when I first started playing Hitman (2016), not using it at all for the entire tutorial levels. Then, the first time I did use it, it was hard not to keep using it...and now I can't really imagine not doing so. 90% of the time I just use it for finding interactables in the heat of things, but it really is a massive quality of life tool. I still remember how annoyed I was at seeing it in action in the trailer/preview of the first Absolution level back in the day (the escape from the cop-filled building). I suppose there were a few flecks of gold in the shitpile after all.
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Apr 21, 2019 08:37
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I wasn't aware that there was much terrible supplementary material, but I wasn't surprised by it. The short story featuring the ICA's third-best assassin trying to copy 47's style and failing hilariously was more in line with the incidental dialogue. I don't mind the overarching plot too much if only because airport thriller is pretty much in line with Hitman's genre stylings, certainly moreso than the grindhouse feel they were trying with Absolution.
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Apr 21, 2019 09:00
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Jerusalem posted:If I remember right, Absolution introduced the instinct mechanic? If so, then it wasn't a total bad thing. Just mostly. It also had point shooting which was fun and allowed combat to be a viable strategy in missions. Of course, the missions still ended up being about as fun as pulling out your own teeth but hey, can't get everything right, huh?
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Apr 21, 2019 09:48
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I've got a massive series of effortposts on the content of Absolution, including its tech, in the Hitman 2016 LP thread, starting here. Absolution implemented Instinct and Contracts modes and improved crowdgen tech, as well as the first version of IoI's glacier engine. It was in many respects (though not all, ofc) a necessary transitional step for the game design of the series. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Apr 21, 2019 |
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Apr 21, 2019 15:44
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elf help book posted:WAR CRIMES rules Yeah, I had a friend ask me how serious the game takes itself and just showed them that video.
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Apr 21, 2019 19:40
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DalaranJ posted:Yeah, I had a friend ask me how serious the game takes itself and just showed them that video. May I ask which video? Turns out, searching for 'hitman WAR CRIMES' isn't very helpful, given the existence of death squads in real life and so forth.
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Apr 22, 2019 01:50
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EimiYoshikawa posted:May I ask which video? https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1565967936 This is a screenshot of it. It's the intro for Miami IIRC
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Apr 22, 2019 07:04
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Jerusalem posted:If I remember right, Absolution introduced the instinct mechanic? If so, then it wasn't a total bad thing. Just mostly. Instinct was part of the stealth system in Absolution. Disguises didn't work unless you burnt instinct, discouraging you from using it to navigate. It was not well thought out.
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Apr 22, 2019 07:52
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You burned instinct for a lot of things- it could be used with a disguise to get past enforcers, specifically, but also for things like point shooting.
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Apr 22, 2019 07:56
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Absolution also killed the whole "every person in the same outfit as you can see through your disguise" thing by making it so bad. How the gently caress are these dudes wearing masks and pantyhose seeing through my disguise? Is everybody so drat close they can tell you don't belong? The Enforcer model is so much better.
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Apr 22, 2019 08:50
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From what I hear, Absolution actually played okay as long as you stuck to exactly the way that levels were clearly designed to be played. Which has been a recurring problem to various extents throughout the franchise. It seems in general it's taken the devs a fair while to figure out what people actually like about the game.
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Apr 22, 2019 09:09
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At least in absolution the guards would notice huge piles of blood on the floor iirc. The only thing I really didn't like about absolution was the fact that like half the levels were just "get from point A to point B" without anyone seeing you. The over the top anime-style cartoonish enemies weren't even a big deal and the mechanics were great compared to the previous games. It's just hard to call the game Hitman when half the levels are just Sneakman.
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Apr 22, 2019 14:12
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Lareine posted:Absolution also killed the whole "every person in the same outfit as you can see through your disguise" thing by making it so bad. How the gently caress are these dudes wearing masks and pantyhose seeing through my disguise? Is everybody so drat close they can tell you don't belong? The Enforcer model is so much better. Absolution was the only game that did that, afaik. Previous games had more complex rules where different disguises were more or less suspicious depending on other factors, e.g. as a Russian soldier, you could pass muster if you didn't stick around and were holding the right kind of gun.
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Apr 22, 2019 21:22
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elf help book posted:WAR CRIMES rules SUPER
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Apr 22, 2019 21:38
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Discendo Vox posted:Absolution was the only game that did that, afaik. Previous games had more complex rules where different disguises were more or less suspicious depending on other factors, e.g. as a Russian soldier, you could pass muster if you didn't stick around and were holding the right kind of gun.
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Apr 22, 2019 22:14
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Discendo Vox posted:Absolution was the only game that did that, afaik. Previous games had more complex rules where different disguises were more or less suspicious depending on other factors, e.g. as a Russian soldier, you could pass muster if you didn't stick around and were holding the right kind of gun. Wasn't that one of the things that Professional mode in 2016 did that 2 pretty much got rid of? Can only openly carry items appropriate to your disguise, so if you're a bodyguard in Paris you can't even pick up the pair of scissors just lying on a side table around the auction.
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Apr 22, 2019 22:18
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Nakar posted:Running was considered one of the most insanely suspicious things you could possibly do in Hitman 2 (the old one, not 2018). My, how times have changed. Fond memories of the weird power walk you could do by tapping the run button repeatedly that wouldn't arouse suspicion. Also that Hokkaido castle level where my whole strat was once foiled by 47's inability to mount a two foot high wall.
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Apr 22, 2019 23:06
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