Eurogamer Expo – Hitman: Absolution

You know Square Enix? Those fine folk who are publishing the new Tomb Raider game? Well, they’re also publishing Hitman: Absolution and I got to get my hands on the advance demo at Eurogamer and have a nice, relaxing sit down with Torben Ellert, Game Developer, from IO Interactive to learn more about the game.

The demo itself? Was freaking astounding. I will happily confess that Hitman: Absolution was a game that nearly stole the show for me. Without a hint of hesitation I would put it right up there in my ‘Top Three Games of the Show’ bracket. Why? Because it’s everything Hitman should be but with even more added. The graphics are shinier, the game engine is slicker, and the list of ways to kill people is longer than ever. I completed the demo mission 11 times and every time found a different way to assassinate the target, from a wild array of methods from crushing him with a pile of bricks to just walking over and gunning the guy down. My first play through I took so long messing around trying to poison sushi that my target wandered off to take a piss and I garrotted him in the alley while noone else was around. True story.

However, before I’d displayed my inability to account for toilet habits, I found out what Torben had to say about Hitman: Absolution.

Duncan: So, to kick things off, can you give us a bit of backstory on the plot of Hitman: Absolution? Or any insight into Agent 47 going into the game?

Torben: Without giving too much away; we’re going to see Agent 47 embarking on a fairly dark journey, he’s been betrayed by the people he trusted, and I think maybe for the first time the world’s deadliest assassin is actually angry. I’m pretty sure that somebody is going to regret that fact.

Duncan: Oh, no doubt. The game’s obviously been heavily improved for the new release, so what are some of the biggest gameplay mechanics and additions that have been added?

Torben: There are a couple of awesome new systems. Crowds, much more powerful, the fact that you can actually use a crowd to hide in plain sight. The new Glacier 2 engine is really, really powerful, it can handle massive crowds on screen at once. We’ve also done a lot of work on our AI generally, that really allows us to do these great emergence things where characters are doing things which you absolutely didn’t expect. Like, for example, a stall worker seeing you with a gun and then running to tell the police. The police would then come over to investigate and suddenly you have a whole new situation you need to deal with.

The way our disguises work is a lot different now, they’re a lot more complex, a disguise isn’t an access card any more. You do need to be aware that if you’re wearing a police uniform that officers might start thinking: “This two metre high, bald guy… Who is he, again?” You need to be a lot more aware to suspicion surrounding your disguise. You do have tools to deal with that, though, for example, using “Instinct” to blend in and get by them.

Torben: We’ve really looked at these things which were really binary things in the old games. Everybody knew you were a bad guy or everybody knew you were a bad guy. Your disguise got you in, or it didn’t. We said to ourselves: “Well, let’s make that more nuanced.” Put the player in control of what’s happening, so if the AI work out that you’re probably not who you should be, and you can deal with everyone who has seen you in that scenario; others may become suspicious of you again but they won’t magically know that you’re the bad guy. You can always deal with a situation. Like, again for example, pretending to surrender, or luring the AI away from an area, because the AI itself is communicative. The AI have to talk to each other to inform the others on what is going on. It won’t just all magically propagate as soon as you get caught out by one of them.

Duncan: Sounds great. So, to ask bluntly, what would you say is the one key feature that would sell Hitman: Absolution? The biggest and best part about it that would push it to the top of the charts.

Torben: I would say it’s that you can create your own contracts.

Duncan: Really?! [I asked excitedly, sounding like a three year old discovering Pop Rocks were a thing]

Torben: You can put a hit out, on any character in the game, on any level, and share it with your friends and online. You walk around your selected level, you can have up to three targets on a single contract, you mark your targets by pressing a single button on your controller or keyboard. Once you’ve marked them the way you take them out and the methods you use are recorded. However you take them out, whether it be by sniping them or by blowing them up or whatever, and how you do it, whether you get seen or not and where you hide bodies – that becomes the contract. Whatever you did becomes the rules of that contract. Maybe you have to take somebody out with a Morning Star, but you don’t where the Morning Star is on that level, so you have to explore it in a way you didn’t try before that contract told you to.

Torben: Once you complete the contract you get a highscore and a pay out. You can then earn money to upgrade your weapons or buy more disguises. Back to the hypothetical examples though. Imagine if there is a contract somebody made in a level full of cops. You buy a police uniform using your previous pay out. Then you have an advantage. You can change the rules because as long as you still fulfil the contract’s rules then you’ve cracked the code. You get a higher score, and a bigger pay out.

Duncan: Seemingly unlimited replayability. I like that. Will their be a central hub for these contracts? Or are they only shareable with friends?

Torben: There will be an online list of both your friends and complete list of online contracts. However, we will also be keeping an eye on all the awesome contracts people are making, we will be choosing some of them alongside some ones we make, and turning them into “Features Contracts”. These will then be available from a specific list in the Contracts mode, but we’ll also be advertising them in the pause menu. So if you’re playing through a level, and you pause the game, there might be a pop-up Contract suggesting “Take out the Sargent” and then you press a button and you’re in Contract mode. That way it adds tremendous replayability to every level because you can literally search out different Contracts mid-game without having to jump to a menu to do it. Suddenly, again, you’re playing a whole different way.

Then, suddenly out of nowhere, I was dragged out by a rather tall, bald man wearing an impeccable suit as it turns out I had to actually go and play Hitman: Absolution rather than sit there all day with Torben talking about it. He was a jolly nice guy for somebody who spent almost our entire meeting talking about killing people, and I’d like to thank Square Enix and IO Interactive for their time at Eurogamer. Now, I just need to sit here rocking back and fourth until I can get my hands on Hitman: Absolution. I’m already having a Contract come down.

Fortunately for all we won’t have to wait too long, as Hitman: Absolution will be released in the UK on November 20th.