HITMAN 3 - final chapter of the nu-Hitman trilogy - now available on Steam

[Agame]

Good job IOI you are killing my interest in the franchise and retroactively making me not want to play the previous 2 games now.

I’m sure they’ll be shattered to lose a non-paying customer...

Would have been a day one purchase for the record.

Imagine being this emotionally traumatized over having to use a different fucking game store.

I know right? Imagine having ethics and morals that are more important than buying a silly little computer game.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Not super sold on these new reflections. They look very nice and don't hit the framerate hard at all. They're the big new thing in the older levels especially. However like RTX reflections I feel like they've gone overboard to show them off. Just did Marakesh and the parking garage's floor is like a mirror. When's the last time you were in a parking garage and the floor looked like a mirror?

Just downloaded it from the "High Seas", but stopped playing after 5 mins. Without my progression from 1 & 2 and the cheevos locked out whats the point?

Good job IOI you are killing my interest in the franchise and retroactively making me not want to play the previous 2 games now.

So yea, fuck you, you pooh bear cum guzzling assholes.

I can't deny those are the most beautiful levels I've seen in Hitman yet, but from what I saw in Digital Foundry's video, the retrofitted previous Hitman games' levels again look worse in 3 than they did in Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2 respectively. And it's mostly because of the overdone reflective surfaces. Digital Foundry are into tasteless shilling of course, drooling over every change in Hitman 3 as if it's guaranteed to be for the better, but you need to trust your eyes and judgement. Mirror-like surfaces like that don't exist in real life settings. Probably things will improve when raytracing is patched it at a later point.

Regarding the missions themselves however and the overall atmosphere, I couldn't be more put off by Hitman 3. It's Hitman at its worst for me, and I don't think I'll even buy it when it comes to Steam. I hate depressing, dark, moody locations and love the cheerful and exotic ones, contrary to many. I also don't give a rat's ass about 47's story or the uninteresting characters that it constantly throws into the plot without any proper introduction. I just refuse to try to follow this garbage and want to play spy assassin on a mission-for-mission basis. This Hitman 3 campaign is the opposite of what I want.

I loved Hitman 2016's locations - Paris, Sapienza, Hokkaido, Bangkok, Marrakesh. The only one I disliked was Colorado, which was pretty much a linear thing with slight branching. Like playing Strike at Karkand in a single player sneaking game.

The quality dropped notably in Hitman 2 - Miami, Mumbai and The Isle of Sgail were good, but I didn't like the others that much. It was going into the dark and edgy territory again.

It's notable how all three games are front loading their most 007-like locations - Paris, Sapienza and Miami, and then progress to the grittier and more "serious" ones. In Hitman 3 it's the same, with the Dubai map being in sharp contrast with the rest of the locations but being in the center of marketing. I highly appreciate the detective minigame and C&C in the Carlisle estate mission, but it can't make up for a brighter setting. I guess it's intended something of a nod to a mission from Contracts, but that was a mission I didn't like either, featuring ghosts and crap. The only location I'm looking forward to seeing is Chongqing.

Also what is this "camera" bullshit? 47 is V now, "scanning" objects of interest with his camera to progress the mission. Instinct is not enough, should have given him Witcher sense Also who carries a camera around in the age of smartphones?

 

[DemonKing]

Finished tonight. The Argentina level was pretty fun and I got in some nice kills. The final level might as well have been a cutscene as it’s completely linear and just seems cheap compared to the other levels.

Luckily the retailer I got it from offers 7 day no questions asked returns. I’ll probably repurchase when the ultimate edition comes out with all 3 games and DLCs.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

Since they gave the story an ending; decided to play the games. Playing through Hitman 1 using Hitman 2 right now. The tone seems very contemporary and feels more like modern spy movies than Hitman, don't like it. They removed the awesome rating system from the og games, sucks, now it's Silent Assassin or nothing. Guess you have to reload spam if you want satisfaction. All I wanted was a Professional rating. The gameplay itself is rather messy, I want to play without instinct, but there is no way of knowing what's behind a door without it. And there are so many items that it's hard to tell what can be interacted with and what cannot be, without using instinct. I don't like that some people notice you wearing outfits garbage either, it feels odd when other dudes literally greet you calling the name of the dude you knocked out for the outfit.

I take back the thing about instinct, the game is much better without it. The minimap shows guards & even shows the ones that will notice you. Should've turned off that instinct crap long ago.
The game trained me on using that garbage, it taught me all the ways to not enjoy it. Now that all the crap, all of it! is off, the game feels like OG Hitman.

Now I can get pissed off at shit like this instead, like wtf all I did was knock out guards. Does storing two guards in the same container suffocate them or something! My fckn Silent Assassin rating down the drain..

 

[cretin]

guys hitman 2016 GOTY or hitman 2?

I'm not going to buy them without playing them first so its not an issue of value, but H2 is a fucking gigantic install and H1 isnt and i hear some vets the og missions are better without h2 changes.

 

[AwesomeButton]

guys hitman 2016 GOTY or hitman 2?

I'm not going to buy them without playing them first so its not an issue of value, but H2 is a fucking gigantic install and H1 isnt and i hear some vets the og missions are better without h2 changes.

I'd take the 2016 version because I find the locations more fun.

 

[kangaxx]

Personally I'd get whichever one gives you a better deal on all the content, but YMMV of course.

 

[Ghulgothas]

guys hitman 2016 GOTY or hitman 2?

I'm not going to buy them without playing them first so its not an issue of value, but H2 is a fucking gigantic install and H1 isnt and i hear some vets the og missions are better without h2 changes.

Dunno about the vets, but Hitman 2 plus the legacy pack is mine choice. H1’s unlockable tools are much better than H2’s.

 

[DalekFlay]

Went out of town for two days but I've put a lot of time into the first two maps. Dubai is fine but it just feels very been there done that to me. I mean the whole game in some sense is just more of the same and it's probably good this is the end, but Dubai kinda highlights that for me by feeling a lot like the other hotel event type levels. Dartmoor is much cooler aesthetically and feels much more unique, I like it a lot. The detective story is perhaps too emphasized, but you can absolutely ignore it and do a lot of other things. Perhaps too easy to get to the target's office, but oh well. The challenge in this game is usually figuring out the challenges.

 

[kangaxx]

Definitely sounds like a 2022 Steam sale kind of deal for me.

 

[fantadomat]

LoL another garbage hitman game hit the fan. The franchise was at its peak when it was about killing randos for money,not when it went on grand crusade against rich white people. Did they even killed a nigger or a jew in this shit game? I just watched the first three missions and it was really repetitive and boring. The disguise mechanics are outdated and stupid at this point. In the first games it made sense since he was unknown to its target. But you will think that a bunch of people that hunt him will recognize him even if he has a cook outfit lol. The disguise retardation is really jarring in the first mission in dubai. LoL you see some famous african fixer talking with the some secretary. She say that he need to get checked by the guards if he wants to enter and to come and talk to her once he accept it. You slap him in the bush 10 meters from here,take his clothes and go talk to her and she doesn't recognize you even if you had changed his race and grown bald in the last 3 minutes.......buahahahahaha yeah fuck off garbage game.

 

[Mikeal]

LoL another garbage hitman game hit the fan. The franchise was at its peak when it was about killing randos for money,not when it went on grand crusade against rich white people. Did they even killed a nigger or a jew in this shit game? I just watched the first three missions and it was really repetitive and boring. The disguise mechanics are outdated and stupid at this point. In the first games it made sense since he was unknown to its target. But you will think that a bunch of people that hunt him will recognize him even if he has a cook outfit lol. The disguise retardation is really jarring in the first mission in dubai. LoL you see some famous african fixer talking with the some secretary. She say that he need to get checked by the guards if he wants to enter and to come and talk to her once he accept it. You slap him in the bush 10 meters from here,take his clothes and go talk to her and she doesn't recognize you even if you had changed his race and grown bald in the last 3 minutes.......buahahahahaha yeah fuck off garbage game.

Well...
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Kalvin_Ritter
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Dalia_Margolis
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Reza_Zaydan
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Ezra_Berg
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Maya_Parvati
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Patrick_Morgan
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Adeze_Oijofor
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Bartholomew_Argus
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Richard_Ekwensi
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Inez_Ekwensi
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Wazir_Kale
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Vanya_Shah
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Dawood_Rangan
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Zoe_Washington
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Sophia_Washington
https://hitman.fandom.com/wiki/Ajit_"AJ"_Krish

 

[fantadomat]

Buahahahaha just saw that they are charging 60 bucks for a 3-4 hour repetitive game.

Well...

You forgot this one you dumb cunt lol.



Looking at old hitman videos is really depressing how much the game has fallen. At hearth the game was about assassinations and actions,most of the kills didn't even had an accident option lol. Now it is all about strip a guard,run around to explore,push a few buttons and watch as some retarded incident happens lol. The disguise is really broken this moment,i laughed at the china mission lol. They have experiments for mind control,you just slap the test subject and change clothes and nobody fucking notices that you are different person or different race lol. The game is made for dumb cash pigs at this point,it has nothing of value at this point. Every mission is the same,go in,make tow whitish people die from an accident and then leave.

 

[DalekFlay]

Berlin is an awesome level, one of the very best from all three installments. Unlike the stupid attempt at unique assassination mechanics with the maelstrom, Berlin does it well by having you identify the targets in a more pleasing way. Atmosphere is great, probably the closest you'll get to Contracts in a 2021 mainstream game.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Berlin is an awesome level, one of the very best from all three installments. Unlike the stupid attempt at unique assassination mechanics with the maelstrom, Berlin does it well by having you identify the targets in a more pleasing way. Atmosphere is great, probably the closest you'll get to Contracts in a 2021 mainstream game.

Man, Berlin of all levels is "one baddie patrolling a corridor each floor of a multi-story building". Their patrol routes don't even intersect. Shooting the camera control system is a no-brainer. You get a silenced gun from the first target who tries to rush you when you enter the radio tower. The whole building is something designed by an intern. The only fun is the first time when you don't know how many the targets are and where they are. It's a strictly one-off thing, though it does have atmosphere when you are approaching it for the first time.

 

[Ghulgothas]

Chongqing's my favorite of this season. Definitely the best of the dense, urban jungle levels they've done alongside Mumbai and Marrakesh. But doesn't make the fatal mistake of placing the target's fortresses at opposite ends of it.

 

[DalekFlay]

Man, Berlin of all levels is "one baddie patrolling a corridor each floor of a multi-story building". Their patrol routes don't even intersect. Shooting the camera control system is a no-brainer. You get a silenced gun from the first target who tries to rush you when you enter the radio tower. The whole building is something designed by an intern. The only fun is the first time when you don't know how many the targets are and where they are. It's a strictly one-off thing, though it does have atmosphere when you are approaching it for the first time.

Not one level in this entire trilogy is difficult gameplay wise, and every target has a standard route, so I'm not sure why that's a criticism of Berlin. The only difficulty is figuring out the challenges if you turn off hints, or maybe SASO runs on master difficulty.

 

[fantadomat]

Man, Berlin of all levels is "one baddie patrolling a corridor each floor of a multi-story building". Their patrol routes don't even intersect. Shooting the camera control system is a no-brainer. You get a silenced gun from the first target who tries to rush you when you enter the radio tower. The whole building is something designed by an intern. The only fun is the first time when you don't know how many the targets are and where they are. It's a strictly one-off thing, though it does have atmosphere when you are approaching it for the first time.

Not one level in this entire trilogy is difficult gameplay wise, and every target has a standard route, so I'm not sure why that's a criticism of Berlin. The only difficulty is figuring out the challenges if you turn off hints, or maybe SASO runs on master difficulty.

Props for the mission,it has the most realistic club in a game for sure.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/how-io-made-the-hitman-trilogy-its-stealth-masterpiece/

How IO made the Hitman trilogy, its stealth masterpiece
And why the reviews made the developers cry.

Hitman's World of Assasination trilogy has come to an end, and it went out in fine style. I enthusiastically slapped 90% on Hitman 3, a beautiful, brilliantly designed stealth game that features some of the best levels in the entire series.

Developer IO Interactive is still hard at work fixing bugs and server issues, but I managed to convince game director Mattias Engström, and executive producer Forest Swartout Large, to sit down for a chat about the trilogy, that incredible Berlin level, and the future of Hitman.

This trilogy kicked off in 2016 with a Hitman reboot, which was originally released episodically. It was a departure from the previous game, Hitman: Absolution, which had a mixed reception (including a pretty critical review from our own Tom Francis), meaning IO had to win back the old fans.

"There's a lot we wanted to achieve with the reboot," says Engström. "There was the globe-trotting element. That is a big part of Hitman, and essential to this World of Assassination trilogy. Travel the world to perform all different kinds of hits, and let the player be creative."

"We took lessons from Absolution," says Swartout Large. "That game was a... departure? Maybe that's not the right word. A tangent? With these games we wanted to go back to the roots of Hitman."

"It's not a Hitman mission if it doesn't have a hit," says Engström. "There's always gotta be a hit in a Hitman game, and I think that was a key takeaway from Absolution. It was more linear, more focused on storytelling."

This return to open sandboxes paid off. The levels in this trilogy are incredible things; vast, intricate machines with a thousand moving parts that react dynamically to the player in countless interesting ways. I ask the developers about how they build these remarkable puzzle boxes.

"It's about making sure there's enough space to explore and to be creative," says Engström. "It also has to be an environment where the target lives or has a purpose. Sometimes we have missions where the target is a little detached from the location, which is always harder to work with."

"It's really about finding a space where the target belongs, and it should feel real," he adds. "Places that might not exist in the real world, but you imagine they could. That's a huge part of designing these levels."

"Visiting locations and gathering reference material is very important too," says Swartout Large. "We have studios in Copenhagen and Malmö, so we're fortunate enough to be able to easily travel around Europe. Our art director and the lead environment artist travel a lot."

"They went to Dubai early in the course of Hitman 3's development," she adds. "They went to the Maldives and Mumbai to research those locations for Hitman 2. We don't want to be perfectly accurate, but we do want to evoke the smells, tastes, and sounds of these places."

Hitman's levels often feature contrasts. There's Marrakesh, which is split between an old, crowded marketplace and a cold, modern Swedish consulate. Chongqing has dark, rain-soaked streets above, and a bright, hyper-modern research facility below. And Sapienza's idyllic Italian coastal town hides a high-tech viral research lab in the caves below.

"We always have a goal to work with contrasts," says Engström. "Not only in a single location, but between the different missions too. If you look at Dubai, it's this brand new building, new money, with gold everywhere. It's very in your face. Then you go from there to Dartmoor, which is this dark, old money mansion. Creating these contrasts is always part of the design process, for sure."

Spoiler

"A great example of a strong contrast within a location in Hitman 3 is Berlin," says Swartout Large. "You start with a cold open at a gas station in the forest, alone. Then you move to the beating heart of the level, the warehouse rave, and it's such a stark contrast to the coldness and isolation of the forest."

Ah, Berlin. The best level in Hitman 3, and if you ask me, the entire trilogy. In this mission, set in a warehouse rave on the outskirts of the city, 47 is being hunted by ten other hitmen—five of which he has to identify and kill. It's a break from the usual series formula, and incredibly atmospheric.

"You start Berlin alone on the road and you're wondering what's going on," says Engström. "But even later, when you're standing in the middle of this crazy rave, you still feel a sense of Agent 47 being detached from what's going on around him. It's hitting the same feeling, but with different notes."

"We had a pretty good feeling about it quite early on, actually," he says when I ask if the studio expected this level to be so well received. "We have people on the team who are ravers and love the club scene in Berlin. So we have a lot of enthusiasts, and that really helped the level."

"There was location scouting for sure on this one," says Swartout Large. "The main level designer for this mission actually lives in Berlin, and did a lot of photographic reference and recording sounds."

"The feature implementation was pretty late for Berlin,," she adds. "There was so much passion for it, and a lot of people felt really strongly about how it should play and how the targets should be presented. It was probably the mission that had the most expensive effort throughout the entire course of development."

"Yes, definitely," says Engström. "Especially with the target identification and how we would present it, how we would tutorialise it. You don't have a handler, you don't know what's going on when you arrive, so how do we explain this to the player without the common tools we usually have in a Hitman game? It took some time to get right."

I ask the developers how they keep a hold on everything in these massive, complicated levels. There are so many parts to the mechanism, surely it could all fall apart at any moment?

"I'll let you in on a secret," says Engström. "A Hitman level is crap all the way until it's not. And that can be a long time. It's easy to break, and when it's breaking it's awful. That's because there's so much to keep track of."

"There's all these systems, then all the scripting that happens on top of the systems, and then players who can do whatever they want," he adds. "It's a big moving theatre piece that you're moving around in. When the player starts messing with things the systems take over, then it all has to fall back into place and still work. It's a lot of effort to make that happen."

"Any time we're talking about changes to AI behaviour, in particular target behaviour, all of the stakeholders on the team have to come together and analyse and discuss, to make sure we're not abusing the game in a way where the players won't understand or it'll be too broken," says Swartout Large. "Making a Hitman mission is an act of courage and trust."

"You have to trust the systems and you have to trust the other team members, because it can be fragile working on this big clock and tweaking the machinery inside it," she says. "It's a huge relief when it works."

That relief extended to the game's reviews, which dropped a day before the game was released. IO got together and watched the reviews come in, and the studio was delighted when it received high scores across the board. Right now, Hitman 3 has a higher OpenCritic average than the previous two games.

"The day before release we watched the reviews come in together, and it was amazing and joyful," says Swartout Large. "I cried. It was very emotional."

"Yes," says Engström. "I was a sobbing mess."

But that doesn't mean it was time for IO to drop tools and move on to the next thing. Hitman's online features mean the game has occasionally been stricken with server issues, there have been issues with importing levels on PC, and there are of course bugs to iron out for future patches.

"For me and QA and a lot of the team, we didn't celebrate," says Swartout Large. "We were grateful and happy and proud of the reviews, but we still have players that cannot play as intended, so I haven't celebrated yet."

"A lot of the team hasn't," she adds. "But we're hoping to very soon, once all the issues have been sorted. Fundamentally, the game is good. We shipped a good game. We just need to fix the final issues in terms of the server, bugs, and progress being carried over."

Hitman 3 is the most creative and experimental entry in the series yet, and it's clear IO is having fun mixing up its established formula. "A lot of it comes from mastery," says Engström. "We've been able to master the tools, but also how to design a mission. We're pretty confident as a team."

"That allowed us to be more experimental in Hitman 3, and do things we'd only dreamt about before," he adds. "We might not have been able to pull them off back then, but here we had the courage to be a bit different."

One of the best examples of this new experimental streak is the Dartmoor level, in which Agent 47 plays detective and solves a locked room murder mystery straight out of an Agatha Christie novel.

"It's something we've talked about many times in bars over beers," says Engström. "What if we could do a murder mystery, and how would we do it? It's not really core Hitman, but it's also a fantasy a lot of people have."

"Hitman is about role-playing, where you can take a disguise and play the role of a barber, a mechanic, or whatever," he says. "And I think this is the ultimate role-playing fantasy. There are a lot of fans of murder mysteries on the team. The idea really connected with us, so we just ran with it."

"It's been a dream of the team for at least five years," says Swartout Large. "When I joined the team almost five years ago, it was a thing then."

With the trilogy behind them, I ask the developers about what lessons they learned along the way. "I can't remember if I read this in a review, or it was on a forum, but everything in Hitman is a Chekov's gun," says Engström.

"A lesson we've learned is if we put something in the game, and it looks like you can do something cool with it, it should lead to an interesting outcome. If that expectation is not met, it's gonna be a letdown. So we're more careful about putting things in the game world if we can't fulfil that promise."

"Missions can also be too big," he adds. "We definitely reached our limits in Hitman 2 with Mumbai and Miami. It's better to be a little sharper and more focused, to create a more polished and coherent experience. Big levels aren't necessarily bad, they can just be overwhelming and exhausting to replay. We actually see fewer players returning to the bigger missions."

I'd be happy for IO to just keep releasing levels for this iteration of Hitman, and I wonder if the developers feel the same. "Personally, I feel like I could work on Hitman forever," says Engström. "It's an awesome thing to work on. We have a game where one minute you're walking the catwalk at a Paris fashion show, then the next you're playing the drums in a band. It's a series that allows for so much creativity, and that's very satisfying as a developer. I love it."

"I would really love to make an airport level," says Swartout Large. "It's wonderful and fun to dream of new mission ideas and interesting targets and settings. But with this trilogy we wanted to set Agent 47 free, and in many ways, we've set ourselves free too.

"Hitman is our IP. It's IO's IP, and it's important for the studio," she says. "In one way or another we'll keep Hitman alive, and we will keep working on it. But as developers, as creatives, as ambitious people, it's exciting to look to the future, at new platforms and new technologies. Allowing ourselves to be free from the current constraints and formulas lets us dream bigger."

 

[Ghulgothas]

So... any word on that fix for Season 2 owners?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

every few days i have the thought
- why haven't i tried this already?
- because you haven't played the previous installments.
- but it has them inside.
- well, also windows 10.
- point.

 

[fantadomat]

So... any word on that fix for Season 2 owners?

Yes,buy it on epic lol. After three seasons there is like a full game....a 180 dolla game .

 

[DalekFlay]

Took my time and spaced them out but finished every level a few times finally. All in all it is more of the same, though you can tell they tried to shake things up a bit with darker, less upscale settings and some new mechanics. Still, no one will mistake these for 6 new "episodes" in a... what, 20 episode series? Like an episode show such as Star Trek I wouldn't really rate any "season" above the others, they all have standout episodes. For me Berlin and Chongwhatever are up there with my favorites from the first two, like Miami and Paris. Mendoza might be great too but I need to play it more. Dubai feels a little been there done that. Anyway... no need to write much, this is more of the same, you know if you like it or not.

The last level is kind of an all climax Splinter Cell level, FYI.

 

[pidstuff]

Mendoza's a fun level. I specially liked Diana assisting me in that wine tour.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Hitman: Codename 47 > buy one DVD or digital version
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin > buy one DVD or digital version
Hitman: Blood Money > buy one DVD or digital version
Hitman Reboot Trilogy > go to Steam page, see 30 things to select from for EACH of the 3 games. Maps, DLCs, whatever. Spend 30 min trying to figure out which of these you should get if you just want to play the game. Then, realize that each game can be played in next game's engine. Spend another 30 minutes trying to figure out which DLC you need for this. Spend a subsequent 30 min trying to put it all together into one thing you can actually buy. Draw up a Venn Diagram to keep track of everything better, with a linked spreadsheet. By the end of this period, all enthusiasm and interest in the game is gone, and you go look for something else. Gamin' in 2020s.