I wouldn't say they didn't learn anything from Absolution, there's just too much hand-holding at the moment. Sure you can create accidents and assassinate the target in different ways, but the way to do them are placed inside an "Assassination" tab, visualized by an image, every costume and assassinate opportunity are in "Discovery" tabs, so that when you put on a disguise or find out how to trick the target into testing the emergency launching system in a jet aircraft, they get "ticked" in one of those tabs like an achievement. It's best to ignore them and discover by yourself.
Disguise works in a weird way in this game, I feel like the game just randomly decides who can see through your clothes and who can't. In the first mission, there are 3 guards on the right side of 47, 1 standing inside a wooden cabin and 2 in front of him. Their positions were like this:
A
B C
At first, I lured B into a corner, subdued him and took his clothes. When I came out, A and C saw through my disguise. However, when I did the same with C, A and B didn't give a fuck for some reason.
I also did a small experiment with the "stay near target to trigger conversation" situation, the result this time is hilarious. If you don't follow Ritter's partner and instead go straight to his place, he will talk to his girlfriend for a bit and their conversation ends at the same time when the partner comes. However, when you stay around the partner, he would wander at the bar, go out and check out the scenery, 3 times (I feel like this is a bug), then ask a guard to lead him to Ritter's place. At this moment, Ritter and the girlfriend's conversation triggered, so the partner had just stood there like a statue and listened to them until their conversation ended.
Mind you, these are just small levels, I really wonder how the game can fuck up more in big, complex levels. The game sure does feel more open, sandbox-y, weird button mapping just like Blood Money, but it has too many problems at the moment. I think it wouldn't be Absoluteshit 2, just not the Blood Money 2 we've been expecting.