PREVIEWS
hitman: absolution
As dead
as disco.
latest info IO Interactive explains how assassination has evolved
The first IO Interactive has shown of the next Hitman game looks like a departure from the series. The last game, Blood Money,
exemplified the best of what the Hitman
games had become: open, freely roamable
environments in which no one is hostile to
you until you do something wrong.
Infiltration was based around finding the
right disguise, and there was very little
actual stealth.
The first video of Absolution shows more
sneaking in the shadows than playing
dress-up. It shows hostile environments
where Agent 47 can’t afford to be seen. And
it shows a sequence in which you’re fleeing
across the rooftops of Chicago, evading the
searchlight of a circling police chopper. It’s
not at all what we’ve come to expect, so we
asked game director Tore
Blystad whether it’s
representative of the rest
of the game.
“There are times in the
game that we want to
dictate a part for the
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player,” Blystad says of the chase sequence,
“but it’s quite rare and in most of the cases
we’ve decided against it after play-testing.”
IO wants Absolution to tell stories.
“What’s always worked well in the Hitman
games,” Blystad says, “is the strange and
often seedy stories the player could
You can kill whom
you need to kill and
sneak past whomever
you don’t.
encounter throughout the levels. It’s very
much a voyeur game, where you often feel
like you’re watching something that you’re
not supposed to see. We spend a lot of time
integrating the situations and dialog into
the game, and the level designers work
closely with the script writers to get the
best possible drama out of the levels.”
In the same mission as the helicopter
chase, an overheard clash between rookie
cop Fizano and his sergeant adds a degree
of humanity to characters that could
otherwise be ignored. “There are all kinds
of personalities, and they have their own
little feuds and disputes,” says Blystad.
When 47 subsequently takes the rookie
police officer hostage during IO’s
demonstration, the moment becomes a lot
more charged. “We get a lot of comments
from our playthrough—where 47 kills
Fizano—saying that it’s unfair. When the
players get their hands on it they can
choose the outcome by themselves.”
The chatter and scripted events that
make up these stories go on while you play,
so how much of them you experience
depends on your play style. If you’re
interested in what’s going on, you can hide
and listen to the whole thing. If not, you
can kill whom you need to kill and sneak
past whomever you don’t.
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