Commenting the Fall and Rise Noclip Documentary sentence by sentence until release - Day 89:
it was really a tough time.
Previous days:
Oh, there you are, welcome to Copenhagen, Denmark.
Our target this time is a rather illusive one.
Despite being one of the most storied developers in all of Europe,
we know very little about what goes on at IO Interactive.
Which is especially unfortunate considering recent events.
IO Interactive, the creators of Hitman,
almost disappeared from existence when their parent company Square Enix decided to sell them off in 2017.
And so not only would we have lost one of the most creative studios in Europe,
but the story of how the company got to that point.
How they survived being dumped by their parent company
and ultimately, they brought Agent 47
back from the dead.
In this multi-part series we’re going to dive headfirst into the design of Hitman and explain how the team forged each location and the simulations that bring them to life.
But in today’s episode we’re going to try and answer many of the lingering questions surrounding the studios turbulent recent past.
how the decision to make Hitman 2016 episodic caused them massive financial strain,
and how much of the team that created perhaps the least well remembered Hitman game went on to create the greatest one.
Very well then, I’ll leave you to prepare.
I vividly recall the first day I went to work,
and I, you know,
that experience you get walking in the door and going, hey, I’m actually working here.
And I had that feeling,
back in the old office we had this staircase,
spiral staircase in the middle of everything.
And I caught myself even years after going up that staircase and going,
hey, I work here.
So it was, you know, to come from Denmark
it’s a remarkable place to work and obviously well known for Hitman and the Hitman series, absolutely.
Well there was this certain thing with the vibe of Silent Assassin
which was mainly around I think characterization and the feel of it
felt larger than life to me sometimes
or the way that 47 sort of came to life as a character, to me back then was pretty significant.
And I think many of my sort of in-game gameplay moments a lot of them seem to go back to Blood Money for me a lot.
I recall the Mardi Gras level
but this was just purely from a visual perspective
going like, what the hell is going on here?
It was to me, back then, mind boggling to look at.
Christian is typical of many of the leads at IO Interactive today.
He came on after the launch of Blood Money, a game that was released 13 years ago in 2006.
Given the age of this franchise, perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that there are only a handful of people at the studio who worked on Blood Money.
Even fewer who touched Contracts or Hitman 2.
And not a single person who worked original title;
2000’s Hitman: Codename 47.
By the time Christian had joined the studio
it was a very different place than the scrappy upstart that had created some of the best stealth-action games ever made.
The company was bought by Eidos Interactive in 2004,
had grown substantially in headcount,
and was developing multiple projects at once.
Including, a next generation of Hitman.
Yeah, so my first Hitman game was actually Hitman: Absolution.
Which is obviously a game that is for the fans been a hot topic.
Like, what kind of game is it?
There’s typically this interesting conversation saying
it’s a solid game but it’s not a Hitman game
and all these things.
And I recall back then sort of the mission briefing if you will
of what we were trying to achieve was to make Hitman very playable
because up until that point stuff like basic controls of the character,
getting the camera, getting combat
stealth action, all that stuff,
to really just feel like you could pick up and play the game like you would pick up and play any other console game
and then I think the deeper AI.
So some of the stuff that was happening in Absolution
where the AI actually spots you, it has full voice
to actually reflect back to you what’s going on,
which is obviously a key component of the gameplay in a Hitman game.
It was one of these, you know, how to not do things.
Where you have crazy ambition for the next Hitman
it was kind of the pinnacle a really good game and it think also after four Hitman games.
I think the creators there were maybe thinking to mix things a bit up.
like Mini Ninjas, some of the people have been there a long time and have got kids at that point
and they wanted to do something else than killing, I guess.
So-
And then Kane and Lynch.
Yeah, so some people wanted to kill more, I guess.
So different sides were emerging, right
and back when Absolution’s original concepts were kind of formed
it was the hay days
of Max Payne and Gears of War kind of things
and that’s where the trend was going and that’s what creatives wanted back then.
And that might’ve worked pretty well if the technology was ready.
A lot of content creators were sitting
and waiting for technology, technology wasn’t ready,
a lot of frustrations, a lot of finger pointing,
.