I haven’t touched my post in about an hour.
I also think H2 had many more visible changes to the mechanics than H3 had.
H2 brought compared to H2016 (initially + in patches):
- Sniper Assassin mode
Ghost mode- SA revamp(s) like being able to get back SA or having pacified bodies found in some cases
- SA tracker
- Briefcase
- Dart guns
- View cones are less… binary
- More agility-related animations
- Better combat (I never really embraced combat so I did not recognize much here)
- Master mode is a bit different to H2016 Professional mode… Idk I never tried either
- Map specific things
– Race cars
– Randomized target appearance (Maelstrom)
– Clue hunt
– VIP Npc (Constant)
H3 brought (initially + in patches)
- Freelancer mode
- Camera
- Number keypads
- Shortcuts
- Greatly reduced game size
- Map specific things
– Solving a crime
– Guard targets
– Surveillance drones
– Diana on the map
– Slapping contest
– Evading bypassing train lights
– Other 7DS stuff
But that is not a bad thing!
H3 is the last of the trilogy, made by IO without a publisher. One very important aspect had to be being a stable experience. Introducing hugely new things could have caused new issues IO might be required to invest years to make the game playable again.
I want to remind of the time during H2 when we were allowed to be found trespassing. Was fun killling franny and then asking the next guard to be brought to the exit. 
Some bugs are still there from H2, like being able to headshot targets in public while keeping SA because the target was hit with a Kalmer seconds earlier. I think we don’t need to drastically increase the list of issues by touching big parts of the engine again.
Regarding OP, I see most complains are because of voice lines or combat.
The first is not related to AI and only to the amount of money the devs were willing to invest into voice actors. I think they work well enough and I rarely see complains about it besides wanting more accents.
Combat on the other hand is surely not comparable to combat focused games. And surely everyone happens to stumble into that part of the mission often enough. But I think that is not the area the game shines at. You don’t have for no reasons so many (social) stealth abilities and mechanics. So much developing focus were put elsewhere.
The AI shines at so many things outside of combat. And also remember your PC is able to simulate the life of hundrets of NPCs at the same time, each being aware of the suroundings and the player, not just those in your proximity like in open world games or just a handfull of enemies in linear games like Resident Evil.
From a technical point of view I am amazed what all these NPCs do on my 2014 mid-range i5 CPU.
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Where’s the camera? Where’s the keypads and perma-doors? Where’s the Stamina meter, the slappers meter for Ambrose, the Rival for Envy. There’s a fair amount missing here.
If you’re gonna count “evading train lights” as a map-specific feature, I feel like that Perma-doors should be on there too.
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Right my mind excluded them already after I read your pos for some reason. I also don’t own the 7DS pack so I surely missed many from there as well.
EDIT: Fixed my list
I just think these things are not that huge. I sorted my list from big things to small things. And if I combined both into one, I see H2 things to dominate the top. Sure Freelancer would lead, followed by the other new modes like Sniper Assassin and Ghost mode… But the daily bread of missions and contracts for me got much more rich with the SA related things, the briefcase and dart guns than anything else after H2016.
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H3 also brought progression transfer 
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Again, you kept “evading train lights” as a feature, but not the more obviously useful Perma-doors.
H3 brought (initially + in patches)
- Freelancer mode, a completely unique Rogue Like game mode that greatly shakes up the gameplay formula. Also, praying to a painting.
- Elusive Target Arcade that lets players replay most, eventually all, Elusive Targets (well, ones not behind legal tape anyway)
- ICA Micro Remote Taser (a proximity version is also in Freelancer)
- The Goldbrick (Proximity Sedative Mine, Sloth)
- Devils’ Cane which drops coins if whacked over the head of someone. (Greed)
- Serpent’s Tongue (Crossbow that fires arrows that blinds people)
- “Bubble Queen” Gum (Sedative gum that NPC’s notice and pick up; plays a unique “I hope nobody see’s me” animation, Gluttony).
- Perma-door shortcuts to reward exploration
- Keypads and codes to lock up areas and reward map knowledge of codes.
- Faster animations so climbing isn’t the slowest thing on earth.
- greatly reduced game size on the disk (155GB to 72GB)
- Generally better optimisation of maps across the board (Including Mumbai, which no longer crashes every ten minutes)
- AMD FSR 2.1/ DLSS 3/ XeSS support
- Raytracing support
- Map specific things:
– Solving a crime as a detective
– The Camera being able to hack into various things (various windows in Dubai, security check in Chongqing), while able to act as Binoculars that can pause time. Also acts as a photo mode.
– Guards as targets that need to be identified
– Surveillance drones
– Diana on the map with unique player-esque AI (the Rival from Envy also has similar AI routines too)
– Evading bypassing train lights
– The Slappers contest
– Hotswapping targets (Pride/ possibly Gluttony)
– Stamina Meter (Sloth)
– Lust (An entire game mode based around finding Lust’s partner, which is randomly decided by the game before you start where you find keys and safes with intel on the partner).
– The Beacon thing Grey gives to signal the helicopter on Ambrose.
I think that covers a lot of it. I’m not surprised the Map-specific stuff outweighs the game-wide stuff, but that’s not bad I feel.
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Note I fixed my list with the stuff you mentioned initially.
It indeed is not bad. I never said things are bad. What I tried to say was that the game-wide changes were less, so one could get the impression H3 offers not enough after playing the map-specific things a few times.
H3 focused on optimizations and deliberately evaded changes that affect many many things that could break in the progress. Instead the new stuff is mostly well isolated. The camera affected items, the keypad and shortcuts are mostly stationary and sophisitcated versions of what we had before: prompts. You approach them, you use them to trigger an event, and the functionality ends there. Besides details like the game remembering your shortcuts or NPCs can now pathfind through them, it cannot potentially break the game. The developing work is more foreseeable, and that is important for the trilogy’s last game.
If they had not released Freelancer, the game could be wrapped up in a good state already. Good idea to finally bundle the trilogy in one game now!
People who did not try Hitman yet now have an incredibly good game without IO having to bring new global mechanics.
People who did play Hitman to a great extend already were gifted Freelancer without IO having to bring new global mechanics (outside Freelancer).
I think there can’t be many players right now not being happy with the current state like OP.
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I saw, I had to adjust my own list.
And that’s fair, I have my own grievances, and I’m glad the game is more accessible to everyone now.
I wouldn’t go so far as to label Lust an “entire game mode”, it’s just an escalation with a specific original mechanic like all the other 7DS.
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I dunno what else to call it other than a one-stage escalation, and at that point you may as well call it a mini-game mode over an escalation.
I concede you may have a point there.
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Can add to the H2 list:
- NPCs able to see in mirrors.
- Sniper shot location AKA ‘triple shot’ mechanics to address sniping insta compromised bugs (and allowing for many new tactics).
- Introduction of ‘playstyle ratings’.
- Picture-in-picture / event notifications.
- Instinct no longer slowing down the game (subjectively an improvement - I hated looking at a target slowly making their way in instinct and then realising I’m making it slower by looking)
- Improved HUD/UI across the board both in-game and in menus (H3 also changed stuff, but it still follows the H2 skeleton mostly).
- XP tracker to replace that god-awful slow moving ‘Explosion Kill’… ‘Unnoticed Kill’… ‘Accident Kill’ thing, levelling system.
- Flash grenades, both thrown by guards and usable by player.
- Tasers & therefore more flexible electrocutions in e.g. puddles (not sure I would count The Big One’s quirky behaviour as it made no sense, was not known by most, and probably unintended).
- The fire extinguisher and propane switcheroo changes, which sparks and tasers interacted with, making propanes useful and amazingly flexible tools for creativity (in short: more systemic).
- Accident KOs.
- Comedy. AKA bananas, rakes, slippery puddles.
- More flexibly poisonable rooms (there’s the atrium in Bangkok in 2016 but H2 stepped it up with rooms you could dose with the poison of your chosing, more systemic)
- Introduction of thematic escalations (the basis of most of H3’s post-game content)
- Proximity exits (weak I know, but stuff on the H3 list is kinda weak too)
- Car batteries
- More diverse and useful unique items, e.g. micro audio, proximity micro explosive, ICA Flash Phone (best item in the game fight me), a fricking TRIPWIRE, emetic grenades, remote emetic, red tie kiwi, magnesium pouch, lil’ flashy, shaman powder, explosive pen, RFID Explosive.
- Mark 2 items with ‘Signature Look’
- Sewer grates.
- Foliage.
- Pretty sure birds and stuff weren’t in 2016?
- EMP charge! Even retroactively having many uses created for it in 2016 maps.
- ‘Map Discovery’ challenges, which keep track of where you’ve been on a map (tbh this encouraged exploration for me more than shortcuts did in H3).
- Fuse boxes already existed, but they started being used for more interesting things in H2, such as being able to disable the cameras around the necklace in Isle of Sgail. In 2016 it’s largely just visual things that only distracted NPCs AFAIK.
- Map specific:
- Not just race cars, but the entire concept of Sierra being a target with two completely different states of existence. Big twist on the formula.
- Not only Maelstrom’s appearance randomising but him convincingly imitating civilian NPC behaviour when in proximity, making it difficult to spot him out even if you know exactly where he should be at a certain time. Still blows my mind to be honest.
- If hyper-specific stuff like slapping contest, train lights and surveillance drones can be included for H3, let me give some quick-fire mentions to: cranes, explosive packages, industrial fans, electroshock interrogation, booby-trapped cave, a hippo, Maelstrom’s memoirs, muffins you can place on plates and poison, tripwired safe room, letterboxes, wake mission story which doubled as Blood Money homage, flaming torches that again work systemically and ignite propanes and light fires, armoured knights, breakable crates, kill switches, portculisses, NY vault with lasers and everything, NY postal chutes, fire hydrants, jet skis.
- The most elaborate mission story (Cashmerian), only beaten out by Mendoza’s meeting stuff.
EDIT:
- Also ‘faster animations’ is mentioned as a H3 thing but I believe H2 did that partially too. It certainly felt like the gameplay in general sped up to me.
- If we include stuff like the ‘stamina meter’ in sloth, surely we include all the specific objectives introduced in H2 escalations, like number of KOs, witnesses, stuff like that? Some of these things later went into H3 escalations and Freelancer. I honestly can’t claim to know of that many though due to not having spent much time with H2 escalations (I felt 2016 escalations were better personally).
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The best addition H3 made was the table flip in Berlin.
How out of all these emoji is there not a Germany flag?
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This is absurd. Because its “common sense” that the more expensive a game is priced, the more efficiently and smartly the developers will work on its mechanics. Lmao.
The AI has a couple bugs in how they panic, and they can be a little rigid in how they react (they’re supposed to be easy to manupulate - it’s a puzzle) but there’s still a bunch of impressive complexity in how they sweep rooms, form up and hunt, or convert others to their scared/alerted/curious/hiding state based on proximity and everything thats going on in one level.
It looks like you’re expecting some super deep, unexpected, self-learning Skynet AI, and that would be terrible for both humanity and the stealth-puzzle experience of Hitman
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Introduction of ‘playstyle ratings’.
This was done in Absolution, and later expanded on in Hitman 3. It wasn’t in Hitman 2 at all; only the star system:
I don’t think that qualifies as a new mechanic, that feels more like a balance change. I agree, I hated it the slo mo too, but I can hardly call that a new mechanic.
As did Hitman 2. You’re making a distinction here without much of a difference, especially since you made a distinction for Instinct slo mo being new (yet based on something old) while trying to minimise H3’s contributions to the UI changes (I’d argue the UI between 2 and 3 are basically identical).
The 2016 escalations were similarly thematic, although H2 did start the trend of specialised event escalations. Although I wouldn’t put 7DS or even the Deluxe Pack escalations as the same type of escalations referred to here, they have markedly different design choices.
Some of the things on the H3 list are I’ll admit, but not everything. Quit it with the downplaying.
That is…debatable. A lot of the items you’ve listed either aren’t diverse or all that useful (or even unique):
Micro audio devices are essentially superseded by radio’s and coins, and really anything you throw. The game is generally pretty good at giving you distractions to lure people into confined areas, and coins and dropped items have a decent radius of hearing anyway, so this is a very specific and niche item. Not useless, just niche.
The Shamans’ powder is a concussion duck, which is hardly new. The only new thing about it is the smoke color.
A tripwire that takes 20 minutes for people to go over while avoiding other NPC’s. I used it precisely once in H2, and a second time in H3’s freelancer because the targets’ loop was so small. And this is ignoring any collateral damage it may cause.
RFID explosive, while genuinely unique in coding, is woefully overdesigned. I get the idea, the target picks up a coin and then they explode when they go near the explosive, but literally any explosive is faster, and some of the proximity explosives can be placed without suspicion, meaning you get a similar effect. It just isn’t useful.
I would be very surprised to learn that birds weren’t in 2016. Can someone who has access to Sapienza in 2016 check for us?
Honestly, with how buggy map discovery was/ still is, I never really took the time to check every room off of the map, in part because it’s just not all that exciting. And I do not believe that second part for a moment.
Yeah, I think that disqualifies it, more use-cases or not. It’s not a new mechanic.
Not really? The animations did get changed, but not to be any faster, I think it was more updating the animations to look better. Again, this feels like a balance change, not a unique mechanic.
I’m reasonably sure some of those mechanics were in 2016’s escalations. Again, someone with better knowledge of that game can confirm it for me.
de … 
But anyway. How 'bout that crazy AI? /tryingtostayontopic 
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You said this the last time we discussed this so I tried to find an example.
The animation speed change I remember the most is vaulting over large obstacles.
H2016: (0:17min if timestamp embed did not work)
H2 (0:13min)
Not all animations did change, like vaulting over small things, such as through a window of the hut right behind that, it is the same speed.
Note that the change might have happened in a H2016 patch but I am really sure that was not the case.
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Admittedly it is possible due to the GOTY’s other sweeping changes, but yeah, i’m sure H2 started it too.
There’s not really much else to say, OP is underestimating how hard AI work is, and how messy it can be. Hitman truly is a one of a kind game, it;'s why players are so fascinated by the outcomes of certain things.
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Doesn’t matter what was done in Absolution. Doing it for the trilogy obviously required all new work and we were talking about what each entry did for the trilogy. Technically it was done in H2:SA if you’re just talking about the idea, just like briefcases were done first in Contracts. But yeah I’m mistaken, it was implemented in H3 for the trilogy. So that’s in H3’s favour.
Still a change brought to the trilogy. “Doesn’t qualify as a new mechanic” also applies to many things you listed: reduced game size, faster animations, map optimisations, AMD FSR etc., raytracing.
Not similarly. H2 started the trend of the style of escalations that went into H3 ones. People really liked ‘the Delgado somethingorother’ (where you start ‘tied up’ in Rico’s basement) as a refreshing change to the escalation formula, and that was taken as a sign that more would be appreciated (with mixed results). Something I’m less sure about is whether it also started the trend of restrictions like restricted loadout and such.
Downplaying of what? The H2 mechanic I mentioned? I could say you’re downplaying the stuff I’m mentioning. Quit with the repetitive accusatory language and learn to take a discussion in good faith.
Just like you listed stuff like ‘The Slappers contest’ which isn’t that unique. It’s a mission story minigame. There have been both mission story minigames and other minigames before.
They are very different in what they offer to gameplay. I would accept more that they are superseded by other audio devices, because they operate similarly. However you listed the micro taser which was superseded by the taser in Hitman 2. Micro audio devices allow pre-planned, precise manipulations. That may be ‘niche’ to you sure, but for me and a bunch of people they are pretty awesome. “Stop downplaying”.
That detonates on impact, making it more useful actually quite useless. Honestly it’s not an item I even like much, but it still counts as one of the many new and unique items added in H2. You list the Devil’s Cane which is just a large KO item that spawns a coin. We’re either going to nitpick over the subjective qualities of each item or we’re just going to accept all newly behaving things as additions. I’d rather not nitpick.
Just because your ability to use it for what you want is limited doesn’t diminish what the item is and how unique and honestly cool (if you can’t at least admit it’s cool, I don’t know how we’ll ever relate on anything lol) it is. It required more work by devs than a micro proximity taser for sure.
Also just reminded me of another added thing I forgot: electro phone. Yeah, I know. But still, it was new and kinda cool like the first time you used it. The micro proximity taser in Freelancer is basically the same as that without the added step of ringing it.
“Woefully overdesigned”? Really? From someone accusing me of downplaying things? That’s the weirdest reason to dismiss a new feature/item. And again, just because you can’t see the uniqueness or appeal in it doesn’t invalidate it. But I am seeing now why you might be arguably undervaluing what was added in H2. And as mentioned before, I’m happy to chalk the difference up to opinions and leave it at that.
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In Freelancer it’s pretty good at blowing up safes! And doors in a pinch. Sadly it can’t blow up cars 