Himan 3 is still a great game, but in only 3 days playing I already finished all challenges from 5 maps and some escalations while exploring every corner, I remember when hitman 2 came out, it took me an entire weekend just to finish Miami, I just wish it lasted a little longer.
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I felt it was short for both Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2, and Hitman 3 was no different. The story was finished in about an hour and the challenges/escalations was finished in about a week. To me it’s the gameplay that makes it bloom so it lasts longer, although there are other ways to keep me occupied for a while.
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having played 2016 and H2 for the past 5 years has drained me, honestly. im glad H3 was something shorter and easier to digest, because i really cannot resonate with the people who just want More More More of this formula.
thats just me though… still love this game and everything. i just dont want More :’) H3 was the perfect way to cap this entire ride off
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Yes, it was about time to end, but I noticed some gaps in the game tha could’ve been more challenges or inspired assassinations but I think IOI also got tired of working on this same formula for all these years.
Hitman 3 was universally praised for the quality and polish of the product.
I prefer quality over quantity. Delicious, well portioned meal in a nice restaurant over an all-you-can-eat buffet of overcooked, tasteless food.
Too many Triple A games are filled with bloat. I finished Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, but I had my fill half way through, and was rather annoyed at how repetitive and undercooked it was.
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I like medium size maps so I am pretty happy with them. I do think there’s an argument to be made that 5 medium sized maps represent a drop in value compared to 1 and 2. I still got tons of hours out of it though, so I can’t complain really.
the whole reason the train level exists is because they had a limited budget. if they had the money to contract SUMO again, they would’ve probably just used it to make a full sixth sandbox themselves. but that’s not the case
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Not really. Sure we had 5 real maps instead of 6 but that was the case for HITMAN 2 as well for the longest time.
I can see the argument for it being shorter but I think most of it comes from us knowing the formula inside and out and just being better at playing quickly.
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I’ll just say this, HITMAN works best when each individual game stands on its own. The WoA Trilogy doesn’t necessarily hold up in this regard given they shared the same proverbial DNA throughout the past 5 Years.
HITMAN 2 brought the most change in the Trilogy by retroactively adding in PiP, Suit Case and Bushes throughout the Hitman 2016 maps which brought new flair to the Locations, Colorado is a good example of this.
HITMAN 3 I’m still looking for those fan requested features that aren’t a half baked camera concept, and QoL improvements to the Suits Menu. HITMAN 3 is the easiest in the series. This should be evident over the lack of Master Difficulty Challenges with that being said it’s also the shortest which isn’t inherently bad since HITMAN 3 and it’s level design has been solid throughout the whole title with the only one lacking in this regard being Carpathian Mountains, but again this isn’t bad.
It’s good that the series is going on hiatus, it needs it because burnout is becoming apparent at-least for me and would like to see the series come back feeling new and refined.
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I dunno how do you guys play it but Hitman from 2016 still is not finished, Hitman 2 still is not finished and 3 months in Hitman 3 is not finished for me… how old are you?
I don’t think that Hitman 3 was too short at all. There have been games that were genuinely too short for their price to me. Something like Destroy all Humans I felt was too short. I was done with that game in just a few hours and never have gone back into it. According to Epic, I’ve played Hitman 3 for 9 days, 11 hours and 37 minutes. That’s a lot of value for the cost that I put into it (to me anyway).
I’m also satisfied with the length in another way too. I have played games that were long. I have played games that were TOO long too. We all have games I’m sure that you get to a point where you just feel like the game needs to be over. Lego Batman 3 was like that for me. To this day it remains the only Lego game I haven’t 100%ed. I just go to a point where I lost interest in doing the same thing over and over to get one more brick. Other games like Red Dead Redemption 2 were long but didn’t feel like it.
Hitman 3 has so far felt fine in terms of length. I have no issue with how long it took to get through the main campaign and if I want to continue to play it, the ongoing escalations, elusive targets, and featured contracts have given me more than enough to maintain interest.
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True that the train level was affordable on a limited budget, and it seemed to me that the choice IOI made was either the train level or a return to the institution (bringing the trilogy to a full circle).
I do recall though that Mattias Engstrom, chief designer saying that the last level was also meant to be linear as a metaphor for Agent 47’s story arc, one whose destiny was tied to his handler.
The only non-linear part of the last mission is in the decision to kill of the Shadow Client and then be let loose and free, or where you decide to inject yourself and restart yourself again as Agent 47 tied to his handler.
The introduction of Diana as a character in the previous level to the last, Mendosa was a purposeful turn for narrative to encroach into the gameplay with Diane in the game instead of having her in a cutscene.
And then the last mission is purposefully set up where gameplay is more or less supposed to be a linear cut scene until the very end where your choice is whether Agent 47 is to set free “to the sandbox” life choice or returning as the dutiful, faithful servant to the choices made by his handler as the life choice leading to “a linear” future.
Mattias Engstrom emphasized that missions were deliberately designed to be unique from each other and maximizing in contrast, which often meant tone and environment, but perhaps included linearity (of the last mission) vs sandbox (the second last mission) in gameplay.
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I still say the last level was fine as a linear level. I get that people felt that IOI lied to them with the “6 levels of 20 mastery each” thing and they felt like they paid for 6 levels and only got 5 but I think that the Carpathian Mountain level was a fitting last level to tie off the game. If it had been a full 20-mastery sandbox level, you’d have people finding some way to beat it without ever seeing Edwards, doing the whole thing in 47 seconds, or some other nonsense way to finish it that defeated the point of it being the “last” level. The End of the WOA was never going to be anything other than a prologue.
I can understand the argument that IOI should have provided 6 “full” levels plus the train we got, but for what it actually is and what was actually released rather than wishful thinking, it’s fine.
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I definitely agree with this, and I’m also thankful I didn’t have to replay and re-complete a bunch of Hitman 2016 challenges again (and H2 for that matter). I know there’s plenty of stuff I did in 2016 that I just couldn’t push myself to do again in H2.
Although, I am kinda two minds about this. On the one side, I really enjoyed the short and concise presentation of Hitman 3. Each level feels like it does exactly what it sets out to do with the environment and they’re used well-enough in terms of Target routes and Mission Story areas that you can get a hang of them pretty quickly. (some of this might also be due to being used to the formula)
On the other side, I’m a bit sad it was so short. It feels like it’s missing some things, especially in terms of Challenges.
I had to complete every single challenge in Chongqing to get to Mastery level 20, and I’ve never had to do that before. The only map I’ve ever gotten full completion on is the ICA Facility and Hawke’s Bay, but that was long after getting full Mastery. Every other map has always been so large and has so many challenges to tackle, it’s really daunting to think about getting them all checked off, and I usually don’t. – However, I do miss the feeling of having a lot more freedom in choosing Assassination challenges to complete or finding hidden Feat easter eggs for that bit of Mastery XP.
I’m sure when H3’s content cycle is over, new players won’t have this issue, but for someone who has played through Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2 at (or near) launch, H3 feels like a more restrictive game, challenge/collectible-wise.
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IMO, Hitman III is not really too short in terms of levels. They’re some of the best and I think they nailed the “right” size for a Hitman level.
There is something missing in H3, though. We got no meaningful new items. The new mechanics (keypad locks, shortcuts, the camera) are restricted to the new levels and are not that interesting, TBH. We “lost” ghost mode and multiplayer sniper, but we got no new mode. Well, there’s VR on PS4, which looks really cool, but eh, I don’t care. Plus, if you don’t want vomit on the ceiling, keep me far away from VR.
It seems like there’s a million mode ideas that would fit Hitman and leverage the existing levels that are going unused: roulette mode, roguelite mode, Pro mode 2.0, difficulty fine-tuning à la Hades Heat mode, bringing back the Hideout, etc, etc.
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It was short.
I would’ve preferred Diana to die IMO.
If another game would come out Grey would’ve been the handler, if you owned any of the WOA games or completed the story in H4 or whatever you wanna nickname it you would unlock “Diana mode”: Having her return as a handler, non canon of course
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What you are saying about Hitman III being the best of Hitman in terms of level design, but lacking in something, that is, in new items or game mechanics, is directly a result of the personnel that IOI invested into Hitman III.
There was only one lighting artist, and one gameplay mechanic programmer put on Hitman III (his name is dubbed “Clank”). “Clank” was devoted mostly to Hitman VR, not basic Hitman III.
The team devoted to Hitman III was composed of experienced level designers at the top of their game, “who could do this stuff in their sleep” in making polished iterations of Hitman.
More was also devoted to story, and meaningful narrative compared to the previous entries in the Trilogy.
So what Hitman III turned out to be was exactly what IOI had invested in Hitman III, that is a team that could make incredibly polished well designed levels, but they didn’t have anyone in serving any other facet, such as game mechanics.
Hitman VR was incredibly hard and required more resources of IOI than expected, but the team dedicated to non-VR Hitman III was determined from the outset, and IOI created Hitman III under the budgetary constraints that they set for themselves.
And based on the sales, it was the right move.
There appears to be a choice in using Youtubers/video game websites for chosen Feature Contracts for post-release Hitman III, to increase the visibility and take advantage of free advertising for Hitman.
In reality, there are only a small dedicated base who play the Feature Contracts and
the previous community-created Feature Contracts were generally conceived to challenge the core Hitman experts.
I completed all Feature Contracts from Hitman2016 and Hitman2 and they have been generally on the very hard to nearly impossible side, often requiring a deep understanding in how to exploit Hitman’s game mechanics and utilize weird oddities associated with some levels or items. Some were a chore rather than fun because of the excessive restrictions and requirements needed to complete some of the Feature Contracts.
inch resting… why would you want grey to replace diana? surely not because of his yummy voice
I want more and more of this formula, but your opinion is winning, IO won’t make more of this.
Even then, what is another formula for a Hitman game? This is the definitive formula, any other would be worse or it would be changing the game too much
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Something similar to C47 or H2SA. Have 2 smaller missions leading to a 3rd, bigger one. Wouldn’t mind if they incorporate some ideas from Freedom Fighters where depending what location you chose first, it will weaken the second or complete one of the first 2 easier missions and have the ability to jump to the 3rd bigger one but be more difficult since you skipped a part. There are other ideas that IO can come up to IF they want to 
Also I wouldn’t mind if not all missions are just one huge cube sandbox. Some missions can be linear like Hidden Valley and At the Gates but less broken
Maybe sprinkle some scripted events like the SWAT attack in Hidden Cargo maybe or eliminate targets that are in moving vehicles, some of the old formula but perfected with today’s tech.
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