I looked a bit more to the Arcade situation. And the “release the vanilla ET” demand (that for the record I kinda share as a first wish)
I think we should look at the menu showed in the Year Two Announcement video :
ETs will release multiple time each.
Everytime with theit own complications. And as disliked as the complications currently are, they are not chosen randomly. They each have a narrative.
When the ET will be reused in new contracts they will show up under a new gameplay narrative.
Right now the Ellipses is a “isolate and clean everything up, nothing left in the open” narrative, but maybe when the Liability and the Ascentionist are reused in the Vitae it will be like the Codices : headshot only, not a lot of social stealth with limited disguise change, so encouraging a sniper approach. Or maybe it will be poison, who knows.
The design intent is gameplay narrative. Vanilla ETs will not happen in this mode (but it should have been clearly communicated from the start)
I actually like this approach. It could be a good way to experiment.
There is nonetheless a few issues with it :
- the naming convention/nomenclature of the contract should have shown that. The current name point to the target as the central point, not the methods (which therefore are a left field surprise).
- only one batch was released, so we can’t really see that distinct, curated narrative are made and that multiple will exists for each target. (not a negative per se, but it will certainly be because of that that changes won’t happen soon : the full reveal and understanding has not happened yet)
- using the complications as they are is not the best. As both @TheChicken and I said, more general complication could have been better
Because now let’s imagine what could be fun with it.
The Proloff Parable deluxe escalation has a “non target elimination will not count against Silent Assassin”.
Let’s imagine an arcade contract with that !
This would be novel and a load of fun.
(@Travis_IOI, @Clemens_IOI honestly if the narrative via gameplay is the intent of the Arcade, at least please give us some that are fun and the opposite of more restrictive. So much more is in the Hitman toolset)