First Impressions and Small Details

Hitman: World of Assassination
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I’ve got to Berlin. The feeling is… pure despair, lifeless machine going agains the badies in a very… techno way. It reminded me of what i feel when i listen to Regis, Maurizio or GAS. The nature of the world (the forest), the moral nature of the human being (the hedonism) and finally, our nature as 47, the killing machine that won’t stop and is capable of eliminating pro ICA agents without any moral or skill problem.

My ranking right now is:

  1. Dartmoor 9,5 (i’d place it in the same level as WC, Hokkaido or New York in terms of fun, it’s a very replayable map with a lot of little details to see and enjoy)
  2. Berlin 9 (what i’ve said before. Besides that, a very unique map with lots of space for a lot of things)
  3. Dubai 8 (it looks very nice, it’s fun and it’s a very standard Hitman map, i don’t think it will be very… memorable compared to the others, but it’s great nonetheless)

My absolutes 10 in the series are Sapienza and Miami. I hope Chongqing or Mendoza are a 10, but i’m really satisfied at this point.

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I’ve only played Dubai and Dartmoor so far, but this thread is called “first impressions” for a reason I imagine.

The story is extremely promising. The cutscene following Dartmoor was the best this trilogy had to offer so far, story-wise.

Music is top notch. The music in the opening sequence of dubai gave me some H2:SA vibes.

Game keeps everything that’s good about previous instalments.

Some minor bugs were noticed. Should be easy enough to iron out, bug report thread would be nice. Stuff like emetic not worknig in certain glasses and 47 getting stuck after lockpicking.

Vibes of the first two maps are brilliant, very easy to navigate but still fun to explore.

My main gripe is with how the first two levels are too easy. I know it’s also about the player challenging themselves by setting higher standards, but when I finish Dubai Silent Assassin ranking on a second try, and Dartmoor on a first, I feel there’s something wrong. Dartmoor required some time figuring out where the case file is, but nothing challenging that surpasses the difficulty level of the initial stages of a point-and-click adventure game. The assassination was almost as easy as killing Luca Wood in the ICA facility.

Same for Dubai. Even without mission story guidance the (in)security challenge was a breeze to find out about, and carrying it out was even easier (the classic “target dismisses his only protection” scenario, which is starting to bore me). Also story-wise this annoys me. So little background checks by someone who’s so notoriously elusive/reclusive. And I can already easily guess other easy ways to get to Stuyvesant. Ingram was also very easy and straightforward. The man is drinking a whisky that’s never under surveillance. What is this, a tutorial? This makes the encounter of these “Providence” targets quite anti-climactic.

Honestly, I like a bit more hoops to jump through to finish the basic missions SA. Dubai required maybe 5 key actions at best, and none of themw ere hard to figure out.

Or maybe I’m just too good at this game now. It feels more and more like an immersive story-telling experience, and I still love it for that, but where is the tension? When I think back of starting levels in the Hitman Codename 47 or even Blood Money era I knew I was going to die a couple of times before getting it right. None of that here.

The abundance of suit collecting is slowly but surely giving me the Pokemon “gotta catch them all”-vibe. Not much of a fan either, but at the same time it’s impossible to resist.

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123

My first impressions despite the buggy launch (even then the game itself has been surprisingly polished aside from scripting errors in Chongqing) are positive but I’d like to get some speed running experts opinion on this: do you think this game has less content or replyability or weaker maps than Hitman 2? Because that seems to be a recurring thing from the subreddit, and I’m wondering if my first impressions will turn sour when I realise the game isn’t as sprawling and nonlinear as I think it is from a couple of playthroughs.

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Played a little bit last night before heading to bed. Dubai looks amazing and I spent a lot of time just wandering around and exploring. Got SA on first time through, but can’t wait to explore more of it later. Got a bit into Dartmoor, but was getting late. Dartmoor looks amazing from the starting location.

So far lots of the mastery unlocks are a bit lackluster, but other than that no complaints.

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I loved this so much, walking infront of the camera. Her reaction is priceless. I freaked out when I saw she is in argentinia aswell, and yet again, you can walk infront of her and annoy her. :smiley:

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Posted this in the shortcut thread but thought it’d be worth posting here too -

So what are peoples initial thoughts on the shortcuts?

From what I’ve seen…I’m not a fan.

I enjoyed the system in 2016 and 2018, whereby you essentially unlocked optional shortcuts through mastery. Then, every play through of the mission, you can decide - you want the lockpick, place a breaching charge in a stash point and start in a secure location already dressed as a guard.

Right there, is a well created system whereby you devise your own shortcuts and they are created individually every time.

The persistent shortcuts I’ve seen, and I’ll admit I haven’t seen all of them so this may be more of an individual critique of their use in specific missions, they almost make the mission too easy. I understand these are still optional, but I find it hard to play as 47, sneaking past 4 guards to obtain a key to unlock a door, when I know I’ve already unlocked a ladder which i already walked past 4 times that’ll get me where I want to go far easier.

Can I ignore the ladder, sure.
Is 47 an idiot for doing so? Yes.

All of that can be negated if the option to unlock that ladder/door was a choice I made at the start of the mission depending on my load out and starting location.

Everyone else’s thoughts?

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128

a-freakin-men. this whole trilogy has felt like an audition tape for Io to score the 007 license. I’m happy they got it so hopefully future Hitman games start to feel more like themselves again. not to say the trilogy has played badly, they’re fantastic games but the disconnect in style from the IP is overtly jarring to me

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hahahaha laughing with the Chongqing briefing

47 says “i will leave you to prepare”. Well done, 47!

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As what I’ve seen, tried and experienced so far, all things are still the same being just carried over from HITMAN 2

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load times on PS4Pro are GREATLY improved for all three games within H3. Whittleton Creek made the PS4 sound like a hair dryer, now it runs quieter. They added a bunch of cameras in places in H2 (haven’t really checked H1 yet). My main first impression was the menu music. Excellent! Hitman 3 has that Contracts/Silent Assassin vibe.

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Holy crap that sounds hilarious. I know what I gotta look for next.

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First chongqing playthrough:

I’ve never felt so good shooting everything a la John Wick than in the ICA facility basement. I killed Imogen and when someone found me, i made through the three floors killing every guard. The sound, the new bullet impacts, man… IO is the perfect match for the 007 game.

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The WoA feels more like a Hitman type of game to me than any of the previous games do. They’ve delivered my exact idea of what a Hitman game is and what it should be, and I wouldn’t be at all unhappy if they took a similar tone whenever the series returns.

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Gameplay-wise I agree, but the aesthetic of previous games is completely gone.

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I’d say the Blood Money aesthetic is still very much there, and that’s the aesthetic that I personally like. I came on board the series with Contracts, but I’d still happily say goodbye to the aesthetic of the non-Blood Money earlier games if we were keeping BM/WoA vibes going forward.

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138

Managed to get my transfer done finally and have just finished playing up until the halfway point. It might be because I literally just finished the mission, but I LOVE Berlin! I’ve wanted that vibe and enemy agents in a nu-Hitman game since the first episode of H1 came out. Granted, it seems like the agents are just ‘super enforcers’ that don’t have new ai attached to them or anything but it really changed the pace even so.

Excited to get through work ASAP tomorrow so I can play the rest.

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I really like the tweaks they made to sounds overall. From locking onto targets, reloading a gun or shooting someone. And shooting the pistol feels more satisfying aswell

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yeah, especially hand to hand punching , although I try to avoid it. More oomph. Hopefully they just leave this things alone. Hate that they removed the neck snap sound though. I am just now finding out they removed the trespassing areas on the mini map. It’s ben a while. I know. Why? I have been gunned down for no reason other than stepping foot in a trespassing area, and getting out quick. Happened in Dubai a few times.

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Yeah, it kind of just switches from being fairly hard to very easy. I’m mainly thinking of Berlin where there’s a frisk point at the entrance with no way around it and I was like “Oh cool, finally a frisk point you can’t just easily get around! This will be great for contracts!” then I unlocked the shortcut next to the frisk point and went “… oh”.

So basically like you said now I’m worried it’s taken away the potential puzzle aspect of some contracts such as “How do you get through this frisk point to bring the required weapon?” “How do you unlock this door when your inventory is full of non-lockpicking stuff?” etc. Just one more reason this game seems to have focused on story at the expense of all other content :frowning:

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A while? Try at least 4 years. I’m pretty sure that’s only been – I think – in the 2016 Alpha/Beta, or so I’ve heard. None of the full games have indicated trespassing zones on their maps.

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