Ugh. Just failed a mission after trying to get a “collateral kill - firearms” or whatever it’s called on Ambrose Island.
I emetic’d a guy to get him to go to the port-a-potty by the ruins, then knocked another guy out to drag him over there and Striker them both. The guy I was dragging died when I dragged him through a puddle of water two centimeters deep. I tried to lure a guard to the port-a-potty instead. It didn’t go well.
Really, I get characters drowning if they’re in deeper water, but people drowning when you’re dragging them through fucking puddles? Not a fan.
What are the rules for failing a mission but just getting an x and then continuing the campaign? I think I just failed the entire campaign every time, so how does it work?
If you fail on a non-alerted mission it will just alert a few levels in the current syndicte but you will be able to continue the campaign (you will still lose half your merces and whatever you were carrying if you were killed though). Failing on an alerted mission or a showdown will end the campaign.
Took some time to reflect on hitting 1,000,000 merces.
The heart of Freelancer seems to be the very thing so many are resisting. If removing Silent Assassin as a rating wasn’t enough, iO designed the objective generator in a way where it’s impossible to meet every one of them all the time. It’s not a flaw. It’s a choice. The choice is “In this rouge-like iteration of the game, survival takes precedence over perfection.” Not to get too heady or give the devs too much credit, but you could take it a step further and say the choice is “In life, perfection is an elusive target few ever achieve. You’ll be much happier if you accept the goal of doing your best and moving forward. 47 clearly has.”
I’ve had GOAT on the mind, so gameplay has been about “return on time investment.” By a slim majority, I’ve maximized most payouts, but as I’m not playing Hardcore at the moment, if the prestige objective promises to double or triple the amount of time it’s going to take to complete a mission, hard skip. “No Combat” doesn’t stop me from sniping. Half the time, “Perfect Shooter” gets ignored. “Hide Target Bodies (If Convenient)” Really, I’ve only been bothered with failing an objective if I forgot to bring the necessary tool. Once every few campaigns, I’ll fail every payout objective. Don’t care so long as the targets are dead and I’m alive. It usually means that particular mission was exciting.
But no matter how disastrously any one mission falls apart, there are always more queued up at the safehouse.
If that is the heart of Freelancer, then IOI completely lost sight of everything they’ve done over the last 20 years. Making a mission have objectives that can’t be completed no matter what the player does - and everyone really pay attention this time because this doesn’t seem to be sinking in - is NOT A CHOICE. Making an objective where the player can fail if they screw up or don’t prepare right, that’s a choice. Hitman has always been about being able to be perfect if you want, be messy if you want, or just have fun if you want. By designing the mode in such a way where one of those is not possible, they are taking choices away, not giving us choices. If it was by design, like I’ve said before, putting the objectives into the mode should have been abandoned altogether and just let us complete each mission in whatever way we want and earn the max money and rating by how well we do, not whether we complete little side projects. If having the objectives in place and permitted to generate in such a way that the completion of one can become a pure impossibility is an example of being the heart of Freelancer, then I’d have preferred IOI not even bothered in the first place. That’s more un-Hitman than anything Absolution ever did.
They made the wrong choice. Hence, I don’t think they made that choice deliberately, for the ones that are absolutely incompatible. Most of the situations that come up with that can be circumvented, for the most part, so if they made any choice, it was only that the odds of purely conflicting objectives coming up was so negligible that they didn’t need to address it at this time, or they overlooked it completely. I highly doubt the deliberately chose for there to be incomplete-able objectives.
You might be right. Could’ve been an oversight. I guess, we’ll find out in future patches. For the time being, I’m giving them the respect of assuming they made a bold choice in an attempt to reinvent the wheel and stood behind it despite knowing it would lead to growing pains for some people.
If that is the case, your objection to their choice is pretty well-documented and I can relate to your resistance to change. This just happens to be a change I’ve enjoyed so far. However, I completely disagree with the sentiment things should be perfect or not exist. That’s a recipe for constant disappointment.
I’m not saying it has to be perfect or not exist: but with Hitman, the option for perfection must be present, or it’s not Hitman (Codename 47 being an exception as it was mostly experimental).
Some things only change by ceasing to exist. The option for perfection in Hitman should be treated as one such subject. It can change when Hitman ceases to exist.
Absolution being another exception (top rating changes based on mission, some sections are unrated), all the Hitman games that end in a shootout being another exception.
All the missions in Absolution can be completed perfectly, and Blood Money is the only other game that ends in a required shootout, and neither of those are official contracts, so the killing of every NPC during those two specific shootouts actually is finishing it with perfection.
“Perfection” changes meaning in half of the sections of that game. Only sections with targets can get ‘Silent Assassin’, sections without them require getting evidence to get ‘Shadow’, but evidence can be ignored if there are targets. In one mission the rating system is broken and ‘Veteran’ is the top rating. Some sections don’t care if you kill everyone and get spotted.
Freelancer also has the most similar rating system to Absolution. The top rating is ‘Traceless ICA Assassin’. If you want perfection, go for that every time.
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin’s last level is also impossible to do Silent Assassin.
