Was away for a few days for some personal stuff, but here we go. I’m gonna address these two things from the Elusive Target Arcade thread because one ties into the subject from here, and the other is partially related to the same question.
Play as intended means play as Agent 47: take your time, stalk your prey, so what you have to do to get the target into a position where you can take them out without being seen, and then escape. I’d you have to throw 30 coins to achieve that, then that’s what you have to do. Running up to the guy, shooting him in the head, then running for the exit, is not challenging, not fun, and nothing to be proud of.
The game is intended to be played as 47 figuring out how to get to his target, take them out, then escape, without being seen. It is not intended to be played speed running or guns blazing. The player can choose to do so, and the option to do so has be set into the game for those who want it, but that’s not how it’s meant to be, that’s not how it’s crafted. The stealth approach of using disguises, triggering events, locating useful items, quietly and carefully is how the game is meant to be played, with the others included as extra for those who don’t want to do it that way at that particular moment. Besides, didn’t you say the game is a puzzle game? Now you’re saying it’s for however the player chooses. Which is is it?
That was my point; you used your video on a target where there was no risk. Dimitri goes to three places on that map, one of which has no NPCs in close proximity, so there’s no chance another person will pick up the phone that you didn’t intend, and it’s not a restricted area, so you have full access to the same place. You tried to make your example by doing it where nothing could happen except the target picking up the phone, and you did it in a location where there was no chance of you getting caught for being there to place it, because you were allowed to be there. The only possible risk you had was that if you’d stood closer to the building in the spot where he picked up the phone, you might have been caught in the security camera, but that was it. In my previous post, I went over in detail an example of how you can’t do that with every target in the game, or even most targets.
You say Hitman is a puzzle game, and you’re right about that. Killing the target, however, is not the puzzle; the puzzle is getting to them without being caught, taking them out without being caught, and then leaving without getting caught. Solving the puzzle means taking the actions needed to accomplish that. In your video, you performed no puzzle solving action, because you showed your example on a completely exposed target in a neutral area. All you did was walk, open a door, drop the phone, and trigger the phone. You can do that with this target. But with virtually any of the other targets, such simplicity does not exist. You have to pick up passes, get disguises, unlock doors, toss distractions, pass pat-downs, enter restricted zones, climb through windows, vault over obstacles, climb pipes, all without being seen or triggering an alarm. Killing the target is the simplest thing, and how you can kill them depends on what you did to get to them and where you are when you do. But any action you take other than simply walking right to them and killing them, like you did, means engaging in the puzzle.
Let me provide an example: Galen Vholes of A Bitter Pill, poisoned wine glass kill, Silent Assassin, Suit Only, no knockouts. You can start with the poison in your inventory, have it in a drop off, or get the pill jar from Helen West’s basement or get one of the poison frogs behind Cassidy’s house. If you do anything other than starting with it in your inventory, you are already performing puzzle-solving action: how to get the tool you need to perform the task, the tool in this case being the poison. Getting to the target is as simple as walking to his house, but to get in through the front door (without being caught), you need a disguise. This example is suit only, like your video, so that is not an option. The only other possible way to get to Vholes is to either unlock the door to his fence, or jump over the fence. If the poison began in the inventory, then this is the first puzzle-solving action taken: how to get in. Take the stairs down into the basement, and then the next stairs up into the house. This is also puzzle-solving behavior: avoiding the people inside by taking an unobserved route. Open the door at the top and move immediately to the kitchen, the open door shielding you from view of those in the living room and at the front door. You put the poison in the wine glass.
At this point, poisoning a wine glass is as simple, by your standards, as dropping the electrocution phone. In fact, it is even more certain to kill the target, because if you left the phone next to the wine glass instead, there is no guarantee that the NPCs wandering the house won’t see it and pick it up before the target does, and obviously in this house you can’t drop it in front of him without a disguise because being spotted by anyone ruins the SA ranking. The poison, however, is guaranteed, because absolutely nobody else will drink from that glass. So by your standards, poison has the phone beat. Anyway, retrace your steps back to the street and wait by an exit for the target to die.
Your method, of simply walking directly to the target, opening an unlocked door, dropping the phone, triggering the phone and waking away, is impossible. You would have to take some other action; get a disguise, trigger an evacuation to get Vholes outside to an unrestricted area, hop/unlock a fence, wait for a patrol to move past you before acting. You would have to do something to get that phone in front of him. Your video with Federov is impossible in this scenario, and virtually all others in the game.
Having said that, you want to make a video, ok then. I want you to make a video doing what you did to Federov to another target. I want you to do it to Silvio Caruso, or Reza Zaydan, or Claus Strandberg, or Jordan Cross, or Sean Rose, or Rico Delgado, or one of the Washingtons. You said, quoting yourself, that you can do what you did in that video with every single target, and so you must do it exactly how you did it in that video. I want you to walk straight to the target and drop the phone in front of them and trigger it. You can do nothing that I have identified as a puzzle-solving action. You can take no disguise, you cannot throw or activate any distractions, you cannot climb through windows or climb pipes or ledges, you cannot vault over any rails or tables, you cannot hug a corner, you cannot crouch, you cannot dodge guards by waiting for them to pass and then going, you cannot unlock any doors, you cannot equip any tools to assist you, you cannot trigger an evacuation to bring the target to you. The only thing you can do, as you did in that video, is walk, open doors that are already unlocked, drop the phone, and trigger it. I will also make an allowance for one thing you didn’t do in the video, and that is eliminate the target in a restricted zone, because all the targets I offered you are only found in restricted zones, but you cannot throw the phone into that zone to get it there. All of these prohibited actions are steps to solving the puzzle of getting to the target and avoiding being caught, and by your logic that the phone does not contribute to the puzzle solving aspect of the game, you can perform none of them in using the phone. You also cannot start the game inside the place where the target is in a pre-equipped disguise. You must start at the default starting location and walk straight to the target without stopping, and without performing any of the actions I listed, and drop the phone in front of them, then head to an exit after triggering, still only walking and not taking any actions to solve the puzzle of getting out unscathed. You must do all of this without being spotted in the restricted zones.
That is the challenge you claimed you could do and that’s what I have set for you. Make your video following those requirements to replicate the same conditions that you had in your first one, as you said you could, and if you cannot, then you are wrong about being able to do that same thing to literally every target, as well as the phone taking away the puzzle aspect of the game. If you try to claim that those actions I listed are not what you consider part of solving the puzzle, I would first ask what precisely you consider a “puzzle” for this game, then, and secondly I’d point out that our disagreement over what constitutes the puzzle aspect of the game means that your claim about the phone is entirely subjective.
The thing is, IO didn’t remove the phone because it was over powered and took away the challenge aspect of the game; they removed it because of the number of complaints they received about it being such from people who felt that it was allowing unfair victories in speed run competitions, with a few claiming that it made ETs too easy for good measure.
Anyway, there’s your challenge. I’ll leave you to prepare.