This might just be a “me” thing, but I’ve felt that a lot of the recent CelebrET mission briefings have felt off. In comparison to the other Hitman 3 ET’s, these ones have a whole different vibe. I’ve been looking back at them to figure out why and I think I’ve come up with some reasons as to why, but one stands out in particular. If anyone else noticed anything else, feel free to add on.
One major thing the recent CelebrET briefings don’t have are sound effects. Even all the way back to the Collector, each briefing added sound effects to make certain aspects of the scene stand out. Footsteps, radio chatter, sound effects when text appears on screen, even cuts contain a sound effect to make the cut feel more smooth. On every CelebrET since the Drop, there have been no sound effects their briefings, not during the scenes or the cuts. The only exception is the Splitter, but even that has a whole different vibe from previous briefings as the sounds are taken straight from the game, while previous sounds were added specifically for the cutscenes before.
Additionally, just because I was curious, I decided to go back to the actual trailers for each CelebrET to see how they matched up to the in-game briefings, and to my surprise, they are so much more high quality than what we actually got in-game. Sure, many of them have additional scenes and can be seen as almost entirely different cinematics, but then there’s the Splitter, who has basically the same trailer and briefing, even down to the massive IOI logo, but the trailer version has more high quality sound effects and feels more in-line to what we had before. What was stopping them from just porting over the same video?
Has anyone else noticed this? There were some other things I noted, like how some of the effects were a different style to the old briefings, especially the graphs in Le Chiffre (which I honestly thought looked kinda cheap). I would love to hear others thoughts on this, because it’s been bugging me for a while.
There might be some kind of issue where they’ve accidentally included the unfinished version in the game, but I often wonder if it’s contract stipulations or image rights that prevent them from making more interesting briefings - or maybe whoever’s making them just isn’t on the Hitman team
I definitely noticed this in Le Chiffre’s briefing. 47 himself appearing in the briefing feels very sloppy to me and afaik the only other time that happens is during the Sarajevo Six campaign, which also felt sloppy. (Not including cutscenes that lead into briefings, like the Patient Zero campaign where it feels fine.) The interesting visuals from previous briefings such as the scrapbook for The Heartbreaker or newspapers in The Liability. Music I think has also changed. Previous briefings have more subdued tracks, meanwhile The Disruptor starting on the Chongqing chorus is jarring (but when it changes its fine), The Splitter going into Colorado combat is jarring and the Paris soundtrack for The Banker. Just very different vibes created, although I’m probably overthinking (I definitely am). One thing I’ve definitely disliked is the new portraits for The Splitter and The Banker though. They feel more like H2016 flat shots than the more dynamic and prettier H2 and H3 images, even the recent refreshes for old Elusive Targets like The Sensation just look much prettier than the new ones.
Those briefings double as advertisements. That’s why 47 is in them and that’s why IOI’s logo is in the briefing too. It pulls double duty, and to be honest, they should just differentiate between the two. The branding is unnecessary within the game.
47 is also technically in The Last Resort’s briefing and definitely appears in Situs Inversus’ briefing.
Time. Much easier to render out a video to Youtube and upload it and delist it than it is to add it to the game. I also noticed this, and I suspect they can just re-add it at some point.
It might also be unintentional. The video format Hitman uses are fully capable for 5.1 surround sound, but for some reason, most of the post-2016 briefings get mixed down to stereo. This might be why the sound effects are missing, if a track has been set to be silent.
I liked the falling casino chips part, but the graph bit did look a little tacked on, not gonna lie.
Wow, it has been a long time since I’ve watched Situs Inversus’s briefing. At least it makes sense for him to be there though, in both scenarios its explicitly talking about how 47 is booked in as Tobias Rieper, so it does feel like he is part of the actual briefing as opposed to just being there like in The Banker’s
See, another example is both New York and Haven Island having 47 in them, but those both act as story cutscenes as well, so they have conversations with each other and it feels more natural. Also, Haven’s briefing has the CGI part where 47’s identity is being changed which also feels natural because it’s explaining important setup for the mission. Le Chiffre’s briefing having 47 doesn’t add anything so it feels weird, like a bad cut from a bigger trailer.
47s appearance at the start of the briefing feels so cheap in comparison to how the ET briefings usually start. Used to be that it was something vaguely related to the ET (a painting, a boxing glove etc) while the ET codename flashed up on screen.