Out of curiosity, what competitors does Hitman actually have? I’m not talking about something as broad as a “stealth-based game”. I’m talking about some other game where you have a large sandbox environment with a broadly defined target, potentially unlimited ways to finish the level, stealth mechanics, a contract-creation system, etc. I think Hitman is pretty much it as I haven’t found anything else that is directly comparable.
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I think it moreorless lies within the broader sense of release titles rather than a specific genre of games like stealth or action. In November 2018, Hitman 2 was released, which by the same month saw Fallout 76 being released and Red Dead Redemption 2 released a month before that - two marginally well-known games amongst others that easily set the precedent for hyped marketing.
I definitely remember around the time Hitman 2 had expediently wider appeal. Trailer releases and E3 footage were just some of the ways of hyped marketing, and at the time didn’t have the consensus being a “dead on arrival” game simply because Hitman 2016 saw ample praise for being favourable than the typical niche genre it harped around at the time - battle royal being very popular.
Now we’re here - Hitman 3 is almost dying out and an angry wrath of pissed off customers were angry at it being EGS exclusive and how PC players almost had to repurchase H1/H2 locations the second time. To be fair its playerbase is already booming, most notably because of community mods/events - but also, a very buggy Cyberpunk 2077 was released a month before Hitman 3 did.
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Lol so salty and disrespectful when he starts talking about the F7SC batch. Poor guy.
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The guy hits the nail on its head when discussing the escalations topic. It’s a shamefull fact they’re charging money for the least amount of work done. Never did I regret not buying 7DS pack since it came out. Gotta be frank, I never was an escalations guy. Paying for it is a no go. The complaining people that bought into IOIs marketing shit really are the reason live content quality is about to hit rock bottom from this point on. Its enough proof they can charge money for everything and loyal fans will still buy.
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Though I doubt it will last forever.
At some point people will understand that the quality of a product they are asking money for is quite poor.
And will stop bying it as a result.
7DS should’ve been part of Deluxe Edition. It was more fair that way and less rants about
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I played Red Dead Redemption 2 all the way through and really liked it, but never even tried Fallout 76. I think I heard that it was a multiplayer game and then just ignored anything about it after that. Never tried Cyberpunk either so I can’t speak to that.
I’m pretty particular about which games I play, I suppose. If I look at my Steam account, the games that I’ve actually bought or played this year are Hitman 3, Dawn of War (Soulstorm), Mad Max, Control, and Horizon Zero Dawn. The only other Epic game besides Hitman 3 I have is Watchdogs Legion.
I guess the most direct competition to Hitman that I own at least would be something like Watchdogs Legion. That’s stealth based, has a pretty open world, is a sandbox style game, and has multiple ways of completing each mission.
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Although I agree the 7DS should have had a mix of bonus missions, escalations and other rewards for the price, nobody can deny IOI have had an impressive run with Hitman 3. Plus making the development costs back within just one week of launch is a great goal for IOI and it’s more than what Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2 did.
No matter what any game has bits you can pick out to improve etc. Personally I have not negative opinions on Hitman 3. IOI have done well with this game and the future looks very bright for Hitman and 47’s inevitable return 
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I think a great compromise IOI should’ve done is had made the deluxe edition a season pass for the sins and deluxe pack. So if you buy the Deluxe Pack separately you dont get the sins for free, but if you pre-ordered the deluxe edition you get it all
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that just makes shit more confusing.
and we all know that IOI is the pinnacle of clear and concise communication
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Well, I have a lot of negativity towards IOI and the quality of H3. In fact, I have blown my stack and went on “vacation” for a couple of weeks. 
I like H2 the most and own it on disc. Didn’t have any problems. I bought H3 digital and it freezes/ crashes 3-5 times DAILY…frustrating and disappointing 
I’m in all the way, however, as I see it. It’s the only game I play. So I now calmly accept it, warts and all.
I am a speedrunna, and like to compete on the Featured Contracts, as well as the fan made contracts. If Hitman didn’t exist at all, I guess I’d be waiting for the new golf games to come out next year, and my controller would be gathering dust.
Too bad the final chapter of Hitman runs so poorly. That is IOI’s fault….
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On what platform are you?
I play on the XBox platform.
I’ve just watched the video on what io needs to do and I couldn’t agree more, hitman use to be my go to game and my favourite thing to do when I had time off but since the release of hitman 3 I’ve felt as if we’ve been let down and I didn’t realise until watching that video and seeing the bare minimal content for this roadmap either
First off elusive targets are one of my favourite aspects of the game what disappoints me is the fact there timed and can’t be played after you’ve done them once also we are STILL waiting for the format to change and no words on it since
Second escaltions are the worst thing to come to hitman I honestly have no idea how people can stand them and the excuse they gave a month ago about how they can do more is a bunch of rubbish
Then you have the lack of content in roadmaps in hitman 2 there was at least 9 new things a month to look forward to now in hitman 3 we have literary 3 new stuff a month and it takes even more time for the next roadmap to come out
The bonus content given to us is shocking Im not saying I want more bonus maps just bonus missions with featured challenges and uniqueness to them it angers me so much to see things like this being a “maybe” when this should be something they work on now
I’m really disappointed in IO especially when I’ve spent up to £200 - £300 please change all of this before the game dies for good
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Not at all.
Because people enjoy unique gameplay elements that can’t be found anywhere else in the game.
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he was right on everything except ETs. the whole point of ETs being one-chance only was to make them tense and thrilling. he never mentions this. sure you could restart by cutting off your internet but then you rob yourself from the thrill and tension, so it’s your own fault. if you want an online guide, you’re still destroying the enjoyment and that is also on you. making ETs permanent content defeats the whole purpose.
an acceptable compromise might be to make them semi-permanent content. i remember @Frote7 suggested on HMF a while ago that players could have the ability to buy ET contracts with XP. but the contracts would be really expensive, and you can only get once chance to complete them. if you die or fail, that’s it. this way, grinding for XP has a purpose, while ETs retain some of their tension. i think this is an acceptable alternative to just making ETs permanent contracts.
also when he said at the end that he was still loyal and was going to buy the next hitman anyway i was like ehh. it kind of makes his rant less meaningful. if you think the game is turning into bullshit, don’t buy. these days, there are a million other games you could be playing right now.
i never bought hitman 3. i saw which way the wind was blowing with hitman 2. unfixed bugs, OP items like the electrocution phone and emetic stuff, abandoning ghost mode, EGS exclusive deal, etc.
because they did not deal with these issues, i was not confident in IOI’s ability (or willingness) to address these issues in hitman 3. so i did not buy at launch. i was proven right, but i wish i was wrong.
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My opinion, I didn’t express it before, but we are in the middle of the year, so why not.
I think it is obvious that some core resources have been refocused on other projects during the production, since the last 2 years, Hitman 3 was made with barely any external help to increase business performance (and it is a success), with some indirect efficient key partnerships. And I think the pandemic does not help the post launch content pipeline, that’s for sure.
Moreover, the game credits explain some of the things here. H1 has ~1500 names listed in, H2 ~900 and H3 ~400 (source: mobygames). Previous entries had more than 100+ outsourced developers from Sumo, Mipumi and other (including freelancers). H3 has two gameplay programmers (1 internal, 1 external), including one dedicated only for PSVR (source: Forest Swartout Large’s interview). H1/2 = more than 10 gameplay programmers.
During H3 production, the online team was still composed of 5 members, but since 2019 the team is now on a multi project scope. I think it is important to mention that a large part of the requested gameplay features is online-dependent (the contract mode overhaul for example), but the online team was still at the same size.
I’m not that angry about the situation because I still enjoy the WOA (no game has ever held me so long), modding is better than ever, the community is an absolute gem (HMF, F7SC, Peacock, Hitmaps…etc). However I understand everyone’s thoughts, they are perfectly understandable and I agree with most of them, particularly on the offline mode which is a very important key point for the franchise’s legacy. I mean, who wants that in 10 years :
NO ONE, it’s an awful fate.
Given the excellent reception of the 3rd game, part of me hopes that they will twist a little bit their resources by the end of the year, to finish this trilogy properly and I think they have the ability to do so, now with 3 studios. Come one, they are more than 270 now, according to linkedin, and they are targeting 400… That’s as much as some of the Microsoft/Sony first party studios…
The video game world is hard and competitive, even more for an independent studio, but I think that a nice ending (with the cost of some additional resources) will be immensely more profitable for them, for the Hitman’s legacy and the community.
Cheers.
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I can get what you’re saying, but for me the normal missions are tense and thrilling enough, especially doing challenges on Master (a difficulty Hitman 3 doesn’t seem to encourage cause there aren’t any challenges restricted to the hardest difficulty like there were in 2016 and 2). Also, there are many drawbacks to the ET limitations.
Not having them be permanent means they can’t really make any challenges for interesting kill setups (something the Special Assignments in Hitman 2 proved works great) cause people won’t be able to replay it and will thus have challenges that’re impossible to complete. What’s the point in trying to do something crazy to kill The Liability when shooting the disco ball above where he starts gets you the same reward?
In Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2 it is now impossible to ever access the Elusive Target content again, even carrying over to Hitman 3 there’s no guarantee they’ll make any changes to the formula or even rerun all the legacy ones (and given how much smaller the dev team is, I’d say changes are far less likely than they were in the other 2 games). If they were permanent, maybe IO could’ve even had a better contract so that Gary Busey would’ve stayed a playable mission (at least in Hitman 2016).
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It feels like IOI has gotten into a no-win situation with this. We regularly see comments about the lack of new content following release and then we see comments about how the content that is released is substandard or lacks replayability.
Most games come out and we buy them, play them, and shelve them. I might play a game a couple times before I put it away for good (or for a pretty long time, at best). When I bought Red Dead Redemption 2 I played it all the way through. That game was phenomenal. It had moral choices, story options, multiple endings, amazing graphics and plot, and was overall a great way to spend the days it took to finish it but I only ever played it one time. I never went back and replayed it. There is no post-launch content for that game (multiplayer stuff aside - I don’t play that type of content).
I bought Watch Dogs Legion when it came out too and played it through. That has a DLC that is coming out but months after the game initially release, it still isn’t available. I paid for a season pass on that one and have yet to get what I already paid for. I liked the game for sure, but the post-release content has been minimal to nothing (yes, a zombie multiplayer thing came out but again - don’t care about MP).
With Hitman we got post-launch content within a month of the game’s release. We continue to get additional content every month, both paid and free. Some of us bought the Deluxe Edition and played our extra escalations and some of us didn’t but still got the free ones.
We continue to get both new Elusive Targets and rereleased older ones. Those of us that paid for it continue to get the themed escalations and everyone gets access to the additional contracts.
The idea that the Elusive Targets are one-and-done has been a fact since Hitman (2016). Maybe we still don’t like the fact that they aren’t replayable. Maybe we don’t like the way we miss content that IOI created because of the way that the Elusive Target goes. Few of us are willing to risk screwing up the mission just to hear all of the dialog that was added so we take the opportunity and get out rather than following the target around and risk getting spotted.
When we play through an escalation, most of seem to enjoy the initial load of the map. We enjoy the changes, major or minor, that IOI added and we enjoy that first play through but then we can’t play it again. Either the escalation is too restrictive to make repetition enjoyable or it’s too tedious or it’s too hard or something.
I guess my point is we can always find faults and flaws with any game and Hitman lends itself to this particularly because they keep releasing additional content for it. When the game monthly reminds us that it’s still there we are also reminded of the flaws in it. If every Elusive Target was there from day one and playable only once, people would complain, sure, but it would be over and done with by the month after it launched. The ongoing release schedule encourages continued critique.
I do think that most players do still enjoy the game and the content that is released continues to be appreciated. IOI could have taken the position that most games do by simply releasing it and stopping with that. They could have waited 6 months to offer DLC instead of doing it so quickly after the initial release. I’ve gone on record several times talking about how the requirement in Hitman 3 to fully support all of the Hitman 1 and 2 content hamstrung how much innovation they could actually do and that is still the case.
Many report game-breaking bugs but I can’t speak to that because following the initial progress transfer, I haven’t had any serious issues to speak of.
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Hmmm, I’m not so sure about this. I mean, sure, if you’re unhappy about various things then certainly you can choose not to buy the game. But while there might be lots of other games you could play instead, the stealth genre is looking very sparse these days (Deux Ex & Splinter Cell being notable casualties). Furthermore, the ‘social stealth sandbox puzzle’ genre is populated almost entirely by the Hitman series (although I hope Project 007 will dip its toe into these waters).
By all means, exercise your consumer choice, but do so in the knowledge that there is no guarantee that the niche fulfilled by the Hitman series will continue to be served in future.
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I guess you could say that kind of applies to Dartmoor under the ‘Season of Sloth’ DLC. Dartmoor had a different setting under this DLC with more of a clear day time feel to it, however, it’s kind of hard to have a lot of replay value to it as it’s very restrictive with the various movement costing you Vitality.
I enjoy the Escalations under the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ but it would have been so cool to have this version of Dartmoor and others as bonus type levels, very much like ‘A House Built on Sand’ etc.
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