Their assassins move really slowly and you can run away from them indefinitely, but they can phase through walls and will never stop their pursuit until they’ve hit you.
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They’re probably just clones of the guys we kill in Berlin with a red sticker on their back anyway.
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There will definitely be another Hitman game if the 007 one flops or doesn’t get as many sales.
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That there will be another Hitman Game down the road isn’t that big of an announcement. Does anyone really thought, they wouldn’t do another one somewhere down the line, independent from the success or not success of their other games like 007 or that Fantasything? Hitman is there biggest and strongest brand. Why should they throw that into the bin?
More interesting would be to know, what we could expect. Storywise I don’t reall care, because to be honest, I never really find the story of the Hitman Games interesting. Yeah, they get the job done, but that’s about it. Give me something, that ties the missions together and I’m happy. Or for once, don’t do a story that involves 47s past. We had that about 300 times in 8 games by now. Do something new. Move forward. Leave the past behind.
In terms of gameplay and structure I wouldn’t even change much. WoA is pretty near perfect on the idea, how Hitman should play like. Open terrain, unlimited freedom to explore and experiment. More possibilities to interact with the environment would be neat.
Other than that, I really hope, there will be a better fighting mechanic, because the QTEs are stupid shit that bores me to death.
And I would love to have dynamic routes for the NPCs, so you cannot simply memorize everything. Like, give guards different routes everytime you start the mission new. Randomize routes of civilians/guests/whatever there is on the map. It would be a new game everytime you start the mission and would make for unlimited replayability. Of course there can still be Mission Stories and the targets should have their routes, where they do special things storywise, but other NPCs could be pretty much free to roam the map.
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This is true I guess. It might be, like what you said, the ICA returns in the next game but totally revamped and Diana is at the helm of it. Who knows? both Diana and 47 might even remain Freelance operatives?
If only they’d stop with the content that doesn’t allow saving and penalizes failure. 
On the other hand, that would reduce the puzzle-solving aspect, since you couldn’t count on NPCs to react in the same way to perfect a run.
Not, that it bothers me at all, because I never save in a mission. When I screw up I play it through as it is or restart the mission. But I’m the first to say, that the Elusive Targets are pretty outdated and I never understood, how you get new players involved in the game with a concept, that lures you in with a celebrity person, and then takes that immediately away from you, when you screw it up. And we all know, there are tons of ways to screw up, if you’re new and don’t understand the mechanics of the game yet. Everytime I see a new player stream Hitman, they need hours to get the approach of freedom into their head, the game delivers and are completely overwhelmed. Therefore, they die all the time. And some streamers just never get it and after hours are still perplex, when they can’t just “Rambo” through the mission guns blazing.
So long story short: Yes, I think, there shouldn’t be any modes, that restrict you from saving or penalize you for failing, at least not in a way, that forbids you, to try again. In the end, learning comes from trying again, and it is just a stupid mechanic, to take that away.
Kind of, yes, on the other hand, it just would be a new puzzle everytime you play. There should still be loops, of course, so you can obeserve and plan during that run. But the loops could change and force you to observe everytime, instead of just memorizing the straight line, that always gets the job done.
Like, I don’t know, give every NPC on a map three routes and when the mission starts, they get one of them randomly asigned to them. Even if a map just has 10 NPCs, that would make for 30 different routes for them, mixed randomly, making up hundreds of possibilities.
Not great for Speedrunners, I guess, but I’m not a Speedrunner. I am a Puzzler and I love to observe and explore to get to my goal. That is the fun in the game for me. And that way, it would give me an unlimited amount of puzzles. And I guess, even Speedrunners could have fun with that, figuring out ways, that always work, even with random routes, because there is this one spot, nobody passes by ever and so on. It is kind of what they do anyway, isn’t it?
As a puzzler myself I like the reliable routes because I can integrate them in these puzzles. It is easier to orchestrate a clockwork. At some size of your plan it is even impossible to leave much room for randomness.
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For the next iteration of this game, I hope that it’s not called HITMAN 4. It would be nice if they took it in a different direction with some kind of subtitle, maybe. Something fresh that does not feel like DLC, ideally.
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Isn’t this, essentially, the way that Freelancer plays? Not the syndicate parts, but the seemingly random nature of the non-player characters and targets? It’s not the whole map, but the stuff that gets added just for the missions is at least pseudo-procedural, isn’t it?
There are specific challenges that are currently part of the game like taking out the targets with poison, or explosives, or getting specific mission stories to trigger. Wouldn’t that be an order of magnitude more complicated if everything (or a good portion of) were randomized at the start of the mission? A plan that works in one iteration would be completely useless in another.
For a game like Halo, or a battlefield simulation, that would be a good thing - every game would be unique. For something like Hitman though, which has always been built on repetitive play and learning the intricacies of the map, randomization would result in a completely different game. I’m not entirely sold on whether that’s a good thing or not.
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Same here.
That’s one of the things that makes me not like Freelancer. I can’t figure out a “solution” for the “puzzle” when there’s no way to restart. Instead I’d have to muddle through until I half-accidentally run into the right circumstances.
I get that, but if I solved the puzzle once, there is just the option, to make my own challenges, but the puzzle stays the same. Kill person X with poison/a gun/explosion/etc. is of course slightly different, but I always know, where I can move along, without someone noticing, where I have to go, to get things done and so on.
Of course, there is fun in that, but it gets to a point, where I have done it all and it gets kind of tiresome. Sure, a new mission like an ET gets the blood flowing againg, but after playing that five times, it is done too.
Even with something like Freelancer that has some randomness to it, it often is kind of the same, because you just know, where people are and how to get to them, after spending enough time in the game.
Somehow it is, but then it isn’t. Kill Target A with poison is kind of the same as Kill Target A with a gun, when you know exactly, where to go and how to get there.
Yeah, I get that. Especially for new players it would be to hard to get into it, I guess. I think, I jsut come from the perspective of someone who played them all and reached a point, where it is kind of to easy to get things done, because I just spend to much time in the World of Assassination. I have the feeling, I just walk through it without an problems now. Like the Eminem ET. Yes, it is nice how they rebuild the map, but after playing it three times, I learned everything new, and now exactly, where I can go when and to do what and so on. It is still fun, because the game just is fun anyway, but I don’t have the feeling, to really solve something, I haven’t solved a hundred times before by now.
Why not? Observe the routes. They are always a loop. Know the maps, they are always the same (more or less). Of course, it is a game of patience that way, and that is not for everyone. But it is kind of the essence of the game to be patient, observe, explore and plan. Freelancer is not different from that, apart from the ability to save the game.
But I think that is the interesting part of the game after all: Hitman gives as so much freedom, that everyone has a different view on what makes it great and how to get the most fun out of it. For me it would be more randomness to always have new puzzles, for others it is memorizing things, to speedrun through, for the next one it is just experimenting and see what happens, and another one just wants to see the world burn and goes in guns blazing.
Maybe it would be better as its own game mode? Something like a Randomizer Mode, where you can randomize targets, routes, items etc.
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What might be interesting, and following on from the idea of a randomizer mode or function, is to have the base game with whatever that is - standard routing, challenges, placement of items, etc., and to then have a function to reset the map using random generation which would replace all the people, items, door lock states, etc. with new variables. There would need to be a “restore default” function to put the map back into its original state, and perhaps challenges, leader boards, etc. would be disabled if the map was randomized, but it would provide a different sort of challenge for people who grow tired of the default maps and objects.
In a randomized map there would be no mission stories, and there would be the caveat that some things would simply break unless there were safeguards set up, but it could serve as a middle ground between a truly random map from the get-go and the Freelancer model.
I have no idea how difficult it would be to implement something like that, or if it would even be possible, but it could be interesting.
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Yes, that is more or less what I’m looking for. The possibility to shake things up.
I’m not familiar with programming at all, but I guess at least something like randomizers for items on the map should be somewhat easy. I mean, there are modded randomizers for Resident Evil for example, that do exactly that. I guess, the biggest hurdle is to implement it with character movement and in this case story elements inside the map. But since they could easily take that out (as they do in Freelancer already) that shouldn’t be too hard.
With routes it would be a completely different animal, because i guess they would have to programm a lot of different routes for every map/NPC that can be chosen by random to make that work. But maybe there are other ways to get that done. I don’t know. I don’t even know, how that works in the game right now to be honest.
Despite having done programming professionally, I know very little about how games are written so I can’t say how complicated (or not) adding something like that would be. I agree that the object placements sound like they’d be easier than people with paths and activities and such though.
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Yeah it’s probably not that difficult to add considering the Freelancer crates are basically just that. If you combine that with some of the Master mode changes that removed some items from the maps (particularly the H1 maps since that’s based on Pro mode), you’d probably have a good basis for an item randomizer mode.
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Observe the routes, and hope that the different NPC loops will synchronize soon enough to be fun and not a long waste of time. And then, whether they do or not, it’s all for nothing because the next time around it’s different. For you that means endless replayability. For me, it’s pointless drudgery.
I highly, highly doubt it will be given Hitman III was the conclusion of the WOA trilogy, so naming it Hitman 4 wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever.
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Well, that is the game, as it is. It’s not different from the standard missions. But as I said, everyone gets something else out of the game. We are just to different in our playstyle to connect on that one, I guess.
My very-early guess is that it will somehow integrate Freelancer with the main game. A safehouse, gear, money, endless randomized contracts plus actual missions with fleshed out targets or stories.
They saw the success and appeal of this, and they see this as the future of Hitman.
Not judging whether that is good or bad, but I’ve got about 25 years of learning IOI’s moves (even if it’s new people this past decade) and that is my prediction.
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