If Absolution was a typical Tarantino movie, there would be a lot of great dialogue surrounding mundane topics and over the top violence.
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If it were a Tarantino movie it wouldn’t have such confused and awful writing and it wouldn’t have so much bloom.
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if hitman was a tarantino movie, it’d probably be absolution with loads more dialogue, neither of which anyone wanted.
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I never cared for the story in any Hitman game. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but “kill person x” is enough for me. I don’t need any backstory.
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That isn’t a very unpopular opinion to be honest.
i can almost agree with that, 1 and 2 had a good story.
but 3 didn’t have one, so it wasn’t good or bad.
I really liked the cutscenes though.
Most unpopular yet.
World of Assassination is just lik Absolution in the sense that, it’s a good game, but a bad (and probably worse than Absolution in that regard) Hitman game.
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that was unnecessary
Well it’s a nice way of saying he disagrees. Just curious, why do you think WOA doesn’t feel like a Hitman game more than Absolution?
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EVERYthing is off, whereas Absolution only had SOME things off.
one of my main problems (easily 50%) is that the music isn’t Jesper Kyd, and the style is too cartoony, not realistic, and especially not dark enough.
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nah.
world of assassination is peak hitman to me. it takes bm’s incredible level design as a jumping off point and adds absolution’s myriad of qol improvements (controls, crowds, challenges, etc.) to make it more playable/modern.
i think absolution is a ‘bad’ hitman game because it sidelines strong, replayable level design - the very thing that makes this series so special - and focuses on admittedly impressive graphics and a sub-tarantino story that i don’t think anyone wanted. these undermined the series’ trademark level design to an absurd degree, though tired console hardware was also a big contributor.
there are some good levels, but the majority are absolute wastes of time, often having the player move from point a to point b, as if people were clamouring for hidden valley or at the gates. even some of the levels that actually bothered to involve hits were just small ‘rooms’ or masked corridors. very frustrating coming off of contracts’ and bm’s superb layouts.
i think absolution can only really be considered ‘good’ because it was a vital stepping stone to woa in terms of modernising certain aspects and gamifying certain community elements (stuff like suit only runs).
woa’s incredible level design puts it in a completely different and far superior league.
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Absolution has much better level design than WoA, actually WoA might have the worst level design in the series, and for some reason the maps people like the most are the worst designed ones (see Paris and Sapienza).
Absolution did not have improvements in those fields, BM’s controls are the most natural to this day (bit less on PC but super fluid on controller), the crowds are a feature more than an improvement, and challenges just make the game SEEM longer.
Absolution is both a better game than WoA, and a better hitman game too
I would love to hear your reasoning behind this
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Well, you’re in the right thread, because precisely 0.01% of the world’s Hitman-playing population agree with you on all of the above. 
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Just what exactly does a level get considered “better”? I feel like this moral ambiguity is extremely flawed in level design, game mechanics etc. For me every map is better in its own regard because that’s what they try to present to me firsthand. It’s much easier to say any level isn’t “better” no matter how old the games were, so I feel like adapting to newer works is what keeps me motivated to play them, and older games tend to get less punishment.
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broadly speaking, what do you consider ‘good’ level design?
have you played bm recently?
i’d say the addition of vaulting and cover alone were huge qol additions. the latter in particular meant you no longer had to stand up against a wall to see into a corridor or room like you were a bald blair witch.
you need to go into more detail to make your point clearer, otherwise you’re just repeating a statement.
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now, i’m way too lazy to get into each level of Woa, so i’m only going to do Paris
(Note: when i say WoA has the worst level design, it doesn’t mean it’s always bad, just not as good as the other games).
Paris
Most of it is empty space, makes sense because i remember that IOI advertised it as (i think) 6 times bigger than King of Chinatown.
There are 2 “main” areas (Inside/Chateau and Outside) to the level and i’m going to explain both seperately.
- Outside
Too much empty space, let me give an example
In the starting area, you can go to the right, when you go to the right there’s a parking area with guards prohibiting you to get into that area, if you do get into the area, you can go to the left (towards the tree i think) you can go to the right side of the chateau.
However if you go to the right there’s just some green plants and absolutely nothing (maybe a screwdriver or something but that’s not important now is it).
the whole back “garden” of the chateau is also useless, there’s a helicopter in the middle of the field (why? but that doesn’t matter), to the right is a small area with 3/4 guards patrolling, and you can go to the sewer to get to that massive “thing” to snipe the targets.
To the left there’s the meeting place with Novikov, which is too big, too easy to navigate through the guards.
all of that is bigger (in surface) than the chateau when it could have been so smaller, 47 was made very clunky in the new game and moving feels painfully slow many times, it’s like the level is the Bjarkhov bomb.
Anyway, bad level design because too much empty space
- Chateau
This is similar to the problem above, but not exactly for the same reasons.
The attic is fine, same goes for the 3rd floor
The 2nd floor though, has many rooms i have no idea why they exist and never end up visiting them, the best example is the the area with the firework controller, it’s connected to many rooms, but they all look the same, contain nothing (except maybe screwdriver or crowbar), and generally do have nothing in them.
Similar for the first floor (or ground), there’s areas i don’t see the point of, for example the weapon showroom, the room with the camera, etc.
The main problem with the design in all levels, is not exactly the design itself but rather how it ties into the (not very good) mechanics of the game, like Absolution, it’s heavily encouraged to use the “Instinct” mode, the map is static, and there’s A LOT of waiting.
Actually that might be my real problem, not the level design but the mechanics of the game which are really clunky compared to Blood Money.
(post deleted by author)
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the levels are bigger spaces because they were designed to accommodate the main mission, contracts, escalations, elusive targets and (occasionally) bonus missions, where a lot of those spaces are/can be used.
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i see you havent, because vaulting was always present (in BM at least)
cover is useless, you can just crouch.
I have no idea what you’re talking about with the last one, as you still have to do that in WoA.
2 things.
The entire area needs to exist (everything has a purpose)
Make the player want to explore the area
So as dumb as it sounds, End of the Road from absolution is a level with great level design.
Like i said, better Level Design.
Feels like an actual hitman game (dark and moody, soundtrack is off but 
i can live with that)
Story is actually better than WoA (that doesn’t mean it’s good though).
Actually felt like hitman levels (many were you are being chased, although you don’t have targets, was always major point in the hitman games, like “the Setup” “Asylum Aftermath” “Deadly Cargo” and i could cite a few more) (Sidenote: this is also why i consider Colorado a fantastic level).
Contracts mode in that game was more fun than WoA.
i could find a few other things if i really put my mind to it but i’m too lazy to do that right now