There’s a lady who, every time I start the Dubai level, is standing precariously on the railing to an infinite fall, just casually sipping from a glass.
Has anyone bought into the season pass? I’m, uh, all for more Hitman, but I dunno if I’m dying to pay $30 right now to play what kinda sounds like (at least with this first mission) New Super Mario Bros. 2 - Agent 47 Edition.
Speaking of levels with weird quirks - is Whittleton Creek the only level in the series where people just…spontaneously die? I mean, apart from the last Patient Zero mission.
In my attempts to get 20/20 on that level there were more than a few times where a jogger would just…I don’t even know? Fall into the open bit of road where they’re doing construction?
More than a few meticulously played runs of that level foiled by some lady with a death wish.
I love doing SASO runs. It feels like playing Dishonored without powers, if anything; recontextualizing the space you’re in by denying the typical tools you might use, but revealing the intricacies the designers laid down to help. There’s a lot of little hidden paths in every level of 1 and 2 (I haven’t played anything of 3 yet), for example, that can be used by someone going for a SASO clear to move around without being caught.
I haven’t tried for it as much as you have but I feel like SASO strips out the social dimension that defines Hitman in the first place. The people turn back into identikit patrolling bots and the spaces turn back into raw walls, floors and lines of sight (with at most a binary trespass/no trespass distinction rather than the tapestry of overlapping disguise-dependent zones) like a barebones 1990s stealth game.
I agree it’s interesting as a contrast to the main way of playing the game, but its presence and prestige is also a temptation to ignore the main way of playing the game (since if you intend to eventually get SASO, a lot of the mechanics are mere training wheels to be jettisoned later), so I’m ambivalent about it.
it is only good as a contrast for sure. that works both ways though-- if you’re playing SASO you basically turn off a bunch of the shit in the level, but there are things you have to think about in SASO that you turn off otherwise, too. and if you’re playing one way you might get ideas about things you might do the other way… i don’t really think of one or the other as the “main” way to play. and then escalations are like a third branch in the middle…
i did buy the expansion pass thing! though i accidentally did it like two days before monster hunter dropped so i haven’t actually played the new shit lol. but i love escalations and side mission shit
i do play the levels very thoroughly (though there are some i’ve barely touched still because i’ve played it in stops and starts over the last few years). they really crystallized a lot of my thinking about videogame space and how it can be meaningful tbh. nowadays i pretty much think hitman is the actual meaningful successor to mario 64 lmao
The way that SA and SASO are almost like two separate levels overlaid on the fullest level is the thing I like most about Hitman. It’s deliberately encouraging you to master the whole level, top to bottom.
I feel like Escalations (and their more hardcore cousin Elusive Targets) would be the closest equivalent to “training wheels off” of Hitman, because they take all you’ve learned doing SA and SASO runs and force you to apply that knowledge to either increasing difficulty or single-attempts. They test your fullest understanding of the level, whereas SA and SASO are mainly there to teach you the level features.
That said I honestly think any way of playing it is “right”, it’s ultimately a diorama toy that’s there for you to fuck with. I tend to try all the different challenges and I enjoy the planning aspect of it, but also I beat Whittleton by shooting everybody.
Elusive targets are such a unique thing, I’ve been scared of the stress of it that parker mentioned, so I’d ruled out paying attention to them (and I guess I should ignore this month’s one too because I haven’t played that level yet and I have too much to stress out about at work lately) but I really admire it in principle.
I’m trying to think of what other games have a similar idea and I gather that a lot of mobile games do (with a pay-to-win system, this type of stressful “priceless, never-again” achievement is great to open players’ wallets). Other than that, roguelike daily challenges come to mind. But daily challenges are just regular seeds and there’s so many of them, so they only have a very attenuated version of that feeling of high-stakes unique opportunity.
they’re so great
i love them all the more because every Hitman Dude on all of twitter and reddit thinks they’re shit and won’t stop shrieking about it but they get completely ignored
The thing about Elusive Targets that helped to alleviate my stress/anxiety attempting them is that you get essentially infinite restarts and time AS LONG AS you don’t attack the target or trigger an alarm.
The few I did (way back in Season 1) were a blast and really pushed my knowledge of the level to the limits. I got SA or SASO or 2-3, and then one of them I goofed the approach (he was completely surrounded by guards! fuck!) and I managed to slip away and disguise as a gardener to make my escape.
there’s no extra recognition or anything for suit only silent assassinating elusive targets so I would recommend going easy on yourself and just silent assassinating them. also on pc even if you trigger an alarm or have killed the target if you mess up and want to restart you can just hit esc to pause alt-tab out and end task, not that I would ever violate the code of assassins like that
i could have modified my line just a bit on this last one and SASO, but it didn’t occur to me until like the moment the kill was confirmed
4/4 silent assassin so far though
the first one, with two targets in sapienza, was very easily the most stressful so far
The one good thing about doing Elusive Targets on PS4 is that if you beef it, so long as go to dash ASAP and close the game, you can try again. Doesn’t work if you let it upload your results!
It’s…come in handy, once or twice (mostly the nightmare old woman Elusive Target in Marrakesh).
One thing I finally learned about this game’s stealth system after SAing about 8 levels is that the NPCs have two kinds of vision.
When you are trespassing, compromised or committing a minor crime such as aiming a gun without shooting or lockpicking, their vision is pretty close range and when they do see you there’s the warmup period with the yellow bar and the whooshing noise before they really see you. If the bar becomes only 3/4 full, they go into “?” status which causes them to change behavior briefly but has no impact on score/challenges.
When you are committing a violent crime or for bodies, their vision is much more long-range (30m?) and there is no warmup period. Their main vision cone is something like 90 degrees and they also seem to have a wider 180-degree vision cone for spotting violent acts at very close range. You really need to be thorough about avoiding any hint of line of sight for those things or you instantly lose Silent Assassin.
I might have been extra slow to understand this because the stealth game I played the most of prior to this was Deus Ex HR, which has a unitary vision mechanic letting you do all kinds of violent stuff basically in other people’s faces without them noticing. So I was pretty baffled for a long time why these NPC who never saw me before always were spotting me at the worst possible moments, leading to a lot of save scumming.
Finally got 20/20 mastery on Berlin. Pretty fun level once you learn the ins and outs!
I will say that the challenge of eliminating all the ICA agents before they vacate is made much, much, much easier if you go around the level subduing as many of the topside and upper level agents as possible, then doing the opportunity where you disguise yourself as the head of security and summon several of the agents to you. If you do it right, the handful of guys you take out you fight in that office should trigger the challenge completion. “Should” being key - I had to wander around the level and snap the neck of one of the guys I took out earlier for it to pop.
I played Em, C#dim7, then C on the piano and got a little chill thinking about Hitman. That’s staying power.
i have minor cause to play it on a different platform and at first i was like fuck no but now i’m starting to come around to like fuck it maybe i’ll just do it all again
