Latex nuns, bad. This? No complaints whatsoever.
In an open letter to the community, IO Interactive have offered some details of the next game in the Hitman series – being developed for PC and “next-gen consoles”, which I’m guessing means “current-gen consoles”, since they’re out – and it actually sounds rather good. Considering how much I utterly loathed Hitman: Absolution, I do not say that lightly.
The game will is set at the height of 47’s career, with him travelling the world and murdering people with the backing of Diana and the ICA. You’ll be “using a wide range of tools to take out a diverse group of targets across expansive, exotic locations around the world” which sounds fairly Hitman-ish to me. It’ll have the largest levels in any Hitman game yet with open, non-linear design, hopefully resulting in large sandbox levels.
“Our aim is to create living, breathing and believable levels which will allow gamers to play around with the AI to create those unique moments every fan of the Hitman franchise loves,” reads the letter, which sounds pretty good to me. They’ll be using what they learned from Hitman: Absolution (which hopefully includes “disguises should not be a bizarre timed meter that anyone in that outfit can see through”, and “47 should not get beaten up in every cutscene”, and “heavy stealth levels are really boring when the stealth mechanics are rubbish”, and “linear levels don’t really have much of a place in Hitman games”, and “rubber-clad nun assassins are pathetic and ridiculous and not in a good way”, and… oh, I’ll stop) and taking inspiration from Contracts and Blood Money. Sounds good to me.
On the actual details front: Contracts mode will be back, 47 doesn’t have magic pockets anymore, and the game will be built on the “backbone of the Glacier 2 engine” so it should still look lovely and run pretty nicely. Alas, there’s no word on whether the disguise system will still be horrible and nonsensical, but at least it sounds like we won’t have a plethora of linear stealth levels.
We’ll apparently be hearing more throughout 2014. Hurrah.
