I've written before about my love for the Hitman franchise before. The only games I haven't played yet are the Sniper Challenge and Hitman GO. The latter because I don't have an iOS device, and the former for reasons I'll be talking more about below.
I was glad that they were rethinking their approach to the game so that there would be more similarity with Hitman: Blood Money. Bigger levels and more stuff happening in the levels are a great thing. The switch to a more episodic digital release was also intriguing, doubtless this was influenced by the success of Hitman GO's own model. There will also be improvements to the Instinct mechanic, which is welcome; the Hitman games have always suffered from the randomness caused by Agent 47 not having good enough feedback from the world he's interacting with.
Where the old Thief games had shadows and great sound rendering and the light gem and highlighted interactive objects:
Gameplay by Lytha, of "Lytha Way" fame
And Mark of the Ninja had vision cones and shadows and "sound bubbles":
The Hitman games never had a similar mechanism warning you if there's someone about to enter the room. The Suspicion meter was there mostly for disguises, so exploring without a disguise - i.e., using actual stealth - was always a fraught affair. Things were less about using cunning and more about tensely being on point with timing.
The thing that turns me off about all this is that by being in a spaced digital release model you have to churn out regular, quality content to keep people engaged with the game. Absolution's Contracts mode was fun but these days no one plays it - the problem is the same, you have to do something new to keep people from getting bored.
And there are elements to the Hitman games that will bore; remember that the NPC's in any Hitman game are scripted to do the same kinds of things. Miss the timing? Just wait and the characters will do it again - doesn't matter if you get discovered, let the heat die down and things will eventually go back to normal. Blood Money addressed this with the Notoriety mechanic, but the effects weren't within a mission - it was more the next mission became harder because you were sloppy. Which means you are more likely to continue being sloppy, while careful players aren't affected.
I think what Hitman has been missing is the improvisation aspect. Sure, they say there will be many ways to take someone out, but all these ways have been pre-programmed. Just be at this place at this time with this item then click the mouse. That's basically what the Sniper Challenge is - shoot here now while the target is there and something happens.
Let's check out fighting games for a second. In a fighting game there are characters who have special moves they can do by the player pressing a button or a combination of buttons. The moves have certain properties like recovery speed or set-up time or invulnerability or unblockability that affect how they are to be used/defended against. But most crucially, the moves can also be chained together. You could argue that it's also a timing game - a very strict one at that - but the prospect of dealing huge damage with the other player not being able to do a thing makes the grind worth it. Also, a lot of these combos don't just get told to us - they have to be discovered. Often it's the players themselves who come up with them, then they share the combos online.
In this way, players make their characters truly theirs. There's nothing equivalent to that in Hitman, before or now. If I were the lead designer, at the very least I'd make the game into a huge PvP fest - players are freelance clones of 47 who compete for contracts against NPC's and each other. Maybe each player gets to develop a main specialty, like infiltration or bomb-making or sniping. Or John Woo-style parkour and double-wielding. The best-performing player could get to actually use 47 as their avatar.
In conclusion, I think to take the franchise to the next level a world of assassination isn't needed - rather, a world of assassins should have been the hook for this reboot.
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