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Hitman: Absolution

Hitman: Absolution

Expectation was, a new Hitman title was coming. Expectation that's lasted five long years as the world watched IO Interactive continue to explore the criminal underworld through other avenues, while hedging over any question of when it'd return to its other franchise.

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Then this year's E3 happened, and hedging was no longer an option. We had a name: Hitman: Absolution. We had trailer, screens. But what the wider world didn't have was concrete information. Well, until now.

Cue to just a few days before the announcement went public. We're sitting in a darkened meeting room. Location: IO Interactive's Copenhagen office. On the big screen are the words Hitman: Absolution, behind which heavy raindrops pound against a window whose view looks out across a dauntingly huge cityscape.

Title fades to coincide with Agent 47 making an uncharacteristically noisy entrance by crashing through the glass. He's wearing the iconic threads; black suit, red tie, but the definition of that familiar face has improved massively since last we saw him.

He's entered an abandoned and dilapidated Chicago library. Bird guano cakes what little floor remains, dotted as it is with huge gaping holes. Balconies are missing handrails and railings here and there. There's little light, save a dim red glow of emergency bulbs blinkering over double doors at the end of the hall. An obvious signposted exit. But there's the problem of the dozen or so police officers between 47 and his goal.

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"This is one of the early sections from the game," explains Tore Blystad, Absolution's Game Director. 47 is the target of a major manhunt, and his escape has meant he's without his usual weapons and tools. Yet that doesn't mean he's no longer dangerous.

Hitman: Absolution

It's no secret that the IO's Glacier game engine was starting to show signs of ageing. Kane & Lynch 2 hid it partly with its stylised low-quality youtube visual filter, but we could still see the odd wrinkle. Yet its still impressive for an engine that has such a legacy behind it, debuting with the original Hitman eleven years ago.

Glacier has finally been put to rest (or more likely, given the company, dragged down a darkened alley and had two bullets lodged in its brain). In its place is Ver 2.0, a brand new engine which will form the foundation for IO's titles in the years to come. It's immediately clear the decision was the right one.

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Hitman: Absolution looks good. Really good. Lighting, shadows, particle effects, level of detail in both environments and characters, animations, everything. The game can stand shoulder to shoulder with modern era titles. IO just put itself back into the graphical arms race.

A later section of the demo has 47 pursued by a helicopter. Its floodlights cast beautiful shadows when shone through the half-shrouded windows of the loft the hitman is in. Outside the rain hammers down, every single raindrop forming its own little splash when hitting the roof, while the water runs convincing down the walls and walls. As 47 steps into the deluge, his trademark suit is quickly soaked through.

Hitman: Absolution

But that's later. Now, he's still in the library hall. A half-dozen officers are searching through this half of the building with little or no light, only flashlights and moonlight piercing the gloom.

Their deaths come with all the methodical pacing we'd expect of 47. He sneaks behind one and strangles him with his bare hands, weaves through the rest of the room like some 18-rated version of Pac-Man popped up on pills.

It's here we see one of the first innovations in the game that will likely receive a mixed response from fans. While 47 sits in hiding behind a bookcase, the ambient colours dim, and your targets are lit with a golden glow, outlining them fully through walls and other obstacles. A bright line in the floor shows the route the nearest cop follows; which directly intersects with 47's current position. The silent assassin creeps to the side, grabs an extension cord from a nearby table as the officer goes by and uses it to strangle him.

The ability has a name: Instinct, and is part of the IO's objective to update some of the more outdated gameplay mechanics in the series.

"The old Hitman games are obese and while they have their place, are quite severe and are heavily based on trial-and-error," says Blystad. "We wanted to create an experience that captures the soul of the old games, but makes them workable for the modern player."

Hitman: Absolution

The idea is that even if 47 is a sleek killing machine who can read the environment and predict the opponent's movements, its not guaranteed the player would also have these abilities. With Instinct, the player can see the world through 47's eyes so you can better get an overview of its options and choices, as Gameplay Director Christian Elverdam explains.

"Imagine that you have made a clumsy murder that another guard may have heard, and is bound to investigate," says Elverdam. "With Instinct, you can see from your hiding spot that he will go left and you can go right to avoid him, instead of just blindly choosing one of two directions. We have removed much of this trial-and-error, and instead give the player a real choice."

Elverdam continues: "Sometimes in previous games players got a feeling that they had an enormous amount of options, but you didn't necessarily understand the consequences to those choices.

"Something you did in one section could have a big effect on another, and we would like to have these consequences more apparent to the player. So this is just one of the systems we have created to help you figure out what the AI thinks, and help you to take your choice."

Instinct does have a catch. It draws on a charge to use, which can only be replenished through silent killings and other acts familiar to a hitman's stock and trade. And of course, you needn't use it at all.

Hitman: Absolution

47 continues his silent but deadly journey through the library. A cop is beaten down with a small bust (improvised weapons are a big part of the experience), while another is dragged out over the balustrade of a balcony, plunging him through a hole in the floor to the level below.

We see 47 avoid a patrolling officer by climbing up on an inner gallery (which is marked out when the Instinct is activated). He finds a baton, sneaks in behind a cop and kills him in typical efficient, silent, and gruesome fashion. He slips it over the officer's neck, kneeing his back so he falls to the ground and wrenches the baton sideways. A chilling snap as bones break echoes across the library.

During the demo we see more classic Hitman mechanics. Corpses can be picked up and carried in hiding, and you can sneak up on unsuspecting people and use them as human shields. We see the bald assassin sabotage a fuse box to cut out the lights. Later we see him disguise himself in a policeman's uniform. The costume comes into play when he's trying to escape the helicopter, letting him sneak past a police search of the apartment building he ends up in.

Instinct has another role to play in these proceedings. Activating the system during an encounter with another police squad has 47 attempting to bluff his way out. He'll immerse himself whatever role he's concealed as, while concealing his face as best he can as he passes by the group.

There's plenty of tension in these sequences...and a sense of contained excitement at getting away with it. Proven brilliantly as 47 walks straight into a room crammed with police and SWAT. Beside him sits a pair of assault rifles, gleaming enticingly. He walks to them reaches over - and grabs a doughnut from the box sitting beside the arsenal. With that, he walks into the throng, hidden in plain sight.

Hitman: Absolution

It might sound like Instinct makes the game too easy, but that's not the case.

"One of the problems with old Hitman was that unless you were an expert in the game, would you look like a real little killer," says Tore Blystad. "This time it's not hard to be a good assassin. Instead, it's hard to keep the situation under control, and hold yourself back from going berserk. We'd rather try to tempt the stealthy players to go into a more action-oriented direction. "

It all depends on how demanding you make the game for yourself. It's your choice whether you make it through without using Instinct. And the gameplay is much more layered now. Whereas before there was a distinct binary-style element to the game (you're either discovered or you're not), now you'll see guards investigate first before sounding the alarm, and even if you're rumbled, you can kill witnesses before they escape. There's several levels before the game whips into outright chaos.

You can still get through unseen, but requires you to perform a flawless walkthrough. Don't expect it to be easy. "We know we have a very strong and loyal fanbase, and they are usually very hardcore," says Blystad. "So one of the things we are very focused on is to make the game even more hardcore in certain areas...but te believe that we have something for everyone - our spectrum is much broader than before. " By complete chance, Blystad seems to echo Nintendo's dilemma from its E3 show: create something that will appeal to all.

Hitman: Absolution

47 continues to stand in the middle of the organised chaos, pretending to devote his entire energy and concentration on the doughnut in his hand. A commander enters and barks out orders for squad deployment, giving 47 his cue to sneak out unseen. As he walks out a police officer mistakes him for a colleague, asks him how long he's been back. "I never left," 47 replies cooly over his shoulder. And with that, he out and into a subway station, mixing with hundreds of pedestrians and dissolving into the night.

And here ends the demo. Crowds will play an important part of the game the developer tells us, come later parts of the game. The new engine is at a state were it can handle more than one thousand characters at once, each controlled individually by an impressive AI system four years in development.

Besides the crowds, there are other cards that developer are still playing tight to its chest, such as how Instinct factors into gunfights, whether there will be multiplayer, and exactly why the police are sifting through Chicago looking for Agent 47.

These are all answers that we will have at a later date. Until then, worried fans should be reassured that the game looks to stick with what makes Hitman, well, Hitman, yet simultaneously modernized the stealth gameplay. Absolution means an ecclesiastical declaration of forgiveness of sins . After five years of waiting, we're willing to hang on another year to see if we can forgive Hitman the excess time he's spent away from our consoles.

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Hitman: AbsolutionScore

Hitman: Absolution

REVIEW. Written by Bengt Lemne

"It stays true to the franchise and provides us with a pleasant and suitably frustrating stealth experience."



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