Its been a while since the release of Absolution,the last entry in the Hitman series. IO Interactive is now looking to give the popular assassin series a fresh coat of paint. With the game due out on March 11, a beta came to both PlayStation 4 and PC, showcasing the game’s mechanics, beautiful visuals, and the massive amount of creative freedom given to players. As I played through the beta, it became clear that IO Interactive’s decision to release the game in episodic parts may play to the series’ strengths. Before getting into that, let’s look at a quick overview of what the Hitman Beta had to offer.
The beta starts off by dropping players on a helipad in the middle of a snowy mountain range, with very little explanation as to why you’re there. It turns out you’ve come to seek answers about yourself and have joined some shady agency. The gameplay at the beginning is fairly simple, as the tutorial mission guides you step-by-step through your very first assassination in the shoes of Agent 47. For any newcomers, this mission was a great way to get a feel for the wide variety of mechanics and options that are at the player’s disposal.
Once you’ve successfully completed your first contract, you find out a tiny bit more about the story of the game before being dropped back into the very same mission. This time, the beta tasks you with assassinating your target in a way different from the one that you were talked through mere minutes before. With a huge range of options at my disposal — drowning him in a toilet, blowing up a dance floor with remote-detonated explosives, or disguising myself as the guy my target was due to meet– I opted to use a crowbar to drop a large container on my target’s head before hopping into a chopper and escaping the scene.
Again, the cutscene that followed divulged a few more tiny details on the game’s story before throwing me into the beta’s final mission.  That mission once again throws players into the same scenario, except they now have complete freedom to assassinate the target whichever way they want. It was at this point that the game’s episodic nature began to really make sense.
When Hitman launches on March 11 it’s going to include a prologue mission and a Paris location from the very start. The intro pack (the part of the game that releases on March 11) will also include full access to Contracts Mode, Escalation Mode, elusive targets and other live content. An Italy location will then come in April and Morocco in May, with Thailand, the US, and Japan rounding out the locations at the end of the year. By releasing the game in this episodic format, IO Interactive may have helped to emphasize Hitman’s strengths, and add even more content into each of these areas, rather than bog the game down in its lighter narrative.
Hitman continues the trend of the most recent titles in the series with its focus on replayability. With each mission quite literally having a dozen different ways (if not more) for you to complete your objective, taking on the same couple of missions over and over again in the beta never became boring. Through releasing the content of the full game episodically, the developer has created an opportunity to keep Hitman fresh and exciting.
New events in older locations, new skills with later chapters, and the ability to apply everything you’ve learned to completed sections can help to make every episode feel fresh after their release. While there are no details on just how these events will work, if done right, they could help Hitman maintain its relevancy throughout the year.
Picture it: the new Morocco location releases in May and once you’ve crossed the assassination targets off your checklist, explored the sandbox, and taken part in the developer events, you decide to try your skills back in Paris. This time you have a keener eye for your environment, and a couple of fresh angles to take. Perhaps you worked out a new way to utilize fire alarms, or discovered that using a wrench to alter something in the environment could give you the upper-hand in a tricky situation. This gives players a reason to go back and give an earlier mission another try.
With the gameplay in order, there are those concerned about how the story will work in this episodic format. In a news post on the official Hitman website, IO Interactive stated that the episodic content drops will allow individual stories to be centered on Agent 47’s targets, as well as longer season stories involving 47 and the other characters. While the overall narrative and individual mission stories may run alongside one another toward the beginning, the later content drops will merge the stories together to give answers to those who are interested in the bigger picture.
We don’t know many details about the shady organization that Agent 47 is now working for, but this, along with the motives for eliminating each target, will become clear as each piece of content drops. It’s a method that can potentially satisfy players with each episode, while also giving enough intrigue to have them look out for what comes next.
The beta gave a small taste of this approach to narrative. The cutscenes that we mentioned before gave insight into Agent 47’s motives. They provided just enough context to keep players driven to discover more. Yet, they made sure not to give up too much of the plot. Important story details for your target, however, were delivered through mission briefs.
This two-pronged approach to narrative allows for those who want something deeper to receive that over the course of the episodes, while those who just want to play get mission specific information. There is no punishment for jumping around and ignoring the bigger picture, and that story in turn becomes an added bonus for those who want it.  If you do become fully engrossed in Agent 47’s storyline, eagerly awaiting the next drop of episodic content will just be like waiting for the next episode of your favorite TV show to drop. This could prove to be a catalyst for some interesting fan theories, just like those that sprang up around Life is Strange. If IO Interactive introduces a handy recap system seen in the likes of Telltale Games’ episodic releases, this could prevent the wait from being jarring to those following the overarching plot.
While the beta for Hitman didn’t take long to finish, it did pique my interest in the game’s release a few weeks from now. Having never played a game in the series before, the beta did a good job of welcoming me into its dark world of assassination and proving the idea that its episodic nature may actually turn out to be a pretty smart move.
Have you played the beta? Will you be picking up the game in March? Let us know in the comments below.
Published: Feb 20, 2016 01:50 pm