Hitman: Codename 47 was released 20 years ago today. In all that time, IO Interactive have crafted an entertaining seven-game series (not including spin-offs), with the eighth aiming for the heart in January 2021. The subject matter might be grim, but from the very first game, IO Interactive were always happy to fold information and easter eggs into their immersive sim (don't @ me) to a ridiculous degree. The games all have murderdeathkills, but they also have hauntings, mythical creatures, and real-world actors as targets.
I've had a blast digging up some forgotten facts and 47's more bizarre moments (this does mean this list contains some spoilers, so beware). There are so many that this could have been 200 facts for 20 years, but I stuck with 20. It seemed right. Enjoy!
]]>Lookit that. We're in mid-June already, which means that the first big game sale of the summer is about to get a sendoff. GOG's summer sale will wind up after the weekend so you've got just a few days left to score those deals. As part of the last hurrah, GOG are offering Hitman: Absolution free to keep. Snag it before Monday, June 15th.
]]>In the best possible way, the Hitman series is ridiculous. Its protagonist, Agent 47, is the single most conspicuous person in any crowd. He’s big and bald and white with a bar code prominently tattooed to the back of his head, and not once does this fact deter him from his preferred method of infiltration: wearing a disguise.
These aren’t disguises in the elaborate, Mission: Impossible, we’ll give you an entire fake head sense. No, 47 simply throws on the clothes of whatever guard or unfortunate bystander he’s subdued. And this actually works. In the franchise’s fiction, he’s considered one of the most dangerous people in the entire world, the best of the best. This imposing figure who scarcely bothers to alter his body language, let alone his voice, is a master of disguise. Like its 2016 predecessor, Hitman 2 is quite aware that this concept is absolute nonsense.
]]>Any time a new Hitman [official site] game rolls around, I need to know the answer to one question: can I royally screw basically everything up and get away with it? Not for me the Silent Assassin, but more a series of pratfalls, murders performed inadvertently in plain sight, panicked costume changes and awkward scuffles, inevitably culminating in a desperate sprint to the exit with a chain of armed and extremely angry guards pursuing me. So I am delighted to discover that the new Hitman game supports this kind of rolling disaster.
I even managed to complete a mission which began with me choking a man unconscious in front of roughly 200 people who I somehow hadn't realised were watching me.
]]>After Hitman: Absolution, Agent 47 is in need of another subtitle. Redemption, perhaps, or Contrition. His upcoming adventure has already made headlines thanks to its now-confirmed episodic release schedule but it also seemed to be a game made with the awareness that the previous hadn't given fans of the series quite what they wanted. I was eager to get my hands on it after seeing a promising demo at Gamescom last year and now that I have, I'm in two minds.
Hitman [official site] contains just about everything I want from the series but all of the ingredients have become a little muddled.
]]>Absolution might be a fitting tag for what looks like a return to form and a casting off of the sins of the past, but since that subtitle's already taken, I'm hoping I'll be able to justify referring to this one as Hitman: Redemption [official site]. So far, the signs are good. I spent some time in the company of IO Interactive's studio head, Hannes Seifert, as he played through a mission set at a Paris fashion show. As he manipulated NPCs behaviour and demonstrated some emergent possibilities, Seifert said all the right things about recovering the best of the series' past. The game - this portion of it at least - backs him up convincingly. It's looking good.
]]>We have Opinions about Absolution, the most recent Hitman game, 'round these parts. Opinions which not everybody shares, but everybody should because famously we're always 100% Objectively Correct in all things. Despite some grasping at greatness, it seemed a disservice to Hitman as we knew it. Meanwhile, in Mobileland, whispers spread that there was, in fact, a pretty great latter-day Hitman. Its name was Hitman GO, it looked lovely, and it was a sort of stealth-themed sliding block puzzle which looked like a miniatures wargame. Though mechanically very different to any Hitman game, as I understand it Go nonethless conjures up a lot of their spirit - perhaps more so than 2012's Absolution was. It was also acclaimed as something of an original. Sadly, it was banished to portables. Until now: suddenly, it's on PC. There is, alas, a catch.
]]>After the disappointment of Hitman: Absolution, developers IO Interactive came to the Internet with their collective hat in their collective hands. Without quite admitting that Absolution's small levels, linear missions, wonky AI, more personal story, and bottomless pockets didn't pan out, they did write an open letter mentioning that they plan to do away with all those things for the next Hitman game. Reminding people that it's still being made and they really did mean all that, IO have shown off a little concept art including a building which, they say, "on its own is larger than any location in Hitman: Absolution."
]]>Hello there. Things have sounded a little unhappy at Hitman and Kane & Lynch devs IO Interactive for a while now, in the wake of 2012's Hitman: Subtitle achieving neither the acclaim or the spondoolies it was hoped to. Last year, the Square Enix-owned Danish studio saw half its workforce removed from their jobs, along with claims that the remainder would get to do nothing but Hitman games. Yesterday, reports circulated that the Next Jennifer Hitman game had been quietly garotted. That claim, despite being made on a Square Enix Montreal senior game designer's LinkedIn profile, has now been denied.
]]>After the gaming industry went on a dubstep-and-Dew-fueled vacation to E3 last week, it's now back to business as usual. By "business," I of course mean layoffs, and goodness gracious, figurative business is booming. However, literal business - the part where people make money - isn't faring so well because, well, layoffs. This time, the sobering specter took its scythe to Hitman developer IO Interactive, reducing its workforce by "almost half". Yeesh. The plan to get things back on track? Er, make more Hitman. Which is to say, make nothing but Hitman.
]]>It's a bad day for Square Enix, latter-day publisher of Tomb Raider, Hitman, Deus Ex and Thief, as well as those dreary Final Fantasy things. Citing "slow sales of major console games" as well as uninspiring business from its arcade machine arm, it's admitted that its recent monies "substantially fall below its plan" and its president Yoichi Wada has fallen on his sword as a result.
]]>Lackluster Hitman: Ablutions sales and wider money woes at publisher Square Enix don't seem to have deterred their interest in doing something more with old Baldy McMurderpants. Or maybe money woes is exactly why they're happy to let a sequel to/reboot of the rather wretched 2007 Hitman movie go ahead.
]]>Update: Gosh, that was quick. Before any other sites had even picked up on this one, Square have removed the app. Links from it now reroute to the main Hitman page, and previously sent death threats no longer work.
Update 2: Square have issued a statement apologising for the app. The full statement is at the bottom of the post.
Original: Square Enix aren't having a brilliant Winter. With profits pointing downward, and Hitman a bit of a stinker, they surely must be on the phone with the Humble Bundle folks, trying to follow THQ. But everything's going to improve with their latest marketing campaign for the disappointing baldie killer! "SQUARE ENIX," says the email that's just arrived in my inbox, "WANTS YOU TO PUT A HIT ON YOUR FRIENDS". Ahaha! Threaten to murder your chums! And mock them for their looks, or the size of their breasts or penis!
]]>Why distort one beloved franchise when you can do two at once? The latest DLC for Hitman: Ablutions once again fails to add new missions, ideally in a Streets of Hope vein, but instead a new costume and gun which can only be used in the Contracts mode. This new costume is the kevlar'n'metal duds of one Adam Jensen, he of Deus Ex: Human Revolution fame. This happens due to Hitman and Deux Ex being publisher stablemates, of course. As far as I can tell there is no narrative justification for why Baldy McChoke would come to acquire the augmented form of a mopey, bearded cyborg from the future, but hell, if Ridley Scott can contrive to unite the Blade Runner and Alien universes then this is no less silly.
The DXHR togs do make 47 look a bit like Gunther, mind.
]]>In which Adam, who has played it all, and Alec, who has played around a third of it, gather to discuss IO Interactive's divisive Hitman: Absolution. Devout Blood Money disciple Adam felt let down by this latest reinvention of Agent 47 - does Alec feel differently? ("No.") They do find some positive things to say about it though, promise.
Alec: I've been playing some Absolution. It's brilliant! Just kidding. It's a nasty, grimy, uneven game.
Adam: I almost wish I had someone to debate it with, who did think it was brilliant. But I think I'd just say YOU'RE WRONG and we'd find little common ground. I have been pondering how much of my dislike does come from the ugliness of it - I don't think it's well designed on the whole but there are bright spots. I wonder if I'd feel more sympathetic toward those if they weren't wrapped in grime.
]]>With Hitman's latest subtitle so recently creeping into public view, IO are already talking about 47's future. Speaking to OPM, Absolution's director Tore Blystad confirmed that the next title in the franchise will be developed at Square Enix Montreal rather than remaining in-house. Blystad reckons development will follow a similar pattern to work on the Call of Duty games, so presumably we can expect development duties to alternate between Squenix and IO as they do between Treyarch and Infinity Ward. It almost certainly means we'll be seeing the wigless wonder more frequently in the next few years. Three weeks ago I would have said that was a good thing. If you've played Absolution, perhaps you'd care to compare your thoughts with mine?
]]>Absolution is the occasional freedom to be a silent killer but is also thimble-sized levels, gun-toting fetish nuns, and a prolonged and startling absence of silenced weapons. Absolution is a clever free-form Contracts mode with less hits than the New Radicals. Absolution has its priorities confused. Here’s wot I think.
]]>In what must surely be the last-but-three trailer before Hitman: Absolution gets a launch trailer (the game appears on November 20th), Square are trying to show off the "living world" in which their game of death and baldness take place. As Adam noted as we watched this in the RPS virtual office, "That Chinatown sequence about 40 secs in is awesome." It really, genuinely is awesome - but is it really game-representative? Is that crowd actually in game and not just a cutscenetrick? I suppose we'll find out soon enough...
]]>Amidst the eardrum-bursting din of day-to-day existence, it's easy to lose track of the little things. The important things. For instance, when was the last time you tossed your schedule in the wastebasket, picked up the phone, and called Agent 47 voice actor David Bateson to tell him how much you appreciate the tremendous role he's played in your life? His vocal stylings are the perfect mixture of gruff, foreboding, and silky smooth - a beautifully layered sandwich of sound that often goes under-appreciated. But Hitman: Subtitle has many noises. Let them enter your sound-intake orifice after the break.
]]>God, I love disguises. I can't go the shop without putting on a beard and some elf ears. It looks like Agent 47 shares the same enthusiasms, too, because in the latest Hitman: Absolution trailer (it's around here somewhere, I know it) we get to see him dressed as a policeman, a worrying janitor, a hotel porter you would not trust with your luggage, a hired killer (not sure if that's really a disguise), a lab technician, a samurai, a chef, a... scarecrow? A judge, a cowboy, I don't know what that is, Robocop, that guy who works at the pub, a hazmat person, a builder, a murderer, a tinfoil hat man, a wrestler/gimp, a chicken...
And so on.
]]>So many bodies stuffed into closets, so many innocents caught in the crossfire, so much blood on my hands. Out, out damn spot. Oh no, wait I was wearing gloves the whole time. Everything's fine. Hitman: Absolution is best played without a conscience for its pleasures are of flesh punctured and perforated. I’ve killed in many ways as I played through the game’s opening missions and after the early elation of having the piano wire back in my hands, I've had a long think about the best and the worst of the experience.
]]>We've seen quite a lot of Hitman: Absolution in the run up to its November launch. Some of it has been downright brilliant. As for other bits, well, the less said the better. But ultimately, the core of Agent 47's exceedingly snazzy murdertimes (or exceedingly murdery snazzytimes, depending on your point of view) remains: you kill people, but in clever, conspicuously inconspicuous ways. That's what today's reel of footage is about, and it also includes a very important lesson: Disco's not dead. In actuality, it was the killer all along.
]]>Hello. Hello you. Did you go to the Eurogamer Expo this weekend? Did you have fun? Because I couldn't go, so I couldn't have fun. My bitterness could destroy worlds. Fortunately, I can catch up with at least some of what I missed, as Eurogamer have posted videos of a great many of their developer sessions. Valve! Hitman! Molyneux! Tomb Raider! Assassin's Creed! DayZ! Remember Me! WARFACE. I've embedded those I am personally most interested in below, selfish twit that I am, but you can see the whole lot over here.
]]>My relationship with Hitman and his latest subtitle is one of love at fifth sight. It hasn't been a whirlwind romance, instead starting with something more like a few gentle but malodorous gusts of disappointment, but now I think we're just about ready to snuggle again. The Contracts mode, with its freeform hits, could have been designed to twang at my heartstrings and with David Bateson's back on vocal duties whispering sinister somethings into my ear, I'm ready to be impressed. I wrote about Contracts in a hotel room, eschewing offers of German beer in favour of typing excitedly about simulated murders. Here's an eighteen minute video very similar to what was shown at Gamescom.
]]>Marketing is a funny old thing, by which I mean it's the sort of amusingly affable codger who will tell you anything you want to hear if you give him a handful of coin for his troubles. Conversely, sometimes he'll be hawking something awesome, say an actual magic carpet, but he'll insist on unpicking some of the ancient weave in order to stitch in a crude simulacrum of a woman, 80% chest, 20% backside. If you ask him why, he'll tell you such unsaucy sauciness is the only way to sell something as mundane as a mystical object. What I'm trying to say is, after the Contracts mode reveal, I'm happy to soar through the sky on Hitman's back no matter what Mr Marketing might say. Here's a new trailer.
]]>Slowly, ever so slowly, Hitman: Absolution has won me over. I was pretty distraught at how Square-Enix were representing the game: it didn't look stealthy enough, it looked overly linear, and there were sexy hitlady nuns. It felt like one of my favourite series was slipping away. But it seems there was a Hitman game there all along, and the closer we get to release the more interesting it looks. I really enjoyed the Sniper Challenge pre-order level. So I'm happier showing off this trailer for the new 'Contracts' mode, where players get to design their own hits and upload them for friends to complete.
]]>I’ve doubted, I’ve cursed and I’ve hoped. That it’s taken this long for Hitman’s new subtitle to reveal the glory of an older subtitle has given me good reason for the clip full of cynicism I’ve often been tempted to level at its gleaming tessellated cranium. But witnessing today’s announcement of the Contracts feature has filled me with a sort of giddy glee. It’s a creative murder-mode that seems to capture everything I’ve ever loved about the series.
]]>People kept telling me this would happen. I first saw Hitman Absolution doing its thing at the Eurogamer Expo last year and expressed some concerns. It was just one level, I knew that, but it was the level chosen to represent the game to the public and the press. Then, nuns. Still, the man on the street (I think his name is Billy Crumpets) would chuckle as I passed: "I'm sure there are plenty of disguises and stealthy suffocations. Marketing is ever a fool's game." Whatever, Crumpets, just move away from my driveway. But perhaps he's been right all along and here's the evidence.
]]>A very CGI trailer for the new Hitman is, well, odd. It's Agent 47 murdering a collection of scantily clad women, who were moments earlier dressed as nuns. It's a trailer that is to feminism what cricket balls are to genitals. You can watch the Tarantino wet dream below.
]]>We mentioned Hitman's pre-order oddity, Sniper Challenge, a few days back. It seems the PC version of the pre-order is now in alignment with the rest, and is yours today if you pre-order. On another note, pre-ordering is a ridiculous thing, paying money for a game before you know whether it's any good or not. It's mad. Why are you doing it? The game's not out until November! And that's the first release date, so the Walker Principle says it'll be some time in space year 3059.
]]>Hm, I'm not sure how to feel about this. I mean, I'm not usually a fan of pre-order bonuses - especially given how inconsequential they ultimately turn out to be relative to how frequently they're paraded in front of us, bells jingling and doves emerging from places where doves shouldn't be (sleeves, obviously). Also, there was a time when this would've been a free demo or teaser available to all. But, nowadays, those take extra time and money a lot of developers don't have, so I suppose Hitman's upcoming Sniper Challenge is - at least, speculatively - justifiable.
]]>I doubt and pout a great deal whenever Hitman: Absolution is mentioned. Until I play it I'll hold out hope that I can be a silent assassin, or at least a low-pitched liquidator, rather than the boisterous chap blasting his way through the majority of the footage I've seen. Let me play dress-up and put bodies in cupboards. Let me scope out an area and plan my path to the target rather than being constantly on the run or up against furious armies of gangsters, cops or soldiers. The new video made me smile when 47 placed a man in a closet but I frowned mightily every time an explosion occurred.
]]>Hitman doesn't just have subtitles, it also has people, and not just the sort that are like pinatas stuffed with money waiting to be popped open by an enterprising exterminator. The first in the "International Contract Agency Files" series gives the background detail on Diana Burnwood, the hairless one's handler. The word is that Absolution is a more personal story, so maybe the Olyphant man will be finding out who his friends really are, or somesuch. I bet he doesn't have any friends, because he's a surly murderer who shows up at the pub in a tie and makes everyone feel comparitively underdressed. Way to go, Hitman.
]]>Just after seeing Agent 47 do his rather John Woo-like thing, our man Dan Gril sat down with Tore Blystad, game director for Hitman: Absolution aka Hitman 5 aka Hitman: Subtitle, and asked the most pressing of questions: whether we've lost the silent assassin to open action aimed at impatient console gamers, or if stealth and caution are still very much the order of the day. And also where 47 gets his suits from.
]]>Agent Griliopoulos was dispatched to see the game formerly known as Hitman: Subtitle for us. He returned bathed in blood, dressed as a sailor, and bearing these words. Update: now with brand new screenshots!
Oh, we are skeptical souls at RPS. Though we loved Hitman: Blood Money, we have been somewhat wary of Hitman: Absolution. Partially, because there are mild changes to something we loved (like when the X-Files replaced Mulder with T-1000) and partially because Kane & Lynch left us colder than Captain Oates. The new level we saw yesterday had the chance to allay our fears though, set as it was in a lovely orphanage. What can go wrong in a lovely orphanage?
Jumping back from the lovely orphanage for a second, we were given a quick rundown of the game’s backstory before Agent 47 got to meet all those lovely nuns.
]]>The VGAs coughed up a new trailer for Hitman: Absolution, which is crammed with sneaking, stealthery and silence. Except for all the parts with windows exploding in slow motion and The Bald One murdering almost every single person in his path, which just happens to take him through a hospital ward. Those parts are quite noisy. There's also a crying nun. She is crying because of the constant gunfire and images of men being shot through the abdomen at point blank range. Do you want to see such things? They are below.
]]>When I witnessed a playthrough of Hitman: Absolution I expressed my concern that there was more murder than assassination and that the level shown looked rather linear. I was fully aware that what was on display may not be representative of the actual hits in the game, showing barcoded-billiard-bonce on the run rather than in his more usual mode of calmly calculated cash-for-cadaver commerce. Here then is another view of the same level, with commentary from game director Tore Blystad and gameplay director Christian Elverdam, as a counterpoint to some of my queries and doubts.
]]>Somehow, this is the first official in-game footage of Hitman: Subtitle which has been released to the hungry eyes of the public. Feast, feast!
As Adam worried in his preview t'other week, old 47 doesn't appear to be quite so silent an assassin as he once was, but it's good to see he's still playing fancy dress in between punching people and shooting people and throwing people and choking people.
]]>Hakan Abrak, lead producer of Hitman: Absolution, held a developer session at the Eurogamer Expo this weekend and I was there to see the game in action. The version we were shown was a pre-alpha build running on PS3 and only covered a single level but, notepad in hand, I managed to scribble down enough impressions to share the bits that made me excited and the other bits that made me raise an eyebrow in a quizzical fashion. Now I'm trying to work out if I'm any closer to understanding the game than I was before the session.
]]>Perhaps not in person, but in spirit. IO Interactive are sending lead producer Hakan Abrak to give a presentation on Hitman: Absolution to the good people attending E2 this year. We've already had a sneaky peak at some early footage of Hitman 5 in action, but hopefully this will be a chance to see it being played properly, and prod at the mind of the bloke producing it.
]]>Ripten's only gone and harvested a entire picnic of Hitman: Absolution details from the latest issue of Edge, including the following bombshell- "47's voice actor will not be returning."
An era is over, my friends. A weird era, but one that did, at least, perfectly capture the voice of a psychotic man raised in a jar. 47's agent and only friend, Diana, is being played be someone else too- Lost's Marsha Thomason, aka Naomi Dorrit from Lost. But there's lots, lots more after the jump.
]]>Oof, there's no telling how long this one will stay online, but some scamp has posted footage of the behind-closed-doors showing of Hitman: Absolution (EDIT: turns out it was the Danish news. Oops.). According to our man John Walker, who actually saw the full demo, the following is an odd compilation of scenes from it, cut with scenes from the glossy, ambiguous cutscene that we did see. Odd.
]]>Old baldygrumps is back, and we've finally seen him slinking about the place. The level we saw of Hitman Absolution may have been a bit gloomy, but where it captured attention was with the atmosphere it generated.
]]>I say, those computer games people are getting rather good at making cinematic trailers! This one's quite the thing.
The game is out some time next year.
]]>Edit- The trailer is no more. For now, anyway. Sorta-explanation below.
We're still agonisingly denied a look at Hitman 5, aka Hitman: Absolution, aka Hitman: Subtitle in as-it-plays action, but at least we've got some raaaawk-soundtracked, stylised pre-rendered kill sequences and scene-setting to stare at. It also features a sort-of naked lady, but you can't really see anything, but if you're reading this in a place where an image of a sort-of naked lady but of whom you can't really see anything would cause you trouble, like a nunnery or on a projector in a primary school classroom, you probably shouldn't carry on.
]]>Are they screens, or are they "target renders"? I've blatantly pinched them from Eurogamer and posted them below so that you can decide.
]]>Morning, giggles. How's every little thing? To start you off for the new week, let's have a good old belly-laugh at leaked marketing materials for the mysterious Hitman: Absolution. Or, as these presumably work in progress box covers (via Kotaku) claim it's called, "Hitman: Subtitle." Y'know what, I'd have bought extra copies if it really was called that. There's an honesty to it. "The bit after the colon doesn't mean anything but people expect it - just put any old melodramatic guff in there." So Hitman: Subtitle it must officially remain on RPS, forever. Coming up next - Red Faction: Sequel.
]]>The Hollywood Reporter has written a big old bunch of information about Hitman: Absolution, because games are like totally mainstream. Also, it seems IO are taking a very Hollywood approach to the production, with its cast already being announced. Including Klundy!
]]>Following a distinctly unrevaltory teaser trailer earlier today, the slow dribble from the promotional teat for IO's just-announced fifth Hitman is now running a little faster - we now have a few early details on the game's theme and the tech behind it. "Never before seen", "familiar but significantly different..." Uh-oh. Change - the internet's least favourite thing. Prepare the twin engines of excitement and rage, faithful pseudo-asssassins....
]]>Here we go... After a flurry of rumour and ARG-based teasing, a comeback for the murderous man with the marvelous pate is now officially confirmed. We have a name - as has been series tradition since the third game, there'll be no number in the title. This is not Hitman 5, but instead Hitman Absolution. But what will our stern Agent 47 be absolving himself of? Forgetting to put the bins out on time for the sixth week running, is my guess. Maybe it'll be something to do with assassionation, though. Anyway! The first trailer, all 27 bloody seconds of it, is below. No in-game footage, of course (we never get that until the eleventh hour these days, it seems) but we do get some mood-setting music and some glove-porn.
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