This month marks 25 years since the North American launch of Hitman: Codename 47a small stealth game from Danish developer IO Interactive starring a genetically modified assassin named Agent 47.
With a focus on using your wits and equipment like sniper rifles and deadly fiber cables to take out specific targets without being detected, its sandbox levels were more like little puzzle boxes that you had to explore and put together piece by piece than a traditional stealth level.
Bringing the vision to life
Hitman: Contracts
The last delivery, that of 2021. Hitman 3, was released to critical acclaim, with countless reviewers praising its sprawling open-world environment, all populated by an impressive number of dynamic non-player characters (NPCs), endless opportunities for experimentation, and the resulting high degree of replayability.
However, not every entry has been such a beloved hit, so I sat down with two series veterans to take a look at the highs and lows of 47’s historic journey so far.
“My first Hitman was Hitman: Contracts“revealed Jacob Mikkelsen, who holds the special title of ‘legend’ level designer as an employee with over two decades of experience at the company. “For me, when I look Hitman Over the years, it has become the game I had in mind when Contracts.”
Hitman 2.
“Where we are now, we’ve realized all that potential, because in the past, fidelity was lower, performance and all kinds of things (got in the way),” he added. “Having been to many Hitman games over the years, seeing that vision become more real has been a lot of fun. Those ideas that were already there in Contracts “They are still the core of the game, but now we are really getting there.”
“I think there are almost different stages,” said creative director Christian Elverdam, who has directed multiple Hitman games. “I think that with Hitman: Absolutionit was about making the game playable more than anything else, just from a personal perspective. We talked a lot about level design back then. We talked a lot about how the game plays on controllers, making it feel much more modern and reliable. Great locomotion, better, predictable takedowns and stuff.”
Learning the right lessons
Hitman: Absolution.
Despite having been well received by contemporary critics, Hitman: Absolution was a disappointment to die-hard fans when it was released in 2012, mainly due to its more linear structure and prominent narrative elements. Even so, the learnings of Absolutionalong with other games of the past, they were a key component of modern gaming. Hitman trilogy, now dubbed Hitman: Murder world.
“I had the opportunity to reimagine Hitmanwith the Murder world“Elverdam explained. “In 2013, we created a speech we called ‘Hitman and the World of Assassination,’ which was basically trying to see the future of what Hitman would become, which was obviously, looking back, inspired by blood money and Contracts.” According to Elverdam, this release combined the “freedom and focus” and level design of those two fan-favorite entries with “the gameplay of Absolution”and the new desire to create an “ever-expanding live game.”
“We learned a lot from Absolutionto be honest,” he continued. “I think it’s lamented from a fan perspective because it broke the freedom of focus formula, the most extreme version of that, and I think the story was a little uneven. sorry for Absolution in a way, because you didn’t get the best of both worlds. We sacrificed all of this to really tell a story, but then the story didn’t reach the peak it was supposed to reach.”
In addition to the updated controls, one of the biggest innovations of Hitman: Absolution It was its Contracts mode that allowed players to create their own objectives in various levels and share them online.
Hitman: Absolution.
“Jacob did something remarkable by Absolution“He came up with this concept of Contracts Mode,” Elverdam revealed. “When I joined the game, I thought, ‘I’d love something that celebrated replayability,’ and my first question was, ‘Why don’t we do something multiplayer, or something co-op, or something?’ Back then, everyone was like, ‘No, we can’t do that!’ Then Jacob actually said, ‘Yeah, I have an idea,’ and long story short, we introduced Contracts Mode.”
It was an instant success, although the team soon became frustrated by the inherent limitations of Absolution‘s format as a single version. “When Absolution “Sent, we had 50,000 or 100,000 players every month, playing Contracts mode, just enjoying the game as a sandbox,” Elverdam said. “We couldn’t do absolutely anything about it, because it wasn’t a live game, so it felt like the players were showing us how they wanted to play, but we couldn’t react, we couldn’t change the levels. We couldn’t do anything. That was also a big part of the inspiration behind (the 2013 release) and what eventually became what we have today.”
Thin
Hitman.
Under this clear sense of direction, many challenges remained in the development of the 2016 campaign. Hitman, especially when deciding the appropriate scope. “I don’t know if we can say this, but the first version from Paris was at least three times larger than the one that was shipped,” Mikkelsen said. “We were looking at this whole space, at some point we thought, ‘okay, this is huge’ and internally, people were also starting to wonder if it had to be that big.”
Originally, that initial Paris level would have featured a sizable surrounding area, including a fully modeled restaurant that still lives on in a different form in the final game.
“We built this old building, and on the bottom floor there was a restaurant with a kitchen in the back and everything, and then obviously there would be a palace next to it,” Elverdam began. “It gives you a little idea of how big the level was originally. Then we needed a location for Thailand and thought we could build in a French colonial style. I hope you can see where this is going.
“By duplicating the old Paris building, we created this two-wing building for Thailand. And in one wing, you’ll find a restaurant on the ground floor, and that restaurant was the first thing that was built in Paris. That was the first thing we did, and that still exists, though, on a completely different continent with a completely different history and setting.”
Hitman.
Elverdam argued that this process was “a good example of the connection between us as game developers and the fans.” And he added: “We all feel the pain of some of the more linear segments, the smaller segments, of Absolution. I think maybe in pre-production we overcompensated a little with Paris.”
“Another big thing was getting back to the live aspect and Contracts mode,” Mikkelsen chimed in. He remembers sitting in a meeting room, facing the difficult task of “figuring out how to build this game so we can keep expanding it forever.” Apparently the answer was a lot of “tech development” which, he said, “then allowed us to do the elusive objectives, all the escalations, all the featured contracts” and all the rest of the content that is still being added. Hitman: world of murder today.
Content will also slow down, and Elverdam said that “fans are very, very happy” with the recent additions, with “a lot of people jumping in and playing with them.” In addition to the tantalizing prospect of “some pretty notable announcements soon” about new elusive targets, the studio previously announced a new co-op mode is on the way.
It’s clear that IO Interactive has really found its groove with Hitman: world of murder, and even when attention turns to his next Bond adventure 007 First lightThere are many reasons to consider trying it for the first time or diving back in today.
Hitman: world of murder is now available for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One and PC, or as Hitman World of Assassination – Exclusive Edition For Nintendo Switch 2.
