Hitman 3 to become ‘World of Assassination’ | Hacker News Reader

Hitman 3 to become ‘World of Assassination’

ioi.dk

If you haven't played this series, it's pretty fascinating. Hitman is essentially a "social stealth" puzzle game set in large sandbox levels with clockwork behavior. Want to carry a knife? That's suspicious, unless you disguise yourself as a chef. It's a game designed around multiple approaches to the target instead of just run and gun.

The most recent trilogy of Hitman games all use a common engine. This announcement means you'll be able to play all of them with a single purchase, inside a single executable.

(You could do this before, but the purchase process was very confusing.)

Want to do anything? That's suspicious, unless you wear an orange vest.

My favourite aspect of it is how the stories in each level are always more deeper than they appear on the surface. You play it once and do an "easy" assassination, but then -- often with prompting from the game's interface -- you go back in with a different objective that uncovers more about what the various characters are up to.

This method of exploring a story by replaying it from varying angles is very unique and compelling storytelling device, and I hope someone will use this in the future for more than just murdering people.

I'm interested in why this is an HN post. I'm not saying it should or shouldn't be, but I'm curious what other people find interesting about it since I don't see anything here besides an ordinary update from a game studio about their product plans.

Rolling previous versions of a game into the latest, for free (for existing users) is pretty darned generous. The game itself is also highly likely to appeal the more established HN user: the assassination stuff is nothing more than a veneer over a space+time puzzle.

>the assassination stuff is nothing more than a veneer over a space+time puzzle.

Spoken like an actual assassin.

It takes one to know one I suppose?

Yeah after reading the whole thing I came here to answer that question myself. It felt like a bit of a nothing.

I'd consider this an interesting intersection of software, business, and finance. There were a lot of games that tried the episodic release format (which many considered the future), but few ended up succeeding. Hitman is one of the last series still pushing this concept, and this final update is a pretty elegant bow on an otherwise messy pool of game content. It's not earth-shattering, but certainly curious and worth discussing.

Hitman 1 in this series was a bit of flop at the time because of the episodic model. I think they had the right idea, but not enough meaty content. Now with 21 maps and stacks of missions and puzzles doing regular map drops for $10 every few months seems like a really good way to create a really rich product.

I think it is a comment and a preview on what we are going to increasingly see. It's in my opinion an evolution of subscription-based monetization where IO _seems_ to be planting a flag that H3 is _the_ Hitman game for the forseeable future.

I am not sure how much that matters to B2B or less game-oriented B2C products but its interesting nonetheless because of the monetization take it seems to indicate.

Sure, but Hitman is hardly the most popular franchise out there and maybe the hundredth one to embrace this model. This would have been news like 10 years ago.

Nerds like video games or something. haha

Fair question. In addition to what others have said about the business/technology model being moderately interesting (though admittedly not unique), I think the Hitman series and its problem-solving would suit the HN crowd pretty well.

Interesting transition towards games as a platform. Call of Duty Modern Warfare is kind of doing this too. There are games within games. Destiny is doing this too with expansion packs and making the base game free. They are enormous IPs, and I can see how Eidos might see how adding modules might be profitable and easier to service until they have technological potential (like a new or improved engine) to use for a new game.

After years of remaining steadfast in my boycott, I was quite eager to make my purchase when they announced they'd be on GOG. But it was not to be, as it was not DRM-free and had to be pulled after considerable controversy.[1]

I've not played this new Hitman 2016 reboot, and probably will never be playing it, as it doesn't appear IO Interactive is going to be changing their stance on DRM anytime soon. I've watched some Let's players play it on YouTube and that's reasonably satiated my desire for this new Hitman.

As a fan of Codename 47 through to Blood Money, it's a shame that fans like myself are being tossed to the wayside.

[1] https://kotaku.com/hitman-goty-edition-removed-from-gog-over...

If you think you know permutations and combinations. Then try out the best way to buy Hitman 1,2,3 with all the access pass and levels when there is a sale because it's a nightmare. I love Hitman to death but how eidos has (purposefully?) made the pricing so damn confusing is a damn shame to me.

You buy Hitman 3 + Hitman 1/2 legacy pass DLC for it. If you already have any version of Hitman 1 or 2 purchased, you don't need to buy the legacy pass DLC for that specific entry. The official website has info on how to let the system know you already own the game (which differs based on the platform), so that you can use that content from within Hitman 3.

tl;dr: there is no reason to ever purchase Hitman 1/2 at this point. You just buy Hitman 3 + legacy pack DLC to get the content of H1/H2 in H3. And if you already own H1 or H2, you get all that content in H3 without needing to pay for DLC.

This is the correct answer but it's pretty unintuitive. Simplifying it was the right move.

The pay per mission model was interesting but ultimately added too much friction, especially as it was so tightly connected to the online account. I didn't buy any of them until it all came out as a discounted pack, but even now I worry the servers will go offline one day and I will be left with unplayable purchases.

This is exactly the reason for the piece of news that you are currently commenting on...

Makes me want to play bloodmoney

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