Hitman: Absolution "had regenerative health at one point", how IO updated 47's game

[Blacksite]

Hitman Absolution’s director Tore Blystad has been talking about updating Hitman for the modern gaming pallette, including how, for a brief stint in development, 47 had magic healing health. [Shudder.]

Updating Hitman Absolution

According to Tore the goal with Absolution was, “to create something for everyone. To make the game as broad as possible”. The idea was to appeal to both the casual and hardcore, That’s why the game has five different difficulty levels, from a super easy baby mode right up to a terrifying Purist mode (no help, no hints, no anything). “In our opinion [Purist mode is] even harder than Hitman 1″, say Tore.

But creating a perfect balance took it’s time to find a balance between the chalenge that made the old Hitman games, and the easier, more forgiving difficulty the average modern gamers is used to, explains Blystad. “We tried most things. We had regenerating health at one point,” but the shortcoming that brought with it quickly became obvious: “You have to think more if you want to play this as a true Hitman game. If you can constantly assault and then hang back and regenerate the challenge gets lost.” The solution then was a mix of old and new. “We actually opted for a hybrid system here. You regenerate something then we have health stations around the game if you want to use them.”

The important thing for IO was to update elements in a way that suited the material. For example, the new checkpoints might seem incongruous with older Hitman games that forced you to memorise and perfect large levels to get the best playthroughs. In practice, though, they make the task more memorable without completely removing the challenge.

“With all the mechanics within the game we tried to apply them in a way that fits the game that we are making, says Tore. “We have some checkpoints to make it slightly easier to get an overview over a section of the game. So you don’t have to worry about the entire massive levels – they’re very, very huge. In the old games you had this kind of a butterfly effect where you could be doing something in this corner of the level and it could spread out and it just messed up everything that you did. You could spend three hours getting to a point and in three seconds you’d destroyed everything you did. We wanted to make sure the player had more freedom to push the game, and the game would push back, but it wouldn’t demolish you immediately.”

via Official PlayStation Magazine.

Not sure why you would even consider going through with the regenerative health mechanic. It's like adding a rewind feature to Gran Turismo. Defeats the entire point.

[keefy]

Its for the noobs they even says so.

Previous Hitman games are very unforgiving and take alot of trial and error to get the best rating at the mission end.
Most Gamers thesedays are impatient and do not want to do the same thing over and over to get it perfect we used to call that practice but now i think its known as boredom.

They want this game to sell well and so they dumb it down by creating easy modes, if they keep all oldschool they will end up with a great game only the hardcore will play much like Quake Live and the hardcore are always in the minority.

I must finish my playthrough of all the hitman games before this is released, I bought them all in the recent Steam sale.

[Blacksite]

I've only played through Blood Money but I really enjoyed going through the levels as a silent assassin. It's a very fulfilling feeling to be able to cover your tracks.

[Chulo]

this is what I'm talking about,
developers are to scared to let the player think for them self's, instead of building a game where it demands skill and precision it caters to those that don't feel like trying.....

why cater to the casual when your game has core written all over it?
now this checkpoint system will make silent assassin rank just that much easier.

ps. why do they even call it making the game for casuals?
casuals don't play hitman, they play angry birds or some stupid web based F2P game. what they should do is call it is catering to the noobs!

[Sir_Scud]

The checkpoint system does worry me somewhat. In other Hitman games you could do like a quicksave option X amount of times depending on the difficulty. However, maybe on the tougher difficulty there won't be so many or maybe even none. But from the article it doesn't sound like that is the case at all.

Personally I liked the challenge in the old games. As long as the changes don't make even the hard difficulties easy street, I have no issue with a change of pace.

[keefy]

On hardest difficulty there are no saves allowed on hitman games, medium is 3, easy is 7.
I epxect the same from Absolution along with varying degrees "hitman senses."

Hitman has always been about choices, hitmn doesnt force you to be 100% stealthy like Splintercell did you could kill anybody and every body you wanted to get the job done.

[billm0066]

Have they announced a release date? I am hoping it's by the holidays and not 2013.

[Blacksite]

November 20th, 2012. They announced it during the Sniper Challenge.

[mooninites]

I'm glad they didn't go with the regenerative health. I'm getting bored with all these games being really easy. I start every game on hard mode but it's not all that difficult. I'm hoping the souls franchises proved to devs that there is still a market for difficult games. Unfortunately it's probably not as big a market as they want.

Sent from my HTC VLE_U using Tapatalk 2

[NARCsnake]

i want the old hitman like the real players do where u have to time the kills or game over not where u go through the game like a chickn with its head cut off this is y theres only 5 hours in a campaign anymore

[podsaurus]

Regenerating health would have been to easy. As difficult as it was with past game, if you messed up you were set back a long ways. But then when you finished it was really satisfying. Also I'm glad the voice actor for 47 from previous games is back!

[Sufi]

Good, sick and tired of all the noobtastic features this generation.