Hitman, the game that shows that episodic developments are a great idea

It was impossible not to approach ‘Hitman’ with some fear. The stunt of Hitman: Absolution and the idea of embarking on an episodic experiment got us to look at the project of IO Interactive and Square Enix with the suspicion of someone who sees the accident coming from afar.

Curious because now, however, we cannot be happier to have experienced that situation, first because the crash of ‘Absolution’ has forced the saga to put the batteries and secondly, because the episodic format has seated him Pearls to development and, most likely, the only way to achieve this level of excellence.

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The Benefits of Episodic Development

Now the game hits stores in a pack that includes everything lived so far over the past few months and, to some extent, reminds us of what happens with the big TV series. Although there is room here for each player to express as much as possible the game, it is inevitable to think that living episodic releases has been a great success to make the most of the investment.

I come to the head Lost and its pair of spectators, on the one hand those who stuck the marathon of the century gobbling up chapter by chapter, on the other those who discovered week after week a new news, rumor or theory that took the series much more Beyond what it apparently was.

Something similar has happened with ‘Hitman’, partly thanks to the work of IO when it comes to creating maps with a number of possibilities and secrets overwhelming, but also by the contracts, objectives and variations as a bonus that have been added with the passage of weeks.

To say that Hitman is a huge game is to stay very short, but to deny that it would have been difficult to live a similar experience if it had not been thanks to the experiment of covering an episodic development that little by little financed the project is to face the abyss that separates the Reality of the yuppie worlds.

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What does Hitman offer us?

For those who walk a little lost with the proposal or have not yet approached the saga, this ‘Hitman’ is Square Enix’s response to the spirit of the franchise. In a similar way to what was experienced with ‘Resident Evil 7’, ‘Hitman’ stripped himself of his ties to seek a reboot that fails to mend past mistakes and focus on exploiting his successes.

That is to create a stealth game in which we will cross six different scenarios pursuing a single objective, ending one or more enemies using the abilities of Agent 47. Those are, as expected, using weapons or manipulate the environment to hunt our particular victim trying, as far as possible, between our entry and exit the stage are not discovered.

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The key is how through disguises we can climb positions to reach our goal, for example first as a waiter, then as a cook, then as a security guard and finally as bodyguard of the target.

Thanks to these changes we will be able to go through the different layers that make up each scene without being detected, but even if it is easy to say it, being always exposed to being recognized by a higher category NPC, the thing becomes enormously complicated and gives life to a puzzle of epic proportions.

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The definitive secrecy game

The thing could stay there and we would be before a more or less well-known experience, but it is what happens (or could happen) in each scenario what marks the greatness and spectacular of this ‘Hitman’. Because yes, to enter pistol in hand and dispatch the target without being seen can have its grace, but find out about the possibility of provoking and catch him by surprise in the sink is just one of the many possibilities offered by each assignment.

It is not something that is simply at the expense of what each player wants to do. Each murder has a series of secondary objectives that, if completed, will allow us to approach the level with certain advantages, be it an initial disguise or a hidden weapon somewhere on the stage.

That, coupled with the scalable goals added by the development team (an achievement of challenges that go on to become absurd) or contracts marked by other players in which we must assassinate X NPC in one form or another, make the repetition Of missions in something much closer to learning and mastery of our possibilities than an excuse to lengthen the game.

That the team behind Hitman introduces new challenges or even modifying scenarios so that you have to relearn them to exploit them not only shows that the affection placed in each level or challenge is worthy of applause, also that ‘Hitman’ is, in spite of its Experiment or thanks to him, one of the most complete, difficult and amusing experiences of secrecy in the history of the environment.