Could Hitman 2016 have gotten away with it?

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

The sad truth is that the game would never have been made, but for the episodic development. Hitman is a niche game that always returned investment while never lighting up the balance sheets. They tried with Absolution to make it a AAA generic game and it was awful. The new one at least *was* a Hitman game. The always-online thing makes no real sense and is a major issue, but I don't think the episodic nature is.

The end result is that the devs delivered a complete game and met every promise they made. I don't think it's fair to rail against episodic games while accepting Early Access, Kickstarter or anything of that nature. Even with the episodic development, IO still didn't do well enough to please owners at Squeenix, so now they're downsizing and being sold off.

I have no issue at all with the episodic delivery. I can understand that players want to pay money and get a complete game, and I can also understand that it can be weird to play a bit of a game each month for several months. However, without this system, the game would never have been made and so for that reason alone, I accept it without issue. Telltale do episodic games and get lots of love so the system of development is clearly effective and can get good results.

Hitman is never going to sell 5mill copies. It simply won't. So for modern AAA publishers, they are less interested in games that cost less and make less. They throw 8 zeroes at Tomb Raider, 7 zeroes for other titles and they want blockbusters. I don't know why the Quest for the Blockbuster is still their only goal. Greedy shareholders should settle for steady growth and reliable returns with occasional blockbusters, instead of releasing fewer huge budget titles that flop with one success every blue moon.

 

[Laughing Man]

Yeah it is.

Plus, it's ten times better than the clunky, scaled down mess that was Blood Money.

Hands down the best Hitman game. It's what the series was always trying to be but never achieved before 2016.

You see, you started well and then went down the route of saying something silly like this. Hitman 2016 was not, categorically NOT the best Hitman game ever, Contracts still takes that honour with Blood Money and Silent Assassin next. It was however better than Absolution but that was such a low bar to clear as to be next to worthless.

Would it have gotten away with it had the game been better.

Hitman 2016 had one big problem, 'opportunities' these were hand held lists of ways in which you could kill your target. Find a clue then the game tracked and showed you where to go and what to do to kill your target with THAT opportunity. The only problem is it listed them all in the main in game menu meaning that even if you didn't opt to kill a target a certain way you at least now knew of the alternative and THAT killed any feeling of needing to replay the missions.

The opportunities system was a requirement of the size and complexity of the levels. Wandering to find them by yourself and work out the movement patterns would have resulted in a very boring game and that's where the smaller, lesser technically superior older games got away with it. Smaller levels more obvious NPC movement patterns and more limited opportunities to kill meant the player didn't spend hours having to work out methods to kill the bad guy and it meant that replaying levels to find better ways of doing the missions was fun rather than a slog. So yeah if Hitman 2016 was as good as previous Hitman games (not Absolution) then chances are I would still be playing the episode trying to find a better way to kill my target by the time the new episode came out, with 2016 I played the game through once and then uninstalled it (I bought the game in a sale after all the episodes had been released).

Also the rewards system for doing well in previous Hitman games helped as well.

Wait, wouldn't it be a good thing for developers? That way they can release part of the game and get paid while they make the rest of it.

We already have a system in place for that it's called Early Access. Where it works well for publishers is that it means they can keep the games price artificially high for a much longer period of time. Hitman 2016 didn't go on ANY kind of sale until after all the episodes had been released and even then it was still quite a small sale. If the game had been sold as a complete package it would have been down in price within 3 - 6 months and the last Christmas sale it would have had a significant reduction but given that the last episode had only just been released the sale on the 'complete game' was rather quite small.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

In response to OP, I'd say no, but I could be alone in this.

Hitman was actually my favorite franchise for quite a while. I've played every single one, and gotten silent assassin rating on each (except Codename 47). But I drew the line in the always-online. I find it a travesty in any single player game.

The other game I put my foot down on was Diablo 3. After spending thousands of hours in Diablo 2, I had waited for it eagerly for years, anticipated more than almost anything I'd played. But with always online and microtransactions, I just said no. Till today, I haven't even watched it online.

Honestly, the episodic format doesn't bother me, unless the devs made it really obvious. The other episodic games I have purchased include A Wolf Among Us, and RE: Revelations 2, both of which I waited until they were complete package deals. And to me, they didn't suffer for it at all (except the last chapter in Rev 2, that was bullshit and whoever paid money for that separately has a right to be pissed). But compared to always online and fucked up DRM, these are minor.

Dropping the Hitman franchise has been a bit of a heartbreak sure, but I can't support that model. And neither will my connection, for that matter.

 

[crypticracer]

I'm not sure I can see how the game was a cashgrab. the full thing was cheaper than prettymuch every other triple a game. The season pass was the whole game, for a total of $60. You didn't have to buy the game and then buy an additional season pass on top of that.

There is a single 3 dollar dlc otherwise you got everything for the price of a game.

The always online element is it's own thing to take issue with. Besides that Hitman is the only episodic game I have felt justifies it's format. I believe Superbunnyhop, but the game still feels like it was always meant to be single episode releases.