IO Changed Hitman: Absolution Following Nun Controversy

[Do4600]

This is mostly why I'm offended:

Spoiler: Hitman: Blood Money E3 Trailer

The trailer for blood money shows strategy, cunning, silenced weapons, disguise and about half a second of automatic fire and women.

Spoiler: Hitman: Absolution E3 Trailer

The trailer for Absolution shows Hitman callously offing eight women in BDSM gear, all of them after the first three are clumsy and not planned at all and the way it's depicted makes me think that this game thinks it's competing against "God of War" or "The Matrix: Path of Neo".

 

[Durgiun]

Wait, there were going to be more lingerie-clad, weapon-wielding nuns in the game pior to that traler release? (The part about him saying that portion of the game had been tweated.)

I'm pretty sure some modder somewhere is hard at work.

 

[matrix3509]

Goddamnit IO, we're are not offended just because the women are scantily clad, we (that is, we the fans of Hitman, and therefore the only people whose opinions on the trailer matter in the slightest) are offended because the trailer didn't look like Hitman, it just looked like shitty action schlock with ironic nuns. That is NOT Hitman.

This character has walked into a mental asylum to confront his creator and clones of himself. He's dressed up like a ninja to get into a samurai-era castle to kill a high-value target. He's killed a butcher in a room with a naked woman hanging barefoot from the ceiling. He killed a group of people (men and women) who dressed up as crows, and an "angelic" assassin who will kill him if he doesn't react. He could have spent the majority of the series making people die in freak accidents involving stairs and very short drops. He killed his albino brother in the White House, then followed it up by killing an innocent reporter, a crippled man and an entire funeral service.

Really, this whole incident is pretty far down the list in terms of WTF-ery from the franchise. If they make the story better as a result of this, I'm all for it - besides, there was already an explanation for who they are in one of the trailers.

Please don't presume to speak for everyone who's a fan of this series. Everything I've seen makes this look like it'll be just as good as Blood Money, if not better.

Notice how every single scenario you just described there basically proves my point. In none of those situations were shitty action movie setpieces employed, unlike the trailer. All signs point to the game being exactly that. Blockbuster movie shlock...probably with shitty cover mechanic tacked on for good measure.

 

[DementedSheep]

Why did they have to bring it up again? I don?t think them saying they tweaked some shit is actually going to change the minds of anyone who was offended by the trailer. That ship has sailed.
I think most people had forgotten about it by now, they would have been better of just leaving it alone.
Personally I wasn?t really offended by the trailer, its just stupid and really doesn?t make me want to buy the game.

This is going to result in more gender threads isn?t it?

 

[Rellik San]

Well if you want the game to be practical lets add all the things an assasin would need to be like 47 in the end we end up wiht splinter cell like character:

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb57886/splintercell/images/f/f6/Splinter_Cells.jpg

Why do they dont add all that stuff?, well because fictional world were a bald clone can pull out all that stuff without wearing all those pockets and stuff on..... like the nuns pull out the rocket launcher and other weapons out of god knows where

Ah, well allow me to further explain my point; 47 is an assassin, his job is to blend in to any number of environments (usually urban ones) not military complexes hence him being in a suit, typically he carries a silenced pistol or two and a blade, so for 47 to be effective in this world, he is the way he is, sure he looks bad ass, but it's practical bad ass, as lets face it a bald man in a business suit is either just that or if he's built like a brick private security and you wouldn't look twice. Ergo his costume is an effective and efficient choice for his style and methods of assassination. To wear full combat gear given his chosen environment would be like wearing a massive exclamation point over his head.

As for the nuns, unless they spend their time in goth clubs or S&M hotels, which they very well could do, their costumes do not make sense beyond basic titillation. In other words, they break the sense of disbelief... I can believe 47 pulling a shotgun out of his ass, even taking them all out without taking a single hit, but I can't believe that those nuns have ever been effective at their jobs, then again, the use of a rocket launcher does belie any sense of subtlety and maybe that's their schtick, that they aren't subtle at all.

It's basic character design 101... and admittedly without seeing any real context for the nuns, it fails.

But of course, you're welcome to disagree with me on this and I doubt I've changed your mind any, I just thought I'd offer an expanded explanation of what I said.

As an aside; "Well it's just a fictional world" is fine for some people, but personally I consider it a weak excuse, a fictional world needs to be consistent to it's own internal logic and that's the difference between believing a man can fly and scoffing at nuking the fridge.

 

[Imbechile]

but, but, but....

THINK OF THE ARTISTIC INTEGRITY!

How could you change something because FANS complained????? Quick escapist! To the developer's defence!!!

Silly Darkmantle!
The escapist only cares for Bioware, the """""""Masters""""""" of storytelling and the last bastion of """""""artistic integrity""""""" in the gaming industry.

PS: In-before MovieBob to the rescue!

PPS: Are some people in this thread purposely acting like idiots, or what?

People aren't offended by scantly-clad nuns.
They are only offended because those scantly-clad nuns don't fit in the overall feel of the Hitman universe.

It would be like putting those same nuns in The Godfather movie. It would make no sense!

 

[Treblaine]

Murdering police officers, US soldiers and doctors: deal with it.

Sexy Nuns: OH DEAR GOD HOW COULD ANYTHING BE ANY WORSE THAN THIS!!!! People can't handle THIS!

 

[rosac]

Lara pissed people off because this new game is an origin story, and the HR guy made the mistake of implying that Lara's tough, individualist demeanor stemmed from an attempted rape. That follows on from what I was just saying about how "tough" women in stories tend to have been raped in the past and "that's why they're tough". That kind of thing never happens to explain why a man is tough.

Plus there was that remark about how rape was used to "make us care for her". He really did put his foot in it.

While I can understand how badly the PR department shot themselves in the foot here, I don't like the "Rape turned her into a badass" argument. After a freaking shipwreck, she was left alone on an island for a while, hunting and helping others she found survive. Whilst (presumably) being hunted by Mercs or some other force. This is a more gradual character change that led into her becoming Lara Croft as we know her: An adventurer who can survive the odds and come out on top. The attempted rape moved things along by being her first ever murder.

 

[Treblaine]

but, but, but....

THINK OF THE ARTISTIC INTEGRITY!

How could you change something because FANS complained????? Quick escapist! To the developer's defence!!!

Protip: It wasn't the fans of Hitman who were the ones complaining and especially not demanding that anything be changed.

I mean this is a series about an utterly cold blooded murderer who is the type of guy to execute a man in a wheelchair, to kill policemen, serving Marines, Federal agents, secret-service agents, and even medical staff and anyone who gets in his way for no higher purpose than to kill people... for money. He killed his own father(s) with his bare hands.

It would be the height of hypocrisy to be fine with all that but then suddenly object to some risqué nun outfits that weren't even very revealing*. No. The complaining was done by people who had no investment nor interest nor understanding with the Hitman universe. A universe where one of your targets is a variously a 500lbs sumo wrestler, a gay BDSM club owner dressed in bondage gear, a cake obsessed riverboat captain, a melodramatic opera performer killed mid rehearsal, a former olymic champion stripped of his medals for taking performance drugs you have to kill him and his girlfriend when they are dressed in bird costumes as they try to assassinate a Presidential candidate, a decrepit old evil Hugh Heffner type, and none other than the Vice President of the United States killed in the Oval Office no less.

*seriously, you didn't see any cleavage, buttocks or midrif. The only thing this was was shocking that you had traditionalist Catholic attire that is normally deathly afraid of sex (and by some dumb logical extension the female body itself) being combined with type of very typically revealing clothing for the 21st century.

 

[Mike Fang]

Putting aside any potential offense to be taken at the content, I don't think the fact the trailer failed was because the content was insulting to someone. I think it failed because it was so STUPID. The Hitman games have generally had a fair sense of realism to them (or if you don't want to call it realism, they've had a fair sense of believability). Their plots and settings have been played relatively straight, with believable antagonists like terrorists, gangsters, drug dealers, corrupt military officials, crooked businessmen, and so forth. Now suddenly we get a trailer of latex-clad nuns with automatic weapons; extreme tonal shift from the previous games and somewhat off-putting.

Now picking the offensiveness back up, this isn't an attempt at censorship. Yes, artists have the right to express themselves however they wish. However, people everywhere have the right to express their opinion on artists' work, even if that opinion is that the work is bull$#!t. Really, people shouldn't take every bit of criticism thrown at something for its message as an attempt at censorship. That in itself is an attempt at censoring the general public or even professional critics from expressing its/their collective thoughts on something.

 

[Rellik San]

Ohhhh oh... I think I got it, I know what IO were trying to do, they were making the Zork to the previous games Mysts.

Watch this space, I guarantee a trailer showing 47 as a Brony.

 

[Treblaine]

Lara pissed people off because this new game is an origin story, and the HR guy made the mistake of implying that Lara's tough, individualist demeanor stemmed from an attempted rape. That follows on from what I was just saying about how "tough" women in stories tend to have been raped in the past and "that's why they're tough". That kind of thing never happens to explain why a man is tough.

The "rape made them tough" is 100% ENTIRELY MADE UP by the very critics OF the idea.

They make up the idea and then say they object to it when that was NEVER anyone's idea. No one ever said "Entirely because she was raped, that made her a badass... like spiderman's spider bite".

Nope. Characters enduring suffering has always been used as an EXAMPLE of how badass they are, it's not even a trope, it's a fundamental tenement of storytelling.

If John Rambo had had a comfortable life filling out tax returns and dying of old age, how would you know he was a badass? No. He is shown in a prison camp being sliced up and electrocuted and broken down to almost nothing, that doesn't make him badass, but rising up again does. Ditto for Casino Royale.

I never heard anyone calling for a boycott of Deliverance or The Shawshank Redemption for the attempted or actual rape of the main character in those films. I wonder what difference it makes that they were men being raped?

"tough" women in stories tend to have been raped

Tend to?
-Ellen Ripley
-Sarah Connor
-Jenette Vasquez
-Tank Girl
-Trinity

Nope. The evil villains of film do tend to be rapists though, that's true in film and true in real life for the worst kinds of people you'd fight against.

Plus there was that remark about how rape was used to "make us care for her". He really did put his foot in it.

Backward-ass, yes. But he's parroting poorly conducted psychology studies when they question male gamers on their attachment to character and many of them did say they were being protective but the study did not correct for how the people surveyed would give more the answers they were expected to give (men are expected to be protective of women and not expected to identify with them) rather than their genuine but hard to express stance. It's a poor analysis of how outsiders think ALL men view ALL female characters in games, not Lara in this particular situation.

 

[crazyrabbits]

Notice how every single scenario you just described there basically proves my point. In none of those situations were shitty action movie setpieces employed, unlike the trailer. All signs point to the game being exactly that. Blockbuster movie shlock...probably with shitty cover mechanic tacked on for good measure.

Semantics. It doesn't matter whether or not it was staged like anything. Your original argument indicated that the trailer didn't "look like Hitman". I'm telling you that the Hitman games have featured such outlandish scenarios throughout its entire history that the whole franchise took on an air of ludicrousness. Half the fun of the games is seeing which bats***-crazy scenario you'll get involved in next.

Again, don't presume to speak for an entire fanbase when you have no idea what you're talking about. Even your notion that this is suddenly "action schlock" was proven false by the advertising for previous games - Silent Assassin's "Ready to Die" trailer played it up as a nonstop killfest where you use a fire axe to split heads and run into buildings while firing wildly. Blood Money's print campaign had images of scantily-clad women shown in death poses with gunshot wounds in their foreheads. Even Absolution's first trailer had 47 walking in on a woman in a shower to kill her.

With all the hypocritical complaining you've done, I'd wager I'm a bigger fan of the franchise than you are. At least I've played every game in the series, and know how outlandish the material is...our problem is with a bunch of assassins who 47 kills before they can kill him. Right.

 

[dnazeri]

Its always nice to see a studio calmly listening to its fans.

 

[dnazeri]

Notice how every single scenario you just described there basically proves my point. In none of those situations were shitty action movie setpieces employed, unlike the trailer. All signs point to the game being exactly that. Blockbuster movie shlock...probably with shitty cover mechanic tacked on for good measure.

Semantics. It doesn't matter whether or not it was staged like anything. Your original argument indicated that the trailer didn't "look like Hitman". I'm telling you that the Hitman games have featured such outlandish scenarios throughout its entire history that the whole franchise took on an air of ludicrousness. Half the fun of the games is seeing which bats***-crazy scenario you'll get involved in next.

Again, don't presume to speak for an entire fanbase when you have no idea what you're talking about. Even your notion that this is suddenly "action schlock" was proven false by the advertising for previous games - Silent Assassin's "Ready to Die" trailer played it up as a nonstop killfest where you use a fire axe to split heads and run into buildings while firing wildly. Blood Money's print campaign had images of scantily-clad women shown in death poses with gunshot wounds in their foreheads. Even Absolution's first trailer had 47 walking in on a woman in a shower to kill her.

With all the hypocritical complaining you've done, I'd wager I'm a bigger fan of the franchise than you are. At least I've played every game in the series, and know how outlandish the material is...our problem is with a bunch of assassins who 47 kills before they can kill him. Right.

I agree with you, Hitman has always had the air of wackiness and ludicrousness about it, but the wackiness always felt like it somehow fit. The trailer just seemed way to over the top, and its absurd sexualization made it feel juvenile. Now if 47 had dressed up as a nun to infiltrate the Catholic Church's secret drug ring or something like that, that would be something I could get on board with

 

[Treblaine]

Putting aside any potential offense to be taken at the content, I don't think the fact the trailer failed was because the content was insulting to someone. I think it failed because it was so STUPID. The Hitman games have generally had a fair sense of realism to them (or if you don't want to call it realism, they've had a fair sense of believability). Their plots and settings have been played relatively straight, with believable antagonists like terrorists, gangsters, drug dealers, corrupt military officials, crooked businessmen, and so forth. Now suddenly we get a trailer of latex-clad nuns with automatic weapons; extreme tonal shift from the previous games and somewhat off-putting.

Now picking the offensiveness back up, this isn't an attempt at censorship. Yes, artists have the right to express themselves however they wish. However, people everywhere have the right to express their opinion on artists' work, even if that opinion is that the work is bull$#!t. Really, people shouldn't take every bit of criticism thrown at something for its message as an attempt at censorship. That in itself is an attempt at censoring the general public or even professional critics from expressing its/their collective thoughts on something.

WHAT! It's got villains pulled straight out of the most Over-the-top comic books, it's got 500lbs sumo wrestlers who guard their boss dressed AS a sumo wrestler, it's BDSM clubs located underneath a meat-packing factory, it's "heaven and hell" nighclubs, it's a pornographers hedonistic party in his mountain mansion, it's assassinating larger than life rich Sheiks in a Vegas casino. The series is like James Bond, only the evil mirror universe bond where the hero is the villain with smatterings of goodness rather than the inverse.

What Hitman games have you played? If any???!?!

The term you don't address is "Self-censorship". They aren't changing this to be more true to the work that their fans have been following, but to cater to the people who have no understanding nor investment in the series who want it changed. The trailer is not inconsistent with what the fans of the series have come to expect, I don't mean in terms of misogyny but in terms of EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING being exploited to the extreme.

 

[TAdamson]

This character has walked into a mental asylum to confront his creator and clones of himself. He's dressed up like a ninja to get into a samurai-era castle to kill a high-value target. He's killed a butcher in a room with a naked woman hanging barefoot from the ceiling. He killed a group of people (men and women) who dressed up as crows, and an "angelic" assassin who will kill him if he doesn't react. He could have spent the majority of the series making people die in freak accidents involving stairs and very short drops. He killed his albino brother in the White House, then followed it up by killing an innocent reporter, a crippled man and an entire funeral service.

Really, this whole incident is pretty far down the list in terms of WTF-ery from the franchise. If they make the story better as a result of this, I'm all for it - besides, there was already an explanation for who they are in one of the trailers.

I disagree. There is schlock, and there is hyper-absurdism.

While I agree that Hitman is silly action schlock at times, it has never really before passed through the plane of plausibility. Even the final levels of Codename47.

It's Faceoff vs Kill Bill. One gives some justification, however flimsy, for events in its narrative. The other just has events and visuals because they look awesome.


In fact lets look at Kill Bill even further. There is something called the Tarantinoverse.
The movies Inglorious Basterds, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction are all set in Tarantinoverse. The movies Kill Bill and From Dusk Till Dawn are movies from the Tarantinoverse.


The movies set in the Tarantinoverse are schlock. The movies in the Tarantinoverse are hyper-absurd.

And sexy killer-nuns is definitely hyper-absurd and it's not the feeling I want in a Hitman game.

 

[Treblaine]

The trailer just seemed way too over the top, and its absurd sexualization made it feel juvenile.

You sure this isn't just a hang up with a society that is so comfortable with sadistic murder of innocents yet neurotic about characters being wilfully sexual in any way?

I don't get why everyone rants about Lara Croft's "sexualisation" who doesn't even show any cleavage yet pays no mind to her murderous and cruel tendencies. The British press are a bit more clued in on this, from the very earliest days the main concern was how flippantly she gunned down endangered species (even collecting ivory trophies) and showed no remorse in annihilating entire tribes of indigenous people even though she is the one trespassing in their most sacred domains and stealing their most precious relics. I mean she illegally owns machine guns and automatic-pistols IN BRITAIN!!! Not to mention that time she went to America and killed over 50 military police officers as well as leading a mass prison break or murdered the head of a cosmetics company to steal her jewellery. Self-defence my arse, she broke into her offices then left with her personal possessions from her looted body.

But oh no SHE'S WEARING SHORT SHORTS!!! Ooooh the humanity! You can kill an many illiterate foreigners and police-officers as you like, but don't show your legs!!! [/sarc]

It's quite clear the complaints are coming from passers by who see JUST the advertising as outsiders and ignore the games themselves.

 

[TAdamson]

The trailer is not inconsistent with what the fans of the series have come to expect, I don't mean in terms of misogyny but in terms of EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING being exploited to the extreme.

I disagree.

Hitman may not always be realistic, but it's always plausible. Sexy-Killer-Nuns is not plausible and drags me out of the fiction.


I can envisage Japanese mob boss guarding himself with sumo wrestler for the theatre of it.
I HAVE BEEN TO CLUBS WITH BDSM THEMES BELOW MEAT PACKING FACTORIES.
And as for larger than life Shieks; you think that they don't exist?

I know what doesn't exist though and that's a "Funky Force Five" of "Sexy Ninja Bondage Nuns".