Noelveiga said:
About this rant that goes on a bit further than this, I have nothing to say but that I just saw a mention of the disguise and the ability to eat a donut to blend in with the cops. I've not seen how the guy demoing dispatched the cop, or if he did at all or just walked out. I don't know what the goal of the mission is, I don't know if it was at the beginning of the game and I don't know if the disguise is an exception or a key to the gameplay.
And neither do you.
Oh, and it is fully possible to play all Hitman games as straight up shooters. That's part of the flexibility, too. We even got the "How not to play Hitman" webseries out of that particular option, which I found hilarious.
You said:
"Apparently the gamescom behind the scenes demo highlighted a sequence in which 47 takes a cop costume, walks up to a table, eats a donut while another cop walks by and then kills him."
Sorry, sounded like a dumb killing in front of everyone thug move. From the way you described it.
This is third hand info now, let's move on.
Waaaaaaaaaitaminuterightthere.
In Hitman you can see every enemy in the minimap. The game outright tells you where they are. It's been a long time and I really can't remember if they take that away on SA difficulty, but still.
Your problem is that they tell you where stuff is? They've been doing that all along! They just made you go into a different screen to do it. In 2 I'm pretty darn sure you also get HUD messages when guards find corpses, and in 3 and 4 you get split-screen cutaways that just show you what happens.
I mean, what are we even talking about here?
I know that, again, this subtly may be lost on you but there is a difference between an over-map and x-ray vision.
An overmap forces you to stand still blind to the world with a latency getting in and out of the map with a broad and basic overview of the map. It is for a large scale strategy, not close range confrontation that you could use pretty much all the time (as in Batman AA).
It was actually quite effective and fitting the way they showed guard discovering things with a split-screen effect showing them actually discovering it.
You are generalising things too much. There is a huge difference between a HUD text message and Navigation trails or highlighting.
Actually it isn't fair to call navigation trails a HUD element, those are painted ONTO the game world, they are not "heads up" (like a subtitle message of goal being completed). They disrupt the appearance of the game world as you stop looking at it as a building, you look at it as a polygon looking for the shiny one to progress. No thought required, a toddler could do it: Just tell him "follow the bright line and press X next to shiny things"
Seriously, like the friggin' exclamation points in the minimap for points of interest? I'm starting to get very confused here.
Excuse me not addressing your game design 101 about setting the scene for the player and upholding suspension of disbelief, but I just don't think we're disagreeing in any of that, either. I just don't have a problem with the HUD giving you information, and there are many ways to do this without ruining the experience.
I do think Arkham Asylum went a bit over the top with it, which I think is pretty much a consensus, and I hear they've toned it down in the sequel, but now you're mixing apples and oranges. It's one thing to claim that the game will take this over the top and break suspension of disbelief, which I don't know yet, because I haven't seen any of these mechanics in action yet, and another to complain that the game provides you with information, which Hitman has always flat out done!
Exclamation points were for The Agency item boxes, things like sniper rifles. It is reasonable your company would have them marked on your map, since they delivered them by one of their lower agents. They are TOOLS for the job, not solutions to the problem.
You may not be actively disagreeing with "upholding suspension of disbelief" but you aren't giving it due consideration. You say there are ways to do it but don't elaborate. That's a dismissal of the problem of HUD highlighting.
I don't trust IO to do this right. They tried to copy gears of War with Kane & Lynch and TWICE they utterly blew it. Now they are trying to copy an element that even Rocksteady struggled to do right?!?
Well, that's not what you said before. You said you "worry" and they are "selling out", which comes across as a tad hyperbolic when what you really meant is "it's ok if they want to add it on top of everything else as long as I can safely ignore the aids if I choose to make a hardcore run. But not so much that the game becomes too hard, because I still want to be able to win with this turned off". That's quite a bit more nuance and insecurity than you demonstrate elsewhere. It's almost "wait and see" material.
Well I have to admit it is a possibility this is jsut an added layer.
But considering their recent track history (Kane & Lynch) and all the other things that have been revealed about this game, I think it is highly likely they are going to fuck this up and use the highlighting/X-ray/nav-trails as the main mechanic that makes the game work at all.
Oh, sorry, did I have to? (give an example of a game as Cerebral as Hitman)
Why, though? I never denied that Hitman has its own feel to it (although, hey, if you need one, I did point out how much of a Thief influence there is in the game).
As for your second statement, there, no there isn't a lot of "evidence", which is not to say they aren't doing that, it's just that you're wasting your time complaining about it now based on extreme leaps of logic, setting a hostile playing field for the game and overall only hurting the franchise, the developers and your chances of actually getting the game you want.
Yeah, it would be nice. Thief is a good example but it isn't around any more.
"setting a hostile playing field"
Oh so if the game is bad it is MY FAULT! So if they are going in a bad direction, i should not say anything about it then somehow they will entirely by themselves reverse this... no.
I didn't say the game is owned by the director, although that's true of some games. I said the game is owned by the developers as a team, which is by default incompatible with filmic auteur theory. If anything, game developers are closer to TV showrunners in that they work more as a group but individual creators still have a noticeable impact in the end result.
For the record, Ebert's argument isn't that games can't be art because auteurs, it was that games are a competitive experience rather than an aesthetic experience. Art is technically defined as an act of communication based on an aesthetic experience, so if there's only competition in gaming, it can't be art by definition. Ebert's mistake isn't to believe that games don't have authors, which they do, actually, but to assume that a ruleset isn't an aesthetic statement, which it is. The rules of Silent Hill make you feel scared, and the objective isn't to "win" or "compete", but to "experience" the story and the gameplay. That's why Ebert is wrong, not... eh... "auteurs".
(There is no technical definition of art) And while you are right that Ebert hasn't out and damned games for lacking auteur-theory but has defended films for it while attacking games on a lot of points that I don't find entirely earnest. Many have speculated that is the source of why so many film critics dismiss video games as art yet film directors are comparatively keen on the medium.
Ebert misses the point and seems to see the "winning the game" or competitiveness and aesthetic experience being mutually exclusive, fails to consider how the competitive and the aesthetic can benefit each other.
Smearing the wonderfully realised world with navigation-trails and highlighted objects/items is discarding the aesthetic and the experience to make competition easier. X-ray mode completely destroys it, the world around you fades into transparency, all that matters are your enemies reduced to basic outlines.
Well, yeah, player agency is a unique part of gaming, and it's very interesting from a technical perspective to think how much of the artistry is brought by the player as opposed to the creator, but don't get confused, the experience is still designed by the developers. Players can actualize the experience in their own way, but without a player there's still a game waiting to happen. Without a developer, there is no game.
They own it because they create it, we just play it. We get to change it a little (or a lot at times) and we get to enjoy it or not enjoy it. We don't get to design it. And that's good.
Yes, the game artists of course design the "set" but the player is the "cameraman" by this analogy, they are controlling the "shot" and it MEANS A LOT that they are controlling it. It means something WHY they are looking somewhere, it is the job of the designers who lay out the level to draw the eye with natural contrast.
But when it is a subtle route, they have to look and take in everything, think about and understand what is around you. There is a difference between:
-immediately run over to shiny thing and Press X, because shiny = winning
and
-scan over the environment and recognise a pipe, looks like a solid metal pipe. It leads up to a ledge which is at the level where I need to be. Apply logic of the world that I can climb up there and shimmy along the ledge...
I think that all these changes that IO are doing are more than additional, they are integral but detract from the aesthetic experience.
Hitman series were great for how you could immerse yourself in these bohemian locations and really get to know them, you in effect played an inverse murder mystery. Rather than a detective trying to solve a seemingly impossible and traceless murder, you are an assassin trying to execute a seemingly impossible and traceless murder. And like a detective novel this puzzle-assassin game is a mode to show all these many elements of the location, characters and so on.
But that only works when you are going incognito, mingling as a bystander or in disguise. It doesn't work stealthy in the shadows which IO seems to be putting a worrying emphasis on.
Though you have convinced me to ease off a bit.
It "might" turn out all right, maybe this is just them showing the cool stuff to get the widest attention and they aren't going to give up on the immersion that made the Hitman series so loved... maybe.
I jsut don't want to get my hopes up and get burned.
I could like a game like absolution if I went into it expecting just homicidal Arkham Asylum, but it would be an unbearable disappointment if I was expecting Blood Money standards.
PS: sorry this has gotten so long.
