IO Refuses To Be "Dictated To" by Fans

jackanderson

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OK, IO. How about this compromise?

I'll stop winging about the upcoming Hitman: Absolution, when you knuckle down and make a fucking Hitman game! Instead of this Arkham Asylum knock off!
Treblaine said:
Hitman is not about "stealth" in the sense of hiding in the shadows, it is ALL about hiding in plain sight, in disguises or just mingling with the public. Something so good about stealing a disguise and infiltrating a place just walking around like you are just another guard.

And to the list of bullshit:
-Bateson completely blown off: the voice AND face of Agent 47
-no overmap
-over-emphasis on combat and shooting
-Jesper Kyd not rehired (that god damn amazing music...)
-no mention of more novel assassination modes like "accidental deaths" in Blood Money
This guy speaks the truth!
 

Strazdas

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so they introduce a feature thats going to make game play like watching a movie, then they cry that fans complain for ruining the game. great. Hitman was NEVER for the broad audience. no game should ever be. games should be made for specific types of players, and made well for it, while other type of players can play other games. sadly, it doesnt work monetary, so lets f**k the players and make money right?
 

IKWerewolf

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Double edged swords are wonderful things, until they hit you.

On one hand, I can understand where they are trying to go, to give the gamers the definitive Hitman as done by the makers of Hitman. In this case they are doing the right thing, keeping to the spirit of the game and making people happy.

However, they can go too far and break the spirit of the game. The example here of Navigation lines is the best example. The lines could ruin the look of the game and make it look tacky.

I can understand the reason for the Navigation System, however it can be done better and surprisingly its past (and Gears of War in some ways) provide the answer.

In Blood Money, if something goes wrong such as discovery of a weapon or your target goes somewhere in particular that affects you, your screen splits and the scene is shown of this happening (it was brilliant when I was shown, on one level, that they had moved the target onto a stage exactly where I could drop the lighting rig on them (I am Evil)).

Why not have a hints system like that. Tap one button, select either what you want to get, something you already haveor the approach you want to take and the best option is shown in the screen split? OK it will cost something in the long run like Blood Money's intelligence system.

It pleases everyone; you don't have to use it but its there, it doesn't affect normal mechanics except your final socre and maybe something like money or skill system and IMPORTANTLY, EVERYONE'S HAPPY!
 

IKWerewolf

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The Virgo said:
Well you know, IO, the fans ARE what made you. And you KNEW that changing the franchise that we fans have come to know and love would result in backlash. (I mean, come on, it doesn't take a fucking consultant to know that.) Then, when the backlash happens, you tell us that you don't want to be "dictated to".

They said it wrong, really. Had I been IO's spokesperson, I would have said it like this:

"While we here at IO Interactive have always believed in listening to our fanbases, including the Hitman fanbases ... yes there are more than one (chuckles), we also believe in following our instincts and doing what we feel can appease everyone, from the hardcore fan who has been with us since the first Hitman game was announced, to the newbie who has never heard of Hitman until now."

But honestly, I have no idea why they need to add a route system. It was that overwhelming sense of "okay ... what should I do" that made Hitman: Blood Money one of my top 5 favorite games. Being dumped in a large setting not knowing what to do and finding out the hard way what does and doesn't work and improvising in this unfamiliar territory when your carefully laid out plan backfires and the shit hits the fan is what makes Hitman a fucking classic. God, I have so many great stories from Blood Money ... and most of them are about when things went wrong! How many games do you play where the fun is in trying to correct your mistakes and by doing so making even BIGGER mistakes! That domino effect of things going wrong and trial and error is what makes the game great!

I'm worried that adding a route system will take away that "lost in an unfamiliar and hostile place" mechanic will make the game too simple. I mean, really, maybe that works for another game, but not Hitman.

Anyway, kudos if anyone has actually read this far. +1 internets, I suppose. :)

Also, I want to make a prediction: The game will release, critics will give it good reviews, newcomers will like it, but anyone who enjoyed the previous games will hate it's simplicity. IO will realize their foolish mistake and the next Hitman game will be closer to Blood Money, which they mention often. You heard it here.
And I can't argue with any of this, however with the costs of these type of games spiralling, they will be happy if they get a wider fan base. So the last paragraph depends on which is the larger fanbase, new customers or old customers.

The best trick, offer solutions to them that go into the spirit of the game such as the split screen concept I mentioned earlier.
 

JoesshittyOs

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While I do hate all the whiny self entitled gamers, I think with an IP like Hitman, the people who are demanding it to remain true to the original are the right ones. Hitman is a delicate series that really is close to as perfect as it's going to be, it just needs a touch of modernization to keep it alive and well, not a whole dose of new features while getting rid of the old ones which made it amazing.

Seriously IO. Just look at Splinter Cell, a game that was in it's prime at about the same times as yours. Don't fuck it up like they did.
 

Treblaine

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Noelveiga said:
Well, that all depends, doesn't it? We haven't played the damn game, like I keep telling you, so I don't know if the game feels like a cop-out. Again, from the trailers and gameplay I've seen, it really, really doesn't feel that way to me yet, but I don't think either of us has the info to make that call yet. Like I said before, this is a conversation that would only make sense after the fact. And because we've had it before the fact, now after the fact is tainted, because you'll play the game from the perspective of this conversation (that is, tainted by hype, positive or negative) instead of seeing it for what it is and analyzing it later.

But... that's still there. That we know for a fact. 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. That sounds Hitman-y to me. Again, I haven't played the game, so I don't know if that's in there more or less than before, but I know it *is* in there.



I'm going to play my old man card here. If I had a cent for every time I've seen this pattern with an UI improvement or control change in gaming I'd have a pile of cents.

AA had an idea that allowed them to have complex patterns in the dark and still make them very readable to players. It worked. Other people took the idea and ran with it, some well and some poorly. A bunch of mechanics, from iron sights aiming to mouselook have been created and spead out in the same way for ages, and gamers always have a hard time telling apart a functional improvement that just makes games better, easier or more convenient to play from a philosophical design stance. Do you know how long people called FPSs "Doom clones?" I remember it took a while to get over that one.



Well, yeah, but rewarding imagination and intelligence can be done in many ways. Hitman found one, all those other games I listed found others. You claimed that no games did reward imagination and intelligence in gameplay, and I object to that. It's just not true. If you want to claim that no game does what Hitman does, though, I do agree, but that doesn't mean that every other game is boring, excessively linear or dumb.



So wait, you are contradicting yourself here. You do admit that pathways were already highlighted before through briefings, texturework, level design and a bunch of other ways, right?

But... you don't want them highlighted with a HUD element.

So you think after the brouhaha they may let you turn off the HUD element (somebody said before that it's turned off in Silent Assassin mode, I don't know if he heard that one from the devs). But you fear that if they do that they'll stop highlighting them through other means? Just you don't know this. And you have no reason to believe it.

I don't get it. I really don't. You're contradicting yourself, complaining about an optional feature(maybe, we don't know yet, but like you say, if you find it's like a commentary track... well, if it's an option, then don't turn the commentary on) and forcing the issue.

It is really not as big a change as you claim it is, you don't know how deeply it runs into the game or changes it yet and you have no basis to claim it's a move without artistic integrity. Sorry to say it, but you have given me nothing but support to the notion that you're behaving like the franchise is owned by you and the people that agree with you and should be made following your guidance when it comes to design and artistic decisions.

I know we both understand where each other comes from, so I think this is it for me. It is an issue that annoys me, though, and let me tell you why it's dangerous.

You know what other media industry ended up becoming merely reactive to fanboy desires, doing things just to please the hardcore to the point where all creativity was gone and accessibility was eliminated, leaving it to be perused only by the geekest of the geek, in a downwards spiral of creativity and commercial viability?

American comic books.

It's a long story, but for a bunch of reasons, while European and Japanese comics kept doing a range of genres, targeting their stories to multiple different audiences and generally allowing some artistry alongside the geeky teenager fare, US comic books just got stuck in superhero mode to the point where nothing else was commercially viable. Only superhero books weren't viable either, because there were too many of them and they appealed only to a tiny, very specific segment of shut-in nerd teens. This went on for decades and it's still an issue, despite some efforts by indie and mainstream publishers, and even as superheroes take over action movies, comic book sales continue to dwindle.

That's where gaming goes if we let the hardcore and only the hardcore "dictate to developers", so in this one IO has my full support. If they try something and it doesn't work, well, that's a shame, but *they* should be trying. Design by comittee is just as bad when it comes from fanboy requests than when it's a result of marketing or corporate pressure.
If you think it is too early to say it is a cop out... equally it should be too early for YOU to say it is NOT a cop out! You are quite happy to conclude a lot of what you'd call positive things from what you have seen... yet somehow I am not allowed to criticise.

Shot in front of a group of people with loads of witnesses does NOT sound like a Hitman game, he is supposed to be a ghost with no one having any idea that there was an assassin till you walk out of there. Yes, Blood Money did include such sequences but only at the beginning and end, not as an integral part of assassination missions.

A Hitman game would be killing him with poison, or with a trap or if he does shoot him then with a sniper rifle from a building away or just at an opportune moment when he thinks he is alone.

Walking up to someone and shooting them, that's what any thug can do; one who excepts to fight his way out or doesn't care if he dies.

I have a genuine issue with X-ray vision in a stealth games much like I have with radar, radar being a feature many copied from Metal Gear Solid even though the MGS series dropped it in subsequent games. See MGS was being played like a 2D game only depending on the radar, in MGS3 to get something like radar it was more ambiguous and came with various costs.

Like X-ray-vision the problem is you only use X-ray vision for stealthy movement, you are missing all the "mise en scene", the game word and all its subtitles. You are just avoiding cyber-skeletons and electro-ghost, it's like including auto-aim in an FPS game. It takes out all the challenge which was your reason for playing it; that is to deduce where the enemy where without actually knowing.

I can see a feature like this as a special one-off tool, like a pair of goggles that have huge power consumption. Otherwise it is overpowered.

You seem to completely misunderstand the point of subtlety when it comes to indicate modes of killing. There is a difference between an in-universe clue that makes sense considering the world you are in, and a blatant out-of-universe clue that comes in the form of a contrived "instinct" that marks every step you have to take.

The subtle clues I am talking about I mean in the sense of - say - a detective at a crime scene finding some evidence and saying "ah ha! I found a clue to who killed the duchess!" but the point is the clue does NOT seem like it was deliberately left there by the perpetrator NOR placed there by contrivance of the writer (if he is a good writer). It's just a chance element indicating something. A terrible crime writer would just give him a special "instinct" that told him exactly what happened with no ambiguity.

The point is they are so subtle they MUST NOT SEEM ARTIFICIALLY PLACED THERE!

When it is a flashing HUD element you haven't discovered shit, it is obvious (through contrivance of "instinct") that the developer is just telling you were to go.

See the thing is the game is actually built around the player, but it MUST NOT feel like it is, it must feel like you are an intruder in a drug-lord's villa or whatever with many obstacles to overcome. It must at first appearances be an impenetrable wall of defences with no way in. The enjoyment of finding a way in is searching for weaknesses, that would be "clues".

That pipe they can shimmy up IS deliberately put there by developers but it is easy to suspend your disbelief that in this universe that that pipe is there for the purpose of draining rainwater. The subtle clue would be a broken railing of the balcony adjacent to the pipe, that makes sense within the universe and is not contrived. The thing is YOU get the satisfaction of DISCOVERING IT. It does NOT feel like it has just been presented to you. An "instinct" that marks every step, highlights every access point, that blows suspension of disbelief.

That subtle distinction seems to have been lost on you.

It becomes a mere choose your own adventure with multiple developer-illuminated paths. You don't get satisfaction of discovery, you get doubt about whether you chose which of the developer's paths to follow. The thing about discovering the paths yourself is you can assess them yourself and make judgements based on your skill level, preference and goals.

But what if it can be turned off?
Well it depends. If this highlighting feature really is just an added layer on top to make the game a bit more obvious for easy-casual setting, OK. But if the developers are leaning entirely on highlighting and path-finding then I will be disappointed, as it would neglect real exposition through the gameplay. There are so many clues, imaginative ways of indicating pathway WITHIN the game rules.

The x-ray mode is more of a problem, if the game is so designed that x-ray is pretty much the ONLY way to overcome obstacles then I don't appreciate the just-turn-it-off solution. As in "use x-ray vision to find place to plant bomb" then fuck that. Also stealth mechanics that make it impossible to do anything but by exploiting this.

Also, you're not giving an example of a game that rewards deep thought and planning quite like the classic Hitman series. And there is a lot of evidence they are giving up on that cerebral killing for more thuggish "I'll fight and kill em all!".

As to fan having no input, it is all owned by the director... sounds like Auteur Theory to me which is ENTIRELY Roger Ebert's argument that games CANNOT be art. Precisely BECAUSE there is input from the fans who play the game when they actually play it giving their own twist and pace to the proceedings. I think auteur theory is a dangerous theory, as the auteur does ask that we fully adopt, immerse and interpret the world yet accept nothing in return.

Don't know what your problem with American Comic books is, or how it has somehow been ruined by fan dictatorship?

Ahem, what about The Walking Dead? Made right in the middle of the "internet age" of supposedly incredibly destructive fan dictatorship? It's not about superheroes. And there are so many other good examples. It's crazy to say it is nothing but superhero fan appeasement.

Look at the top comic books of the past 10 years you'll see a majority of american entries and well deservedly.
 

Treblaine

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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.
 

LegionDre

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I have spent more time laughing about my failures in the Hitman series than any other video game. Almost as much time rejoicing in Victory after a solution was crafted and perfectly executed. I am glad I was never "dictated" by the game developer of how and exactly what I was supposed to do in order to complete the mission. (besides the first mission which is usually straight forward enough to get you in the groove of how the game works.)
 

Treblaine

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Noelveiga said:
Treblaine said:
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.
It is third hand indeed. I was repeating what a reporter said of what he saw. I'll tell you something I saw in gameplay footage online that I did like, though: a standoff between 47 holding a cop hostage and a bunch of other cops aiming at him *but not shooting*. It looked far more realistic than the same situation in the past, and it actually seemed like the guy playing (who admitted to have screwed up on purpose just to show this off) could drag the cop to a door and run away without engaging in a fight.

That's something I'd like to see the game do, too: handle failure well. So far when I screw up in Hitman I'm basically forced to restart or load something. What I *did* love of Arkham Asylum and I'd like to see in more stealth games is the AI reacting well after having seen you, that is, not reverting to "all is well" mode, but not setting up a situation in which you can't or don't want to keep going because things are impractical now.

I know that, again, this subtly may be lost on you but there is a difference between an over-map and x-ray vision.

You are generalising things too much. There is a huge difference between a HUD text message and Navigation trails or highlighting.
But HOW DO YOU KNOW!? Seriously, if they've shown what it looks like please give me a link. At this point it seems like your reaction is merely gradual: if they do it right, you like it, if you don't, then you don't like it. So knowing where the baddies are is ok, as long as it sets you at a disadvantage? Well, that may be the case. Maybe you have to stand still to trigger it. Maybe, as in Assassin's Creed, the effect blurs everything else so much that moving around is nearly impossible. The fact that the highlights were in Batman doesn't mean that IO is doing the exact same filter here, does it?

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.
Well, I kind of just did. AC went one way, with a very disrupting effect that basically lets you move around but is impractical for more complicated stuff. In AC I frankly only use "Eagle Vision" when it's required for a quest or if I lose track of a person in a crowd, but I've never navigated the game with it on, so that kind of works.

There's also the option of not letting you shoot or interact with stuff as long as it is on. Or not letting you move while it's on. Or... there's tons of ways to balance it out.


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?!?
So... wait, you like what they've already done so much that you don't trust them to handle their own game, which they've done 4 times "right", even though you acknowledge that nobody else other than them has ever pulled it off.

Uh... okay?

For the record, I didn't like the shooting in K&L or the characters in K&L, but a Gears clone it wasn't. They tried to go for a wildly different feel in 1 and actually came up with a very interesting "the cameraman is in the action" look for 2. It was largely unsuccessful and not very pleasant to play, but I appreciated the experimentation they brought to their genre of choice.


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.
Like I said, I don't know, but I'd be surprised to find that to be the case. More likely, marketing departments just tend to highlight what's new (because if they don't, they get accused of not changing anything in the sequel by the fanbase, ironically).

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.
Well, yes, that was my point. That the hype cycle is too long, there is no reason to be giving a crap about Hitman Absolution either way yet (it doesn't have a release date and it will certainly be a 2012 release at best).

All the early hype engine does is generate these crazy cycles of irrational fan hate/love that bring nothing to the table other than manic depression to developers and rants to online forums. Unfortunately, the field is so crowded that if you don't spoil your own game half a dozen times in the year leading up to release your sales get impacted.

We should be complaining about having anything to talk about until the game is at least locked down, playable and a few weeks from release at most.

(There is no technical definition of art)
There is.

There is an entire discipline dedicated to defining and studying the concept of art. I'd say that's pretty technical.

http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/visualarts/art-theory-intro.html

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.
Frankly, the reason why film critics dismiss games is that many games are wholly dismissable from an artistic viewpoint (again, like comic books) and film adaptations of games tend to be abysmal, which doesn't do the source material any favours in the PR department with that particular crowd.

I'd be hard pressed to prove to Ebert or any other critic why Dungeon Siege the game, however technically competent it may be, is any more worthwhile as a fiction or an artistic experience than Uwe Boll's movie (except that stabbing yourself in the kidneys might be a better artistic experience than that thing, but you get my point).

I think that all these changes that IO are doing are more than additional, they are integral but detract from the aesthetic experience.
Sorry to be repetitive, but I wouldn't know, I haven't seen what they're doing. Again, if you have, point me to it and we'll talk.


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.
Well, the marketing may be (although, again, I haven't seen it do that), but I have seen them say that disguises are definitely there. I'm pretty sure they're very much NOT making a shooter here.
Well I think we are both coming to the same damn conclusion: it's too soon

This game isn't coming out till some time next year, what they have shown us (while worrying) isn't conclusive.

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this, hopeful but not particularly expectant.

Still after 5 years of not Hitman I had all but given up on another entry in the series, maybe I need to just cool off on my expectations and see it not as a Hitman game... but just as a game. See it for what it is, not what it is pretending that it is.
 

The Virgo

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IKWerewolf said:
The Virgo said:
And I can't argue with any of this, however with the costs of these type of games spiralling, they will be happy if they get a wider fan base. So the last paragraph depends on which is the larger fanbase, new customers or old customers.

The best trick, offer solutions to them that go into the spirit of the game such as the split screen concept I mentioned earlier.
That's a very good point you are making. However, if you gain ten new customers and lose ten old ones, you're not improving sales. What they should do is just add the option to turn that on or off, as was suggested earlier in the thread.

But one thing concerns me: In Blood Money, you couldn't have had that option because the levels were so open that drawing a line from point A to point B was impossible. I'm not sure if you have played Blood Money before, but if you have, try and imagine "The Murder of Crows" level with the game giving you directions. It would have been impossible. And that's the reason why it is my favorite mission in the game: Because you have no idea where the assassins are (except for that Mark guy) and the game doesn't tell you where they are or how to find them. The game says "Welcome to Mardi Gras. There are assassins somewhere here, as well as cops and MP7 armed henchmen. Good luck finding them." There's no hand-holding.

So what I'm saying is: Are the levels going to be simplified into several linear routes instead of an open world?

I'm still going to buy the game, but I have my doubts as to whether it will be good or not. :-/
 

rsvp42

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Even if, hypothetically, fans always had good ideas and their advice was flawless, they'd still have no real ground to stand on. It's not a question of who's right or wrong. It's not about if X game would have benefited from fan ideas or not. Fans have a say, yes, but they have to realize that they are not entitled to anything. Studios make games and sometimes that requires them to gauge fan feedback and adjust accordingly. But that doesn't mean that every decision needs to be vetted by every schmuck with an opinion on a forum.

It's important to voice our opinions, it always is, but what developers do with that is up to them. Our role ends after we say what we want. We can't then start demanding they use our advice.
 

SyphonX

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Mar 22, 2009
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I really know nothing about this game to make an opinion on it. We probably have until mid-2012 at the earliest before we see it.

That being said, it will sadden me if it was more action-oriented. Blood Money, imho, was the best in the series. It was just incredible, and still is. I've replayed multiple times, but I can play it only so much before I've seen it all. Graphics are getting stale also.

So I hope there is a bit of Blood Money in this. It doesn't have to be a total sandbox like BM, but if Absolution is just a linear series of scripted events, then that will just be sad for such a promising series.
 

The Virgo

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Fronzel said:
The Virgo said:
I'm still going to buy the game, but I have my doubts as to whether it will be good or not. :-/
That sounds like a bad idea. The only power you have to punish a developer for making a bad game is to withhold your money from them, and punishment nearly always works better than argument.
You are absolutely correct, but right now I cannot say that the game will be bad just as much as I can say the game will be good. I may find myself enjoying the game when it comes out. On that note, however, there may be news down the road that will have me change my mind from buying it, like regenerating health.

But as for right now, I will buy it. If it sucks, I will punish them by spreading the word that it is a piss-poor departure from the original and that, while people could still buy it because they might enjoy it, they should be prepared for a let down. Then, the next game they make I won't buy it.

I'm giving IO all the rope they need to hang themselves.
 

duchaked

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not a fan of the new DMC art style direction and whatnot, but gameplay...well guess that's what matters
 

Canadamus Prime

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Jun 17, 2009
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Well good on them. I've been saying for some time that developers need to stop listening so closely to their whiny fans.
Grey Carter said:
The most vocal fans are not always the most important.
Usually the most vocal ones are the ones you need to ignore the most.
 

DeadlyYellow

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Wait wait wait wait.

The only way to show the game's freedom is to tell players where to go?

Mind blown!

Here's hoping I can turn that shit off.