Hitman: Codename 47

was released 20 years ago today. In all that time, IO Interactive have crafted an entertaining seven-game series (not including spin-offs), with the eighth aiming for the heart in January 2021. The subject matter might be grim, but from the very first game, IO Interactive were always happy to fold information and easter eggs into their immersive sim (don’t @ me) to a ridiculous degree. The games all have murderdeathkills, but they also have hauntings, mythical creatures, and real-world actors as targets.

I’ve had a blast digging up some forgotten facts and 47’s more bizarre moments (this does mean this list contains some spoilers, so beware). There are so many that this could have been 200 facts for 20 years, but I stuck with 20. It seemed right. Enjoy!

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Lookit that. We’re in mid-June already, which means that the first big game sale of the summer is about to get a sendoff. GOG’s summer sale will wind up after the weekend so you’ve got just a few days left to score those deals. As part of the last hurrah, GOG are offering Hitman: Absolution free to keep. Snag it before Monday, June 15th.

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In the best possible way, the Hitman series is ridiculous. Its protagonist, Agent 47, is the single most conspicuous person in any crowd. He s big and bald and white with a bar code prominently tattooed to the back of his head, and not once does this fact deter him from his preferred method of infiltration: wearing a disguise.

These aren t disguises in the elaborate, Mission: Impossible, we ll give you an entire fake head sense. No, 47 simply throws on the clothes of whatever guard or unfortunate bystander he s subdued. And this actually works. In the franchise s fiction, he s considered one of the most dangerous people in the entire world, the best of the best. This imposing figure who scarcely bothers to alter his body language, let alone his voice, is a master of disguise. Like its 2016 predecessor, Hitman 2 is quite aware that this concept is absolute nonsense.

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Any time a new Hitman [official site] game rolls around, I need to know the answer to one question: can I royally screw basically everything up and get away with it? Not for me the Silent Assassin, but more a series of pratfalls, murders performed inadvertently in plain sight, panicked costume changes and awkward scuffles, inevitably culminating in a desperate sprint to the exit with a chain of armed and extremely angry guards pursuing me. So I am delighted to discover that the new Hitman game supports this kind of rolling disaster.

I even managed to complete a mission which began with me choking a man unconscious in front of roughly 200 people who I somehow hadn’t realised were watching me.

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After Hitman: Absolution, Agent 47 is in need of another subtitle. Redemption, perhaps, or Contrition. His upcoming adventure has already made headlines thanks to its now-confirmed episodic release schedule but it also seemed to be a game made with the awareness that the previous hadn’t given fans of the series quite what they wanted. I was eager to get my hands on it after seeing a promising demo at Gamescom last year and now that I have, I’m in two minds.

Hitman [official site] contains just about everything I want from the series but all of the ingredients have become a little muddled.

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Absolution might be a fitting tag for what looks like a return to form and a casting off of the sins of the past, but since that subtitle’s already taken, I’m hoping I’ll be able to justify referring to this one as Hitman: Redemption [official site]. So far, the signs are good. I spent some time in the company of IO Interactive’s studio head, Hannes Seifert, as he played through a mission set at a Paris fashion show. As he manipulated NPCs behaviour and demonstrated some emergent possibilities, Seifert said all the right things about recovering the best of the series’ past. The game – this portion of it at least – backs him up convincingly. It’s looking good.>

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We have Opinions about Absolution, the most recent Hitman game, ’round these parts. Opinions which not everybody shares, but everybody should because famously we’re always 100% Objectively Correct in all things. Despite some grasping at greatness, it seemed a disservice to Hitman as we knew it. Meanwhile, in Mobileland, whispers spread that there was, in fact, a pretty great latter-day Hitman. Its name was Hitman GO, it looked lovely>, and it was a sort of stealth-themed sliding block puzzle which looked like a miniatures wargame. Though mechanically very different to any Hitman game, as I understand it Go nonethless conjures up a lot of their spirit – perhaps more so than 2012’s Absolution was. It was also acclaimed as something of an original. Sadly, it was banished to portables. Until now: suddenly, it’s on PC. There is, alas, a catch. … [visit site to read more]

After the disappointment of Hitman: Absolution, developers IO Interactive came to the Internet with their collective hat in their collective hands. Without quite admitting that Absolution’s small levels, linear missions, wonky AI, more personal story, and bottomless pockets didn’t pan out, they did write an open letter mentioning that they plan to do away with all those things for the next Hitman game. Reminding people that it’s still being made and they really did mean all that, IO have shown off a little concept art including a building which, they say, “on its own is larger than any location in Hitman: Absolution.”

… [visit site to read more]

Hello there. Things have sounded a little unhappy at Hitman and Kane & Lynch devs IO Interactive for a while now, in the wake of 2012′s Hitman: Subtitle achieving neither the acclaim or the spondoolies it was hoped to. Last year, the Square Enix-owned Danish studio saw half its workforce removed from their jobs, along with claims that the remainder would get to do nothing but Hitman games. Yesterday, reports circulated that the Next Jennifer Hitman game had been quietly garotted. That claim, despite being made on a Square Enix Montreal senior game designer’s LinkedIn profile, has now been denied. (more…)

After the gaming industry went on a dubstep-and-Dew-fueled vacation to E3 last week, it’s now back to business as usual. By “business,” I of course mean layoffs, and goodness gracious, figurative business is booming. However, literal business – the part where people make money – isn’t faring so well because, well, layoffs. This time, the sobering specter took its scythe to Hitman developer IO Interactive, reducing its workforce by “almost half”. Yeesh. The plan to get things back on track? Er, make more Hitman. Which is to say, make nothing but Hitman.

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