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Look I want to pretend Hitman Absolution isn't that deep so while you are probably right I will still report you to the mods to get you banned. Please report me for this terrible page snipe
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Jun 15, 2018 00:31
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JOBBO FETT ELIMINATED Score: -4204901249 points.
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Jun 15, 2018 00:45
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Quicksilver6 posted:JOBBO FETT ELIMINATED Danced with the angels, I did.
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Jun 15, 2018 00:55
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I have my work cut out for me. Please give me like a week to write these three vids up, add the Cosmo Faulkner material post, post my Absolution redesign fanfiction, and proofread everything. vvvv Oh man wait til you hear what folks think was cut with the Praetorians. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Jun 15, 2018 |
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Jun 15, 2018 01:24
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Look I want to pretend Hitman Absolution isn't that deep so while you are probably right I will still report you to the mods to get you banned. They're the praetorians, probably named after the praetorian guard, and all have the names of shields; it's as deep as a kiddy pool and about as full of human waste.
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Jun 15, 2018 01:32
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Atomikus posted:They're the praetorians, probably named after the praetorian guard, and all have the names of shields; it's as deep as a kiddy pool and about as full of human waste. Even thats too deep
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Jun 15, 2018 01:51
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Atomikus posted:They're the praetorians, probably named after the praetorian guard, and all have the names of shields; it's as deep as a kiddy pool and about as full of human waste. Yeah honestly, naming things after historical/mythological things is grade school level "symbolism". It's what you do when you don't have any interesting ideas but still want people to think you're well read. Bonus points if the references you're making are so mainstream that you don't even have to actually BE well read to know them. This is why every lovely movie where the hero sacrifices themselves at the end has really blatant cross/Jesus imagery. It's not cliche if it's SYMBOLISM
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Jun 15, 2018 02:22
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The Cheshire Cat posted:This is why every lovely movie where the hero sacrifices themselves at the end has really blatant cross/Jesus imagery. It's not cliche if it's SYMBOLISM You'll NEVER GUESS what one of the planned, cut endings for Absolution was, then! Or why the villain would be guarded specifically by the people who guarded Caesar! edit: Oh wow, that shoutout was way too kind, thank you so much! Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Jun 15, 2018 |
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Jun 15, 2018 03:02
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Funny thing to note but this game ends the exact same way that the first really terrible Hitman movie did.
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Jun 15, 2018 15:35
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David D. Davidson posted:Funny thing to note but this game ends the exact same way that the first really terrible Hitman movie did. Looping credits?
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Jun 15, 2018 17:09
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White Coke posted:Looping credits? Disappointment
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Jun 15, 2018 17:16
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Atomikus posted:it's as deep as a kiddy pool and about as full of human waste. Jobbo_Fett posted:Even thats too deep
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Jun 16, 2018 10:29
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 Episode 16: Change of Pace Notes Great screencap, btw. These last handful have been works of art reminiscent of the Great Homecoming LP. "I bet it's the symbolism!" This scene is meant to come full circle and represent 47's rejuvenation and return to form, symbolizing how both the character and the series are born again (I know, I know). Returning to Chicago in yet another death symbol car, 47 gets his an "upgraded, all-new" suit, and all of his scars and dirt are wiped away. In a better game with less of a kitchen sink plot, it'd be a big moment. As it stands, it's another "why did they spend time and money on this" scene, even if it's blissfully short. All the easter eggs don't help much, either! All the Costumes As you can guess, the costumes down here were originally planned for other missions. In particular, the Hot Sauce Factory Chef outfit(the one with a sort of feather boa made of chili peppers) were originally for a Chili Factory mission that got most of the way through production before being cut. Players could steal the secret recipe from a safe on the premises for...some reason, I forget. I suspect the giant pool of pig carcasses and meat-strewn conveyor belts from Death Factory was an asset originally developed for that mission. There's also a Big Bird outfit in a corner, referring to an infamous outfit from a Blood Money mission, The Murder of Crows, set during Mardi Gras. All the Easter Eggs Tommy must be a fan: In addition to the music in the shop (from the famous Opera mission in Blood Money), most of the material in the basement of Tommy's shop is also an oblique reference to Blood Money (I think they had a bunch of assets from it on hand or something). A devil mask high on a shelf was originally worn by target Anthony Martinez in the A Dance with the Devil mission in Blood Money, as well as several other places in that game. Other newspaper clippings referencing targets from that game are attached to the walls:   (not shown: five clippings about the tutorial mission from Blood Money that also appeared in-mission and are purely reused assets). Oddly, Martinez appears in a news clipping with his name retconned to "John Hardwick". As Jobbo predicted, there are special costume-prop combinations. Wearing the bird outfit and carrying a book lets you leave without the suit, and triggers a canned laughter side effect as you leave. There's a clipping titled "Club-wielding thug terrorizes neighborhood", with a pic of 47 in the hot sauce factory chef outfit, with a club and the aforementioned devil mask.  Wearing the outfit and bearing the club will let you pick up the mask and leave without your suit, this time triggering a canned scream effect. "I'm sure there's something cryptic" It turns out there are some captions in braille in this level- on boxes in the basement, and in a big book open on Tommy's desk. Braille is, to put it mildly, not a friendly thing to translate, especially between languages- it's a kludge at best, and completely different between cultures and languages with few common rules. The Braille on this level nearly drove me insane before I decided it almost certainly wasn't valid, and was just random characters that were laid out to look like valid Braille text. The "text" on the book is the same on both pages, and I might have screenshotted it upside down. The text caption on the boxes in the basement is just a subset of the book text, too. For the record, here it is (oh godd it must mean something help me translate it I can't sleep). Hopefully it doesn't mean something, and I haven't missed Crucial Undiscovered Absolution Lore.  Blind Tailor Tommy Clemenza is obliquely referenced again in HITMAN, where Jasper Knight, the target on the Russian airfield tutorial mission, uses the callsign "Blind Tailor" to attempt to talk to Janus, the KGB leader. That loving coin Why does 47 pull out a coin at the end there?! you can't use it for anything! what does it meannn (spoilers: it's going to be more symbolism, but even more nonsensical because it's mostly based on cut material). Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Jul 22, 2018 |
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Jun 17, 2018 03:08
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 Episode 17: Man Eater Notes Intro cutscene I suspect that all of the cutscenes for Blackwater's were done really quickly, late in development, with less budget than other shots. The cutscenes have way more effects missing, and a ton of consistency errors. The bodyguards use low-def models, Blake wears spurs suddenly, the motivations make no sense...it's weird, because the roof of Blackwater, and Blackwater, definitely seem to have been under development for a long time. They're crowded with neat touches, like how the chopper lands on an unused tennis court. I don't know when or how the cutscenes were rearranged- my source materials are mostly silent on these issues. I can't decide if these out-of-engine cutscenes were made long before the levels, or long after...or some combination of the two. I'm used to weird cutscene-engine transitional mismatches (Arkham:Origins has a bunch of them left over from script editing), but the ones here are especially horrendous. Ms Cooper Yep, that's Ms Cooper in the schoolgirl outfit, not a murder sex nun. What a wonderful scene, with the upskirts and being shot in the head through an apple sack with "pure delicious" written on the side and the missing blood and bullethole and everything. As far as I can tell, Cooper wasn't intended to be an ICA agent, the writers just wanted an excuse to execute another character. The only dialogue we get from Cooper is a sentence or two before 47's electrocution in the jail basement. We vaguely get the sense that she's...unpleasant? That's about it. I have no inside info on Cooper, and the internet is as mystified by this whole scene as anyone else. Was she written just so they could do a pointless hostage execution fakeout? Why did she come with Dexter? Why did Dexter kill her? I have only one idea. It might have been the case, at the very early in development, that there was an intended parallelism between Blake Dexter, Travis Benjamin and Clive Skurky. At such a time, each of these three Strong Male Characters would get an equally Strong Female Character as an assistant, to draw thematic parallels between them. But then the plot got altered, Clive got iced, and they had a perfectly "good" objectified Sex Pervert Lady character they needed to "resolve". "uhhhhh...plot hole!" "split tail". Not twin-tail. I had to look it up. It's...a term for women. Dexter was telling Travis Benjamin to give him Jade. Yep. "oh, now we're taking a taxi?" I guess 47 needed the exercise- he is shown walking away from Tommy's place, I guess (it's because they didn't plan for this to be after 47 got a hearse). "I guess because it's dark, the AI's that much worse at spotting you?" As far as I can tell, blackwater has completely normal detection ranges. It's just lovely AI. "what, just the one guy?" That one civ was a plumber called to help deal with Blackwater's leaking SYMBOLISM problem. He's easy to get to and a great disguise...which is why IOI had to gently caress things up and make a challenge where you have to steal the plumber's costume and complete the whole mission undetected. "Why are there so many civilians here? Where are we?" Blackwater's an upscale apartment building, and Dexter Laboratories (lol, good one) just owns the penthouse. I think the Blackwater building was at least conceptually developed for earlier in the game. What I can be certain of is the building is meant to be a structural and thematic contrast with the Terminus hotel. You start outside the building, go through a flooded basement (there's a flooding car-park around the side that's the intended suit-only route), and ride to an upper level for the Big Confrontation. Blackwater and Terminus are really straightforward in their similarities and differences. I don't, um, really know how it was all going to tie together, given how much of everything was on the cutting room floor. Regardless, SYMBOLISM Stylistically, Blackwater is meant to be a vaguely art deco looking building with a bizzare gothic spire, letting the devs fold in some Christian imagery out of nowhere later on. This poses some gameplay challenges, though, because the interior areas of Blackwater are all really samey. It's particularly easy to get turned around or lost, and it gets much worse in the later part of the level. "I kinda thought this...was an underground passage that would lead me where I want to go" You're actually going through the intended suit-only route (through the flooded utility area) in reverse. The NPCs here have a great conversation about how this city had a big tournament party weekend, so when plumbing broke down all the sewage flowed up into the streets and buildings...and then they managed to gently caress it up again later the next year, when the high water table filled the whole city with the same sewage again! Lol, what a bunch of morons! what backwater-rear end place did that?!  [I like to think this was a metaphor for the game's development.] A note on the Lobby and the receptionist The lobby actually does work well for social stealth- although it's open, NPCs are spread out and there are a number of disguises you can use to get in. What marginalized groups hasn't the game directly stereotyped yet? Oh, I know, how about the LGBTQ community! The lobby receptionist is played up as a flambouyantly homosexual stereotype, from verbal affectations to unique "talk to the hand" gestures. Since you shot everyone, you missed it, but his dialogue is intended to convey important information about the objective- that the head of security has locked down the elevator with a retinal scanner only she can use, that she wants to see the hotel manager, that uniforms from the lower level won't work in the next area, etc. His behavior triggers when you get close enough to the elevator that the intended goal transitions from "get inside" to "get in the elevator", and he effectively tells you how to do it. Of course, he also calls the head of security a bitch five times and aggressively hits on the guards, who also call the head of security a bitch, but they say "I'd still do her". Like with our Long Island friend, I come with screenshots.     The head of security's only role is to yell at people and confirm the receptionist's characterization, as well as serve as the main obstacle in getting to the elevator. Not a great depiction of a female character. In Hitman Absolution. What else is new. There are actually several paths forward here, though, and they're pretty clever. Manager route The head of security in the lobby wants the hotel manager to head to the 10th floor and give Blake Dexter's team access to the server room. Getting his clothes is the most effective non-suit-only route to level completion. Aside from, y'know, icing everyone and running around the map for several minutes because you screwed up the (admittedly very buggy) objective indicators. The manager is hanging out in the room with the film projector. It's very hard to distinguish the manager's outfit- he's wearing a slightly different shade than the other hotel staff. He has no dialogue, so there's no indication (unless you see him walking away from the receptionist the moment you enter the lobby) as to who he is. On the other hand, if you dress as the manager, you can walk to the security head and she'll just let you out of the level- the manager outfit will also let you walk anywhere but the security office. The manager does stand near a security guard periodically in the back hall- I suspect it was planned that he'd have dialogue there. Computer route As you noticed, there's a computer in the security office that will override the scanner. It's hard to get to cleanly, and if the head of security sees it on her short patrol circuit, she'll immediately undo the override. You can distract the head of security with the filmreel, though, giving yourself more time. Even better, you can shoot the computer or monitor after you hack it, which prevents the head of security from reversing the override. Or you can shoot it in advance while going loud, which kinda screws you! Knockout route Of course, even then you can knock out/kill the head of security and use her to get into the elevator. Good luck dragging the head of security to the scanner and clearing the level in stealth, though. For the record, this is the "default" method for moving forward, and it's perfectly finely communicated...unless you immediately go on a killing rampage throughout the level. The objective info actually tells you about it, too! It's just a bit hard to identify the head of security among the pile of corpses you've made. "What's the moviereel?" In another parallel to Terminus, there's the training video distraction, which lures several guards and the head of security away from the lobby (and the security office, with the scanner override). It's actually worth the effort- like in Terminus, it's really effective at clearing your path. The training video, in addition to spouting 10 seconds of nonsense about leet martial arts, starts off with a sign indicating it's partly meant to parody incredibly timely hit TV show Jackass. The video uses the Patriot's crew, which is fitting I guess.  ...why is it on a freaking film reel, anyways? What happened in Hope? The radio in the Blackwater back hall refers to "hundreds of casualties", and of witnesses reporting an "Angel of Death" (another sobriquet the game tries to force onto 47, the homeless people in Chicago and that loving CHALLENGE reference it too). NPC dialogue references Dexter's men locking down the hotel "because of what happened in Hope", (which has been covered up as some sort of terrorist attack), and how Dexter's son disappeared. Most NPCs on the lower level are attributing this to Blake Dexter being paranoid and having a swollen ego. There's a great bit of dialogue, "relax, we're here! it's not like someone's going to bum rush you!" ("You" being the maintenence worker you executed immediately past the staff door into the building). Interregnum cutscene Note the cutaway from in-engine to cutscene when the camera passes "through" the camera. regardless of costume, you show up in your suit on the guard's phone. And you guessed it, the camera's intact when you arrive (though note it's a model, also visible in the courthouse, that gets reused in HITMAN 2016). I don't know if it was another cut content or script reworking or what. The cutscene, like the others in this video, is suspiciously low-fi and rushed. The guard watching his phone acts as if he's directly talking to Dexter, but his lines don't match the scene with Dexter and Layla gloating over the money that then ensues. Nor was it some tricky interlay- it doesn't match the later call Dexter gets, either. Heck, the whole scene with Layla and Dexter doesn't match any location in the penthouse level- I'm pretty sure there are no pool tables there. Who knows when this was created, or in what weird cut environment. "why was the cell phone made of glass?" So you wouldn't notice it was the same model that the Agency characters were using earlier. Game Theory: Two Isotopes In trying to figure out how the devs could miss that Victoria and Blake are both wearing isotope necklaces, I had a stroke. Not of genius, I read some designer notes and had an ischemic stroke. Anyway, I have a possible explanation, beyond "the plot's all hosed up." It's possible that the reason Blake and Victoria both have isotope necklaces in some scenes (though not this initial one) is that during some other draft of the game's script there were two isotope Macguffins. Victoria's necklace makes her strong, but Blake's isotope is basically Victoria's Kryptonite, so by wearing it he can shut her down by getting near her. (have I mentioned how impossibly dumb this is?) That's speculation on my part, but it would explain the inconsistencies elsewhere in cutscenes with the two characters, and why Victoria's never just gone on a spree and freed herself. Blake would have gotten his isotope during the "she's completely perfect- she needs flair to live!" scene in Dexter's Laborato- I mean Death Factory. "apparently Layla is this badass assassin or something?" Layla sure is suddenly all in-control, isn't she? I'd like to think she was either submissive or coequal depending on the version of the script, on the contrasts being drawn between Dexter and Travis Benjamin, between Dexter's Laboratory and the ICA...but at this point who knows. "I have a feeling I know where this is going and I don't like it" ahahahahahahaahahakillme The Sushi Ninja is another Dorky Unlikeable Guy Who is Killed. Enjoy the bad physics initialization on his stomach-"goofy versus stupid" indeed. My guess is there was going to be a ninja oufit at one point. I think he's also meant to be a reference to Mini Ninja, one of IOI's earliest projects. The Mini Ninja logo also shows up in sushi delivery trucks and carts in HITMAN 2016 (in Paris), and figurines of the playable characters are part of an extensive easter egg in the Hokkaido level. All of his material is completely in-engine, not in the cutscene. My guess is it was all added later in development. Penthouse The penthouse is really confusing in its layout- where HITMAN 2016 (and many parts of Absolution) use environmental color coding to help the player orient themselves, almost all of the Penthouse uses the same dark green and brown paneling, and there's a lot of prop repetition. The lower floor is laid out in a rough circle, with the elevator (and an offshoot from the elevator to a utility hall) in the middle. Stepping out of the elevator, to your immediate right is a keycard door- just past that door is the saferoom that is your ultimate destination. There are a couple keycards lingering around, but otherwise that door is a complete barrier- the illogical upper floor areas, which are all isolated from each other, come to a stop there, and there's no way to bypass the wall using the similarly weird outdoor balconies. The Penthouse is also cluttered. Some rooms have big unique setpieces (dining room tables, a cool scale model of Dexter industries, a suspended whale skeleton, some uniquely arrayed doorway decorations that were supposed to aid navigation, a globe that was meant to signpost the saferoom), but these are combined with tons and tons of static and interactive models that are duplicated and repeated over and over and over again. I swear there are like 10 goddamn katanas in this place, and 10 live mines, and 30 shotguns, three (eye-searingly blue) samurai armor outfits, a handful of Ultramaxes... all on resource intensive glass podiums, freely available to one and all, in rooms with unique skylight models and shader effects and cowboy hats and stuffed eagles and tiger rugs and abstract paintings of Lenny, and paintings of Dexter with a whale he harpooned, or brooding, or paintings of Dexter's ancestors selling guns to cowboys and Native Americans, many of them copied multiple times in different rooms. Mine schematics that are completely new, different from the ones in Death Factory and much nicer looking. All sorts of detailed, time-consuming art that no one notices or cares about because YOUR GAME IS poo poo IOI OH MY GOD ARRRGHH WHY THIS LEVEL MUST HAVE TAKEN SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS OF DEVELOPMENT TIME. Sorry, I'm getting pretty burnt out on Absolution. The charm of describing all of this waste is starting to sour. I'm going to post some screenshots here. That'll make me feel better about this huge wasted effort. I'm not even going to tell you about the hidden crawl vents.        "I don't know why this guy wasn't alerted" There's something really messed up with the boundaries between the interior and exterior of the penthouse. It's as if it's a separate map for some AI purposes in some areas, particularly for sound. Line of sight works fine, though, which can make taking people out iffy with all the windows. Layla's route Layla takes three circuits of the lower floor before permanently entering the saferoom. Over the course of these three loops, Layla will stop at a series of locations once each, to berate guards or eat sushi or check a laptop. When and where Layla stops is the same on every run...except not. Like every other NPC script in Absolution, some of Layla's behaviors won't fire unless you're close enough to hear them. Others occur every time, but if you're not shadowing her, she'll practically sprint through the map on some circuits. The whole route also starts differently if you come into the level without skipping the transitional scene, versus hammering escape like a sane person, or entering the level from level select. This inconsistency and time limit are incredibly annoying, especially if you're going for a kill method that's only triggered early on, or very late, in her route. It's easy to mistime things and miss your shot. I suspect this whole one-off target behavior was an early test of the Instinct route-tracking tech, but that's a stab in the dark. Layla kill challenges Layla has five or so kill challenges which are fairly nice and clean, with really clear signposting- she stands somewhere (or you trigger a distraction for her) and you hit a big Interact With Me button, and she dies. Poison her with a neurotoxin and make her dive off the building, drop a whale skeleton on her, shoot her with a harpoon that launches her through a window...If it weren't for the layout and route problems the map introduces, it'd all be a be pretty clever setup. But putting the whole thing on a soft deadline, and setting it in a map that basically functions as a maze, really screws with everything. On top of this, a couple of the kills are really finicky. In particular, one requires that you grab a can of gas from the balcony barbecue grill and throw it into a fireplace when she stands near it. You have plenty of time (Layla stands near the fire on her last loop), but you get one attempt at the throw before everyone is likely to start shooting, and the target moves away from the fire. The throwing mechanics aren't great, the fireplace has weird hit detection, and you have to take several minutes to try again after each failed throw. The escorts The escorts actually can see through their own disguise, but their pathing is such that it very rarely comes up. If you rush the side exit from the start of the map and fire a silenced shot into a corner, you can lead one into the vent area for an easy kill and disguise. The escorts are purely tied to Layla's state with no fallbacks, so they bug out when anything even momentarily disrupts Layla- and if she dies without being noticed, they just go completely stationary wherever they were standing. It's remarkable how much we take the "Mr. Caruso, where are you, sir" of HITMAN 2016 for granted. Lenny's room A guard conversation outside Lenny's room tells the player that it's a trespassing area for everyone- even guards. Blake Dexter hasn't given up hope that his son will return, even though their only ingame interactions were less than compassionate. As with the jail interrogation scene, it is implied that Dexter cares about his son, sometimes. Lenny's room is full of scenery-based storytelling: unique textures, girlie magazines, PUA guides, a Cougars jacket, a pinball machine, a disco ball- and, of course, a bong melee weapon (which inexplicably has a smoke plume coming out of it).   The radio in Lenny's room plays a weather report ("47 is the low tomorrow") reporting fog, which presages the next level's heavy use of a fog mechanic. This is mostly significant because the rest of the framing elements of Blackwater are so halfassed that I was sure the fog was a last minute addition until I heard this. The only reasons to actually visit are a save point, a keycard next to the bed, and a sniper rifle by the window. He was using it to shoot pigeons. Yes, there are pigeons. No, there isn't a challenge for shooting them. Yes, this game is replete with missed opportunities. The Museum Right next to Lenny's room is a really cool medieval weapons display, a room completely filled to the brim with melee tools of death. The centerpiece is a bottle of poison from the U'wa Tribe, an incrediracist native stereotype group from the first Hitman. (I like to think Dexter genocided them all to get the poison, it seems in character). The hallucination-casuing, neurotoxic poison is necessary to get one of Layla's clearer kill challenges....but what's that red glow, and that beeping sound? Shortly after entering the room, this flashes briefly into view.  Tripping any of the lasers will sound an alarm, putting any living enemies into hostile and sending them to the room. They're mostly pretty easy to avoid(only 3 of them move, and they're all visible in instinct mode without burning your meter), but...the timing for the poison kill on Layla is stupidly tight. You have about 90 seconds to get the poison and dose her sushi before she eats, and as mentioned earlier, she only eats once. I've only been able to consistently pull it off by cheesing myself an escort guard outfit as described above- it lets me at least bypass the two guards outside the museum. This room is also obnoxious for Lost and Found, because there are five or six melee weapons only found in the cases in this room, and it's easy to overlook them. IOI really wanted to show off their seemingly endless asset budget with this space. Atmospherics Both the ground and penthouse levels of Absolution have a detailed looping car animation set in the skybox, which is a really impressive touch. Less impressive is that if you drop a body over the building edge, it's still visible floating a few stories up off the ground (though, if you poison Layla she apparently lands on a car- you can hear the alarm going off at the end of the kill, which is genuinely a funny moment). "there's nothing that indicates there's a door here" There's a slight outline, but it clearly wasn't enough. Layla "oh, she was such a great character." "I didn't see where that was going at all." What happens if you let Layla get to the panic room, then follow her in? Well, I have some bad news. Yup, Layla tries to go all Femme Fatale. It was lovely when Blood Money did it, it's somehow even worse in Absolution. The scene literally plays a track over it might seem like that's meant to evoke the David Rose orchestra's The Stripper... but although I can't prove it (the Absolution music production process is almost completely uncredited, with a bunch of "singles" produced just for ambience like Black Bandana), from the vocals, I think this might be one of the earliest tracks in the game development process, left over from when the whole story was going to be narrated by a lounge singer. None of this...event...is helped by the engine parachuting Layla into the uncanny valley, replete with model vertex tearing in her face during her close-ups.  Look above and to the right of her mouth. That black line expands and stretches to let her lips move. Mercifully, the panic room is soundproofed, so at least you can't alert the guards. Less mercifully, if you wanted anything earlier in the level, too bad- the door locks behind you. (I suspect the game handles the "soundproofing" by forcing you through the door and despawning the rest of the map). Final cutscene "I'm gonna breed you like a prize bull"? Seriously? I've said it before, but Absolution tried to do the "your daughterwife proxy is vaguely placed under sexual threat" thing that games like Bioshock 2 and Infinite do; the difference is they keep saying the quiet stuff loud. I suspect the fight scene with Victoria, which is especially rough, was intended for earlier in the game's plotline, establishing Blake Dexter as a character. The whole scene looks an awful lot like it was made early with incomplete assets, and errors abound. In particular, the scientist at the start is meant to be holding a syringe, but it only materializes after she plants it in his eye. But why is the scientist here? Why is a (non)reveal happening here? I suspect that part of the answer is that at one point, Blackwater and the big Victoria reveal occurred immediately after Rosewood, and would transition the rest of the game to Hope- or that the entire scene didn't take place at Blackwater. That almost completely obscuring fog conveniently lets the scene take place on any rooftop with a heliport, and the geometry doesn't really match Blackwater... As nearly as I can tell, in terms of stitching, all of Dexter's lines are delivered from off-camera. They were likely recorded for a different cutscene and then stitched in...badly, the sync is off. When dexter's head is moving at the beginning of the scene (as the camera zooms in over his shoulder), you can see his movements don't match his lines. The most telling moment, though, is one line, "well done girl, looks like you might be worth the trouble after all" is delivered while Dexter's face is visible. Go back and watch the scene, starting at about 18:43. Dexter's lips don't move, and it immediately cuts away before he starts actually speaking again. The line has an echo effect added, so the devs can pretend he was thinking it (and the player gets to hear his thoughts somehow, which is totally consistent for this series). This whole scene was meant to depict Victoria's initial capture, or recapture. It was extensively recut and moved to the climax of the final act. Remember, the order of scenes was all adjusted post hoc and hastily rationalized with Birdie Lubricant. The fact that this could contradict the earlier scenes or other theories doesn't really mean much, because there were so many versions of the script that were carried all the way into production. Anyways, on some level it's impressive that they can have a character kill 5 people and still give them zero agency. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Jan 15, 2020 |
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Jun 18, 2018 19:20
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 WHATS WRONG WITH YOUR NEEEEEECK?! 
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Jun 21, 2018 17:01
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This LP now rated T for Terrible. Countdown and Absolution will take another couple days, but they're much shorter than Blackwater (I really went overboard with the blackwater screenshots, sorry). Beyond those, I have 3 more posts planned: one to provide my main sources, including a copy of the making of documentary, one to provide the weird rabbithole of Deep Plot I found on Google Plus (plus a summary of an ending cutscene you somehow lost), and one to "provide" my Game Design Fanfiction. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Jun 21, 2018 |
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Jun 21, 2018 19:24
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Her shoulders visibly clip through her shirt, too.
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Jun 21, 2018 19:36
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Discendo Vox posted:What happens if you let Layla get to the panic room, then follow her in? Well, I have some bad news. Along with the technical issues and just stupidity of the scene, why didn't they have her pull the gun out while she was saying the "send you to heaven" line and just not have her loving scream "DIE MOTHERFUCKER" like a moron.
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Jun 22, 2018 01:47
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Jun 22, 2018 02:19
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Garrand posted:Along with the technical issues and just stupidity of the scene, why didn't they have her pull the gun out while she was saying the "send you to heaven" line and just not have her loving scream "DIE MOTHERFUCKER" like a moron. Because the whole striptease has to happen in-cutscene: they couldn't model the clothes coming off in-engine. (that's also why her clothes are clipping through her, they're separate models very badly applied by the physics engine). Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Jun 22, 2018 |
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Jun 22, 2018 04:53
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 Foggy Memories There was a whole level here. It's gone now. Now that I've seen it with re-editing in mind, it's pretty clear the intro cutscene shows 47 getting onto the roof, and that the roof level was going to be foggy, but that the cutscene was created before there was this whole "countdown" gimmick added on top of it. The roof might actually have been intended as 47's first Blackwater area. Close examination reveals it almost completely matches the final level, but not quite. It's quite possible that at one point the penthouse and roof areas were designed as a single cohesive area, and that all of them were heavily re-edited. I...I just can't tell. Little touches, multiple pointless dead ends, excruciatingly well thought out details like the disused tennis court, all suggest this was at a minimum, once a fully functioning, normally stealthable level- and if you think about it, wasn't there another mission where you started out by crossing a tennis court? I'm not saying that the roof of Blackwater, and Blackwater as a whole, was once an attempt to set up a parallel with the intro mission...except I think that's exactly what I am saying. At some point it got changed into a fog-focused stealth setting, then into the last area of the Blackwater mission, then into its own mission, then finally into this weird garbage countdown forced stealth thing. This game is like an Aztec ruin of design decisions. By now I've realized that I could probably go back over earlier missions and information posts and figure out all sorts of things about the earlier designs of Absolution...but I want to end this. I'm not going to do that, except for all the information posts where I've already done that, and all the other ones where I'm going to do that. The Countdown Protip: When you enter the mission, sneak forward and choke, then snap the neck of, the first guard immediately on your left. The sound makes the guard on the immediate right go "huh?" and stop his call to Dexter. Because Dexter doesn't receive any word that the bombs are set, this prevents the countdown from starting. The countdown will not restart until a guard somewhere becomes suspicious. For the life of me I can't tell if this is intentional or not. Based on other cues throughout the mission, the bombs are not just on a timer. Instead, they reflect the amount of time before Dexter loses it and blows the roof. But I can't tell if you're supposed to be able to circumvent it in this way. If they were trying to make the countdown a hard time limit, there would be many easier, cleaner ways to implement it- but this is Absolution, so who the hell knows. Alternate Routes While this level may seem incredibly linear (and it mostly is), there are a bunch of dead ends and alternate routes you didn't explore in your run. Once you're up on the tennis court, there are three paths forward. On the left wall is a keycard door containing the level's intel and several melee weapons. The end of this hallway is blocked off; it's a dead end. In the center is the mine path you took. On the right, though, is the real prize: past two stationary guards, a door leads to a short utility tunnel. This tunnel contains the keycard needed for the door mentioned earlier, but it also has a padlocked door at the end. Like the padlock in Skurky's Law, it can be shot open, or knocked off with a convenient sledgehammer that's immediately nearby. Past the door is a ladder that leads up directly behind Dexter. But the utility route has another surprise- an easily missed vent that just leads to a spot past the first set of mines. Both the extra routes and the bizzare dead end with the keycard strongly suggest to me that this level was originally larger, and was a conventional stealth affair, fog or no. Axe me a question Part 3 of Take em Down requires 10 kills while remaining unseen, and "Axed" requires nabbing an axe from the keycard hallway and killing 5 enemies with it (meaning you have to go get the keycard first). Without stopping the timer, the window for doing either of these is pretty darn tight. The reality is that since the level is pretty short and there's a nice checkpoint on the abandoned tennis court, these challenges aren't too bad. Lost and Found: the Agony and the Ecstasy Despite being so short, this map has some especially infuriating lost and found items. First, a plunger is hidden inside a completely static, partially open locker in the keycard corridor. It's really hard to see, let alone finagle the game into letting you pick it up. What's really infuriating, though, is that there are a couple melee items that are hidden in the minefield. And not just off to the side of your route, oh no. You have to shoot the mines to clear a path- taking you to a spot that you'd otherwise have no reason to go to. There's not a single other situation where you shoot these mines in the game- hell, they only appear in one other level! To add insult to injury, when you shoot a mine, Dexter has a special behavior that makes him move and check out the minefield from the helipad- unique lines and everything. Avoiding getting seen by him appears to be impossible if you're actually on the field- you have to basically retreat all the way to the stairs. The crowbar that is your reward for going through this is the last truly obnoxious Lost and Found item in the game. Good riddance. Except not quite, because it turns out there's a completely unknown, hidden interaction on the rooftop that no one else has written about. There are some lights suspended from cables on the roof- shooting the cables will make the lights fall, destroying a bunch of mines and clearing most of a route through the mines (though some additional mineshoot is still necessary to walk up the stairs to the helipad). I can find no reference to this action anywhere online. I alone know about this. I alone found it. And I only found it because I played through the level again to get more information about Dexter's behavior. Do you understand what this game is doing to me?!? I started a fight about Slavoj Zizek in the philosophy thread to put off doing this! Cut Dynamite The cut, patched out, unobtainable Lost and Found items are sometimes revelatory. At one point, there was a dynamite inventory item on the map (just like the ones the guards are setting up all over the place). Dexter Remember how I said Blackwater was once meant to parallel Diana's mansion? Here's a sobering thought- Lenny was meant to parallel and contrast with Victoria in that setup. Yeesh. In the level, as 47 approaches, Dexter complains to Victoria that this whole mess was nothing like 47- that he'd never chosen to "go all guardian angel" before. When the player gets closer, Dexter is scripted to get a call from the guards informing him that Layla is dead, halting the timer. This prompts Dexys Midnight Runners to start directly addressing 47. Dexter laments the loss of Layla and his son, then calls 47 out as good at killing, but terrible at protecting people. He begins threatening to kill Victoria, but will not actually do so. When he finishes talking, Dexter will start a simple back and forth patrol of the helipad. In combat, Dexter has way more torso health than almost any other enemy in the game- but he takes headshots like a chump. His scripted animations dragging Victoria around and yelling into his phone make him only a little harder to garrote than any typical NPC. He wields a unique Ultramax, the Big Bad Beltfed gun of the game. The extra pause after killing him is to give you a chance to grab it.We've seen a lot of Dexter as a character in Absolution, more than just about anyone else, other than that smug useless gently caress Birdie. Dexter seems to represent the excesses of a number of different stereotypically American villains (the arms dealer, the bigot, the cowboy, the businessman) but he was also, during the tangled development of Absolution, set up as a contrast to Diana and/or Travis, and is nebulously the primary or secondary antagonist. He's a multibillionaire arms dealer and former ICA client who somehow is desperate for ten million dollars- a price much cheaper than the cost of even a fraction of the equipment he's shown owning in any of his levels. Depending on the cutscene, he's either callously indifferent to, or cares deeply for, his son and sexretary. He's either presented as being sincerely Western, or a city slicker Chicagoan. The only thing he doesn't really seem is especially competent, which is what makes the promo material calling him the "most calculating and ruthless antagonist in the series so far" such a joke. In better hands, in a cleaner script where he was a main focus, Dexter would maybe be a captivating antagonist. That's not what we got, but the potential still lingers. It's hard to tell exactly what Dexter was supposed to be, or what story the developers wanted to tell with him. But I know what fictional property his character is ripped from, and it's not the Dukes of Hazzard. In conclusion, Blake Dexter is a land of contrasts, and as a bloated, bigoted mess of bullshit contradictions, a great metaphor for the game as a whole. Outro whoops, there isn't one! Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Jul 8, 2018 |
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Jun 23, 2018 04:01
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 Part 19: Angel of Death Notes "I can't wait to be free of this" You're telling me. "I hope Discendo Vox corrects me" I have no freaking idea why they did this. My only guess is they didn't want to make it so people entering the Absolution level would get thrust into the giant spoilersphere that is the Absolution intro right off the bat. I'd completely forgotten it did this, and need to move my notes from Countdown over to this post. Countdown Outro Victoria's hair sure is snazzy, isn't it? In many of her cutscenes, when Victoria first appears, her hair briefly appears in a default position, ignoring gravity, before being effected by whatever physics variables are involved in the scene. In other scenes, "chunks" of her hair doesn't seem to be effected by gravity at all. I think this is the same issue that caused the Elevator Sushi Ninja's buggy stomach- a sort of model physics equivalent of the asset-loading T-Pose. Like the T-Pose issue, it's a completely amateur mistake to make. Not all cutscenes have this problem; I think the ones made late in development just skipped that level of scrutiny. Yet at the same time they have that SYMBOLISM shot of the sky clearing, which would not have been easy to make, so I have no idea. I just want to pause to reiterate that Dexter does this, mostly because I love the linked site. what a tweest So in case it wasn't obvious, Travis's people made Victoria. I know, it's been obvious for freaking ever. Here's why. This cutscene consists entirely of material that was originally in the intro level, followed by in-engine footage of the Absolution map with some filters put over it. The whole "twist" wasn't going to be a twist until late in development-it was just going to be a main plot hook. This is also why I think the scene of Victoria fighting was originally from much earlier in the game-it was going to be used to establish the stakes. The remixed twist reveal with the envelope is also apparently where the motif with 47 staring at a coin was going to come from. Shame they cut it, eh? A Note on Layout Absolution is a relatively well-made level with a fair number of details and structural touches missing from the other corridor-setpiece-corridor frankenstein missions in Absolution. If you look ahead into the horizon from your starting position, you can actually see the crematorium building in the distance, past the depressed also visible middle area:  Similarly, at the crematorium, you can turn around and get a good look at the route you took to get here, including the mausoleum you start at.  This is a pretty basic layout trick for a game to use, but for a game like Absolution to actually make use of it, even at the end, makes a nice change. Hm, starting in a mausoleum and going back to a crematorium. At the end of a game all about 47's symbolic destruction and rebirth. SYMBOLISM Open graves and High Ground Challenges The starting area is laid out for the sniper rifle in more ways than one; the open graves you mention are actually all aligned with idle position for enemy NPC patrols, with line of sight to the starting position. You can shoot guards into the graves from there, which is part of the last part of the higher ground challenge; it requires chaining completely unnoticed sniper kills. It's not too bad. "why are we here?" It's 6 months after Dexter died, and Travis has gotten paranoid that Diana is actually still alive. He's come to the Burnwood family gravesite in England and cordoned the place off so he can dig up her body and have it tested. "was that a rocket launcher on the right wall over there?" It's a shotgun and a bunch of shell boxes. A note on the exit I've gone without mentioning it the whole run, but many levels have a big colored light highlight over the exit to try to make it stand out. It's especially visible in this initial graveyard, because it's red and comes from nowhere (see 4:55). My guess is it was added because testers were unable to find the exit under all the grime and extraneous detail. Burnwood Crypt The Burnwood Crypt is really a fine level- it's very small, with relatively little going on, but that's because there's only one target with a couple intended kill methods. If I didn't know any better, I'd say Absolution's levels were finished and polished relatively early, given their much simpler scale. That's a shot in the dark, though. "Is Diana of nobility or something?" Yes, basically. This garbage promo video should have you covered. It's sort of a Lara Croft thing- minor nobility, superwealthy, father dies mysteriously at young age. The writers decided she also had a brother that has gone missing. Be warned that if you pause that video enough and connect the dots, you'll probably spoil the upcoming HITMAN sequel; unless the devs decide to retcon things, it indirectly reveals where the games are headed. "why do we have to be here?" Travis is terrified of Diana because she had information on the creation of Victoria. The whole cloning project was unapproved; he was hiding it from ICA leadership. "That scientist guy I killed is the only guy with that outfit" You, uh, literally say this while staring at a free copy of the technician outfit. The technician's outfit has the freaking ICA logo on the back, and the front, and on an ID card necklace. If you're wearing the outfit and walk within eyeshot of Jade, she'll tell you to walk back to the grave with her. If you do so, she will conveniently stand under the lifted scarcophogus lid for a while (with the big red button on the crane, etc) before giving you a brief "we need to finish this job" spiel. Think of it as a prototype for all the other social stealth opportunities in HITMAN 2016. The only other intended kill method is that several little tunnels in the map are collapsible (you kill her in one at 7:40), although the hit detection on them is garbage and you need to basically use the explosives pointlessly littered around to make them work. "maybe I didn't shoot it enough times" Haha, I tried to shoot it in the exact same place, to the same outcome. I didn't go back and check, but it might work if you shoot the chain just above the scarcophogus lid. "who even is Jade?" I'd love to say there was more to Jade, but there's nothing there past an Asian stereotype. NPC conversations say that she's ambitious and is looking to seize power from Travis, but as you mention there's zero direct indication of this via her actions at any point in the game. "Discendo Vox lied" My bad, I have no idea how the backup works at this point. I do think it eventually ends, but the details are totally opaque. In my defense, the game's not exactly well-documented (aside from my beautiful artisan posts). "we killed Jack Aeges" "Igis?" "enh, it'd probably be Aeges" ˈējis. The Praetorians As you illustrate, the Praetorians are mostly clowns in stealth- while their patrol routes overlap and there are trip mines in the area, the game's mechanics just make them a joke of a final "boss" encounter. They do not have any random pattern, which would indeed be...well, something interesting at least. The Praetorians do have a couple special tricks- their detection range for sound appears to be wider, and they move around at a faster rate than most enemies when patrolling. Also, if you kill one Praetorian within a certain range of another, regardless of method or position, the other two instantly go hostile, with knowledge of your exact location. This...doesn't come up because you don't generally kill them in this sort of proximity. Similarly, the investigation behavior isn't changed, leaving them just as open as any other semi-alert enemy- and their greater range makes it easier to lure them away. I could write a whole long design theory post about the challenges presented by a "Stealth Boss", especially in the hitman series, but...god, I'm just so tired. Let it be over. In combat, the Praetorians behave like normal enemies- they even have generic voices. Their only special trait is having frankly absurd amounts of health, even against headshots. The symbolism of the Praetorians is probably pretty obvious: they were the dudes that guarded the Roman Emperor. You know, the dude who orders the death of Christ. Yep. They go there (well, tried- the Roman history's more complicated than that). "Carey Scut'em is our target" ˈskuːtəm. There's something hinky going on with the Praetorians, though, and I think I (and some other obsessives) know what it is. Although NPCs ingame say they're mercenaries, "the best of the best", that wasn't their original role. Here are three clues: 1. All of the Praetorians come equipped with a set of digital displays on their arms and waist, similar to below:  2. All of the Praetorians also the following patch on their arm:  This is highly reminiscent of the ICA logo(warning, huge):  3. Finally, all of the Praetorians have white hair and red eyes (try to ignore the luscious lips of mr. aegis here):  "I want to hazard a guess that these are the names of people who won a contest" Haha, you wish it was that smart. They're names for three different kinds of Grecon-Roman shield. Why am I showing you all this? Cast your mind back to Hitman Blood Money. In that game, the big bad rival assassin company, "The Franchise", were dabbling in human cloning, an activity that drove the plot of the game. A pair of targets in that game were successive iterations of their imperfect clone assassin program; albinos who aged incredibly fast, dying in only a couple years, but who had skills that rivaled 47's. It appears likely that the Praetorians were originally going to be the ICA's successful efforts at continuing the Franchise's clone assassin program. The targets are all albino, and carry digital gear that appears to (in addition to serving military roles), monitor their vital signs. Regarding the patch, "Praesidium" seems to be a rank; the historical use would be "senior executive", roughly. The roman numeral VI probably refers to their origins; the earlier Franchise assassins each had a roman numeral at the end of their name referencing what generation of imperfect clone they were, with the final enemy being Mark III. The laurel wreath is pretty intuitive. I have no clue what the drops represent, and frankly I don't care anymore. Or maybe they just slapped some assets from unused ICA guards together, who knows. Double Rainbow Easter Egg Because the internet is a thing, there's an easter egg in the last area. If you look left from the start, there's a rainbow there, formed in response to the sunlit drizzle that covers the level. Destroying every statue in the area causes a second rainbow to form, all the way.  "That explosion apparently ripped the middle and top of the door, and nothing else" It actually reflects a bit of care in modeling the explosion: the parts that are still intact are the areas where there are big metal crossbands holding the wood together. Benjamin Travis Travis' big motivation throughout the game was that he was secretly trying to replicate 47, producing Victoria, who was supposedly easier to control due to the incredibly stupid isotope Macguffin. Travis is only mildly more characterized than Jade, and I've described/linked that material before. Here's his ICA file trailer. Note the scene at the end where he's shot through the hand- this is left over from when 47 was going to more overtly betray Travis after "killing" Diana in the intro. It's also where his cyberhand comes from. The video has many blink-and-you'll-miss-it shots of psych reports on Travis (again, fully written, exhaustively so, to great waste) that basically imply that stress makes him increasingly sociopathic and he has an innate impulse toward abusive manipulation of others, referring to them as "buttons and levers" when pressed. Ingame, it appears very likely that there was some sort of fight, or conventional assassination, or at least a quicktime shooting bit like Wade, planned for Travis. The dynamite used to enter the crematorium is visibly a reused asset from countdown, and the effects associated with it are very slapdash. The interior of the crematorium is also fully rendered, and is partially visible from outside. Travis does have an in-engine model, but it appears visibly incomplete in the only visible instance of its appearance. More on that, and the crematorium, further down. Ben also has a unique pistol that you can't pick up; it's another million dollars in Contracts mode. RIP Contracts Speaking of which, Contracts mode is now online, possibly forever; IOI sent out a message on their site that they didn't have time to make it GDPR compliant before the 2018 Eurpoean privacy law went into effect. So long, only popular part of Hitman Absolution! A note on getting murdered There's a fancy little thing when you're in a mission where you kill a Big Target- Sanchez, Wade, Skurky, etc. If you die, a brief cutscene plays showing the player looking up from the ground at the target, who has a one-sentence, entirely unrandom, boring taunt. It's basically a garbage version of the killscreens in the Arkham games. I mention this only because it reveals a couple things about Travis. First, Travis does in fact have an ingame model that appears in this scene, but his cybernetic hand is completely unmoving in the brief animation, which may be tied to why they weren't able to do an ingame assassination. Second, the killscreen perspective appears inside the crematorium, with particle effects that are probably meant to signify 47 is going to go into the oven. This supports my theory that the crematorium interior was at one point going to be navigable. Third, Travis's taunt is "You cross the agency and you get hosed!" (I know, great, isn't it). The line doesn't match his motivation, which is to kill 47 and cover up his own crimes against the agency. No clue what's going on there. Ending This ends with Victoria considering giving up her isotope necklace, permanently rendering herself a medical invalid. You cover the details of the obvious/nonsensical Diana reveal. Victoria does not appear and is not mentioned in the follow-up, our beloved HITMAN 2016. I like to think she found a better game to star in. "I'm sure that the corporate heads from [square enix] did it very poorly" In my last posts, I hope to convince you that the fault for Absolution rests almost entirely with the core devs. "What happened to Birdie/Cosmo Faulkner?" hehehahahahaha  But wait, there's more! I still have two more posts in me: 1. An extras and sources post with: a) A set of links to some information sources I used to compile these posts. b) The virtually unheard-of social media promo material for Cosmo Faulkner, preserved for all time before Google Plus shuts down. 3. My fanfiction on how I'd have reworked Hitman Absolution to be moderately tolerable. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Jan 15, 2020 |
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Jun 27, 2018 06:03
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I didn't miss any costumes, I wanted to do suit-only! 
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Jun 27, 2018 12:45
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I can't remember if this was brought up, but why does the judge wear a wig? The game is set in South Dakota, not Britain.
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Jun 28, 2018 06:14
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You say in the video that you have to take out the technician, but you say it...as you are standing in front of a technician outfit. For the record finishing this out is going to take a bit longer than I wanted, my RSI is really acting up and another goon project I'm on is about to launch. Mantis42 posted:I can't remember if this was brought up, but why does the judge wear a wig? The game is set in South Dakota, not Britain. You're going to hate me for this. He recently found out one of his ancestors was a British judge, so he's started wearing British judge poo poo. I'm sorry. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Jun 28, 2018 |
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Jun 28, 2018 06:18
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Discendo Vox posted:You're going to hate me for this. oh my loving god
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Jun 28, 2018 06:19
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Hahaha, sounds like they probably reverse engineered it after coming up with what is admittedly a pretty cool disguise. They should revisit the courtroom idea in one of the new, better games.
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Jun 28, 2018 06:23
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Mantis42 posted:Hahaha, sounds like they probably reverse engineered it after coming up with what is admittedly a pretty cool disguise. They should revisit the courtroom idea in one of the new, better games. Based on reading the tea leaves, there was a Big List o' Costume Ideas brainstorming session during the runup to Blood Money, and they went back to that list and just kept trying to force them in after they ran out of development time for BM.
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Jun 28, 2018 06:43
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Discendo Vox posted:You're going to hate me for this.
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Jun 28, 2018 16:30
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Discendo Vox posted:You're going to hate me for this. American judges used to dress like British judges until Thomas Jefferson changed it.
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Jun 28, 2018 17:12
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I'm sorry, I need to correct my earlier statement. The judge didn't find out that his ancestor was a British judge, then decide to dress as a british judge, adopt british mannerisms and collect british legal paraphernalia. He found out his ancestor was British, then decided to dress as a british judge, adopt british mannerisms and collect british legal paraphernalia.
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Jun 28, 2018 18:12
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Discendo Vox posted:I'm sorry, I need to correct my earlier statement. The judge didn't find out that his ancestor was a British judge, then decide to dress as a british judge, adopt british mannerisms and collect british legal paraphernalia. Oh then that's not so bad.
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Jun 28, 2018 18:38
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Oh then that's not so bad. At least it isn't a plantation wedding.
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Jun 29, 2018 02:11
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Discendo Vox posted:I'm sorry, I need to correct my earlier statement. The judge didn't find out that his ancestor was a British judge, then decide to dress as a british judge, adopt british mannerisms and collect british legal paraphernalia. I refuse to believe this until proof is provided 
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Jun 29, 2018 05:21
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CommissarMega posted:I refuse to believe this until proof is provided It's actually in some of the various guard conversations you can overhear. It's dumb but they do at least point it out/justify it rather than just leaving it there as a blatantly wrong thing. I can totally imagine this having been recycled from a level concept that originally would have been in the UK and thus wouldn't have needed the extra justification. When they set it in the US, they probably felt a judge's robe on its own would have been kind of boring as a unique/all-access costume. Although it does kind of raise the question about why the guards don't see through the disguise - if it WAS just some "generic judge" outfit, it would be still be stretching belief but hey, maybe it's a bigger courthouse than it looks and there's a lot of judges. But with the British wig thing it's now a costume of a SPECIFIC GUY that the guards would definitely recognize because they know about this one weird thing he does. Although it's not the only costume in Absolution with that problem. At least in 2016 when you do disguise yourself as someone specific, people who know that person well actually WILL see through the disguise, or it's Helmut Kruger where they make a point of how he looks exactly like 47. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Jun 29, 2018 |
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Jun 29, 2018 06:30
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Hey, so Jobbo and I are gonna play some Hitman Sniper Assassin co-op on stream later tonight, so I figured I'd let all of you here in the thread know in case anyone wanted to watch. We'll be streaming at https://twitch.tv/chaosargate, so keep an eye out there, here, or on my twitter for whenever we go live.
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Jul 6, 2018 19:16
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https://twitter.com/ChaosArgate/status/1015366822714109954
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Jul 6, 2018 23:48
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Apparently, I missed a cutscene at the end. I think it was locked behind a higher difficulty. No I don't know why. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9kPUvfWD78
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Jul 6, 2018 23:52
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You should still do the bonus eps and Patient Zero. The bonus episodes are fairly short but have some goofy Opportunities, and Patient Zero tries to add a twist to the formula on each mission. No tagged opportunities and killing one target actively changes the other's routine in the first, time limit in the second, sniper-only in the third and the virus in the fourth
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Jul 7, 2018 00:02
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Gaz-L posted:You should still do the bonus eps and Patient Zero. The bonus episodes are fairly short but have some goofy Opportunities, and Patient Zero tries to add a twist to the formula on each mission. No tagged opportunities and killing one target actively changes the other's routine in the first, time limit in the second, sniper-only in the third and the virus in the fourth Yeah, the plan is to do them once Chaos stops being lazy. I really liked some of the bonus eps.
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Jul 7, 2018 00:12
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