New Script (video coming v soon, see description) #1! Analysing Hitman GO: Distilling the Essence of Hitman (Patreon)

Hey everyone!

Quick explanation for what's happening here: essentially I was working on two videos at once... technically three... four? Five? A lot was happening at once, but I was hoping to have two fully done videos by the end of the month and then I'd just blast on working on the Yakuza cinema piece and a bunch of other stuff I have planned.

Then, well, I got COVID. 

I'm fine, don't worry, I think I'm out of the woods with it now but it more or less laid waste to my release schedule (which was already cutting it pretty tight to begin with). As much as I usually just push through whatever my body is telling me in order to get the work done, this felt, well... weird enough that I needed to take my foot off the gas for a few days and take care of myself. I'm incredibly sorry for the delay and I sincerely hope you can understand. 

Just so you have something to keep you occupied while I put the finishing touches on the videos, I'm going to post the scripts I'm working on for the videos that are very nearly complete. They'll be with you in a couple of days. As has been in the case in the past, I'll put these through as charged posts for the Patreon deadline but rest assured, you will not be charged for the final videos when they're posted. 

This first script takes a look at Hitman GO—the mobile game (later ported to other platforms) released in 2014, and one that like many other decisions taken with this series, saw people initially sceptical before they got their hands on it, and realised just how thoroughly GO managed to capture the essence of what makes Hitman tick. I love this game, I've wanted to talk about it for a long time, and now I get the chance. Enjoy and you'll see the completed video in a day or two!

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The Hitman series has seen a number of business decisions made along its over-two-decades-long history that have seen audience reactions range from a near-constant fear regarding its future, to outright confusion directed squarely at those holding the reins. Changing course on an already announced new game and breaking up the World of Assassination trilogy into episodic chunks; maintaining a completely pointless always online experience despite the fact it made said trilogy markedly worse in all sorts of novel ways; taking a series known for the freedom it afforded players in how they approached objectives and morphing it into a much more linear experience as found in 2011’s Absolution.

But perhaps most confusing is the idea that someone would look at that game, see many fans decry its adherence to more conventional action game tropes of the time, lamenting the resulting restriction in approach, and saying “you know what this series needs to be? A board game. What’s more, let’s release it on mobile just so we can ensure that no fan is left happy.”

But like the episodic structure of the recent games emphasised the joy of replayability in the World of Assassination trilogy, sometimes there is indeed method to some of that madness and similarly, the scepticism that surrounded 2014’s Hitman GO largely subsided as soon as people got their hands on it—not simply because it turned out to be a fun puzzle game in its own right (although it absolutely did), but because to this day it manages to capture everything that makes Hitman the unique curio of a series that it is.

I mean, just look at this aesthetic design. The perfectly crafted little dioramas, the pristine architecture, the delicately organised topiary that surrounds it, the pastel glow it’s all baked in, It’s all so… clean, so stark, in a way that immediately brings to mind the refined elegance of the high society settings 47 finds himself navigating in more traditional series entries; the sleek efficiency with which he works—his character design is so genuinely iconic that even without facial features, on a board of similarly featureless pieces, you know exactly where 47 is at any given time, what he’s capable of.

Of course, this is the most surface level indicator that you’re in for an experience that captures the essence of Hitman, but what’s most impressive about GO, as you find navigating the countless grids that comprise its levels, is how this extends to the gameplay. As it turns out, even on a set grid, 47’s capability will outshine your expectations.

There’s a rigidity you might associate with the board game format here – the distinct pathways, the ruthless adherence to the assigned routes of your enemies and the quickness with which your game is ended if you should wind up wandering into it, but even for a title that reduces the scope of its namesake quite like GO does, you’re afforded a fair amount of flexibility in approach.

Of course, as evidenced by the big retry button constantly taunting you from the corner, there is almost always the possibility you could find yourself boxed into an unwinnable situation – a momentary tap dance around the inevitable – but because the rest of the board only shifts when you decide on where you’ll position 47 next, in order to study the board and the multiple systems that might be at play, you find yourself constantly on the move – having to manoeuvre around multiple constantly shifting sightlines, jumping between shrubbery and deciding the most efficient moment with which to activate a distraction, so its effects draw in as many unwitting guards as possible (although hopefully not the one that will subsequently move into the path you had just cleared – it is very possible for your best laid plans to turn on you just when you think everything is starting to go your way and, like the best situations in Hitman proper, sometimes you get to improvise your way out of such binds).

Disguises, distinct weapons with different functions, conveyor belts, guards that face two directions simultaneously, guard dogs that track you through a level… it feels like every few boards you’re getting introduced to some new mechanic or tool or enemy type that stacks upon the previously established mechanics, that mean by the time you get to the end of the game, the sheer number of variables and rules to consider in any given map can be pretty overwhelming.

At times, especially later on, such abundance can lead to certain rules not being explained as well as they could be (I’m still not sure about the specifics of the airport disguise you start out with that allows you to murder some guards but simply move alongside others…) but the fact that such a wealth of strategic options is being provided to you in a board game that’s actually a phone game is novel enough to make up for such inconsistencies.

Do you use the sniper rifle to take out multiple guards on the one target at the same time? Or do you instead shoot down the statue over here? It might seem like a wasted opportunity to let all those people go, but maybe they’re not actually in your way in the long run, and maybe you’ve just blocked the path for another unsuspecting guard that might have become troublesome down the line. Just like regular Hitman encourages you to consider the consequences of any action you might take, where your exits are, how many guards might be in your way, etc., Hitman GO requires you to take your time and think several moves ahead, literally, as thanks to clever puzzle design, the obvious answer is rarely the best.

In much the same vein, the game has enough in its toolbox at that point that it can actually throw you mechanical red herrings – placing a pickup at a certain faraway spot on the map’s grid, conditioning you to think “at some point in the level I’m going to have to use that,” and factoring the possibility into your experimentation and improvisation; making you worry when you realise you’re deep into a strategy that somehow doesn’t involve that one piece… only for you to reach the end of the level without incident and you realise the level designers have been playing tricks with you. Of course, you could have gone out of your way to use it if you so wished, but most of the time these tools would offer minor benefits and lock you off from certain objectives in your pursuit of them.

It's a flexibility bolstered by the multiple optional objectives each level has to be met by the player. I often found myself wishing that there were more opportunities to figure out an optimal route and tick off both optional objectives at once – you know, with many missions taking the form of completing the board in a certain number of turns, and goals like “collect the briefcase” usually requiring careful and prolonged manoeuvring of enemies, it’s rare that you’ll find two objectives that aren’t at direct odds with each other tactically – but I dunno, one of the key tenets of Hitman’s design at large is the necessity of revisiting older maps with renewed strategy. If you drop someone off a balcony then you’re going to have to wait until the next go around to drop a chandelier on them too.

And with the need to repeat maps in order to wring all the rewards you can from them, it helps that somehow, even in a board game setting, the Cold Hard Murder you’re here for is made viscerally satisfying. Indeed, the clack and clatter of conquered pieces is the kind of sound that makes you truly thankful for skilled audio design – finding a way to create the board game equivalent of that instantly recognisable fizz from a silenced pistol; a sound that’s delicate, but decisive, and only grows more satisfying the more targets you’re able to take out at once.

Indeed, in a way that might actually go against typical stealth game logic, taking people out actually feels really good here. Where extra-curricular kills are considered a failing in other games, leaving a mess that might alert others to your presence, here every piece taken, no matter how minor, feels like the core of the level you’re on – the reason you’re there; with victory over your actual crucial targets being given the added ceremony of slow motion and having their demise soundtracked by Ave Maria.

See, even the series’ trademark jet-black humour is captured here in the form of the set dressing of these dioramas – the peripheral little action figures frozen in time in often compromising positions. This set dressing also pulls double, triple duty in highlighting the raw capability of our protagonist – you know, 47 gets in and out before these dimwits even have a chance to move – while also telling a story without words.

47’s targets don’t need huge lore dumps here, telling you why they’re a key part of Providence or whatever – they are pieces on a board, bigger than the rest of the pieces and requiring the most work to get to which is incentive enough – but the snapshots of time you find them in, trading organs or looking through box upon box of highly valuable art, helps place them in the exact same kind of shady upper echelons of society consistent with the more fully characterised targets in other games, all without a single line of dialogue.

And that’s perhaps what I love most about Hitman GO—despite only being made by eleven people as the new studio’s first project, it all just feels so effortless, so confident, like this was the mechanical and aesthetic blueprint regular Hitman would go on to pull from rather than the other way around. In some ways that might not actually be too far from the truth—need I remind you that this released two whole years before the World of Assassination trilogy that put the series back on the map.

But further, Hitman works so well as a board game because, well… it is a board game, of sorts. You carefully analyse the game space and the pieces that populate it, looking for a hole in their clockwork AI patterns and manoeuvring your pieces in just such a way that you can pick the right moment to pierce it. In other words, for all the talk of how accurately Hitman GO captures the essence of its series, in actuality its purity helps us see more clearly what Hitman actually is to begin with.