E3 2011: Hitman – Are Stealth Games Becoming Action Games?
by: dkpatriarch
©2011 David Hilton
I slipped Santa’s body into the kitchen freezer. He was dead drunk before, now he was just dead. Santa’s suit gave me free access to the mansion’s rooms. Nobody would suspect that a drunken Santa was the assassin.
A sausage on the floor gave me an idea – I quickly injected the sedative into the oily meat. This would remove another rather noisy obstacle – the annoying noisy dog coming my way.
I casually joined the party mixing in with the other guests while looking around the room for my target. Ahh, there he was, just leaving, perfect. I followed him past the guards, then throwing the sausage in order to distract the dog, which was barking at my heels by then.
There was the target smoking on a balcony, looking out across the beautiful vista at the snow gently falling over the cliffs below, it seemed almost too inviting.
A few silent steps up behind him, a sudden, forceful push, and he too was falling over the cliffs, although there was nothing gentle about his descent. Mission accomplished. Time to get paid.
The strengths of the Hitman series
The Hitman series is famous for such levels. The strength of the games were the diversity of missions and the way in which to accomplish the assassinations. Bald-headed hero Agent 47 uses disguises, poison injections, stealth, and creativity with available items to get the job done.
Hitman Absolution is the next title in the series and will be fully revealed shortly at E3, but there is a difference this time. The developers of IO Interactive want to reach the broader mainstream buyers and the larger profits they can provide.
Director Tore Blystad, in an interview with DigitalTrends said:
“The Hitman games of the past have been very hardcore. Even though the fantasy of the Hitman universe has a very universal appeal, the games have been so difficult to play, that it’s been more of an acquired taste.”
But what does this mean for the game, as previous iterations were heavily focused on stealth and disguise?
• Hitman Absolution E3 2011 Teaser
Well according to GameReactor, it means that the game will have an open-world feel divided by more linear sections which are “firearm focused” and use cover mechanics and better enemy AI. It also means you will play more than just Agent 47, as a female assassin becomes playable this time around.
Blystad describes Hitman Absolution as having similar things as games like GTA or other sandbox games, “but it’s on a much less granular level because we have a very strong focus on the abilities of the characters” he said.
More story driven, more open-world, more action, more guns, better enemy AI, hot playable female assassin….this all adds up to a greater action focus.
Action Hero or Silent Assassin?
This is exactly what developers think mainstream gamers want. Action.
Look at games like Metal Gear Solid 4. This game was simply brilliant, and one of the reasons for that was the fact that the gamer could choose to play it as they wanted. Hardcore stealth gamer? Then you could do it that way. Too impatient for that? Well you could pretend it was Call of Duty Modern Warfare. However, the focus on pure 100% stealth style to move forward in the game no longer applied.
Then there is the more recent Splinter Cell: Conviction reboot. There were still some elements of stealth but it felt much more like an action game. The ‘mission failed’ for setting off an alarm or being spotted has made way for ‘mark and execute’.
What does this mean?
Clearly the pure stealth approach is making way for a more action oriented approach. This could mean that upcoming stealth games like the shortly to be detailed medieval Thief 4 could also be less sneaky and more about elimination.
This does make it more appealing to the mainstream, but will it be at the cost of some great challenging, creative puzzling gameplay?
Will disguise and dark shadows matter so much anymore?
These days gamers don’t have the patience or time to keep repeating missions that have failed because of bad timing under the security camera or failing to evaluate the environment for all patrolling guards.
What this means for the stealth genre long term could be simply that it ceases to exist as a stand alone entity. I believe we are seeing many different genres mixing together. RPG games like Mass Effect are becoming more action oriented. Action games are having more RPG upgrade and story telling elements to them.
In the end if the game is fun and can encourage multiple styles of gameplay as MGS4 did, then most gamers will be happy.
Perhaps this is what Hitman Absolution is aiming for.
But the huge range of disguises are non-negotiable…they had better still be there!
OXCGN’s E3 2011 Articles:
Make sure you check out as many of these great E3 2011 articles, not only showing you the news, but looking deeper into the games and hardware coming from this year’s E3.
In the mean time, please feel free to grab any of the videos (we supply easy share-code for that) and images to share with your friends using the helpful social media buttons on the site. But basically, enjoy the information, and share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.
This list will be updated with every new article and new notice, so make sure you bookmark it so you’ll be notified when there’s a new item up – enjoy
- E3 2011: Brothers In Arms: Furious 4: Desecrating the BIA Name - click here
- OXCGN’s Nintendo E3 Conference Wrap Up - click here
- E3 2011: The Darkness 2 – To Sequel or Not to Sequel - click here
- Sony PS Vita (NGP) Australian Price Revealed? - click here
- Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – Limited Animus and Special Editions Unveiled (with trailers) - click here
- OXCGN’s Sony E3 Conference Wrap Up - click here
- The Kinect Strikes Back: Kinect Star Wars - click here
- E3 2011: Hitman – Are Stealth Games Becoming Action Games - click here
- Tomb Raider: A Darker More Visceral Lara Croft - click here
- OXCGN’s EA Conference Wrap Up - click here
- OXCGN’s Ubisoft Conference Wrap Up - click here
- E3 2011: Minecraft Coming to 360 - click here
- E3 2011: Microsoft Showcases Halo 4, Halo HD remake - click here
- OXCGN’s Microsoft Conference Wrap Up - click here
- Konami E3 2011 Conference Wrap Up - click here
- Top Announcement We Want and Don’t Want at E3 - click here
- The Best Places to Watch E3 2011 - click here
©2011 David Hilton
xxxxxx
Like this:
Filed under: Xbox 360 Tagged: | "Splinter Cell: Conviction", Action game, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Game, History of E3, Hitman, Hitman Absolution, Hitman Absolution e3 news, Hitman Absolution screenshots, Hitman Absolution videos, IO Interactive, Metal Gear Solid 4, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, MGS4, Santa Claus, Splinter Cell, Square Enix, Stealth game, Thief, Thief 2, Thief 3, Thief 4, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction, Tore Blystad, video games
It’s ipmeatrive that more people make this exact point.
I for one am not happy with this, I can understand their reasons behind it. but that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow. I loved sitting in my room with the lights turned out staring at one room for 20 minutes just to kill one guy unnoticed. I loved the diversity, I killed one guy about 8 different times before I decided to move onto the next mission. They may think what they are doing is right but they might be losing what made the games great with this transition.
am sorry but I think you need to go back to reading about genres again.
Stealth games ARE action games man.
True stealth games are different to hack n’ slash action or FPS action, or Gears of War 3rd person action style games. You might call ‘Stealth’ a sub-genre, but it is distinct.