All they need to do for the clothes thing is make the camera look away for a moment. Or they could do something clever like making it go level so you just see 47's shoulders. Have him shuffle around a bit, lift the clothing into frame, duck down out of frame, and then straighten back up with the new clothes. Done.
Even if they leave the stairs as inclined planes for the collision mesh, they could at least animate a quick arm wave in the general direction of opening doors. I don't care if it's three feet away when he does it, I just want some visual acknowledgement that 47 is physically opening the door himself.
The clothes changing has been an issue I don't think IO or anyone could have a great solution for--just some ones that are modest improvements over what they have now.
I could see, for example, the camera focusing on 47's arms, wrists, legs, etc., as he unbuttons, etc., his original outfit and then the same for the new one. It'd still be very fast, but it wouldn't actually have clothes swapping out like an optical illusion. Or the camera pan to the head.
If they wanted to have a sexy nuns trailer, then show the nuns kitting up and getting into their nun outfits and hiding all their weapons, it gets boobs out there, and it establishes that these are dangerous assassins and not normal nuns. Then have them getting out of a bus and walking down the sidewalk towards 47's location, except he's outside stalking them and they don't even realize it.
If they wanted to have a sexy nuns trailer, then show the nuns kitting up and getting into their nun outfits and hiding all their weapons, it gets boobs out there, and it establishes that these are dangerous assassins and not normal nuns.
Earlier hinting aside, I think it became pretty clear that they were not normal nuns when they pulled out rocket launchers and assault rifles.
A team of female assassins? Okay. A team of female assassins in sexy nun outfits? That's Saints Row territory right there. It just doesn't fit the tone of the Hitman series.
The fact that this game seems to be pushing so many Hitman fans away is actually kind of turning me on to it
On the latest Bombcast where they talked about Blood Money and how you have to try to break the system and it becomes a big trial-and-error thing for hours until you get a level just right...I can't believe that there's such a large group of people that honestly find that kind of thing fun
This is possibly the first time I've actually been interested in this game, because everything else they've shown has made it look goddamn terrible.
Still, I would hope the final product has a bit more of a challenge to it. That target practically killed himself.
The fact that this game seems to be pushing so many Hitman fans away is actually kind of turning me on to it
On the latest Bombcast where they talked about Blood Money and how you have to try to break the system and it becomes a big trial-and-error thing for hours until you get a level just right...I can't believe that there's such a large group of people that honestly find that kind of thing fun
There's a huge group of people that find DayZ and the Witcher 2 fun. People like to be challenged. People like completing a real challenge because of the sense of satisfaction.
You just don't get that kind of feeling from a game that babysits you.
The fact that this game seems to be pushing so many Hitman fans away is actually kind of turning me on to it
On the latest Bombcast where they talked about Blood Money and how you have to try to break the system and it becomes a big trial-and-error thing for hours until you get a level just right...I can't believe that there's such a large group of people that honestly find that kind of thing fun
But...it's not like you're failing if you don't get it right. You could be happy with whatever result you get first try, or you could replay the level to try a different tactic. There are so many ways to clear every level. One of those ways is the perfect no-one-spots-you-victim's-victim's-death-looks-like-an-accident run. But even if you don't get that, it doesn't mean you've lost. That's where all the fun comes from. You keep trying different ways to do things. It's not like the game won't let you move past until you've figured out some some obscure solution to its level. It's not an adventure game.
This is like the time the Bombcast guys bitched about the Mass Effect 2 ending because you're given a number of choices in the final mission, and it isn't immediately apparent what your best option is to get the perfect ending.
Downloaded the demo for Blood Money because I was curious
Yeah, I'd be awful at that kind of game
It told me to distract the guards. I couldn't find anything to do it with, I had a coin in my inventory, but nowhere I dropped it seemed to get them to notice it.
So I just went out the door and was promptly noticed, stole the gun from one of the guards and shot and killed them both
I got past it, but I know I did it "wrong," yet I have no clue how I was supposed to approach it.
0
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Downloaded the demo for Blood Money because I was curious
Yeah, I'd be awful at that kind of game
It told me to distract the guards. I couldn't find anything to do it with, I had a coin in my inventory, but nowhere I dropped it seemed to get them to notice it.
So I just went out the door and was promptly noticed, stole the gun from one of the guards and shot and killed them both
I got past it, but I know I did it "wrong," yet I have no clue how I was supposed to approach it.
As long as you got past it, it's done.
There are other ways to do it, yes, and some will technically get you a better rating in the end, but the reason the game is good is because you can approach a lot of situations in multiple ways. Some of which involve just shooting everyone.
The demo is the abandoned carnival, right? Because that's literally the worst level in the entire game (tutorial) and offers you zero freedom or fun while beating you over the head with what it wants you to do at each stage. It's terrible. Case in point, what they wanted you to do there was take out a coin, hold whatever the throw key is to toss it through the window at the bullseye. No other level in the game has such limited solutions.
Watch some videos of other levels on youtube or see if you can find a place to rent it. It's an excellent game regardless if you want to do perfect runs with fatal "accidents" and no witnesses or run around in a chicken suit through mardi gras desperately gunning down cops on your way to the target.
I just got curious and looked up a guide, and it said throw the coin at the bullseye. I figured that might be it, but...
How the hell do you even throw the coin? Y just drops it, RT doesn't do anything. Tried all the buttons and nothing works. A really shitty in-game tutorial, though this is a ported PS2 game so it has age working against it on that front
EDIT: Figured it out. Holding down the left stick, guiding with the right stick and releasing? Goddamn that is awkward. Why wouldn't they just map whatever item you're holding to RT? Hopefully Absolution would fix that sort of thing. You can tell this game needs a lot of polish so I now know why you're all desperate for Absolution to be amazing
There's not a lot stopping you from running around murdering people as loudly as possible, especially since Codename 47, the first game, when you could get fucked up really badly with a lucky shot from the AI and there was no first person perspective.
There are a minority of missions where the enemy will run away fast enough if you start killing things. The greatest punishment is just that everyone starts gunning for you...which is what you wanted anyway. And on the easiest difficulty, you can live through quite a few gunfights.
Hell, the last mission in Blood Money, without spoiling it too much, demands a big ass gunfight.
Yeah the beauty is how you can solve it in so many ways that you never thought a developer would bother to include. Like the suburb level with the guy under witness protection. His wife has some info in a locket you need, you can knock out the clown who shows up for their kid's b-day party, dress up his outfit, and then run into the wife who, for whatever reason, has a clown fetish and you can seduce her to get the locket while she's cleaning up afterwards.
In that same level one of the ways to eliminate one of the federal agents who is protecting the witness is by putting ether on the teenage daughter's panties because one of them randomly will come in and sniff them. THAT'S how you break the game, because you notice during one run-through "Hey that agent just literally sniffed that little girls panties, what the fuck?!" and there's a way to exploit that.
And those are only 2 of probably 3 dozen different scenarios that can play out in that one mission alone in order to help you assassinate the guy and complete any secondary assignments.
A couple of things in that video bother me about the movement. The graphics are awesome, but everything still moves the same way it did in the first game. Why does 47 still glide up stairs at a walking pace? Doors and dumpster lids still fly open through telekinesis. A few more contextual animations would go a long way towards making things feel smoother. And the crowd he's pushing through has zero return effect on his momentum or heading. I'd just like a bit more reactive simulation in character movement.
A super cool thing about the first game that none of the others have had was actually how intelligent it was with its animation. It was pretty dynamic. He'd move his legs correctly when climbing stairs (unless he was running, I think?) and when you picked up a weapon he'd a actually reach out and grab it - correctly, too. Like, even if the physics glitched out and a gun got stuck hovering in the air above 47's head at an angle, he would reach up with one hand and take it.
There was even a button to toggle a second type of mouse look where instead of rotating the camera or the character, the mouse would just move the crosshair around the screen and when you fired 47 would point the gun in that direction, without rotating his entire body, so you could just stand still and wave one arm around.
That was really a super cool thing, I wonder why they abandoned it.
Also, dual-wielding any two one-handed weapons was awesome.
I always thought it would be kind of cool instead of the entire outfit if he just slipped on any jacket/hat/tie that was part of the stolen outfit without actually changing his pants/shirt.
But yeah, the walking animation not changing for stairs is just lazy. I mean, I think Rainbow Six Raven Shield did that almost like 10 years ago.
Edit:
He'd move his legs correctly when climbing stairs (unless he was running, I think?)
Oh, wow. That's so odd that the later games had less complex animation systems.
Gotta jump in on this stairs animation thing. I don't think it's them being lazy per se, it's just that getting the animation right is an incredibly hard thing to do. A ton of games don't do it because of that, the few that do pull it off are pretty damned amazing, speaking as an animator.
Not saying they shouldn't try to do it anyway though.
While the animations could almost certainly use an overhaul in this day and age, I'm fine with them being a bit more bare bones so long as the games retain the ability to take on your target in a large variety of ways (which at least appears to still be the case here).
t Symbolsor: yeah absolutely, I only find it strange in this instance that they didn't run with the good thing they had going in the first game.
Oh also, if you turned on developer keys there was a jump button in Hitman 1. It was kind of hilarious, you'd hold the button down and he'd bend his knees and stoop but his upper body stayed in the usual animation. Then you'd let go and he'd spring up.
Hitman 1 was really just all-round amazing, actually, tech-wise. Ragdolls were rare back then. Mirrors. Dynamic character shadows that looked great, and not the bullshit kind where your character can only cast his shadow in one direction at a time (like every game on Unreal 3 including mine*).
*(not that you can't do that on UE3, you just usually don't because it's expensive)
Lazy really was a poor word choice. It's just that there is so much realism and attention to detail in every other aspect of this game that the (lack of) animation really stands out. Especially the trashcan lid opening and closing by itself as GSM noted. The weapons cycling in his hands is also bizarre and dated. I think the first game had him placing and drawing weapons from his jacket, no? And deformable hanging cloth. Shit was ahead of its time, apparently.
Animation gripes aside, Absolution looks awesome and may be the first stealth game I will actually play since TDS/SC:PT.
(Cheekiness aside, those nuns were coming after him with rocket launchers and automatic weapons. Trained killers or not, I would also beat the fuck out of them if I were in the same boat.)
They never asked for this.
Which reminds me. Weren't there DXHR trailers about different approaches. Or at least AP ones
Yeah you're right, forgot about the cloth. First I saw of that in a game.
And he did reach into his jacket. It was kind of hilarious if you collected heaps of weapons, there wasn't a max carry
On the subject of the trailer: I don't have a problem with the violence or the sexualization or the sexualized violence. There's plenty of grindhouse flicks that do the same thing and it has its place in art. I understand why other people find it problematic, though, just like a lot of people complained about the "Beautifully/Artfully/Onanistically Executed" ad campaign for Blood Money.
The problem I have is that while the Blood Money ad campaign also presented violent murder as beautiful (if not exactly sexual), the deaths in those ads typified the kind of stealthy, accidental-seeming murders Hitman is all about.
Garroting incredibly unobservant stripper assassins in broad daylight while they fire rockets at you is not a big part of the Hitman franchise
This is possibly the first time I've actually been interested in this game, because everything else they've shown has made it look goddamn terrible.
Still, I would hope the final product has a bit more of a challenge to it. That target practically killed himself.
I've really been jonesing to play Blood Money since playing the demo last week, but it's at no GameStops around me
Why is this game priced so ludicrously high? Even used on Amazon, the lowest price for it is $27. The game came out in 2006. That is goddamned inexcusable!
0
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Damn, just checked and I must have gotten rid of my 360 copy, otherwise I would have sent it to you.
Posts
Even if they leave the stairs as inclined planes for the collision mesh, they could at least animate a quick arm wave in the general direction of opening doors. I don't care if it's three feet away when he does it, I just want some visual acknowledgement that 47 is physically opening the door himself.
I could see, for example, the camera focusing on 47's arms, wrists, legs, etc., as he unbuttons, etc., his original outfit and then the same for the new one. It'd still be very fast, but it wouldn't actually have clothes swapping out like an optical illusion. Or the camera pan to the head.
Professional Edition includes:
Not really sold enough to pull the trigger on this one quite yet. Hopefully the price for Aus doesn't skyrocket later.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
If they wanted to have a sexy nuns trailer, then show the nuns kitting up and getting into their nun outfits and hiding all their weapons, it gets boobs out there, and it establishes that these are dangerous assassins and not normal nuns. Then have them getting out of a bus and walking down the sidewalk towards 47's location, except he's outside stalking them and they don't even realize it.
Earlier hinting aside, I think it became pretty clear that they were not normal nuns when they pulled out rocket launchers and assault rifles.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
On the latest Bombcast where they talked about Blood Money and how you have to try to break the system and it becomes a big trial-and-error thing for hours until you get a level just right...I can't believe that there's such a large group of people that honestly find that kind of thing fun
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
This is possibly the first time I've actually been interested in this game, because everything else they've shown has made it look goddamn terrible.
Still, I would hope the final product has a bit more of a challenge to it. That target practically killed himself.
Handmade Jewelry by me on EtsyGames for sale
Me on Twitch!
EDIT: Whoops, misspelled her name!
There's a huge group of people that find DayZ and the Witcher 2 fun. People like to be challenged. People like completing a real challenge because of the sense of satisfaction.
You just don't get that kind of feeling from a game that babysits you.
Handmade Jewelry by me on EtsyGames for sale
Me on Twitch!
But...it's not like you're failing if you don't get it right. You could be happy with whatever result you get first try, or you could replay the level to try a different tactic. There are so many ways to clear every level. One of those ways is the perfect no-one-spots-you-victim's-victim's-death-looks-like-an-accident run. But even if you don't get that, it doesn't mean you've lost. That's where all the fun comes from. You keep trying different ways to do things. It's not like the game won't let you move past until you've figured out some some obscure solution to its level. It's not an adventure game.
This is like the time the Bombcast guys bitched about the Mass Effect 2 ending because you're given a number of choices in the final mission, and it isn't immediately apparent what your best option is to get the perfect ending.
Yeah, I'd be awful at that kind of game
It told me to distract the guards. I couldn't find anything to do it with, I had a coin in my inventory, but nowhere I dropped it seemed to get them to notice it.
So I just went out the door and was promptly noticed, stole the gun from one of the guards and shot and killed them both
I got past it, but I know I did it "wrong," yet I have no clue how I was supposed to approach it.
As long as you got past it, it's done.
There are other ways to do it, yes, and some will technically get you a better rating in the end, but the reason the game is good is because you can approach a lot of situations in multiple ways. Some of which involve just shooting everyone.
Watch some videos of other levels on youtube or see if you can find a place to rent it. It's an excellent game regardless if you want to do perfect runs with fatal "accidents" and no witnesses or run around in a chicken suit through mardi gras desperately gunning down cops on your way to the target.
How the hell do you even throw the coin? Y just drops it, RT doesn't do anything. Tried all the buttons and nothing works. A really shitty in-game tutorial, though this is a ported PS2 game so it has age working against it on that front
EDIT: Figured it out. Holding down the left stick, guiding with the right stick and releasing? Goddamn that is awkward. Why wouldn't they just map whatever item you're holding to RT? Hopefully Absolution would fix that sort of thing. You can tell this game needs a lot of polish so I now know why you're all desperate for Absolution to be amazing
I might pick up a used copy on the cheap if I can find one
There are a minority of missions where the enemy will run away fast enough if you start killing things. The greatest punishment is just that everyone starts gunning for you...which is what you wanted anyway. And on the easiest difficulty, you can live through quite a few gunfights.
Hell, the last mission in Blood Money, without spoiling it too much, demands a big ass gunfight.
In that same level one of the ways to eliminate one of the federal agents who is protecting the witness is by putting ether on the teenage daughter's panties because one of them randomly will come in and sniff them. THAT'S how you break the game, because you notice during one run-through "Hey that agent just literally sniffed that little girls panties, what the fuck?!" and there's a way to exploit that.
And those are only 2 of probably 3 dozen different scenarios that can play out in that one mission alone in order to help you assassinate the guy and complete any secondary assignments.
There was even a button to toggle a second type of mouse look where instead of rotating the camera or the character, the mouse would just move the crosshair around the screen and when you fired 47 would point the gun in that direction, without rotating his entire body, so you could just stand still and wave one arm around.
That was really a super cool thing, I wonder why they abandoned it.
Also, dual-wielding any two one-handed weapons was awesome.
But yeah, the walking animation not changing for stairs is just lazy. I mean, I think Rainbow Six Raven Shield did that almost like 10 years ago.
Edit:
Oh, wow. That's so odd that the later games had less complex animation systems.
Not saying they shouldn't try to do it anyway though.
Oh also, if you turned on developer keys there was a jump button in Hitman 1. It was kind of hilarious, you'd hold the button down and he'd bend his knees and stoop but his upper body stayed in the usual animation. Then you'd let go and he'd spring up.
*(not that you can't do that on UE3, you just usually don't because it's expensive)
Animation gripes aside, Absolution looks awesome and may be the first stealth game I will actually play since TDS/SC:PT.
And he did reach into his jacket. It was kind of hilarious if you collected heaps of weapons, there wasn't a max carry
The problem I have is that while the Blood Money ad campaign also presented violent murder as beautiful (if not exactly sexual), the deaths in those ads typified the kind of stealthy, accidental-seeming murders Hitman is all about.
Garroting incredibly unobservant stripper assassins in broad daylight while they fire rockets at you is not a big part of the Hitman franchise
... Is he pulling knives out of his ass?
Why is this game priced so ludicrously high? Even used on Amazon, the lowest price for it is $27. The game came out in 2006. That is goddamned inexcusable!
Mac.
And I'm a console gamer anyway
Thanks for looking, Maddoc!