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YMMV / Hitman: Absolution

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YMMV Navigation: Franchise | Codename 47 | Silent Assassin | Contracts | Blood Money | Absolution | 2016 | Hitman 2 | Hitman 3 | Freelancer

  • Anticlimax Boss:
    • Blake Dexter in "Countdown". This chapter, where you kill him on a helipad, is a short, timed (5 minutes, or less on harder difficulties) stealth level which is pretty easy. When you get up to him, you immediately enter point shooting, giving you the opportunity to unload two clips into him right then and there. Wait until his back is turned, and you can sneak right up to him and garrote him like any standard mook.
    • Ditto his Dragon, Layla. She can be dispatched moments after you step off the elevator when the mission starts.
  • Bizarro Episode: The more the game ages, Absolution seems like more of an oddity, experimenting with new elements like increasingly linear gameplay with more action-y elements and a grittier, Hollywood-style tone (oddly more in tone with the 2007 film), but in a franchise known for its sprawling sandbox stealth and much subtler Conspiracy Thriller-type atmosphere. While the merits of the game itself are up for debate, the fact that IOI have veered away from this direction so hard, returning to their usual roots in the World of Assassination Trilogy, has cemented Absolution as a very unusual entry in the series.
  • Cant Unhear It: Go ahead, play Hitman (2016) and then replay this games' tutorial. Now good luck getting Diana out of your head!
  • Character Rerailment: The game once again portrays 47 as the Hitman with a Heart that we saw in Hitmen 1-3, after he Took a Level in Jerkass in Blood Money. In the latter, he was portrayed as something of a bastard whose main motivation was money.
  • Cliché Storm:
    • Birdie, Jade, Layla, Wade, Dexter ("Yee-ha! Lemme tell ya, I don't ordinarily yee-ha. But that was a fuckin' yee-ha! Fuckin' Christmas!") and Faulkner are all instantly-recognizable template characters, which means there doesn't need to be a lot of exposition/development in order for us to relate to them.
    • Even the Agency isn't spared. We see the inner workings, the incompetent guards, the bumbling Evil McBadguy boss with the robot arm.
  • Complete Monster: Edward Wade, a former cartel member and ruthless mercenary on the payroll of Blake Dexter, turns a simple locate-and-kidnap mission into a horrifying massacre, killing every single nun and staff member at an orphanage his target is located at and cajoling his mentally challenged associate Leonardo "Lenny" Isaac Dexter into murdering the head nun. Wade is also revealed to be a rapist, torturer, and killer of prostitutes, which he gains from pimp Dominic Osmond. Even threatening to kill his own men if they hesitate with the slaughter, Wade's gleeful response to Agent 47 is to announce that he'll kill him and have his way with the corpse.
  • Contested Sequel: Despite being praised by critics and first-time fans, the shift in focus to cinematic storytelling over deeply interactive gameplay leaves the title considered a black sheep to long-time fans. When sequels returned closer to the original formula, it cemented the game's place as a strange, largely ignored piece of canon.
    Yahtzee Croshaw: I think of Hitman games like I think of Columbo: They suffer when they try to be about the character rather than his work.
  • Critical Dissonance: Critics were relatively favorable to the game, averaging 79 on Metacritic, and the game sold roughly 1.5 million more units than Blood Money did. Players (and especially the dedicated Hitman fanbase) loathe the game for taking a linear grindhouse route, ditching the sandbox aspect from Blood Money, and also adding "Instinct", which many claimed at the time dumbed the game down.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: The "Prostate cancer guy" in the first mission became liked for this. One guard is talking to a phone and learns his cancer is gone, after which he walks to the window 47 is hiding next to... as the game explains how to eliminate guards from such a position. You don't have to do it, but the fact that IOI actually chose to include it is priceless.
  • Difficulty Spike: If you want to keep it clean, "Attack of the Saints" will tax your patience and memorization.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Several of the NPCs in Absolution, such as Anthony Fizano, the rookie cop from the "Pick On the New Guy" challenge in the "Run For Your Life" chapter, and Prostate Cancer Guy. Agent 47 can throw him out the window right after he learns from his doctor that he doesn't have prostate cancer in "A Personal Contract".
  • Fan Nickname: Hitman: Conviction.
  • Genius Bonus: The scene where 47 confronts Diana as she's showering takes inspiration from Roman mythology. Diana is named after the Roman goddess of hunting, who once transformed a hunter into a deer after he accidentally caught her bathing in the woods.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
  • Harsher in Hindsight: This isn't the first time David Bateson was involved in a work about child labour and exploitation (e.g. with Victoria), as he also narrated the 2010 documentary film The Dark Side of Chocolate where he covered the more harrowing side of confectionery with fiendish films having no qualms about using innocent children as slaves trafficked and forced into servitude without a shred of concern for their well-being, much like how Benjamin Travis, Blake Dexter and a few others have sought to exploit Victoria as part of a breed of genetically-enhanced super-soldiers.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Shut up Wade!, though Mark had been active for a few months when the game came out.
    • 47's wrestling abilities in "Fight Night" also became this thanks to Low Ki, who wrestled few times in a 47-esque suit.
  • Narm Charm: 47 vs. Sanchez (should you go that route) in "Fight Night." A stone-faced hired killer wrestling an apparent Fusion Dance between Danny Trejo and The Great Khali. And yet it still manages to be the game's Signature Scene!
  • Nightmare Fuel: Has its own page
  • Older Than They Think:
    • Some criticism the fans have about this game is that 47 is shown to care about other people, something which Hitman 2: Silent Assassin already did 10 years earlier. Rather than being a case of Took a Level in Kindness, it's actually a case of Character Rerailment after 47 shot that mailman in the last game.
    • The game plays like the first two games in the series did: There used to be several missions without any notable Targets that led up to the big assassination, and were there to both give players a break and to lenghten the game. However, these kinds of levels were phased out as they just weren't as interesting as the assassination levels, would become the main selling point of the series. In the end, the return to formula didn't do the game any favours.
    • The game is oddly similar to Codename 47, both being somewhat awkward test runs that take themselves too seriously and are filled with Narm. Both would even lead to a Surprisingly Improved Sequel.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • Instinct, so very much. The mechanic is baked into the level design (meaning you can't not use it), it is crucial to most of Absolutions' gameplay, and it is broken beyond repair here. The mechanic on the surface sounds good on paper; it makes sense that if you're dressed up as a cop, the real cops would notice that you don't actually work for them, so to counter this you can get past them by using some of your "Focus" resource, where the cops will just comment on you looking familiar, but will otherwise ignore you. This game however, is made up of linear levels, filled them nothing but cops and Elite Mooks. So if the "Focus" meter runs out, you're completely screwed, especially on the higher difficulty levels where Instinct is harder to come by, as you need to subdue people to regenerate it, going out of your way to risk getting caught. Really, it's an awkward system which doesn't make much sense and kind of defeated the purpose of disguises for the most part as you're often more suspicious wearing a cop uniform than your two-piece suit. The World of Assassination Trilogy would later retool the mechanic, see that page for more details.
    • The checkpoints were probably a memory limitation while trying to get the game to run on consoles, because otherwise that was a bad design decision. The save points suck because the whole world resets if you reload. This also adds to the linear feel, since you only care about running to the next checkpoint.
    • Not being able to select collected weapons in the campaign. While it's a nod to realism in that 47 doesn't have access to a central armoury like in previous games, it means that unless you're playing Contracts mode, you won't be able to try out all of the guns in the game, especially the DLC guns. The later shutting down of the Contracts servers means that these weapons are now unusable, even in the remasters.
    • The five difficulty settings are poorly implemented, the game is clearly designed for the wall hacking of Instinct but you lose those above Normal, 47's total Instinct (so disguise time) also gets made much smaller, making disguises less useful, on the other hand, if you do pick Normal, 47 is a tank and can absorb a ton of damage and there are less guards, meaning there's little reason not to just shoot everything beyond score.
  • Sequel Difficulty Drop:
    • There's very little reason to explore beyond what glows yellow or the blazing footprint paths of your targets, and the player interaction with the environment boils down to "I can interact with sleeping pills and pizza, hmmm" There's also another small issue which the Challenge notebook makes very apparent: if 47 hasn't already thought of a way to kill your target, you're out of luck.
    • It takes less than 2 seconds to reload now, even with the Silverballers. Your Ballers also come with silencers by default.
    • Hitman doesn't need a sedative or chloroform rag anymore. Put your enemies in a sleeper hold, and they're out like a light for the remainder of the mission.
    • 47 can now conceal large two-handed weapons on his person, such as shotguns, assault rifles, and even sniper rifles (which no longer need assembly). This feature does away with the ICA crates and weapon briefcases.
    • Hitman Absolution has regenerating health, but it only regenerates part of your health. To fully heal you need to use a first aid station.
    • If 47 is caught in the middle of trespassing or some other suspicious activity, the rest of the NPCs won't be alerted immediately like in older games. Instead, he will be asked to leave (if trespassing) or held at gunpoint, giving him a chance to regain control of the situation by killing or knocking them out before they alert each other on the radio. 47 can also pretend to surrender, disarm them and take them as a human shield.
  • Sequel Difficulty Spike:
    • For one, it doesn't allow you to choose your guns. The sniper method is a bit messy since the Kazo TRG (which you can find sitting around) is unsilenced. This will attract attention, and on higher difficulties a S.W.A.T. team will be deployed after the shot is fired. Civilians will automatically identify the source of the second shot, so make the first one count.
    • What makes Absolution harder is the lack of a real Save feature. The checkpoints in this game are far apart, even the extra ones you are given on any difficulty from Hard and below. It's a test of endurance. On top of that, activating a checkpoint only saves how far along you are in your mission, not the actual state of the level. If you reload a game, you'll find any complex accident kill you've set in place now has to be reset and all those guards you got rid of are suddenly alive and well.
    • Having people recognize you if have their disguise on. (I know every cop in America, and he's an imposter!) A similar thing happened in Silent Assassin, wherein if you got too close to staff they would look past your disguise and call for help. But it's somehow even worse here: An example would be the Chinatown mission. If you waddle out wearing a chef disguise, the disguise will constantly trigger chefs among the crowd, and you have to burn instinct or hide until it blows over. In most cases just wearing your suit is better, because trying to 'blend in' is actually less effective.
  • Special Effects Failure: At least in Blackwater, rain only happens in a small square around 47. Especially noticeable on the remaster.
  • That One Achievement: Some of the in-game challenges are a little unfair, but "Angel of Death Part 2" in "Attack of the Saints" is by far the worst. It requires you to kill every Target and enemy across all three areas without ever getting spotted, having bodies or blood pools be found, or reloading a checkpoint; basically, fulfilling a perfect Silent Assassin run with no restarts (while trying to do something best avoided for a Silent Assassin rank). This might have been feasible in other levels, but "Attack of the Saints" is a series of wide open areas where the Targets are all actively hunting for 47, and the only enemies are identically-dressed Agency soldiers, so the Instinct system doesn't help as much. And even if you take the time to do all of this perfectly (which can last well over an hour), the game might just not register it at all, due to a bug.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • The reaction of parts of the fandom over the addition of a cover system, an optional "Instinct" mechanic that allows the player to sense enemies through walls and show the best route and kill possible, and tweaks to the stealth system. Cue cries of dumbing down, consolitis, and Square Enix not knowing how to market Hitman. Also, Jesper Kyd didn't compose the score for this game.
    • The Tone Shift irked a lot of longtime fans. Up unto this point, the tone of the games had been informed by Conspiracy Thrillers, Film Noir, and Spy films, and the hard shift into greasy Exploitation Film territory (best exemplified by the Saints) was not received as well.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • In contrast to what Diana and 47 think, many fans were interested in Victoria's career as a female assassin akin to 47, or at least a couple more scenes involving her kicking someone's ass. Alas, she spends the entire game being passed around from Dexter associate to Dexter associate.
    • Despite their questionable wardrobe, the Saints would have been an interesting set of opponents if they weren't simply all killed in a single level.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • The game's location range never goes beyond the USA until the final level.
    • The ICA spends the majority of the game chasing and attempting to kill 47, but never try to find Victoria; Travis just assumes that Victoria is with 47, and thus finding him will get Victoria at the same time. It would have been interesting if they got into a war with Dexter Industries.
  • Tough Act to Follow: The game itself isn't bad, but suffered from a form of Duke Nukem syndrome. It had huge shoes to fill, and it didn't. By association with Blood Money, it's an inferior game. Many comparisons have been drawn between this and how fellow stealth game Splinter Cell: Conviction was similarly fun, but not in the silent ninja way that one imagines Splinter Cell to be.
  • Underused Game Mechanic: IOI did improve on a few things, namely hiding two bodies in crates/wardrobes instead of just one, adding stealth grass, and introducing "Instinct" (albeit clumsily until Hitman '16 came about). And most players don't know those came from this game! It's just a shame those mechanics never really get used to their full potential.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The immediate aftermath of Dexter framing 47. The room is being consumed by fire and he escapes through a window and it's raining outside. Looks awesome, especially in the remaster.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: As for why the ICA has a wetworks division: real-life killers in less developed nations are usually closer to Blackwater (and other PMCs) than Bond, so why not?

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