Because I've known this whole time and definitely didn't just figure it out when I picked the game up again to check out Freelancer mode.
Okay but seriously, I wasn't all that "aware" in 2016 when the game came out and I don't think I even knew who Epstein and Maxwell were at the time. The devs sure did though because the very first mission is to kill those creeps. They pull their punches a bit because the devs are obviously libs. There's no sex-trafficking per sé, they just use (adult) fashion models to compromise powerful and influential people and obtain useful information they can sell, but it's still unmistakable that it's them. It didn't click for me until I heard an NPC convo about Margolis father being an Israeli military general (guessing they went with that instead of Mossad for a little plausible deniability), which is also in the character bio I didn't read.
Really wish the devs weren't so liberal because it could have been a really fun game about murdering the 1% of the 1%. It is that to a certain extent, but my biggest disappointment in the whole series was when I got to the Isle of Sgail mission. It's a secret island in the middle of the ocean where the global elite are meeting to strategize over escaping the ravages of climate change and conduct demonic rituals. I was so excited to get in there and go nuts, until I watched the mission briefing and...
Forgive me for doing an identity politics, but you're telling me the most powerful of these powerful people are two young Black women, and I'm supposed to kill them while extracting an old white man unharmed? And by the game's own admission, these two don't even need to die? They're just "collateral damage" so I can get the items they're carrying, and also it's fine to kill them because we're throwing in a few vague details about how they're bad people doing white colonizer shit? Jfc. If they were gonna go with this story, I feel like they could have made it one of those twist-on-the-formula missions and require the player to do the whole thing non-lethally. The mechanics for pick-pocketing and non-lethally subduing NPCs are already built into the game. A tiny bit of imagination and creativity could have gone a long way. Seems to me like what happened here was the liberals making the game wanted to go for "inclusivity," and that's a nice thing on its face, but then they decided to be "inclusive" in a way that just makes the proceedings uncomfortable. I wanted to have a nice time assassinating the pedophile elite, not the members of Destiny's Child.
Now that I've written far too much on the subject, I would like to hear everyone else's good opinions. All else aside, the HITMAN games are among my favorites in recent years.
I realized many years ago :gigachad-hd: although I don’t see the Epstein connection
They’re incredibly lib, but also have some bold moments. The mission in Marakesh is about capital’s involvement in coups
Strandberg, a former bank CEO who stole billions of dollars' worth of savings from the Moroccan people, was facing trial for investment fraud. But early this morning, a band of heavily armed mercenaries freed Strandberg from his prison transport, resulting in the death of several police officers. Strandberg now takes refuge at his native Swedish Consulate, in front of which crowds of angry protesters have gathered, demanding his handover to Moroccan authorities. We believe that General Zaydan orchestrated Strandberg's escape to infuriate the public and spark nationwide riots allowing Zaydan to impose martial law. Operating out of a field HQ at a nearby abandoned school, he will no doubt use the riots to depict the Rabat government as weak and inept and persuade the General Staff to support a fully fledged military coup in the name of "national security". Our client, building contractor Hamilton-Lowe, who stands to lose a fortune in government contracts, has hired us to prevent the coup d'etat. To do so, you need to paralyze Zaydan's rebel forces and prevent the riots from escalating further, hence the double contract. This is quite the political powder keg, 47, so be careful. The fate of a nation is at stake.I had a good laugh during one of the Hitman (2016) mission briefings Diana is speaking with 47 and she says, "I know you don't care about politics, 47."
"I LOVE MY NONPOLITICAL ASSASSINATION GAME!" - Gamers :so-true:
I would like to hear everyone else’s good opinions. All else aside, the HITMAN games are among my favorites in recent years.
I think individually each of the new trilogy was extremely underwhelming, but when packaged together they were pretty good. Definitely a game I was glad to be able to play all at once as the Hitman 3 Collection.
As others have said, the Hitman games are pure :brainworms: and entirely incoherent and their plot does suffer for that, but they're fun and the gameplay strikes a good balance between gameplay considerations and stealth themes. It does get very silly when you get into speedrun AI manip tactics where you can control AI movement and even turn trespassing detection off by shooting in particular ways, but at its core it's pretty good.
It almost feels very Shadowrun in terms of how the hard part is all the legwork and figuring out where to go and what to do, but the actual execution can be done in seconds once you've got it worked out. Replaying the missions for challenges made me realize that, and that's when it really started to grow on me. Some of the maps, anyways: Paris and Bangkok are annoying to get around in because of how they're chokepointed around enforcers on staircases and one or two drain pipes on the outside to bypass them with and those are your only options.
It's a very heist feeling gameplay loop and it really makes me wish something of a similar caliber could be done for something like Shadowrun, with a freeform scout, set up, and execute loop to carry out runs (GTAO does a structured version of that, which is fun once or twice but gets old super fast). That's what I wish Cyberpunk 2077 had leaned into instead of the Bethesda style stumble dickfirst into a firefight, win, and wander on gameloop it had.
That is a great idea for a game. A hitman-style game where you break into billionaire's compounds and execute them with consumer-grade, household items.
Most of the missions are like that. One from Hitman 3 has a Knives Out mission
yeah i think that mission was a weird failure of inclusion more than anything else. outside the politics not being great past a vague surface level deal they're a lot of fun
have no idea how they'll adapt to a james bond game, but i am kind of excited to see it
