By Jim Rossignol on March 17th, 2011 at 8:38 am.
We’ve heard rumours for a while now, but it seems like the reveal must be getting close. Why? Well, the chaps over on HitmanForum have stumbled across what seems to be an ARG teasing the fifth Hitman game. Reading the thread, I’m not sure it entirely makes sense, but it’s early and I haven’t had my tea.
In other news: HITMAN 5! It’s enough to make a man want to play Blood Money again.
17/03/2011 at 08:53 mollemannen says:
it’s probably just becuse i recently played trough all the hitman games. my psychic energy convinced the danes it’s time to pick up the ballers yet again.
17/03/2011 at 16:13 Commisar says:
yep, I am chugging through Blood Money as we speak
17/03/2011 at 08:54 QuantaCat says:
YES. I think Blood Money was the only really good sequel to Hitman: Codename 47. The money system actually made sense..
17/03/2011 at 08:59 Solcry says:
This may be because its 5.00 a.m. right now and I haven’t slept – but that thread seems ridiculously awesome.
17/03/2011 at 09:04 DaftPunk says:
Imagine Hitman 5 being similar to new splinter cell game lololol,i really hope that won’t happen x)
17/03/2011 at 09:08 wasabi2k says:
As probably the one Game that Made Me, I am double plus excited that the latest iteration is coming out.
Having played every one to death (all items, silent assassin on all etc), this is probably the only series I am willing to replay over and over and over.
EXCITED.
Also I am way too thick for ARGs.
17/03/2011 at 09:08 int says:
Here’s to hoping they don’t make it console exclusive.
17/03/2011 at 09:29 AwesomeOwl says:
Why would you even say that?! Like they ever released a console exclusive game.
Now you’ve probably jinxed it.. Thank you very much.
17/03/2011 at 16:52 Kotti says:
http://www.radgametools.com/binkgames.htm
PC version is listed there.
17/03/2011 at 09:08 Orija says:
Is that a dent above his left eye?
17/03/2011 at 09:19 Rinox says:
Not sure if this says something about AAA sequels these days or just about my own cynicism and jade, but my enthusiasm for a new Hitman game is already dampened by a ‘yeah let’s just wait and see if it’s not a watered down cross-platform title first’. :-(
When did I become this way?! *acts out dramatic hands-to-heaven scene*
17/03/2011 at 09:50 Ian says:
Would you like a great big hug?
C’mon, open your arms and gimme the good stuff.
17/03/2011 at 13:37 steggieav says:
I wouldn’t worry too much. All Hitman games except 1 were cross-platform, and they turned out fine. I just hope they learned something from the miserable failure that was Kane and Lynch 2.
17/03/2011 at 14:33 Lacessit says:
We OBVIOUSLY need this in the background now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfxqZagHXbM
18/03/2011 at 00:58 sinister agent says:
Thank you for that injection of sanity. People really need to get over the OMG DUMBING DOWN FOR CONSOLES!! bogeyman.
17/03/2011 at 09:19 karry says:
ARG…am i supposed to know what that is ?
Ok, i’ll just google it : Australian Railroad Group ? Automotive Replacement Glass ?
Oh, i see, Alternative Reality Games…and…what does that mean in the context – i have no idea.
17/03/2011 at 15:34 FalseMyrmidon says:
Wondering the same thing.
17/03/2011 at 09:28 mollemannen says:
also, something hitman haven’t touched on yet is multiplayer. imagine executing a perfect plan with a buddy or two.
17/03/2011 at 09:29 BooleanBob says:
Good God man. Doing anything before one has had one’s tea, let alone submitting a dispatch before the steely, unremitting gaze of the international infopipes is tantamount to madness.
17/03/2011 at 14:45 Tizoc says:
Or silently assassinating a buddy or two.
Or mass murdering strangers, it’s all good to me.
Edit: that was a reply to mollemannen, of course…
17/03/2011 at 09:35 Kevin says:
Chuck Jones (the creator of Bugs Bunny and other Looney Toons) always said that an artist has a million bad drawings in them to get out before they produce something worthwhile. Let’s hope that with game development, two bad games is all IO Interactive needed before they can make another good game (and a sequel to one of my favourite stealth-action games, no less).
17/03/2011 at 10:02 Kaira- says:
I’m pretty sure you are playing it wrong, it is stealth-puzzle game in my opinion. *mildly irritated fist-shake*
17/03/2011 at 10:22 Kevin says:
Well sometimes I like to pretend I’m Tom Cruise in the Korean nightclub in Collateral. And I don’t know about you, but it’s oddly soothing to take a fully upgraded shotgun, Hardballers akimbo, and dual-mag MP5 to the hill-billy wedding mission and go nuts.
I’ll admit, the first time I played it, I’d take a guy’s uniform, then think to myself: “I don’t need him waking up.” Then put a .45 round into his temple.
17/03/2011 at 09:42 BrendanJB says:
I really didn’t enjoy the hitman series much. Played 1, 2 and Blood Money and only got about half way through all of them. I kept going because I thought the missions would open up a little more and that the AI might get a little smarter, but neither happened.
Many of the missions require you to do things in the exact way that the developers want you to, or you die/fail, the menus and control scheme are irritating and cumbersome, and the characters are less than engaging.
Not to say they are bad games. Not at all. Just a little too finicky for my liking. I’ll be keeping my eye on 5 to see how they bring Agent 47 in to the new era of gaming conventions.
17/03/2011 at 10:51 gorgol says:
This was my feeling too.
Too easy, too scripted, and tbh it seemed like I would be able to get through it by treating it as an FPS…
17/03/2011 at 13:00 AwesomeOwl says:
@Gorgol
Could you elaborate on the “too scripted” part? How would you make a game like this without making it scripted?
17/03/2011 at 13:54 Kotti says:
“Many of the missions require you to do things in the exact way that the developers want you to, or you die/fail”
Did we play the same game? Sure there was usually some obvious way of doing things but there was always a ton of other ways of getting things done.
17/03/2011 at 14:35 Kaira- says:
“Many of the missions require you to do things in the exact way that the developers want you to, or you die/fail”
I’ll take an example out of Blood Money, I don’t know which mission but there was a recovering alcoholic and something like that. How to kill him?
a) drop a piano(!) on him
b) poison the beer he has hidden
c) shoot him
d) strangle him
e) push him down from balcony
I’m pretty sure there was other ways to kill him also, but those were the only ones that came to my mind.
17/03/2011 at 19:40 Shih Tzu says:
Yeah, what? Blood Money is one of the few games designed to give you the freedom to come up with ten different solutions to a problem, even if most of them are ideas that the developers planned for. Sure, you usually can’t just walk up and shoot your target, because of all the repercussions that follow, but the fun is in sneaking in and observing the NPCs’ patterns of behavior, looking for just the right chink in the armor, the perfect opportunity to strike. The whole point of the game is that each stage is a toybox, a little closed system, and your object is to study it and find ways to disrupt the system that achieve your goals but don’t also get you killed or discovered.
I played through most of it with the idea that I’d check GameFAQs either after beating a level or after getting sick of it. Most of the FAQs there just say “Here is how you beat the level” and give one solution, which is completely missing the point. However, there’s one author who actually gets it; their FAQ lists eight or more possible solutions for each level, then editorializes about which ones are fun and which ones are for weakass chumps. Man, I ought to install that again.
17/03/2011 at 09:44 Heliocentric says:
I await a post saying that the hitman arg has resulted in dozens of deaths because people misunderstood the context.
17/03/2011 at 09:45 Jonathan says:
Hmm, I tried Blood Money a couple of times, and just bounced off the tutorial mission. I guess I should probably try to stick with it, huh?
17/03/2011 at 10:08 Dominic White says:
How can you even have trouble with the tutorial mission? It literally walks you through every single step.
17/03/2011 at 10:16 Jonathan says:
1) Alcohol.
2) It’s not that I found it too hard — it just didn’t make it feel like something I wanted to spend time on.
3) Minecraft was asking me to play it.
17/03/2011 at 10:54 gorgol says:
@ Dominic White:
That was precisely the issue imo. It walks you through every single step…
And no that doesn’t make a good tutorial imo. A good tutorial lets you know how to control your character and gives you a general overview of what you can do in the game, imo. Spoonfeeding and handholding you through a few missions is not it.
17/03/2011 at 11:41 Joe W-A says:
Yeah, the tutorial was definitely the worst thing in the game.
Another way of putting that would be that it is the only bad thing in the game, which is otherwise one hundred percent magnificent.
17/03/2011 at 19:46 Shih Tzu says:
I literally don’t even remember there being a tutorial mission. It must have been really dull.
The first thing I remember doing in the game is raiding the party at the Latin American mansion. Whereupon I would always immediately grab the American movie star as a hostage and start shooting everyone, then reload. I think I may be a danger to society.
I forget, when you have a hostage, can you shove them places? I want to push him off that cliff.
17/03/2011 at 20:05 Soon says:
Hmm. I remember the tutorial being harder than some of the missions.
17/03/2011 at 09:50 Ian says:
DO WANT.
*Goes into another tedious speech about how much he loved the crowd in Blood Money’s “Murder of Crows” level*
17/03/2011 at 11:51 Harlander says:
Oh yes! There’s not a lot of better portrayals of crowds in games than that crowd.
17/03/2011 at 15:53 Kadayi says:
Yeah I loved that level for that very reason (I also thought the nightclub scene in K&L was as good as well). Metropolitan environments should feel and be crowded and more often than not most developers fail in this respect.
17/03/2011 at 10:00 Kotti says:
I did send you a hint about this over two weeks ago…
17/03/2011 at 11:28 dragonhunter21 says:
I keep seeing a date mentioned in the thread- September 7th, 1964, 47′s birthday. I ran the numbers, and…
Well, September 7th, 2011 is his 47th birthday.
Coincidence? I THINK NOT
20/03/2011 at 21:25 MrCrun says:
7th of September 2011 is MY 30th birthday! Coincidence? I THINK SO!
It’d be nice if it did come out then but it’s a Wednesday so unlikely. Boo. :-(
17/03/2011 at 11:37 superemmjay says:
Not quite.
17/03/2011 at 12:48 Stellar Duck says:
I love that it’s called the HitmanForum. I can’t help but imagining some sort of job board and social site for hitmen. I guess that is the site 47 browses in the games.
17/03/2011 at 14:22 StreetCleaner says:
Lots of speculation on the forum. Given the context of the discovery, this is most likely the Hitman 2 movie. Why would all the hints hover around film festivals?
17/03/2011 at 14:29 Kotti says:
The second picture (the one with the script) mentions gameplay, so this is definitely relate to the game.
17/03/2011 at 15:03 Teddy Leach says:
I love you.
17/03/2011 at 15:07 Shadowcat says:
“Grrr, Arg.”
17/03/2011 at 19:51 Shih Tzu says:
Did I fall asleep?
17/03/2011 at 15:25 adonf says:
This is awesome ! Now what’s an ARG ?
17/03/2011 at 16:35 Juiceman says:
I stopped going to those forums when the majority of people on there tried to tell me the Hitman movie wasn’t a disaster. So until I see incontrovertible evidence of Hitman 5, those people are all crazy zealots.
17/03/2011 at 18:02 Callum says:
This makes me very excited. Hitman: Blood Money had only a few niggling faults but otherwise was a fantastic example of a social stealth game done right. The previous Hitman games were pretty good but I always felt let down by the inconsistent AI. Blood Money got it almost spot on. It’s a shame though, every time I think about replaying Blood Money I install it and only get as far as half way through the tutorial mission because of a strange sort of microstuttering which goes on whenever I move the camera. I assume it’s a Windows 7 issue but I’ve never found a fix.