With the finale of Hitman’s first season on the way, we had the opportunity to sit down with the game’s lead writer, Michael Vogt, and PR manager, Sven Liebold, to ask them about Hitman’s journey, their thoughts on the episodic accomplishment, and what the future may hold for one Agent 47.
Twinfinite: So what do you have for us today?
Vogt: Well, I thought I’d tell you about the overall vision for the game. So basically what we set out to do was reimagine Hitman as this contemporary spy formula, and we wanted to set it in a universe with characters that you actually care about, and set it with a more mature and intelligent tone.
And as you know, we went the episodic route and we wanted to go with a really ambitious episodic storyline that spans multiple seasons, and at the same time build up a large main cast of characters because – you know – in the old games the targets were the star characters, but they were so short lived because you’d just go and kill them and move onto the next. So we wanted to build up a larger main cast for the game that would last for the entire storyline.
But at the same time, the storyline doesn’t evolve like a traditional AAA narrative, in that we kinda launched it under the radar, and that all of the major talking points for season one weren’t going to be the story. It was going to be the episodic route and why that’s a good idea, the Elusive Targets and the sandbox gameplay and all this new stuff. We really just kind of launched it under the radar and we didn’t really tell people what it was about or what to expect, how long it is or anything like that. We just let people kinda latch on as it progresses.
We also built it in a way where, for most of Season 1, the story is kind of a subtle background presence. You can feel that it’s connected to each mission, and you have these cutscenes at the end of each mission, but it’s kind of a test because we wanted players to just experience what it feels like to be Agent 47 without necessarily taking an active part in the storyline. So, for like the first half of the season it feels like his usual. You go to America, you stop a coup d’état, killed a couple of guys. But for Agent 47, that’s just a Tuesday. That’s just his life, and we wanted players to feel what it’s like to be Agent 47, and then slowly the story will kind of merge with the gameplay and step into the foreground a little bit more.
And that’s the reason why in the penultimate episode of Season 1, the current release, where it’s like the missions and the gameplay and the story have become fully integrated, you’re playing the main story in a more traditional sense, like normal games. So that’s why we added it in; with the final episode coming up, it just blows the story wide open. And the way we see it was, Season 1 is like act one in a film, right? It’s an introduction phase, really. We’re introducing all the characters, and a mystery and dilemma and conflict, but the story itself is only just beginning.
I do have a few questions on the series as a whole. One thing I noticed when this Hitman season came out, and it was revealed to be episodic, people were a little hesitant. That’s not the Hitman we’re used to. But now we’re five episodes in and people love it. How does that feel? Is it vindication?
Vogt: It feels great. We always felt like it was a good idea obviously, and there’s a bunch of reasons for doing it creatively. From the story perspective, it provides a larger timeframe. We can go a little bit slower and evolve characters over time and don’t have to rush it. And since Hitman is all about replay, we all have this in-built forward motion thing, where we’re used to games where we always progress and you beat a task and you go onto the next one. But that doesn’t really work with Hitman.
Replay is fun, but in Hitman, replay is necessary if you want to get more bang for your buck. You play a mission and you complete it once, then maybe you’ve uncovered 5% of content in that mission. You need to play it like 10 or 20 times, and then you get a sense of what’s actually going on – to experience all the cool ways of killing your target, to get all the sub plots, and all the back stories and the connections to the story.
All that stuff is kind of in there, right? And going the episodic route, we kind of forced the players to explore these locations a bit more than if we gave them the whole package up front, because there’s nowhere to progress. I think players have actually realized how deep the game is because it’s episodic.
Was that ever considered a daunting task? Like you guys had this plan and it’s working wonderfully, but was it ever considered, ‘maybe we’re not doing or giving them enough to hold them over?’
Liebold: Definitely. I mean, that’s why all our episodes are so crazy. There is so much stuff you can do, like Michael has just used that awesome analogy where he explains that if you play in a traditional way, that you rush through it and complete one mission and go to the next, then you would miss out on 95%. It’s like ordering a big stein of the best beer you can get, and just having one sip and leaving the rest.
To answer your question, it’s not just the episodic thing. I think quite a lot of people were skeptical of the game because there are other episodic games out there where players have to wait like five to six months until the next episode comes out, and that was something we wanted to avoid. We wanted to have a steady monthly rhythm, but then again we have free content that’s out there every week – the Elusive Targets and contracts. So it’s a pretty impressive package when you think about it.
It’s funny that you mention the Elusive Targets because they have probably been my favorite thing, these weekly targets that you have for two or three days. You have one shot, and if you mess up, then you’re the worst Agent 47 to have ever lived. But how was it building those? How was it balancing that so it was challenging for those who wanted that challenge, but also fair when they didn’t succeed, killed the wrong target, blew up the wrong building or whatever?
Vogt: It kind of has to be merciless, that’s the whole point of the challenges.
Liebold: At the bottom of it was really about bringing this Hitman fantasy across, and I think the Elusive Target is like the pure form of assassin gameplay. That’s something we wanted to achieve, so yes you’re in this location and you only have one shot, you can’t replay it, you know they’re gone if you do screw it up – and from that idea we started to develop Elusive Targets and mix them up in different ways.
I don’t know if you played the one where you have to take out twins, but only one of them. These are the more evil ones, right? Like you can only tell them apart by like, only one is having a watch and stuff like that. And that’s really interesting, because we can spawn these really, really cool stories within the actual episode. They’re not actually attached to the story. It’s almost like a parallel universe as they’re almost superimposed on the story. Agent 47 can’t do two things at once, so that’s why they’re not connected to the storyline. It’s just a different load.
It’s also interesting because we can mix up the actual level design as well. Like in Paris, where, urghh what’s his name… Well let’s say Cardinal in La Sapienza, where he’s in the church and suddenly there’s like 30 bodyguards around there – so you can have these little set pieces in the world, and that’s something we’re able to do with the Elusive Targets.
So with the episodic releases and Elusive Targets, this new version of Hitman is like this spy-drama thing doing a lot of different things from what previous Hitman games have done. Do you think there’s something particular about this IP that made it prime for that? Or maybe other titles in your realm that could pull this off well considering how well you’ve done this successfully?
Vogt: I think Hitman is the only AAA title out there that gives you the contemporary agent fantasy – there are plenty of other similar games taking place that provide more fantasy-like or sci-fi-like – but if you want that contemporary agent feel and a game that takes place in a completely civilian world, which is kind of unusual in games. Normally it’s a more binary, like people are either for or against you, right? But Hitman is a truly civilian world and that’s part of the challenge. If that answers your question.
No, no, I think it did. It’s that special challenge that only Hitman provides in not just being an assassin that other games provide, but going back in and really fine-tuning your approach.
Vogt: Well I think obviously the gameplay is very much inspired by Blood Money, which was always the staple of the Hitman franchise and a fan favorite. But obviously we had to reinvent it for a new age and take it to the 21st century. There are different standards now also and we wanted to raise the bar and make it feel like an HBO series.
Liebold: Yeah I mean there is no other game out there that is like Hitman, so we wanted to open that narrative and bring it to the next level.
It’s a different type of episodic.
Liebold: Yeah, and it’s a curse and a blessing at the same time. We see it a lot at game shows. Sometimes people haven’t played a Hitman game before, will pick up the pad, play it for 5 minutes and be like what the hell is going on here? So, it’s awesome, but you have to spend time, you have to embrace it.
Vogt: Yeah it’s vulnerable to reviews in a way. Because you have to spend more time than just completing the missions and main objectives to really get a feel for the game.
Were you guys hesitant of doing that, too? Because as you said, the story is now busting wide-open, the first four episodes were more of an introduction to characters, the story is just being touched upon now and the final episode will really break it open, leaving it to the future seasons. Were you worried that people wouldn’t get what you were doing?
Vogt: Yeah, I think it played out as we had anticipated. We knew it would start out with the prologue that takes place in the past, and then with Paris, people would be like, “ooh this looks interesting.” But then with the next few episodes people would be like, “okay now I don’t get it. Cool cutscenes, but what does it have to do with what I’m doing, and what’s the story actually about?”
And then when we got to the end of Bangkok and then to Colorado, people were like, “ohhhhh.” So you know, it pretty much happened the way we thought it would, which at least is a good thing.
Yeah that’s definitely a good thing. So I have one last question. This first season, which as you said has gone according to plan, has taken us around the world, all these different targets and interesting story tidbits. The world hopping isn’t particularly new to Hitman, we saw it in Blood Money, Contracts, 1 and 2. How do you plan on mixing things up for next season to keep it as fresh as this season has been?
Vogt: We can’t really, unfortunately, talk about it.
We need to come up with a cool location obviously, but also a cool event that can take place there and an environment that is believable, that the targets you’re going after would actually exist there. So it is kind of like, it’s a very elite fantasy. Agent 47 only goes after the 1%. It’s supposed to be the type of environments that normal people don’t have access to. So it’s a bit of a puzzle to get the right location with the right event that can also spawn new mission.
Season 1 of Hitman concludes this Oct. 31 with the release of its seventh chapter, Hokkaido, on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. A physical version of the game, complete with all of the digital content released so far, is set to release January 2017.
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