Starring John Travolta and Nick Cage…

To elaborate on a point I was making in the middle of this episode regarding the online nature of this game.

When players launch Hitman (2016), the game will immediately attempt to connect with I/Os servers. If the game fails to connect, then the player can still continue to play the game, but in “Offline Mode”.

This is significant, because when in Offline Mode, players cannot do anything aside from the story mission, and cannot use any of the tools, starting locations, or smuggling locations that they unlocked. Summarily, they can play the story missions as if they never completed any challenges. And any challenges they complete while offline do not count and will not be applied once connection is reestablished.

In other words, unless players are online, they will play Hitman in the worst way possible. As a game, it technically works without an internet connection, but none of the really cool features will work without it.

I can understand that in some ways. I don’t mind that leaderboards and the player made contacts can’t be used without connecting to their servers. It also makes sense for the Elusive Targets require a connection in a way, since they’re timed events and otherwise players could just readjust their system clocks to keep taking cracks at them.

That said, it is unacceptable that many of these other features require a connection. Completing challenges in order to gain area mastery, level up, and acquire new gear is *the* fundamental gameplay loop intended to inspire players to repeat missions using different approaches and tactics. It is why I have personally put more time into this game that I have all the other Hitman games combined (and I beat every Hitman game except Codename 47).

But even if they wanted to prevent cheating, and prevented players from completing challenges unless connected for that reason, I still would not understand why players can’t use items they have already unlocked while they are offline. And even if players could not get credit for completing an Escalation unless they were online (because they give mastery points on completion), players should still be able to make an attempt/practice run of them.

In the face of an otherwise amazing game (remember, I still say this is better than Blood Money), it’s a serious critique. And it’s not something that should be let go of, even if the game as a whole is well-executed.

Confession: I have never watched Face Off, starring John Travolta and Nicholas Cage.

Welcome to Colorado, one of the most interesting missions in the game.

In hindsight, after taking this footage and playing Colorado many times afterward, the most striking thing about it is just how small the level actually is.

I talked a bit in this episode about how the episodic model can, in some unexpected ways, hamper the level design. Because new story missions have to be large enough to justify the month or so wait between episodes, and have enough content to tide players over until another episode is released, they tend to be fairly large.

But when I think back to some of my favorite missions in Blood Money, like the infamous birthday party level, the actual area of operations in them aren’t very big. However, they are dense with opportunities and viable methods to both infiltrate the building and take out the target. This is also true on the tutorial missions for Hitman 2016.

Colorado is larger than those levels, but it also houses four separate targets and is much smaller than any of the other maps, that each take up different (but interwoven and overlapping) segments of the level. In this way, it’s not impossible to think of this level as four smaller, compact Hitman levels combined.

It’s not as good as Paris or Sapienza, but it’s a well-designed level and the closest thing to those smaller, but denser maps I liked in older Hitman games that we’re likely to get on the episodic production pipeline.

Today, we finish our discussion on Escalation Contracts and the “stack” of Hitman.

Last time, I talked about how Escalations help Hitman players improve their improvisational skills and ability to adapt to new conditions on old missions.

Each level of an escalation adds a new condition, which could be anything from a new target to a level change, or even something as simple as forcing players to hide the bodies. No matter what this condition is though, it must build on top of the old map and the old objectives.

In a way, this is exactly what an Elusive Target is, just without the hard time limit and inability to retry after objectives start getting completed. Elusive Targets always take place on maps that have already been introduced in the story missions, like everything else. However, they are adding new NPCs and objectives, with their own routines, and asking players to either kill them or work around them.

For the player who does many of these Escalations, this is not much of a step up to what they’re already used to. In fact, many of the Escalation are quite challenging in their own rights.

Next time, we get back to the story with the fifth episode: Colorado.

And now, we get to talk a bit about Escalations in Hitman.

Continuing from where I left off last time…

In his article about the success of Hitman, Kirk Hamilton posits that Escalations help players master small subsections of a given map, and he’s not wrong. However, I would add that they add a more important tool to the repertoire of the Hitman player.

That is: They add the element of improvisation and planning to Hitman.

That’s not to say that players don’t learn these skills during the story missions. Naturally, most of the gameplay in any Hitman game comes from analyzing the environment and what tools one has access to when pulling off the assassination. However, both story missions and contracts give players a lot of safety when pulling them off. Even if one isn’t particularly cunning or sneaky, they can still pull of an assassination, and might even pull one off spectacularly.

In Escalations, that’s no longer true. Sure, anybody can complete the first few stages of a given Escalation Contract. (And I’m well aware of my performance in this episode as I say this.) However, as new constraints and conditions are added to the mission in later Escalation levels, players have to teach themselves how to handle these new complications. If a mission is otherwise the same, but tweaked in this particular way, how will you, as the player, be able to account for that new factor. The player is forced to improvise in a way that the other modes don’t force them to.

Likewise with Contracts, Escalations are usually devoid of the scripted kills often seen in the story missions. Most of the targets end up just being otherwise nameless/faceless NPCs with an AI routine, some spoken lines, and not much else. This means that instead of scripted sequences, players must learn to adapt to playing within the systems of Hitman, rather than relying on Opportunities.

This helps to prepare for the Elusive Targets, and I’ll discuss that preparation in the last part of the Escalation discuss, next time.

Today, we explore the contracts mode in Hitman.

I got the idea for making both this and the Escalation contract episodes (yes, plural) after reading an opinion piece from Kirk Hamilton on Kotaku. In the piece, he talks about the what I have come to call the “stack” of Hitman, which I also eluded to in my episodes on Elusive Targets. Hamilton and I agree on the overall layout of the stack but not necessarily what every piece of it does.

We both agree on the story missions. Those are the “safest” missions in the game. Players can save and load anywhere they want in the middle of these missions, which gives them freedom to fail and try again with impunity. However, since most targets have several scripted “opportunity” sequences that lead one through an easy path to isolate or kill the target, there’s an upper limit to know much one can learn just by going through this mode over and over.

Contracts is a lot more freeform, owing to their status as player-generated missions. While contracts take place on the same maps as story missions, with the same NPCs and AI routines, the twist is that the targets, up to 5, can be anyone on the map. And unlike story missions, players cannot save while in the middle of performing a player-made Contract.

In order to succeed as a contract player and as a contract creator, one will naturally begin to explore the maps and learn about layouts, AI routines, and item placement. Because it’s impossible to save, and because they are player-made, contracts are not as easy to perform as story missions. However, they are low-stakes and can be retried as often as the player wants.

For me, I didn’t know about that secret entrance to the mansion via the waterfall, nor did I know about the Red and Green Plumbers, until I played this contract. And that’s far from the only thing I learned about these maps from Contracts that I never knew from rising in Mastery level by completing challenges in the story mission.

Escalation Contracts are next in the stack, but we’ll get to those next time.

At long last, we have arrived at the first finale of our Kingdom Hearts Primer.

It’s a shame that Gamer’s Little Playground had to change the music in the end for copyright reasons, because that finale had me bawling as a child.

There’s not much more that I can add to our commentary on this episode. A lot went on, but not many details need to be elaborated on in these notes.

Next up will be Chain of Memories. Gamer’s Little Playground didn’t have a video for it at the time, so we used one from another YouTuber named “AtRiley”. I hope you enjoyed this first part of the series.

If you have any questions about Kingdom Hearts 1, feel free to leave them in the comments of either the video or this post. Please note that questions for later games should be saved for when we do the primers on them.

And now, the most famous scene in the entire franchise:

And today, we finish what we started with our Elusive Target.

Finding the target in an Elusive Contract isn’t always easy. Because players don’t have the benefit of seeing the target with Instinct, they need to rely on the details given in the briefing in order to search for them. Or, if they’re like me, just kinda fumble around until they randomly stumble into them.

But once that’s done, players still need to figure out how to complete the assassination. This is where the creativity truly starts to set in. Unlike the story missions, that have a lot of canned, scripted methods of assassination already lined up for, the Elusive Targets are tend to be more systems-driven. There is some light scripting, but no where near as much as one might expect. And since the player has yet to perform the kill by this point, they can still technically restart if something goes wrong.

Though by far the most tense and exciting moments in these Elusive Targets in the escape. After all the objectives have been completed, knowing that restart is now impossible, players need to avoid setting off any alarms or alerting any of the guards. If they do, they risk a lethal shootout that would compromise their ability to get out.

The excitement of these missions cannot be overstated. It’s truly a marvel in design, and I look forward to the next one.

Welcome back to the main plot.

I know we’ve spoken about the big twist well before it came into play here, but I still think it’s a really great moment. The big reveal that Sora was *never* supposed to be the hero. His status as a keyblade bearer, and his numerous successes, can be attributed to a happy accident.

It’s the part of the story where the hero hits rock bottom, and everything is stolen from him. Fortunately, this sets up one of my favorite scenes in the game. After reflecting on his journey, Sora realizes that he can keep going without the keyblade. It’s a powerful scene, especially in the context of this story.

Sam makes a great point in that this especially highlights the dichotomy between Sora and Riku and how they see the world. Unlike Riku, Sora went out, saw the world, and met all kinds of people, so he learned the value of friendship. Despite leaving his island home, Riku remained isolated, and ultimately gave into the darkness. It’s not original, but it’s a plot that works.

Today, we give one of the Elusive Targets a shot.

On occasion, re-watching these videos in order to do the post-commentary is a lot like watching someone play Dark Souls. I can see all the mistakes being made with so much more clarity than I’d even have been able to in the moment. Things that look like they are possible in the moment can be seen, once your one level removed from the action, as the needlessly difficult/impossible tasks that they are.

That said, I really enjoy attempting these Elusive Targets. It’s true that even with save files and the potential to recover from failure, Hitman certainly has its moments of tension. However, that tension is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the player can always reload and save and try again, or restart the mission to give it another shot. There’s no real penalty for failure.

But that’s different with the Elusive Targets. Once objectives start being completed, the attempt is locked in. Players can no longer restart, so if they die or otherwise fail the mission, it’s over. That target is forever lost. It’s the sort of excitement that players can’t get from Hitman otherwise.

At first, I didn’t think I would like the idea of these one-time targets that players couldn’t retry if they failed. Having played them, my opinion has taken a complete 180. I am genuinely excited whenever a new one is announced, and the gears in my head start turning as I think of an initial game plan for them.