Welcome ladies and gentleman. Interactive Friction returns once more. Sam and I have a new idea for a series, and today we’re excited to share it with you.

And now, for a funny little diversion.

Though this episode does show off a little bit of what I was talking about last episode, in truth this was just an excuse to have a little bit of fun.

In case anyone thinks that Hitman is a serious game for serious people, show them this episode. Trust me, it’ll teach’em.

We… look…. FABULOUS!

The feedback loop for this game is one of its smartest systems, because it encourages exactly the kind of behavior gives the player the best possible “Hitman” experience.

Players start with a single entrance point, and a single location they can smuggle an item into, along with some starter equipment. This gives them enough to successfully complete the level the first time (they could even do Silent Assassin if they are attentive enough, but that’s unlikely).

But then, once they’ve completed the level, they gain experience in that level for the challenges completed on the way (and since killing the target the first time is it’s own challenge, this is guaranteed). They go up in their “Mastery Level” for the stage, and gain new weapons/items, new starting locations, and new places they can smuggle equipment in through.

Knowing that more bonuses await, they are encouraged to replay the level, and find more unique kills and opportunities to complete challenges. This process is made easier both because they already know the level layout from having played it previously and by having new items and starting points to work with.

Then they complete new opportunities, gain more bonuses, and the loop continues on. Since Hitman is a series that thrives on players who love to explore and discover, encouraging this behavior through it’s challenge/reward system gives the player the best possible chance of enjoying the game.

It’s genius, and it’s so bizarre to think that the genesis of these challenges is Hitman: Absolution, of all the games.

Ladies, gentleman, and all other persuasions, we at Interactive Friction are pleased to announce our new project. That’s right, Sam and I are back at it!

Welcome…. to Kingdom Hearts.

A long while back, Sam and I were talking about how he didn’t really understand the plot to Kingdom Hearts, while I did. So, in anticipation of Kingdom Hearts 3, we decided to do a series on the plot of the series, such as it stands.

We couldn’t have anticipated what a colossal undertaking this would turn out to be. Ultimately, the recording of this series is ongoing and it will likely be the most ambitious Interactive Friction project to date.

The idea will be to release new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, starting next week. To accommodate this, the Hitman (2016) LP will transition to a Tuesday/Thursday schedule.

Get excited, guys. This is going to be quite the ride!

Welcome to the Paris fashion show: Home to chic design and fabulous murder.

One of the things I am grateful to Absolution for is that it forced IO Interactive to seriously improve on the sneaking/stealth mechanics of Blood Money. Where we once had this terrible binary of “detected/not detected”, there now exists a ton of states and transitions between those states.

Hitman didn’t have any of the things you’d expect from stealth games, like detection notifiers, searching/suspicious states, distractions, etc until Absolution. For all of the things it did well, this was an area where even Blood Money faltered.

I disliked Absolution when it came out, and frankly I still dislike it. But in a weird way, this episodic Hitman game almost redeems Absolution in retrospect. Without the new engine, gameplay improvements, additional mid-mission challenges, and UI adjustments, we wouldn’t have this game. We might have a different Hitman, but it’s doubtful that they could make a game of this level without first having worked on many of these ideas in Absolution.

So in a weird way, thank you, Hitman: Absolution. You suck, but you also made a good game possible.

Today, we finish the tutorial.

There’s some dispute over whether or not this section can be treated as part of the tutorial. I lean on the side that it is part of the tutorial, because it makes sense if you treat like a further escalation on the Freeform Training.

At the start of the training, the game focuses purely on the mechanical aspects. It introduces the mechanics in ways that make sense and guides players through their first attempt.

Once that’s complete, the player, armed with their knowledge of the first attempt, is given a set of basic tools and told to try the mission again on their terms. Further, they are allowed to reattempt the mission over and over until they are comfortable working on those terms.

This can thought of as another step in that chain. The player has been guided through the level, and then told to go through that same level Freeform-style, but with the knowledge they gained. Now that they have been indoctrinated in the mechanics and thought patterns, the game removes the guardrail of knowledge from previous runs. You know the mechanics. You know what to do. And now it is time to apply those skills in a new, unfamiliar scenario.

However, this is still a relatively small area compared to an actual episode’s map, so it’s not a full-fledged mission. It’s Hitman in miniature, so the game designers still haven’t thrown you to the wolves yet. By the time you’re done with this mission, you should be more than ready to head to Paris for Episode 1…

…which we’ll do in the next episode.

Welcome to the smartest Hitman tutorial IO has ever made.

I really can’t stress how smart a decision this was for the tutorial. While any tutorial can be used to introduce the basic mechanics, the mechanics themselves are only half of a Hitman game.

The other half of teaching someone how to play Hitman is teaching the mentality required to get the most out of the experience. This is something Blood Money failed to understand. It taught the mechanics, but not the mentality, which is why getting lost in the first mission is such a common experience.

But here, in this game, they were much smarter about it. They guide players through their very first mission in a somewhat scripted sequence to familiarize them with the mechanics and the map. Once they do that, they release the guardrails and give the player more freedom. They’re not totally defenseless, because they game provides some basic tools and they are still armed with the knowledge from the scripted sequence. But the game escalates and expects them to be able to practically apply what they’ve learned.

Even better, once player’s finish this “Freeform Training”, the game encourages them to go through again and again until they feel comfortable acting and behaving like a Hitman should. Not only does this help ease new players in, but it also introduces the idea of replaying missions over and over again. Once we’re out of the tutorial, this becomes very important.

But we’ll get to that another day.

Welcome, my friends, to a World of Assassination.

I never went through the tutorial for Blood Money when doing the LP for it, and there’s a very specific reason for that. Said tutorial is so poorly done that it makes my blood boil ever more than the White House mission.

It’s does teach the basic controls and mechanic for the game. However, it does so in such a staged manner, where most of the game elements are introduced outside of contexts where you’ll realistically use them, that it’s quite useless beyond that. It’s very common for people to complete the tutorial mission in Blood Money, and then enter the first contract and have no idea what they’re supposed to do.

This tutorial is different from that. Mechanics are introduced in contexts where players can be expected to make use of them in actual missions. It guides you through the assassination, but not enough to be annoying or to undermine the player’s development.

And once this part of the tutorial is over, it handled training in the best way for a game like Hitman. But we’ll get to that next episode.

Anyone who knows about Blood Money knew this episode was coming, but it is the finale and the natural place to end an LP of the game.

I’m a little disappointed, because I was prepared to go into a large tirade about how difficult this gunfight is, because I died so many times to it.

But then I went and killed everyone the first time, without need to give it a second shot, ruining said tirade.

Like the White House, it’s a cool idea. However, for it to really work, the player needs the ability to mow down all the mooks with little difficulty. I’d probably have given 47 extra defense or outfitted the enemies with weak weapons that don’t do much damage.

Instead, it’s just the usual guards and guns. Players will probably die countless times to it before they get it right.

Fortunately, this is all just a prelude to my next project. See you next time, when we play the new Hitman, which will start on Monday, September 19th.

We finish the worst, and final, mission in Hitman: Blood Money today:

Last time, I wrote about how awful it was that this level runs you through a linear sequence of rooms like the tutorial.

But now, we can finally understand exactly why that is. This level culminates in a set-piece where 47 is forced to enter into a trap and have a conversation with the other assassin that gets nothing done, doesn’t advance the story in any way, and serves no purpose other than to tell the player how “awesome” the target is.

Afterwards, the player has no choice but to follow him up to the roof to engage in a shoot out. And as we’ve already established, the gunplay in Blood Money is terrible. If I hadn’t gotten lucky with that first shot, I would have probably been even more frustrated.

In all likelihood, this finale was probably developed last and had very little budget remaining. However, it still highlights the problem that video games tend to have very poor endings. It left me with a sour taste in my mouth back when I first played the game, and I grow less and less fond of this mission the more I play it.