Hitman: Absolution is a 2012 action stealth game developed by IO Interactive and published by Square Enix Europe. It is the fifth installment in the Hitman series and the sequel to 2006's Hitman: Blood Money. Before release, the developers stated that Absolution would be easier to play and more accessible, while still retaining hardcore aspects of the franchise. The game was released on 20 November 2012 for PlayStation 3, Windows, and Xbox 360. On 15 May 2014, Hitman: Absolution – Elite Edition was released for macOS by Feral Interactive;"Hitman: Absolution – Elite Edition for Mac now out in the field" . it contains all previously released downloadable content, including Hitman: Sniper Challenge, a "making of" documentary, and a 72-page artbook. On 11 January 2019, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment released enhanced versions of Absolution and Blood Money for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as part of the Hitman HD Enhanced Collection.
Absolutions single-player campaign follows genetically engineered contract killer Agent 47 and his efforts to protect a similarly genetically enhanced teenage girl from various parties who wish to use her potential as an assassin for their own ends, including a private military company, several criminal syndicates, and 47's former employers, the International Contract Agency (ICA). The game features an online component called "Contracts", which allows the player to create their own custom objectives for any of the missions in the base game and share them with others.
The game was met with a polarized reception upon release, with most of the praise focusing on its graphics, environments and locations, as well as varied gameplay options. However, many critics and players disliked the game for its narrative, issues with the disguise system, and the game's linear structure as opposed to the open ended nature of previous installments. As of March 2013, the game had sold over 3.6 million copies. Following Absolutions reception, the series returned to a more open-ended style of gameplay in 2016's Hitman.
Gameplay
Hitman: Absolution is a stealth game in which the player assumes the role of a Agent 47, an assassin for hire. Presented from a third-person perspective, the gameplay centers around completing a number of objectives within a series of levels. Objectives range from reaching the end of a level to eliminating specific individuals. The player chooses how to complete each mission and is able to take multiple paths to reach targets and locations.Martchiafava, Jeff. (19 November 2012). "A Beginner's Guide To Hitman: Absolution" . Game Informer. Retrieved 31 May 2015. Players may use pistols, bottles or bricks, assault or sniper rifles, shotguns, fiber-wire, or steel pipes against enemies if opting for action-oriented approaches, or avoid adversaries altogether by using disguises, blending into the environment, and only attacking specific targets using a stealth-oriented approach.Torres, Samir. (26 January 2013). "Hitman: Absolution: How to unlock all 53 disguises" . Venture Beat. Retrieved 31 May 2015."Weapon" . IGN. Retrieved 31 May 2015. Agent 47 has an 'Instinct' ability that lets the player monitor enemies more easily. There are environmental ways to kill or distract individuals; poison can be used to spike coffee, a switch to make a disco ball fall and break, a massive explosion at a gas station, levers to make scaffolding to fall down, small or large fires, and fireworks can be set off.Nunneley, Stephany. (3 October 2012). "Hitman: Absolution – man's head catches fire in new trailer" . VG247. Retrieved 31 May 2015. The player must complete a number of chapters in order to progress through the story. The game features a variety of locations, including a mansion, library, strip club, gun store, wrestling arena, courthouse, and hotel.
Absolution introduces an online option to the Hitman series, 'Contracts', where the player can create their own missions for others to participate in. The player chooses one of the areas from the game's story missions and decide which non-player characters (NPCs) are required to be eliminated, what weapon must be used to eliminate each target, what disguise is required, whether the body must be hidden or not and if the player is allowed to be spotted by the AI.Clay, Sam. (19 November 2012). "Hitman Absolution contracts mode gameplay: the gun shop" . VG247. Retrieved 30 May 2015. The online servers for "Contracts" were shut down in May 2018 due to IO Interactive encountering difficulties in complying with GDPR legislation.
Plot Genetically engineered assassin Agent 47 (David Bateson) is ordered by the International Contract Agency (ICA), to kill his former handler Diana Burnwood (Marsha Thomason), who, for unknown reasons, has betrayed the organisation: Diana had sabotaged funding streams and publicized their database, bringing undesired attention to the Agency. 47 infiltrates Diana's Chicago estate and reluctantly shoots her in the bathroom. Whilst bleeding out, Diana reveals she betrayed the Agency to prevent a genetically engineered teenage girl named Victoria (Isabelle Fuhrman) from becoming an assassin like 47. She asks 47 to protect Victoria, leading 47's new handler, Benjamin Travis (Powers Boothe), to brand him a traitor.
As the Agency knows all of 47's safe houses, 47 hides Victoria at the Rosewood Orphanage before meeting a disgraced ICA informant known as 'Birdie' (Steven Bauer). 47 and Birdie broker a deal in which 47 agrees to kill a local crime lord called the 'King of Chinatown' and trade his Silverballer pistols for information. After 47 meets his end of the deal, Birdie tells 47 about Blake Dexter (Keith Carradine), an international arms dealer. 47 sneaks into the air ducts adjacent to Dexter's room in the Terminus Hotel and learns that Dexter and his secretary/mistress Layla Stockton (Traci Lords) intend to kidnap Victoria and sell her to the highest bidder. Before he can confront the pair, 47 is knocked out by Dexter's genetically engineered bodyguard, Sanchez (Isaac C. Singleton Jr.), who resists 47's piano wire.
Dexter frames 47 for the murder of a hotel maid before setting the hotel suite alight, from which 47 narrowly escapes. Pursued by police, 47 evades an extensive police presence by escaping through an abandoned library into a hippie commune and then out through the Chicago subway network. 47 then kills one of Dexter's informants, mobster Dom Osmond (Jon Curry), at his strip club. 47 discovers that Dexter has hired a group of mercenaries led by Edward Wade (Larry Cedar) to ensure the capture of Victoria. Wade subsequently dispatches Bill Dole (Nicolas Roye), Larry Clay (James Sie), and Frank Owens (Jeffrey Johnson) to capture Birdie and find Victoria. Though 47 successfully kills Dole, Clay and Owens during a Chinese New Year celebration, Birdie is caught by Sanchez and trades Victoria's location for his life. 47 rushes back to the Orphanage and eliminates Wade and his assault team. However, Dexter's son Lenny (Shane Stevens), managing to be in the right place at the right time, grabs Victoria and escapes.
After obtaining Lenny's location from a bartender during a bar fight, Birdie provides 47 with the address of a gun store holding his 'Silverballer' pistols. From there, 47 moves onto the town of Hope, South Dakota, unaware that Birdie has also contacted the ICA and Detective Cosmo Faulkner (Jonathan Adams) of the Chicago Police Department, culminating in several attempts to kill 47 by the Agency. Despite the town being firmly under Dexter Industries' control, 47 is able to covertly kill the entirety of Lenny's gang, the Hope Cougars. In doing so, 47 disrupts the gang's plan to sell Victoria to a rival weapons corporation for a significant payout. 47 kidnaps Lenny and interrogates him in the desert, before either killing or abandoning him. 47 continues on to a Dexter Industries' facility, infiltrating its laboratory and eliminating key leadership within the science division tasked with examining Victoria, and destroys their research. 47 also discovers an fighting match taking place on site at which he is able to kill Sanchez.
47 recuperates at a motel, but is attacked by an Agency division led by "The Saints", Travis' all-female personal hit squad. 47 moves through the motel, eliminating the majority of the Saints before escaping out of the grounds and into the neighboring farm land. There, he identifies a mobile command post and finishes off the remaining Saints before tracking Victoria to Hope Courthouse jail, run by corrupt sheriff and Dexter ally Clive Skurky (Jon Gries). 47 is captured and tortured instead.
As 47 escapes from the jail, Travis summons Dexter to a meeting in which he seeks to buy Victoria back for $10 million. The ICA launches a full scale assault on the town. 47 evades the Agency and eventually corners Skurky in a church, who reveals that Dexter and Travis will be meeting to sell Victoria at Blackwater Park, Chicago. 47 kills Skurky, infiltrates Blackwater, makes his way into Dexter's residence, and kills Layla before finally hunting Dexter himself to the top of the park. As Dexter's men rig the building to explode, 47 successfully prevents Dexter's escape via helicopter, mortally wounding him. After lamenting the loss of his son and money, Dexter is left to die alone.
Several months later, Travis and the ICA exhume Diana's grave at the Burnwood crypt in Cornwall, suspecting she has faked her death. Working with Diana, 47 kills Travis' assistant Jade Nguyen (Shannyn Sossamon) and his elite bodyguards before mortally wounding Travis. Travis rants at him for wasting Victoria's potential for the ICA, and asks whether Diana is really dead, to which 47 responds "You will never know" before finishing him off. Sometime later, 47 observes Diana and Victoria from a rooftop across Lake Michigan via sniper rifle, confirming that Diana did fake her death with 47's help and is now looking after Victoria. The game ends with a message from Diana to Agent 47 welcoming him back to the ICA and thanking him, as his actions have helped purge the ICA of internal corruption. In the final scene, Detective Cosmo Faulkner, who has been tracking 47 since the Terminus Hotel fire, is having trouble discovering 47's identity until Birdie appears and offers to help him for a price as the door slowly closes.
Development Though plans to continue the Hitman franchise were announced in 2007, it was not until May 2009 that Eidos confirmed the game was in development. Certain plot details for the game were rumored in 2009, stating that the game's story would lead Agent 47 to a low point from which he would have to rebuild himself. On 20 April 2011, Square Enix filed the trademark for the name Hitman: Absolution in Europe, leading sites to speculate that it would be the name of the fifth Hitman game. On 6 May 2011, a teaser trailer was released, confirming the title Hitman: Absolution. The trailer briefly showed Agent 47 attaching a suppressor and a rattlesnake coiled around his signature Silverballer pistol. It has been reported the game will be a "familiar and yet significantly different experience from other Hitman games." On 9 October 2011, a full gameplay trailer entitled "Run for Your Life" was released.
Originally William Mapother had been cast as Agent 47, replacing original voice actor David Bateson. Bateson had not been notified of his replacement and only found out when the first trailer was released. However, following fan backlash, Bateson was rehired just six months before the game's release. Mapother's motion capture performance for Agent 47 is still included in the game.
In 2023, chief creative officer of IO, Christian Elverdam, said that Absolution "is fundamentally a really good stealth-action game" and that many of the lessons learned in creating it can be seen in the World of Assassination trilogy.
Marketing