As great as Hitman: Absolution looks history tells us, and IO Interactive, that only one in five players will finish their upcoming game. As discussed in an interview with Official PlayStation Magazine, Hitman: Absolution developer IO Interactive arrived at the figure thorugh various internal metrics to track player behavior.
"20 percent of the players will see the last level of the game. It's horrible to know. It makes the people working on it really really sad," admitted director Tore Blystad.
"We are using metrics a lot more now than we did, for good and for bad. The general player will probably never even finish the game, which is very sad. Or they might only play through it once," he added, "but the game is built for the people who want to go back through every single level and get all the stuff out of it. It's built to last, rather than be a one-off experience."
While acknowledging that it's disheartening to know that their hard work and time spent on Hitman: Absolution will likely not be enjoyed in completion by many, they are using the numbers as a challenge to create a game that will incentivize replayability.
"A battle we have is that we want to put all this stuff in, but we also know that because the game is up to the player there's a lot of people that will never ever see it. The only thing we can do is incentivize replayability in different ways," Blystad said.
"In the user tests we have they actually tell us that the replayability factor in itself, it's the situation or the humor that's the reason people actually go back through the levels," he explained. "They want to see more, they want to find these things, which makes us very happy, because it takes a lot of time and effort to get these things in."
Hitman: Absolution is due out on November 20 and I think we owe it to IO Interactive to finish the game! With that being said, I can definitely see their emphasis on replayability. For instance, in my preview of Hitman: Absolution they showcased two opposite, but completely feasible ways to play the game: stealth or action. Each form is 100% possible, it just depends on your preference, and I'm sure there will be separate Achievements or Trophies relating to each path.
[OPM]
