Interview: Why episodic was the way to go for Hitman

Tom Caswell: I want to first talk about the success that Hitman has found. It seems to be doing very well, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that you released it episodically. How does a release schedule like that change the writing for you?

Michael Vogt: Going episodic, we wanted to do a really ambitious storyline that spanned multiple seasons. Of course, a lot of planning went into this overarching storyline. At the same time, we wanted to take it slow in season 1. It’s a reintroduction to the universe; a reimagining of the franchise as a spy/thriller. We thought we’d make it “business as usual” to begin with. We wanted players to get the experience of just being Agent 47 without taking an active part in the storyline, at least for the first half of the season. So you can treat each episode as an independent narrative and not pay too much attention to what’s going on in the background. Clearly, it’s connected to all the overarching storylines, but it’s also kind of detached. Towards the end with the Colorado release, that’s where the gameplay and the storyline converge and will continue to do so going forward. That’s the way we structured it, which isn’t like a traditional box game, where you kind of need to rush it a little bit more.

From a PR standpoint, what are the advantages and disadvantages to releasing a game episodically?

Sven Liebold: I think the major con is that it’s not very healthy [laughs]. It’s something very new for us as a studio. It’s very exciting and has been a great learning process. As you say, we’re essentially releasing a new game every month, which is quite crazy to do. We’re basically at every exhibition and game show on this planet talking about Hitman, which is great because we get to meet a lot of people; media and players alike. That’s one of the positive things about the episodic model because now we’re in a position to react in a fast manner. We don’t have to wait 3 or 4 years till the next game ships. We can apply it immediately. I’d say that’s the biggest perk.

How much does that feedback affect the production and writing of the game?

Michael: The main story is sort of a fixed thing because it’s produced way in advance. But with the mission stories, I think we’re very versatile having already implemented a lot of stuff we’ve already got from feedback. We’ve tried a lot of variations of what we think is the perfect Hitman mission, and the feedback has played into that. We’ve found out that players really like the map layout of Sapienza: it feels like the perfect Hitman map to people. So we’ve pushed with that going forward; what types of maps, what types of missions, what types of gameplay. It’s not like feedback from episode one feeds into episode two, because it’s already in production, but we’ve definitely reacted to a lot of the feedback we’ve gotten.

Sven: It’s the very right spectrum when it comes to feedback. Like Michael was saying, the story is more or less in place. Due to the nature of this sandbox, we are able to support other stories. In Paris, we have this vampire magician disguise, and people started doing all sorts of crazy stuff with it! The team sat down and thought “Hmm. This is interesting. Let’s do a vampire magician pack, with challenges based on that disguise!” It’s a whole different fantasy, but it’s there for the players to try out.

With season one wrapping up, can you talk a little about season 2? Was that something that was always in the works or would only exist based on the reception of season 1?

Michael: Depends who you ask [laughs]. If you ask me, the storyline has been in place for quite a while and it was designed to span multiple seasons. But it’s not up to me how the game is made, and when or how [laughs]. You do need to plan for something, and obviously, it has a finite size. We can’t really get into how many seasons are actually planned.

Sven: We’re in this for the long haul. This is not just an experiment; we want to do something new and exciting. I think we’re now at this point where we’ve proved this can work, and proved there can be an AAA episodic game. Not many people are doing that. We try to own it, and there’s no other game out there like Hitman. I think the episode nature is the perfect fit.

There are so many small details to this game. What would you say your favorite would be?

Michael: As a writer, I put most of my effort into the opportunity system which we call guided fantasy fulfillment: all these little subplots that you can trigger and leads to a cool way of killing your target that’s in character with who [Agent] 47 is. I’m really proud of that and leads to some memorable kills. My personal favorite is in Bangkok you have the opportunity to do a murder/suicide where you can get one target to push another target out the window, and you can then push them out the window, and it’ll be seen as a murder/suicide. It’s poetic justice for his story and why he deserves to die.

Sven: This is so difficult. There’s so much special stuff in there. I like a lot of the side dialogues that are going on. When it comes to my favorite kill, it’s in Sapienza where you have to take out a target who will try to escape with a plane. Across from that is an island with these old canons, and if you do it right, you can take out the plane in the air with the cannon and that’s pretty cool!