Welcome to Warner Bros, Agent 47.

At least this is far less confusing than the Arkham Knight pre order stuff.

Society: "Video games are stupid"

Me: "No they're not"

Hitman: Pre-order and get this special edition to receive the exclusive "Concussive Rubber Duck"

Maybe it's because I've seen dumber versions of this chart for other games but, it seems straight forward. Silver has one expansion, Gold has two, Collectors has two expansions plus the physical bullshit.

Ugh, fuck it. I just wanna know about the expansions. Season 1 was so unbelievably well supported with all those bonus packs, no to mention the elusive target stuff. I'm guessing the expansions would be more on the vein of the GotY campaign? Would be nice if we still got a few bonus remixed missions for free.

Yeah. Once you look at it it's incredibly straight forward. Do you want a bunch of physical shit? No? Ignore nearly 50% of this chart.

Gold Edition is $130 for me ugh, I wouldn't even get a concussive rubber duck.

Like, yeah, it's not as convoluted with retailer-specific bonuses as other games have been, but I do think the sheer number of different things being confined to one version or another is on the higher end of the spectrum.

Hate all of this WB BS on marketing this game (Gold Edition? Collectors Edition?) CONFUSING as HELL!

That said, I'm still joyous that Hitman is back.

I'll just wait for the Complete Edition....and hope a Definitive Edition doesn't follow.

Since it's not episodic it better have a platinum trophy this time around.

For what it's worth, Hitman: Absolution's preorder stuff was far worse. At least we've moved past retailer-specific shit (although Absolution's Sniper Challenge is still among the best preorder bonuses ever, IMO).

Moreover, even HITMAN 2016's "pre-order" was essentially buying the whole game from the start instead of episodically. This was ultimately a steal overall because the game and its depth turned out to be an incredible deal at $60, but likely the reason this game won't be episodic is because everyone on Steam lost their collective shit on the last one over having to pay $5, $10, or $20 more to buy everything piecemeal or upgrade to the full game depending on how long they waited. People went all-out whiny brat over it and tanked the user reviews of the game because they wanted to have their "let's see if it's any good" cake and eat it at the early-adopter price, too, and/or simply didn't pay attention to what they were buying. To watch people trash a game out of spite for their own ignorance/reticence was disappointing, to say the least. I imagine these folks, based on the tantrums thrown over it then, would argue that this preorder stuff for the current game pales in comparison.

Nothing here seems particularly offensive to me. It's certainly not just a WB thing, and this is arguably less bad than a lot of shit out there and even past Hitman games.

This isn't episodic?!

What the hell, thats the reason I played that game so much. I liked engaging deeply with each level, and as soon as I got bored, a new one was on the way. Add in the elusive targets, and constant content updates and it became like a full year of hitman rather than one brief playthrough. In contrast I never had any interest in the optional objectives of Blood Money or Absolution.

Probably because steam review idiots couldn't handle it. That sucks.

Agreed, and it's infuriating. They didn't microtransact anything, I think I bought them piecemeal and I ended up getting one of the episodes on a sale or something so I ended up spending less than 60 bucks on the full experience. it was great. Maybe they could have messaged it better.

I hoped IO owning Hitman meant they would be able to cut through the BS and do what worked best for Hitman, guess I was wrong. Can't help but feel this is the work of WB. Maybe IO really saw a strong negative response to the seasonal thing but outside of steam reviews I don't know who would be complaining.

I'm concerned with Hitman 2. Hearing it's a full release and not having any information on how many maps will be included with the full release is worrying. for all i know you'll get one main map and one sniper map. Then to hear there are expansions that add more locations makes IO seem a bit full of shit in interviews that explain elusive targets are easier to work on when they know everyone has the maps...except for those who don't buy the expansions? Will the expansions not have elusive targets then?

With how much i liked the last Hitman game i wanted to be ready to support this game from the jump, but now it looks like it'll be a wait and see situation.

@mikemcn: okay, I’ll bite. You can presumabely still play this just like you did the episodes.. you don’t have to move on to new levels until you choose to do so.

Yeah this seems fine to me. You lose out on two pieces of digital content if you don't get the collections edition, but those are just "extra goodies" anyways. The Gold Edition gives you extra content and the two expansions, so at that point it's no different than most Gold Editions of games ergo giving you the equivalent of a Season Pass. So you know what your getting when you pay for it, and realistically save for a couple of other digital bonuses, aren't paying for stuff you really don't need in that sense. Since it's an actual content purchase.

Collections Editions with physical stuff have always been a scam. Always. This isn't news here. If your some weird collectathon whale (the reason these things keep getting made for every game ever) then you pay for that stuff.

As for the switch to WB and the change from the episodic stuff. I don't know how I feel about that. I liked the idea of a level per episode with the Hitman reboot. It was smart, and it was an effective and good example of the episodic content. But some people just feel alienated being told to pay for content piece meal. More than that, some people also get a bit uppity when content releases on weird schedules. Like yes, technically people could of waited until all of Hitmans episodes released and played them all, but some people like to just pay up front for a whole game and not episodes. I don't know, it's weird. Game consumers are weird.

I have faith that IO had good reason to do what they did with this game. I don't think the switch from episodic to this is an overreaction, as I think the model here with multiple seasons each with likely 4-6 maps (which I believe they also confirmed for the base game) is perfectly fine. Especially if the maps are the racetrack like in size or at least comparable. If anything some of this restructuring is likely just to rustle less feathers and get more eyes on the product, and for the rest of us who enjoyed the first Hitman it seems mostly business as usual.

Someone's going to pay $110 just to get that concussive rubber duck, and I hope to god it's not me.

They clearly have said there will be 6 levels in the game, just like the first game (aside from tutorials).

I'm guess two more DLC levels it appears then added on. So seems like more content in the long run.

@flashflood_29: That's not really the point. It was an interesting experiment that lead to being excited for a single game through an entire year. Market didn't care for the episodic format (or being forced to play online in this single player game) and even i was skeptical at first, but it was an experience i haven't had with any other game. I'm not bummed about it being a full package or anything, what they've created with this game deserves the attention, but i'm curious if i'll enthusiastically spend the 100+ hours on 2 as i did with the last one.

@stephen_von_cloud: i dunno about, "clearly" seeing as they failed to mention this anywhere on the Steam storefront page, but that's good to know. As long as i can upgrade to gold later, or just buy the expansions separately, it seems fair enough for me.

@flashflood_29: i spent 15 hours in blood money, 15 in absolution and over 40 in the episodic hitman. The episodic design kept me coming back for more. I went back and did a few missions in the previous games over again, but quickly lost interest.

@mikemcn: @sin4profit: So the excitement was having the levels drip fed. So just restrict yourself to one level per two months. I'm sorry, I just don't think I'll ever understand the difference between having it unreleased and choosing not to play it, if that's your preferred play style. I do this exact thing for the same reason, both with games and shows. I don't need a publisher to keep the content unreleased to do it for the same effect.

@mikemcn: People resented the episodic nature, hence the mixed reviews for Hitmam 2016 on Steam. Yes I coudln't give less a shit about steam reviews either, just saying that's a potential barometer of wider opinion.

I thought it fit really well and seemed a good way to coerce players to getting their money's worth from the game, but potentially nothing is lost from them dropping episodes either.

They said on the coach that by releasing all the maps at once it means they can make better use of them during the Elusive Target missions, instead of them all being front loaded onto the first two maps again.

A explosive golf bal would have being cool. But sadly you can't sell explosives...

@ripelivejam: The majority of reviews i read on Steam was because of the "always online" DRM, which i suspect will still be the case in Hitman 2. It was more the media who panned the episodic structure before the game came out, from what i remember.

@flashflood_29:like i said, i was skeptical at first. As a long time fan of the Hitman series i didn't buy Hitman (2016) until Bangkok was released. But playing it half way into the season, i got the appeal of the episodic structure. Made things exciting throughout the year, not having any way of knowing what's coming next, and then being hyped for the preview of what's coming next. Believe it or not, anticipation is always more exciting than the indulgence. It's the nature of, "hype".

Think back to the Diablo 3 auction house. Remember all the people who shouted, "if you don't like it, just don't use it!". Those people, too, did not understand how this looming system in the background, whether you engaged with it or not, deflated the overall experience. So the, "just pretend it isn't there" solution is a logical fallacy.

However, i'm not saying it's all going to be a total letdown because it's a full release, i'm just saying it's not going to be the exciting ride that Hitman (2016) was through the year. I'm optimistic though, there's still content they can drip feed, like the elusive targets, that may do the trick. Who knows, i was a skeptic once and they've proved me wrong before.

Diana: Your target is codenamed “Daddy’s Wallet”.

I spent the better part of a soul-crushing day reading through the negative steam reviews when the "controversy" really hit after Sapienza came out and people realized the game was great and that they wanted the rest of it. This was also right around the time they announced the (mediocre) nighttime bonus mission on Sapienza that was made available first to the people who had bought the full game. Despite the devs outright stating that it would be released for sale later, Steam dickheads either missed or ignored that, and went apeshit over content they "couldn't play" unless they paid all of $5 or $10 more than the people who initially bought the full game to upgrade to it, which was apparently somehow unfair and/or unacceptable. Something to that effect was the vast majority of the complaints.

I'm also willing to bet that about 80% of the always online DRM complaints were in reality these same sort of people who just didn't want to admit that they were throwing temper tantrums over five fucking dollars because they were late to the party and could have avoided the "problem" entirely with better foresight or if they'd actually paid attention to what they were buying. Instead of pointing the finger in the mirror, though, they decided to act affronted and make a mountain out of a molehill to act like IO kicked their dog. So they collectively tanked the reviews of a game they knew was good just to be petty and shitty. It was the worst.

While the idea of them being able to release elusive targets on all the maps is a nice-sounding explanation as to why HITMAN 2 isn't episodic, the real reason is very likely to avoid more garbage backlash again from a bunch of petulant internet assholes. Except IO can't point that out without causing an uproar from this same awful group of assclowns, so I'm doing it for them. IMO, the episodic structure was novel and awesome and made each episode this sort of zeitgeist thing with the community discovering fun things in each map, but now HITMAN 2 will be a bit lesser without it because people are terrible and we can't have nice things.