Goofy in the sense that the AI seems pretty terrible, especially for a stealth/covert game, and mostly designed for people to get laughs out of. I've watched only three people play it, but I haven't seen any amazing assassinationing (that's totally a word) going on. It's mostly amazingly hilarious. Which is fun to watch, but I'm not that interested in playing it myself.

@zevvion: What game would you consider have good stealth AI then?

@rethla: It's a difficult comparison, because Hitman is a little more about hiding in plain sight than straight up breaking line of sight. But from what I've seen, it seems most previous Hitman games I've played were better at that than this seems to. But it may also just be the playstyle people that I've watched have.

@zevvion: Well i dont know what specifics of the AI you dont like but i find it much better that previous games and being a longtime fan of stealthgames i cant think of a game with better AI.

Sure you have formations and etc. in Metal Gear Solid but thats in combat which everyone can agree is not the point in Hitman. The logical actions AI take in Hitman feels kinda unique.

@rethla: I mean, the fact that you can literally bump into people with your face while they release their deepest personal secrets that if they got out would destroy them. All while a stranger is not stealthily listening in on the conversation, but right there in your face watching how many times you blink. It's just all so goofy.

@zevvion: If that's what you mean by goofy literally every Hitman is too goofy for you, that's not new to the franchise at all.

Yah, Hitman has always had that oblivious "hey look there is this huge 6 foot tall guy with a barcode on his back but I guess he works at this triad sushi restaurant because he's wearing a chef outfit!" type of deal going on. If anything they've grounded it a bit while expertly maintaining the humor. Blood Money had you walking around a birthday party dressed as a clown. Thats Hitman. The only times it was a bit more serious was probably the very first game.

99.9% of all videogames will be to goofy for you aswell :)

Also thats not exactly AI but more like scripted filler dialogue or whatever :)

I hope this is you trying to ape those horrible steam reviews, otherwise lol.

Yeah I was making fun of the "____-wall" thing.

Level 20 is actually pretty easy. You're basically missing the whole game if you don't hit level 20, so i don't even understand why you'd complain about missing out on additional content.

As someone who is now 1 challenge away from having done every single thing in the game (Silent Assassin on the Sarejevo Six guy in Colorado), I welcome this. This game is straight Dave Lang God-Like.

That's absolutely not true. AI can respond to perimeters and in fact they did in the original Hitman as well as 2. Perimeter triggers are nothing new, not even in the Hitman franchise and absolutely not in all videogames. You even have that in Assassin's Creed of all games. It was clearly a conscious decision to completely leave that out of the game on the devs part and clearly you guys love it. I'm not trying to say you shouldn't, but to suggest like it is some sort of impossible thing to do or something all videogames has is just not true.

There's plenty of more issues with this Hitman that make me think it's odd to describe its AI as 'the best ever'. But whatever, opinions. I like XCOM 2 difficulty scaling where the AI doesn't change (a little, but not a lot) and they just get more health, aim and more enemies on the map. I'm not suggesting there is only one way to make a game fun, I'm just explaining why I don't like this stuff in a Hitman game. It does seem that the Professional Difficulty alleviates some of the misgivings I have with it, though it's super weird that you have to play every map a bunch of times before you're allowed to play it in a more engaging and fun way.

That AI logic is in this Hitman game aswell. There are certain AI conversations/situations where they will ask wtf. you are doing there even if you have the correct disguise and clearence.

I strongly doubt "improved AI" in professional mode is gonna have random filler discussions start triggering alarms however.

edit: kinda offtopic but i have to say in my oppinion difficultyscaling with +hp and +dmg to the AI is the most lazy difficultyscaling ever and basicly 99% of the games use it.

@rethla:What do you mean it mean it seems like a huge stretch. You find it hard to believe that I'd buy a game to play a particular mode? Of course I would, why is that hard to believe? And I know what the game is about, it's a fucking hitman game, I've been playing them on and off for 15 years.

@burncoat: Ya, good for you man,I'm glad you enjoy squeezing as much content out of games as possible. I don't. I'm ok with missing content that I paid for. I prefer to go through once and have that be my story. I like iron man mode in games for that very reason. I thought that they totally different middle acts in the Witcher 2 were fucking cool and I am happy that I will never see one of them. I don't give a fuck if I can kill a guy with a moose but I shot him instead, I'm not going to replay it if I've already completed the mission to my satisfaction. I don't enjoy games the way you do and that's ok.

@rethla: Some games are just well suited for that sort of difficulty scaling. It's not always lazy, sometimes it's smart. In DMC for instance it lends itself incredibly well to that game's combat, since you'll have to juggle longer/create weirder combo's and control the aggro better. You can't just make a blanket statement that it's always bad and lazy. I also find it incredibly annoying in some games though. DOOM last year was a good example of a game I enjoyed a decent amount on Ultra-Violence, but became a chore to play on Nightmare due to increased health and damage. I don't feel it fits what I want from that game.

@zevvion: Yeh you can use it well if there are systems around it that supports and justifies it. What usually happens though is that developers design the game in one way and then they just add or removes HP from enemies to create more arbitrary difficulty levels usually with difficultyspikes and and weird progression as an effect. The way its done in Hitman is far superior, where you got the complete game at all times and the different difficulty levels are naturally in how you play. Scaling rarely gets the same sense accomplishement for me. The way its done in escalations is also really good where it gradually forces you to finetune your approach at the same time as you learn the setpieces.

@arabes:I think its a stretch that you completly dismisses the entire game for very vague reasons and then makes an complete U-turn for a mode thats very little known about and most likely changes very little about the game.

@rethla: Probably needless to say, but I disagree. I want a game to challenge me on its own merits. Hitman is easy unless you decide to make it hard for yourself. The last thing I'd call that is superior. You can virtually do this with most games if you want. Not taking away that that particular sandbox is obviously great for some people, but there is definitely something to be said for mastercrafting a challenge with damage-spectrums and health management. It's not as easy to balance as you think it is.

@zevvion: I never said it was easy, just that most times its very sloppy.

@rethla: I didn't completely dismiss the game, I just didn't think it was for me.

Remember the old days?

When video games difficulty levels were well thought out instead of being the same thing but with different modifiers.

Thanks IO for bring this back to our lives!