Like any of Agent 47’s emergent schemes, it’s impossible to know how well Io’s grand plan for episodic Hitman is going to pan out once it meets the chaotic network of interactions we call the real world. But I’ve really come around to the idea of letting each one of its levels stand by itself. Perhaps every new release can be like Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes, played and replayed, picked over endlessly by an internet with nothing yet to move on to.
One of those levels is named Show Stopper – the same we saw a little of last month. It’s set in a mansion hosting a fashion show – your target a crime lord in the penthouse. The demo begins approximately nine minutes in.
Our John saw Show Stopper during a private demo of Hitman at Gamescom.
“The potential options become challenging to quantify when you take into account the sheer scale of this Paris level,” he wrote. “It dwarfs anything ever seen in past Hitman outings and, while we don’t know whether every stage will be of equivalent scope, there’s no fear of becoming stuck for options in this instance.
“Being a fashion show of apparently considerable importance, only the finest mansion will do and that’s what Io has provided. The place is four or five storeys tall and is made up of multiple wings that flank an enormous central chamber, within which is constructed the catwalk. Below that is a basement, above it the roof. Both can be explored: the former by figuring out how to avoid courting suspicion on entry, the latter by shimmying up a drainpipe or similar. There are likely other ways of achieving the same goal…”
We’ll have to wait a while to discover those options for ourselves. A Hitman delay has punted the game into March next year. Has it earned your blood money yet?