[Hitman Absolution Update 1.0.447
Eliora Shopbell
Absolution's single-player campaign follows genetically engineered contract killer Agent 47 and his efforts to protect a similarly genetically enhanced teenage girl from various parties who wish to use her potential as an assassin for their own ends, including a private military company, several criminal syndicates, and 47's own former employers, the International Contract Agency (ICA). For the first time in the series, the game featured an online component called "Contracts", which allowed players to create their own custom objectives for any of the missions in the base game and share them with others.
Hitman: Absolution is a stealth game in which the player assumes the role of a hitman named Agent 47. Presented from a third-person perspective, the gameplay centers around completing set objectives within a series of levels.[8][9] Objectives can range from simply reaching the end of the level, to eliminating specific individuals.[9] The players choose how to complete each level, taking branching paths to get to a target or location.[10] Players may use pistols, bottles or bricks, assault rifles, shotguns, fiber-wire, or steel pipe against enemies if opting for the action-oriented approach, or avoid enemies altogether, not being seen, using disguises, blending into the environment, and only attacking the set target(s), if using the stealth-oriented approach.[11][12][13] Agent 47 also has the 'Instinct' ability that lets the player monitor enemies more easily.[10] There are also environmental ways to kill or distract individuals; players can use poison to spike coffee, pull switches to make a disco ball fall and break, cause a massive explosion at a gas station, pull a switch to cause scaffolding to fall down, cause fires, or set off fireworks.[10][14] Players complete chapters in order to progress through the story. The player journeys to various locations, including a mansion, library, strip club, gun store, wrestling arena, courthouse, and hotel during the story.[14]
The game introduces an online option to the series, 'Contracts', where players can create their own missions for other players to complete.[15] Players choose one of the areas from the game's story missions and decide which non-player characters (NPCs) are required to be eliminated, what weapon must be used to eliminate each target, what disguise is required, whether the body must be hidden or not and if the player is allowed to be spotted by the AI.[16] "Contracts" was shut down in May 2018 not due to IO Interactive to owning or controlling the online servers but needing to comply with GDPR legislation.[17]
Genetically-engineered assassin Agent 47 (David Bateson) receives a contract from his employers, the International Contract Agency (ICA), to kill his former handler Diana Burnwood (Marsha Thomason), who betrayed the ICA for unknown reasons and sabotaged their funding and database, forcing them to reform. 47 confronts Diana at her Chicago estate and seemingly shoots her. Before dying, Diana confesses that she betrayed the ICA to protect a genetically-engineered teenage girl named Victoria (Isabelle Fuhrman) from a life of violence as an assassin, and asks 47 to look after Victoria in her place. 47 agrees, causing his new handler, Benjamin Travis (Powers Boothe), to brand him a traitor to the ICA.
After dropping Victoria off at the Redwood Orphanage, 47 meets disgraced ICA informant Birdie (Steven Bauer), who asks him to assassinate a local crime boss (James Sie) in exchange for information. After the hit, Birdie tells 47 about Blake Dexter (Keith Carradine), head of a home defense system company, who has taken an interest in Victoria. 47 sneaks into Dexter's room at the Terminus Hotel and learns that he is planning to kidnap Victoria and sell her to the highest bidder. 47 attempts to kill Dexter, but is knocked out, framed for the murder of a maid, and left to die in Dexter's suite after the latter sets it on fire. Escaping from the hotel, 47 kills Dexter's informant Dom Osmond (Jon Curry) at his strip club, but learns that Dexter has hired a group of mercenaries led by Edward Wade (Larry Cedar) to capture Victoria. Though 47 intercepts and executes Wade's associates Bill Dole (Nicolas Roye), Larry Clay (also James Sie) and Frank Owens (Jeffrey Johnson), Birdie is caught and betrays Victoria's location at the orphanage in exchange for his life. 47 successfully eliminates Wade and his assault team during their attack on the orphanage, but Dexter's son Lenny (Shane Stevens) grabs Victoria and escapes.
After obtaining Lenny's location from a bartender, 47 recovers his 'Silverballer' pistols from a gun store through Birdie's help and moves on to the town of Hope, South Dakota. Unbeknownst to 47, however, Birdie also makes overtures to the ICA and Detective Cosmo Faulkner of the Chicago PD, culminating in a number of attempts to kill 47 by the Agency throughout the game. Despite being firmly under the control of Dexter's PMC, 47 eliminates Lenny's gang, the Hope Cougars, preventing them from kidnapping Victoria and selling her to a rival weapons corporation. 47 kidnaps Lenny, drives him to the desert, and interrogates him for Victoria's location, before either killing or abandoning him. 47 subsequently infiltrates Dexter Industries' laboratory, kills lead members of the science division examining Victoria, and destroys their research. At an unlicensed cage fighting match being held on site, 47 kills Dexter's deformed bodyguard Sanchez (Isaac C. Singleton Jr.). While recuperating at a hotel, 47 is attacked by "The Saints", Travis's personal hit squad, but manages to eliminate them.
47 tracks Victoria to a detention facility within the Hope Courthouse jail operated by corrupt sheriff and Dexter ally Clive Skurky (Jon Gries). However, 47 is captured and tortured by Dexter until he is summoned to a meeting with Travis, seeking to buy Victoria back for $10 million. As 47 escapes and hunts the sheriff, the ICA invade the town and wound Skurky. 47 evades the Agency and corners Skurky in a Church, discovering Dexter and Travis will be meeting to sell Victoria at Blackwater Park, Chicago, before killing him. 47 infiltrates Blackwater, makes his way into Dexter's residence, and kills his secretary Layla Stockton (Traci Lords) before hunting Dexter himself to the top of the park. As Dexter's men rig the building to explode, 47 successfully prevents Dexter's escape via helicopter, mortally wounding him. After lamenting the loss of his son and money, Dexter is left to die alone.
Several months later, Travis and the ICA exhume Diana's grave at the Burnwood crypt in Cornwall, suspecting she has faked her death. Working with Diana, 47 kills Travis' assistant Jade and his elite Praetorian Guard, before mortally wounding Travis himself. Travis rants at him for wasting Victoria's potential for the ICA, and asks whether Diana is really dead, to which 47 responds "You will never know" before finishing him off. Sometime later, 47 observes Diana and Victoria from a rooftop across Lake Michigan, confirming that Diana faked her death with 47's help and is now looking after Victoria. The game ends with a message from Diana to Agent 47 welcoming him back to the ICA and thanking him, as his actions have helped purge the ICA of internal corruption. In the final scene, Detective Cosmo Faulkner (Jonathan Adams), who has been tracking 47 since the Terminus Hotel fire, is having trouble discovering 47's identity until Birdie appears and offers to help him for a price, as the door slowly close.
Though plans to continue the Hitman franchise were first announced in 2007,[18] it was not until May 2009 that Eidos confirmed the game was in development.[19] Certain plot details for the game were rumored in 2009, stating that the game's story would lead Agent 47 to a low point from which he would have to rebuild himself.[20] On 20 April 2011, Square Enix filed the trademark for the name Hitman: Absolution in Europe, leading sites to speculate that it would be the name of the fifth Hitman game.[21] On 6 May 2011, a teaser trailer was released, confirming the title Hitman: Absolution. The trailer briefly showed Agent 47 attaching a suppressor and a rattlesnake coiled around his signature Silverballer pistol.[22] It has been reported the game will be a "familiar and yet significantly different experience from other Hitman games."[23] On 9 October 2011, a full gameplay trailer entitled "Run for Your Life" was released.[24]
Originally William Mapother had been cast as Agent 47, replacing original voice actor David Bateson. Bateson had not been notified of his replacement and only found out when the first trailer was released. However, following fan backlash, Bateson was rehired just six months before the game's release. Mapother's motion capture performance for Agent 47 is still included in the game.[25]
In 2023, chief creative officer of IO, Christian Elverdam said that Absolution "is fundamentally a really good stealth-action game" and that many of the lessons learned in creating it can be seen in World of Assassination trilogy.[26]
Hitman: Sniper Challenge, a single sniping mission, was developed by IO Interactive, originally as a pre-order bonus, available to people who pre-order the game. The code would be supplied by retailers upon pre-order of the game, and could be collected from retailers before release as a download code before the game's release. At the time of pre-order, Sniper Challenge was redeemable via the PSN Store, Xbox Live Marketplace and PC. While the console version launched worldwide on 15 May 2012, the PC version wasn't released until 1 August 2012.[28][29]
Square Enix announced special Hitman: Absolution pre-order bonuses for selected retailers.[30] For Steam purchased games, these downloadable content are available as well.[31] These items only work for Contract mode and not the single-player story mode.
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