News Hitman goes episodic with monthly mission releases

Here's an idea Square Enix; how about you wait until it's finished before you release it? That ones straight out of the Old School playbook. And anything released after the initial release date used to be called expansions, not original game content. God help you when you announce the pricing.

 

It's already on Steam pre-order for £39.99! That's a big ask for 2 levels and 1 a month there after.

 

Could be Valve's interpretation of episodic release - a couple of eps and then nothing, ever again.

 

That's a funny way to say tons of overpriced DLC

 

Whilst iirc Squeenix did say that all future levels would be included in that £40 price, doesn't bode well given most 'episodic' games tend to release a couple of episode and then give up.

EDIT: Re-reading this and the articles elsehwere it comes across as 'the game isn't finished, but the powers that be won't let us postpone the release...'

 

WHy the hell all game producers started to release games based on season pass, episodic releases, payable dlc...
Did you guys notice how pc game prices raised lately? It's not £30 anymore, now its £40-50.

 

Same development to make a console game as PC. Naturally prices go up to accommodate it. In reality your looking at £50-£60 for PC games by 2020 if buying retail. We may even see a £100 computer game in the next few years.

 

Personally, I'd take a well-made game of lower graphical quality (or more accurately, lower graphical variety) than vice versa, but I'm clearly in the minority. We've seen several years of turd-polishing 'AAA' releases, but unfortunately all that's proven is that the average consumer can't look past the SHINY SHINY before dropping their cash, and once that cash has been dropped a publisher no longer gives a ****. Backlash against low quality games after they are paid for clearly doesn't work. Hopefully Steam's refund policy may change this by actually taking money back from publishers, but it remains to be seen if that can counterbalance the console market's lack of a similar policy.

 

I can live with that. As i read it there is the option to pre-order the complete package or seperately buy the smaller chunks.
I'd rather spend 15$ on release to try it out and forget about it if i don't like it than wait 2 years for a sale, spend 15$ and not like it.
If it turns out i like it enough to "finish" it, I'm fine with spending more on it - wether it's called episodes or dlc.
I would certainly NOT pre-order the complete package tough.

 

That's a horrible over simplification and not at all representative of what's really going on. Most games now are already coming out at £49.99, regardless of if they have 'triple-A' status and big name voice actors or not. Let alone all the issues relating to season passes, potential cut content and games designed around trying to see you DLC from the get go. No one asked for the big names and AAA that is the current focus of many games, it was cooked up by the publishers to try and counter their previous piss poor business practices.
That aside, there are plenty of early access games for example that have great visuals and/or audio that also play very well, so cost is not always a gauge for quality.

Yeah, there used to be these things called demos, that were FREE and allowed you to try a game before buying it to help you figure out if it was worth buying.

Pre-orders and day 1 DLC purchases have done wonders for the quality and cost of games. :/

 

I remember that thing you're talking about. Good old times
Still, seeing that they don't try to sell a full priced game + 5 locations as DLC (yet) but offer you the option to buy either one game (that you get delivered in small chunks or at the end of the year) or buy the small chunks at relatively moderate prices as long as you're interested, i appreciate the episodic release schedule.

 

DLC done right is fine as is Episodic content. The issue that arises for me is simply that 2 missions will not take me a month to complete more like a couple of hours then I have to wait a whole month to play 1 more mission.

For this to work they need to make sure there are a lot of different ways to complete the contract without making it too easy / stupid.

Also i'm all for having skins as DLC as personally I don't care what my gun looks like. I am against putting weapons / tools as DLC as that imo detracts from the game..

I loved the shed in Hitman 2, running around with all the weapons i had collected killing chickens, pig & crows.

The mission "A new life" in Blood Money was probably one of my favorites as there were loads of different innovative ways of killing him and getting the microfilm.

I do object to all the focus on the AAA voice actors, and in fact find they detract from the game. Look at fallout 4 while it is a good game it's not a great fallout game to quote a reviewer on steam. They spent a lot of time on voice acting instead of just text bubbles the result was a substandard dialog experience as the choices were limited as were the responses.

 

I never asked for it i'm sure Patrick Stuarts voice for all of 5 minutes in the opening was well with the extra cost. It is possible to good good voice work without paying top dollar for voice talent. Or worse examples, like Mark strong was advertised as doing voice work in Rome 2. Did it make for a good game? Hell no...
Can't argue with the point about voting with their wallets though :/

Hitmans episodic approach is not really the same as traditional early access, when compared to say Kerbal Space Program, Subnautica or Invisible Inc.
But the point there was really that £50 'triple-A' and good voice actors don't make for a good game in many occasions. There is plenty of quality titles that fall outside of that horrible term.

A pretty extreme example but there was also plenty of times when Demos were available on-line and worked as a reasonable quality gate to purchase. But maybe that's the problem 'our game is **** and we know it, let's not bother with a Demo' combined with Pre-orders, the link between making a good game and having it sell well is broken.

Yes abstinence is a good thing where games are concerned, something I have adopted more and more over the past few years. I paid full price for Rome 2 (back when new games on steam were £30) and got a terrible experience, I bought Attila way later for a third of the cost and got a much better experience. There is a lesson there i'm sure
It is difficult though, as many of us want to support the good devs, so they keep making good games.

It's a shame more reviews don't put a value for money marker on games, like is done with hardware. Not all games are worth the fixed £49.99 release price that is pushed on everyone.
Can you really say Rainbow 6 Siege is worth the same day 1 cost as The Witcher 3?

 

Agreed, I can live with that

 

While I can see how releasing "Episodes" is theoretically attractive to a developer, is there any (well known) game that has really pulled this through and didn't just die after the initial release (and maybe one episode)?