Game:

Hitman (2016)

Duration: 2:38

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17

Hitman [Beta] (PS4) – The Final Test

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Addendum: Check out TheKotti's SA, SO no KO speedrun of this stage that's not only faster than mine, but also goes through the front entrance! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq6emS2XbZI

-Comments-

After watching some other videos of the beta, I was inspired to refine my run and complete it without knocking out Jasper's guard. This run is also faster than the first, so it makes it totally obsolete. I don't think this mission can be done any better than this, aside from the mistake I make near the end.

Putting Jasper's body behind the desk is sort of weird, you'd think his guard would notice he was gone. I think it would've been nice for that to be the case (though it would need special scripting), but that the guard wouldn't check there, at least not for some time. Checking the adjacent rooms and asking for help would be pretty cool, and eventually having the whole area go into a high alert status once the target is found dead would be great (this game, and I'm guessing the Hitman series in general, have a real problem with handling scenarios after the target is eliminated, see the aftermath of the ejector seat kill in this mission for a poignant example). This would all be very hard to implement, I'm sure, but this is a game that attempts to simulate social dynamics to a significant extent, and that kind of behavior could add to the sense of AI being socially aware, so it's the kind of thing I'd like to see. I do know that having him stand at his post permanently as if nothing happened definitely isn't a great solution.

I included demonstrations of a couple of AI design issues at the end. The first is a cardinal sin of stealth game enemy design: never have enemies look behind themselves (or to be more precise, in a direction the player isn't expecting) without warning or stimulus. In this case it looks like I got caught in what should be the enemy's peripheral vision; he wasn't looking directly behind himself, but enemies in this game having a roughly 180 degree radius of fully effective vision means I get seen anyway. This could be fixed in many ways without changing the AI's action routine, but I think the routine itself is just fundamentally a bad idea. The golden rule of no sightfield movement without warning or stimulus applies to sightfield shifts stimulated by the player - this means that if I guide an enemy's sightfield in a direction, it should not shift again from that direction without warning or further stimulus. The look to the left that results in me being seen isn't provoked any extra stimulus and has no warning, it's a canned action that was likely made to make enemies seem more like actual humans and less like relatively simple bots. Making enemies predictable, but still seemingly human is a big issue in stealth games and I understand the desire to do things like this, but there must be ways to create the illusion of humanity without moving an enemy's sightfield. I'm pretty shocked that this continues to be a problem in modern stealth games.

The second issue is much simpler. I noticed early on that enemy sightfields seemed surprisingly tall in this game, but dramatic examples like this made clear the truth: enemies' sightfields extend nearly straight up from their origin. This is clearly absurd, and hilarious. I hope it wasn't intentional. It's gotta be one of those things that'll be altered in the final game... right?

I think I won't be able to do the speedrun of the yacht mission I talked about in the first video's description, it doesn't seem like there's any way to do it particularly fast. I'd need to do some serious experimenting at least, and since there's currently no way to know for sure whether I'm fulfilling the game's Silent Assassin requirements (challenges aren't available with the servers offline - grrrr - and even with them once you do a challenge once it's permanently marked as done so experimenting would probably require me to wipe my save each time if that's even possible) I think I'm going to have to leave it.

I still intend to do at least one more video of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, so expect that next, though it could be a while.

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