Hitman: Absolution NPCs have dedicated identities

Enemies in Hitman: Absolution won’t be nameless goons like your garden variety stealth (or action, or stealth/action) game.

January 23, 2012 3:30 PM4

Enemies in Hitman: Absolution won’t be nameless goons like your garden variety stealth (or action, or stealth/action) game. According to game director Tor Blystad, Agent 47’s latest gives a dedicated name and identity to each NPC you come across.

IO Interactive is also focusing on giving NPCs a wide range of responses to their changing environments. Blystad said that the studio recently held a “big” audio recording with more sessions planned.

“We have a script of 2000 pages for the AI alone. It’s huge,” Blystad told Videogamer. The first gameplay footage of Hitman: Absolution (below) shows off just some of the AI’s varied responses to the world.

What stops every piece of planned audio from making it into the final product? According to Blystad, “logistics and memory” will determine how much content the team can “cram in.”

Of course to a true stealth assassin, targets won’t have a moment to say a word and their name is completely inconsequential.