YMMV / World of Assassination Trilogy

• Hitman (2016)
  • Agent 47: Birth of the Hitman
• Hitman 2
• Hitman 3

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• Best Level Ever: All of the levels in the trilogy have fans (even Colorado has gotten a better reputation since 2016), but Sapienza, Hokkaido, Miami, Whittleton Creek, Dartmoor, Berlin and Mendoza are the levels that tend to be the ones that people rave about the most, and rank top of "Best Level" lists as a result.
• Cant Unhear It: Jane Perry is widely considered by fans to be the de-facto Diana Burnwood voice actor, and going back to the older games makes it very hard to unhear her voice when reading older games' briefings.
• Complete Monster:
  • Hitman (2016):
    • Etta Davis, nicknamed the Angel of Death, is a kindly-looking Serial Killer specializing in poisonings, blunt weapons, and violent accidents. A retired nurse, Davis was connected to 47 murders in retirement homes and hospitals throughout Great Britain, including a former member of parliament who she killed by sabotaging his wheelchair. Fleeing to Marrakesh to avoid police investigation, Davis proceeds to murder three men, including the local headmaster. When a troop of soldiers arrive to visit the headmaster, Davis manipulates them into escorting her around the city, all while planning to poison the commanding officer.
    • "Patient Zero": Oybek Nabazov, his second-in-command Sister Yulduz, and Owen Cage are the leaders of Liberation, who attempted to cause a pandemic by having brainwashed cult members inject themselves with a lethal virus and spread it around the globe. While Oybek is a fanatical "serial cultist" who has spent the last three decades founding cults and leading them down a self-destructive path that resulted in several mass suicides, Yulduz has secretly invested large amounts of money into security and pharmacy companies to profit from the ensuring chaos, and plans to leave Oybek and rest of the cult to their fates once they have set their plan in motion. When both of them are killed by Agent 47, Owen Cage willingly infects himself in order to become Patient Zero to wipe out all life with the virus, and when contained in Hokkaido, can possibly infect hundreds of others in the quarantined zone if he infected Agent 47.
  • Hitman 3's "End of an Era": "Hush" is a cyberterrorist working with Human Traffickers and organ harvesters. Previously working for his home nation of Khandanyang, he purged dozens of dissidents and rebels before fleeing during one of their periodic purges. When his protegee, Olivia Hall, learned about the true nature of their work and confronted him, Hush attempted to kill her. As overseer of an ICA data facility in Chongqing, he experiments on the city's homeless population with implants, agonizingly shattering their minds and leaving them broken husks.
• Continuity Lockout:
  • This trilogy is one continuous narrative, so missing any one game will cause this to happen. However, the developers have made the gaming public very aware of the Embedded Precursor nature of the trilogy (each game was made to be playable in the newest instalment), so going from one game to the next (or even buying the first two games for cheap) will net you the locations for free in the following game.
  • The tie-in Agent 47: Birth of the Hitman comic is tied to the running plot of this series, and while it isn't strictly necessary to read all of it, it does shed more light, and give more depth to 47, Diana, and Lucas Grey (Subject 6) by giving them some more sympathetic motivations that aren't explored in the games. Hitman 2 had a bit of a problem of not visually explaining the comic's events very well due to the cut in budget, relying on the characters speaking in-game and in cutscenes. It took until 3's cutscenes for everything to make more sense when the budget was bigger, and therefore dropped a lot more overt, and better explained, references to the comic as a result.
• Dancing Bear: It would not be hyperbole to say players bought each game in succession because each previous game was available in the new entry (2016's mission in 2, 2 and 2016's mission's in 3), for free for returning players. The fact the final entry compressed all the assets down to 55GB initially only made it more enticing to pick up.
• Even Better Sequel: Each game in the trilogy iterates and improves on the last:
  • 2016 was seen as a good first step in the right direction; better than anything in Absolution, but not quite perfect. It made instinct more of an informative tool instead of a perishable resource, it added Death to Spies enforcer mechanics to make NPC's more consistent and levels less irritating to navigate, and overall made the levels much bigger and better to look at and play.
  • Hitman 2 brought back the stealth grass from Absolution, added Crowd Blending, and implemented working mirrors. The briefcase and PiP windows returned from Blood Money, the latter being much less distracting than in the latter game, and it expanded the levels' even more with more complex AI and bigger maps.
  • Meanwhile Hitman 3 added more puzzle elements to the game: power fuses to activate certain switchboxes and traps, keypads to access buildings and rooms, Permanently unlockable shortcuts to reward exploration, not to mention there's unique AI in Mendoza for Diana and the Berlin ICA Agents, making a lot more rewarding risks to gameplay in the process. It also added a camera to function as a way to scope out targets (like the binocular in Blood Money) and acts as an in-game Photo Mode.
    • Not to mention the file size of the third and final game in the trilogy had players before launch fearing it would be too big to fit on a single SSD, as 2 was already 159GB with everything installed (hello Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) and its 250GB install size) to somehow being one of the smallest PC games released to date, ending up releasing to be 55GB in size with every game installed within it, which garnered a lot of praise from the press and fans alike.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: A news reporter in Mendoza mentions that Ken Morgan's death was "several months ago", which completely ruins many fan-theorised timelines◊ when recounting the events of the trilogy, especially as it's quite hard to believe that five months have passed between Club 27 and The Farewell, given how much takes place in that time-frame (including a separate campaign and multiple Elusive Targets!). Not to mention there's an explicit gap where the gang need to stake out The Ark Society for two months, essentially meaning the time frame is shortened to three months.
• Fan Nickname:
  • As with past and series games, players tend to use the word "loops" when describing the routines all NPC's take in a given level. Everything from guards, civilians, and, of course, your targets, they all follow the same path every few minutes and will almost always go back to their starting point (or on a loop, hence the name).
  • "Super-Enforcer" for any enforcer that can see through all disguises (or the great majority).
  • When talking online, fans tend to either shorten the mission or location name, or use the location name itself to refer to the main mission, specific examples can be found on each games' trivia page.
  • The ICA19 pistol quickly gained the nickname of "Blackballer" among fans.
• Fountain of Memes: Diana, whose expanded role and Welcome to Corneria tendencies in this trilogy made her new Mission Control commentary, intel and snark to become very quotable among fans, who've in turn turned her from 47's enigmatic colleague to a Girl Friday who'll enthusiastically list the target's name, resume and other (in)significant details as soon as 47 catches a glimpse of them.
• Magnificent Bitch: Olivia Hall is a young, brilliant hacker serving as Lucas Grey's right-hand woman and chief hacker in his war against Providence. After 47 defects to Grey and assassinates Providence's former Constant, Janus, she tracks the coffin to the Isle of Sgàil and they kidnap Providence's second-in-command, Arthur Edwards, forcing him to give up the names of the Partners. When the Partners fake their deaths, she hacks into HAVEN's servers to recover their forged identities. After an ambush leaves Grey dead, Diana missing and the ICA after her and 47, Hall guides 47 as he infiltrates an ICA data facility in Chongqing so he could hack its data core and leak out the ICA's operatives and clients to the public, shutting them down for good. Afterwards, Hall tracks down Diana for him before bidding him farewell.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: The trilogy ran into this issue even more than with most previous Hitman games — the broad story of the trilogy isn't disliked, but it's often treated as more of a supplementary element when compared to the exceptional gameplay and mini-stories per mission that tend to get more love and attention by fans. This was especially pronounced as the trilogy's episodic nature and scattering of necessary multimedia made it quite confusing to follow as everything was unfolding, a gaming equivalent to it being written for the trade. While the trilogy is now complete and is much more comprehensible in finished form, there's still quite a lot to go through, and some necessary details are spread out beyond the game itself, such as in the comic book or short stories.
• The Producer Thinks of Everything: The trilogy's story is a deceptively simple Conspiracy Thriller, but the more you dig around its lore, the more players will realise how much of each level, their targets, and notable NPC's are connected to each other in one massive narrative web, even if some of the references were added later. The game is structured to give the player information via NPC background chatter (The Partners are first mentioned in Colorado, and later get mention in the comics, and then in the second game), many of the things Targets and NPC's say act as a kind of Chekhov's Gun, Call-Back or a Call-Forward to later events, and very few prominent names get discarded (Jason Portmans' company, Quantum Leap, is mentioned in all three games in various capacities), while a lot of the games' targets, themes and narrative are repeated to great effect. From adding fairly obscure lore from 2004, and releasing a comic book series with the express purpose of making references to it in later games, the writers showed a lot of dedication in making a complex world here.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The game needs to be online to be fully playable, with Challenges, Elusive Targets, Contracts Mode, and Escalations (among other things), are all locked away behind the Always-Online requirement. While an Offline mode does exist, and the game allows instant re-connection to avoid loss of progress, the only notable change to the mode was made back in November 28th, 2016, making unlockable gear usable offline, the only condition is that they still need to be unlocked online. This came to a head in 2021 when the developers released the game on GOG, a service which prides itself on delivering DRM-free games, but this caused backlash as players disagreed, which led to it being pulled from the store.
  • In Paris, there is one particular guard in the party area outside that, for reasons unexplained, is an enforcer for 47 in his default suit, despite having a formal invitation. This was likely to take advantage of the new crowd blending feature, but this change has sparked some confusion and ire from fans for making the map unnecessarily tricky, and some even consider it a Kaizo Trap. The "Vampire Magician" disguise, rather bafflingly, does not prompt the same suspicion from that same guard, despite clearly looking goofier and more out of place.
  • Sniper Assassin mode has a really, really long grind per-level. The incentive to play is to upgrade your weapon each tier, making it easier to complete subsequent runs, which is all fine and dandy. What players take issue with is the time to beat each missions' mastery is painfully slow. Not only does it make the levels unfun to replay, there's no end-game reward for both "The Last Yardbird" and "The Pen and the Sword" (something "Crime and Punishment" does have, but the unlock is identical stat-wise to the Jaeger 7 Tuatara, so there's little incentive to obtain it outside of bragging rights), all of which mean players have largely sworn off completing the Sniper Assassin missions to their fullest. Even the challenges for the level do not provide much of an incentive as they tend to focus on easter eggs and specific events that require guides to find, or require shooting everything on sight.
  • The entire concept of Elusive Targets has been a major point of contention, as not a lot of people like the idea of a single-player game having content that's only available for a brief window of real-life time. While 3's Elusive Target Arcade does solve this problem in a roundabout way, the increasing scrutiny towards time limited content, and the mass-reactivations in later games has players getting tired of their limited time nature.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: 2016 had one goal in mind; refine every mechanic in Hitman to make it more accessible while still providing a challenge to veteran and new players alike, a trend that continued in the later two entries. That does mean some past games' mechanics were either removed or changed for this trilogy to meet this goal:
  • The fullscreen map now pauses the game instead of being updated in real time (as was the case in Blood Money), though positions of targets or notable NPC's do correspond to where they are the moment you open the map). On the other hand, there is a mini-map on the lower left corner, which does works in real-time.
  • Casual mode acts as this, as the intention behind it is to let players screw around in an Easier Than Easy version of a given level so they can get used to the layout and the mission stories before trying it out on the other difficulties. It's also useful if this is the players' first time playing a stealth game, giving them the breathing room and time to adjust to the mechanics.
  • Instinct returns from Absolution, but is no longer limited by the "Focus" resource meter, it's now an infinite tool, and has been rebalanced to be separated from the disguise mechanics. Instead, the functionality is more aimed toward keeping track of targets and seeing what items in the level can be picked up, used, or to help stage accidents.
  • Manual saving is back instead of the checkpoint saving in Absolution. Additionally, it actually saves the map state instead of just mission progress, so you no longer have to reset any traps or worry about miraculously recovered guards. There are still some things that are not saved by this (some easter eggs don't allow for Save Scumming, and the odd physics quirk), but the great majority of the map is as it was when you leave it if you decide to carry on later.
  • Unlike previous games, there is no longer any limit to the number of times players can load a save or make a save during missions, heck, the game even autosaves regularly and those are treated separately in case of the unexpected. Even Master mode (Professional mode in 2016) allows the player to save once per mission, even when autosave is turned off there, and the game expects the player to use it.
  • Guard disguises now allow carrying any weapon openly, instead of just a select few in the previous games. Note that this does not apply to 2016 and its Professional difficulty; guards will become suspicious if they see you with a weapon that no other guards are using (though this also applies to other non-weapons too such as a lead pipe).
  • Poisoning foods is now much easier than before, as wearing food-related disguises (a chef or waiter) allows using poison in public.
  • As the suspicion mechanics changed from universal (as in Absolution) to NPC-specific, someone discovering the body you took your disguise from doesn't compromise your clothes, the only way for everyone to be hostile to you is for the tattle tale to tell others, which can take some time.
  • Speaking of disguise suspicion, Absolution's disguise mechanics (everyone can see through their own disguise) was dropped in favor of Death to Spies disguise mechanics (certain people can see through certain disguises), which is both more consistent to play against (generally target bodyguards or high-ranking staff positions see through most disguises as they are expected to know everyone), and less irritating for the player.
  • NPCs don't react to blood, unlike the previous games where the mess from a kill would arouse suspicion or even lead to the discovery of a body.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike:
  • Items such as the coin and lockpick are no longer standard. Considering that 47 can literally carry in as many melee weapons and pistols as he wants, it's odd that he can't fit some coins and a lockpick in without sacrificing something else. In past games., your only limit was your wallet. Still, if you need a lockpick you can put it in a suitcase or hidden stash and get it later.
  • Subverted in Casual mode. Most direct action is a last resort and discouraged in the main game; on Casual mode on the other hand, the AI is very forgiving for those who get into firefights often.
  • Certain situations block saving, such as being in combat. Got yourself in a bit of a pickle, and now half the map's guards are coming for you? Hiding out in a safe location, and you really want to save in case a guard happens to stumble across you? Well, tough, you have to wait it out.
  • In previous games, direct action was an option as a last resort; Not this time. Attempting to get into a gunfight, particularly against multiple enemies armed with shotguns and automatic weapons will result in a rather swift death, as 47's ability to take damage has been reduced.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: It is extremely common for players, once they've done most of the mastery on a given mission, to just walk around a level and pay a lot more attention to incidental dialogue made for the crowd NPC's (such as the bar conversations in Hokkaido, or the chatter in Sapienza's town square), which would otherwise be mostly ignored. This can lead to anything from amusing conversations about the color pink, people playing mobile games, talking about the goings-on in the location, or may actually be some Foreshadowing to later game events.
• Spiritual Adaptation: To the James Bond franchise. The Hitman series has always been inspired by that film series, but in this trilogy, it's quite a lot more pronounced. Pretty much any mission in (2016) and 2 are the exact kind of high-profile events 007 himself would be sent to infiltrate, not to mention having enough weapons and gadgets to make Q-branch blush. The music itself is also very bond-esque thanks to the stylings of Neils Bye Nielson, particularly in 2016. Became Hilarious in Hindsight, as on the 19th November 2020, IO Interactive announced they were working on an actually officially licensed James Bond game; codenamed Project 007, something that was met with critical praise after the last game in Bond's repertoire; 007 Legends was not well received, after being only out on store shelves for almost two months, and then being pulled off sale by Activision at MGM's insistence.
• Special Effects Failure: While the blood effects are otherwise fine, the puddles that form under corpses don't interact with the environment such as ledges, shoes, or especially water; while in real life the two liquids would mix, here it's completely possible to see a puddle of blood form on the ground underwater. The end result is a static texture that looks awkward at points, especially since no-one reacts to it.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: There are elitist players online (often with several hundreds of hours in the game) who feel that Opportunities and Mission Stories feel like a cheap way to do the more elaborate kills, equating it to an "easy mode" for the game. Their entire purpose, however, is to help players work out how a level works, especially if they are new to the series, and the systems eases them into a mindset of what to look for in a given level, and how to do specific things. Not helping is when people recommend turning them off to new players, which is just asking for trouble. In fact, when Ambrose Island released for Hitman 3, a common criticism, even among veteran players, was the lack of Mission Stories for the level, making the level harder to learn initially. While the games encourage freedom and exploration, many people don't realise there is no shame in having help, especially if it means players understand the game better. This also ignore the fact that the game lets you turn them off (or limit their usefulness) if the player so desires.

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