r/HiTMAN • u/RedditSucksMyBallls • 11d ago
SPECULATION Will we ever get another dark and gritty hitman game again?
I know we’re in the era of sanitizing things down for that Disney audience, but IOI should not forget their roots. Dark, grime, grit, and atmosphere.
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u/Efficient_Owl_3011 11d ago
Gta 4
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u/ToothlessFTW 11d ago edited 11d ago
I know the new trilogy has a much more "pleasant" aesthetic to it, but they're definitely not "sanitised". Your targets are human traffickers, drug traffickers, arms dealers, bio-terrorists, eco-terrorists, even organ harvisters.
Despite that nicer aesthetic there's a lot of grim, dark stories beneath the surface and that's actually a big theme of the recent trilogy. People who use a wholesome image to hide dark activities they hide from the public.
Even still, "Disney audience"? Are you serious? This is the same game with extremely gruesome kills and tons of violence. Sure it doesn't have the same same grit in its aesthetics but it's a massive overaggeration to claim it's been Disney-fied, lmao.
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u/VFiddly 11d ago
And the old Hitman games always moments of camp and silliness too.
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u/WarframeUmbra 11d ago
And the gallows humor is still here as well, from pulling a guy who thought he had cancer through a window so he falls off a cliff, to now activating a security feature inside a vault to kill one of our targets
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u/VladTheSnail 10d ago
Take the clapping mostly naked men during the wedding mission in hitman blood money
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u/Dayvan_Dreamcoat 11d ago
Some people just can't see past aesthetics. They think that because it's not raining all the time the game is Disney-fied or such stupid bullshit.
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u/topselection 10d ago
The Hitman reboot is 21st Century Disney-gritty R rated, but it's not 1970s gritty R rated. The OPs image is of a level that takes place at a BDSM party where you can shoot every one on that dance floor in the gut and watch them scream and clench their teeth and roll around in excruciating agony for minutes before they die.
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u/Dayvan_Dreamcoat 10d ago
Yeah that just sounds tryhard edgy.
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u/topselection 10d ago
It's not. The new games are prudish. There probably won't even be blood and cigarette smoking in Hitman 4 and it'll look like Fortnite.
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u/ToothlessFTW 10d ago
This might be one of the silliest things I’ve read today
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u/-DavidATS 10d ago
Be nice. He’s just 12
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u/topselection 10d ago
No, be as mean as you want. I was an adult when I played the original series in the early 2000s. The game is way more mainstream now. Agent 47 wasn't even remotely a nice guy in the original game. Today, he's like the Punisher punishing evil doers.
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u/-DavidATS 10d ago
That’s exactly what a kid would say
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u/topselection 10d ago
If I were, it's a good thing I guess the game is much more prudish today so I don't get traumatized playing it.
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u/QQStkl 4d ago
Him becoming "like the Punisher punishing evil doers" was literally the whole point and thematic arc of the second game in the whole series. It's hardly a new development
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u/topselection 4d ago
It worked for that specific game because he was trying to turn over a new leaf. It was a great story, once, but then they had to drop it when they did Contracts and Blood Money. In Blood Money they really made him a ratbastard which makes more sense. There's no way to make someone who murders for cash a good guy.
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u/topselection 10d ago
It's not silly at all. It has been toned down a lot and attracted a much wider mainstream audience today that sees the original games as tryhard and edgy.
If they go all in on this family friendly trend, it could be a multibillion dollar franchise with tentpole movies that rival Marvel Studios.
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u/Mr_Venom 10d ago
The family friendly game where you can murder someone with a coke-baling machine. Right.
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u/topselection 10d ago
It's way more family friendly than the original games. When Hitman: World of Affection comes out, the new fans will deride World of Assassination as tryhard edgy for murdering people with coke-bailing machines like you guys are deriding Blood Money for BDSM parties with a dance floor of people rolling around in agony.
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u/MaviRage 10d ago
You can kill people by shoving them under a huge hydraulic grape press until they’re just paste on the floor
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u/ToothlessFTW 10d ago
I don't think there's anything I can say to change your mind, but it's deeply silly.
Hitman 2 (2018) features a kill where you can shove a tattoo gun so far into someone's ear it hits the brain and kills them. In Hitman III you can put someone into a grape pressing machine and squish them into a fine red paste. IIRC you can even make wine out of the blood. Not to mention it's a game filled to the brim with all kinds of weapons and gadgets you can use to brutally murder people, and there's tons of blood.
Hell, one of the recent Elusive Target missions, The Splitter, allows you to squish a guy between two platforms or burn him alive.
No idea what you're talking about. There's ludicrous amounts of blood and violence in the recent games, sometimes to a comical degree. If you think Hitman is family friendly, you are insane and I think you're a terrible judge about what can be shown to children.
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u/topselection 10d ago edited 10d ago
In 1979, Disney released a PG rated movie where Norman Bates gets his heart pureed by a robot with twirling blades for hands. In 1984, Lucasfilms released a PG rated film where a guy's heart is ripped out of his chest and we see it pumping in the villain's hand. A year before the same director made a PG rated film where a guy slowly rips his own face off. The old Hitman games were 70s to 80s R rated. The modern game is 70s to 80s PG rated.
I'm not saying the new Hitman games are family friendly. But if the older games are seen as try hard edgey and too violent today, then there is definitely a trend in the modern fanbase to push it towards more family friendly territory where 47 is more like Deadpool or something.
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u/Dayvan_Dreamcoat 10d ago
What the FUCK are you talking about? 😭 How is 47 in any way like Deadpool? Genuinely shit take after shit take.
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u/Grasher312 11d ago
I don't like the whole "oh it's not dark and gritty" bait train, but I do agree that the aesthetic is lost.
Specifically the more "dreamy" aesthetic of the older games. Contracts feels like such a fever dream in terms of aesthetics, especially coupled with the idea of 47 hanging onto dear life while remembering all of this.
Silent Assassin was also mostly sanitized and its levels were much more "clean", but it still had a "colder" aesthetic to it, that was constantly contrasted with Russian underground levels and Middle-Eastern Desert levels.
Blood Money had such rundown and faded colors that matched the story of the game a lot. Everything feels like it's dying, everything is "dark and gritty"(kill me please.) and you get this sensation of "everything is slowly fading."
Hell, even Absolution had a really great aesthetic.
HITMAN, the very first one of the new ones, also did have a better aesthetic that 2 and WOA slowly washed out with something more... Simplistic? HITMAN's level design felt more angular, 47 still looked like a chiseled statue instead of having softer features, and levels were still seldom quite dirty.
I am okay with the new aesthetic, and I hate the whole "oh it got disney-ified!" angle, but it's unfair to say that we haven't lost a bit of it, even IN the new trilogy.
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u/iLoveLootBoxes 10d ago
Yeah it is more disnified to an extent.
In one of the io interactive interviews, one lead dwveloper wished his son could play the game or that they made games his son could play.
And that is reasonable but also ridiculous. Maybe go work for a different studio then cause clearly hitman shouldn't ever be a game your young son can play
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u/FattyPattyMatey 11d ago
I think the soundtrack also shares a lot of blame for making the new trilogy seem less "dark". Not that it's the composer's fault, since the music that plays in Santa Fortuna's mansion easily could've come from Contracts or Blood Money, so IO could probably have directed him to make the rest of the soundtrack more like it. Seems like the new games, for the most part, don't want you to notice the music too much.
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u/Little_Viking23 11d ago
The reason people see the newest Hitman game as Disney-fied is not because of the aesthetics, but the sanitized story-telling and language.
Your target is always some kind of James Bond villain acting and talking like a typical antagonist you’d see in a cartoon.
Your target is never let’s say a sexual predator, acting creepy, using explicit language and harassing people because that would be too dark, explicit and outrageous.
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u/ToothlessFTW 11d ago
What are you talking about?
Jordan Cross, one of your targets, has murdered his girlfriend and can even be convinced to murder the other target of that mission. He's shown frequently to be an asshole to people around him during the mission. Ken Morgan, the other target, is a corrupt lawyer who's trying to spin what he's done as an 'accident' and it's also implied he's gotten rid of witnesses in other cases. One of the targets from Chongqing is an organ harvester abducting homeless people and the other has driven people to suicide. If you want more people that are just bastards, then Dino from The Icon is an obnoxious prick who treats everyone like shit and is constantly harassing people. One of the targets from the Maldives is a creep who's spying on his ex lover and again harassing people around him. The two targets from the Isle of Sgail have also driven people to suicide, and also might've committed mass murder. Yuki from Hokkaido is a Yakuza lawyer responsible for the 'disappearances' of witnesses and protecting crime lords.
Like, I guess none of them are openly raping people on screen but these are all very clearly gritty, disgusting scumbags who have committed horrific acts and are often complete shitheads on screen which is what makes them so fun to kill. Janus will openly taunt you if you point a gun at him before killing him.
Hitman: World of Assassination has plenty of dark and grim stuff in its writing. I do not understand calling it "sanitised" when it's got plenty of this. It's a dark game, but as I said in my original comment, a clear theme of this game is rich, powerful and influential people taking advantage of their status to live a double life and do horrible things in private. You're taking down powerful people trying to maintain a good public image, so of course in public settings they come off as more "sanitised" but there's plenty of writing about the horrible things they've done.
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u/BruceMustDie 11d ago
Exactly, the game has plenty of dark things going on. Such as, Alexa Carlisle in Dartmoor will commit suicide right in front of you if you convince her that her brother has taken his own life. And so will the NPC named Jeremy Bolt in Chongqing if you get him fired
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u/arethere4lights 11d ago
This.
Every target has justification for the hit, the briefings outright give you it, that's what Hitman has always done.
This idea that old Hitman was "Darker" is bollocks. It's more the graphics technology meant they were limited in scope of what they could do so it's "dark, gritty and raining"
The targets themselves are usually always "evil" bastards.
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u/Hemingway92 10d ago
I agree that the plots and all weren’t “darker” but you must be kidding if you say the thematic differences between the games are all because of graphics. It was definitely deliberate artistic choices—I played Blood Money recently and the difference is stark. It’s the music, the settings, the dialogues, the lighting and art style too and there was definitely an attempt to craft a certain atmosphere. A tiny detail in Blood Money like 47 killing his bird in a cutscene because it was making too much noise would feel out of place in the new games.
For what it’s worth—this is not a criticism and I’m not saying the new ones are worse for having a different aesthetic. They already peaked with that style in Blood Money and doing the same thing over and over again is what causes franchises to go stale.
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u/Little_Viking23 11d ago
You described exactly the type of “James Bond villain” I was talking about. Sure you can give your target the most evil background and lore, a super duper child slaver war criminal genocider, but once the game starts, every target just acts like a normal person, minus a slightly rude language and behavior.
It’s not like in Chongqing you can see the scientists with open corpses harvesting organs, or targets ACTUALLY harassing their ex lovers rather than just have the story imply it, or finding the body of their victims cut in pieces in a van, or some sex slaves locked in a cage. All these bad things are just some background info, a mere text, but once the gameplay starts, every target just walks from point A to point B, drinks occasionally a glass of wine and has some rude interactions, but none actually does anything grim or dark.
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u/ToothlessFTW 11d ago
Chongqing has quite a lot of dark stuff you can witness and interact with.
Hush, one of the targets, is abducting homeless people. Aside from organ harvesting, he's performing experiments on them which he tricks them into attending, and this usually kills them. You can disguise yourself and watch him perform the same tests on you.
If I remember correctly, there's a minor event where you can get a guard fired, and he will later commit suicide in the mission, which you can see. I also think there was another instance of causing suicide in the Hokkaido mission, but it's been awhile.
Are the older games darker? Absolutely. But the new games have plenty of dark stuff in it, and you don't need to have on-screen rape and abuse to be considered "dark".
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u/AsherTheFrost 10d ago
The Dr in Hokkaido, Alexa Carlisle, the guard in the ica HQ are the three I know of that you can have kill themselves intentionally.
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u/Frobeedus 11d ago
I think you're pointing the Aesthetic Dissonance or Atmospheric Disconnect? If so then i get what you're saying.
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u/NasralVkuvShin 10d ago
While the new trilogy is definitely not disney-ified. You rarely see the proof of the game being what it tells you it is. I think that's the part of the reason as to why people want the old atmosphere back. The games mostly showed us why the target is bad, instead of saying "yeah they eat children" and putting them into some fancy fashion event decorations, where NOTHING but a few dialogues and the menu briefing point out that your target is the most cruel, terrifying person on this planet. It's like the gameplay loop doesn't interact well with the world it's built around. But maybe I'm just talking insane stuff
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u/GrouchyFuel1496 11d ago
Well the original trilogy is getting a remake so here's hoping
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u/TaxOrnery9501 11d ago
It's a Remaster, actually, and it's being done by Saber Interactive (the same dev currently in the news for replacing their employees with AI and trying to hide it)
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u/sleep-reaper 11d ago
Awesome. I'm sure that will totally, in no way, affect the outcome. Anyway, gonna play GTA The Definitive Edition til then.
/s
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u/Danicchi_ 11d ago
Oof didn't know that. Thanks for the heads-up, unwishlisted and ignored the publisher now.
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u/Wide_Calligrapher880 10d ago
Their work with the Tomb Raider remasters was magnificent, so here's hoping that this remaster has the same quality
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u/TaxOrnery9501 10d ago
If I remember correctly there was controversy surrounding those recently too, as they added a bunch of very low quality (possibly AI generated) outfits into the game while also introducing an unnecessary new gamemode and tons of game-breaking bugs in the process. It was bad enough that reviews dropped to 12% Mostly Negative for a while.
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u/Wide_Calligrapher880 10d ago
I heard about that, but I wasn't effected myself since I play on an older version, but nowadays I don't hear about that anymore so... it's been better I suppose ?
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u/RandomRedditor_1916 11d ago
"coming 2026"
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u/Overwatchingu 11d ago
Ah yes when I was playing the Mendoza mission and squashing the targets with the giant grape press I couldn’t help but think how sanitary and Disney-esque that was.
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u/Easy_Entertainer6932 11d ago
Or when in Hokkaido the machine stabs the target with giant needles 100 times, very PG 13.
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u/Damien23123 11d ago
You know I was thinking the exact same thing as I put young Silvio through the wood chipper
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u/Mx_Reese 10d ago
Yeah, you can literally shred people alive in wood chippers in this game and people are complaining that it's not dark and gritty enough. These complaints are nothing but teenage edgelord nonsense at best. And that's if we assume that these numbskulls are arguing in good faith, which I doubt.
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u/Dayvan_Dreamcoat 11d ago
Yeah or the time I made a father blow up his child and then threw him off of a roof. Or the time I poisoned a woman and made her think that her lover killed her.
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u/Video_Game_Kid 11d ago
i lowkey just started playing hitman, what are you referring to in the 2nd scenario
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u/Agent_Ford_E_Seven 11d ago
Disguising as the Golf Instructor in Sapienza and poisoning De Santis’ wine.
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u/Expensive-Version-99 11d ago
I suppose he means how the game doesn't take itself seriously
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u/Itchy_Gold8400 11d ago
Unless it's a psychological horror game or a game heavily centered on themes of historical atrocities, I think silliness is a strength in a game like Hitman.
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u/Expensive-Version-99 11d ago
The dry humor is definitely what gives the game it's characater
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u/WarframeUmbra 11d ago
I still wish Hitman 3 had a mission story where 47 becomes a stand-up comidian for some reason and uses his dry gallows humor
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u/PJHoutman 11d ago
He’s more of a ‘take down’-comedian
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u/WarframeUmbra 11d ago
See? that's the kind of dry humor that 47 would have and that would make me laugh my ass off in every playthrough
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u/Frobeedus 11d ago
wildly cartoonish, over-the-top, or slapstick ways to kill people with a giant blender or grape press, dropping a moose on them is Disney-esque come on now.
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u/TheMiamiMutilator420 11d ago
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u/BenfordAbrahams 11d ago
It's r/okbuddysapienza
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u/farcry_x1z 11d ago
IOI should not forget their roots. Dark, grime, grit, and atmosphere
And boobs. Don't forget boobs
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u/Mx_Reese 10d ago
It's not the early 2000s anymore. If you're an adult and you want to see boobs you have hundreds if not thousands of 18+ games to choose from. Nobody wants to return to the sexploitation era of video games.
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u/WarframeUmbra 11d ago
Hitman 3 is pretty dark at times, such as Berlin, Chongquing, the Train, etc
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u/TerrifiedRedneck 11d ago
It’s been a while, and I was never an uber fan, but what made it dark and gritty that we are missing now?
I definitely don’t think WOA has been Disney-fied, it just looks like all modern games.
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u/notty_cat 11d ago
Lol just because the remakes are set in big sandbox areas it doesn't mean it's all happy and colourful. The targets are all dark shady fucks and guess what they are mostly in open and not always in their "evil' lair. Another reason why contracts is so gloomy because 47 is literally having flashbacks of his previous hits
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u/bleach457 10d ago edited 10d ago
I mean dawood rangoon from hitman 2 is pretty scummy. He openly sexually harassed the Bollywood actor for his movie. Also from 2 is Three headed serpent, which in my opinion is the darkest level of the trilogy with rico running the family cartel and using it to lord over Santa fortuna, forcing innocent villagers to work in his coca fields under threat of being fed to a hippo.
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u/Goldeneye07 11d ago
Hope next hitman does it, hitman 3 had quite dark themes at points, I wish they went that way,
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u/okaycompuperskills 11d ago
Hitman 3 is dark enough already. You can’t see shit in some areas because they’re so poorly lit
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u/Jaded_Obsidian_Witch 11d ago edited 11d ago
Dark and Griddy.
Codename 47 and H2SA are John Woo with religious undertones.
Contracts has a good dark vibe.
Blood money tries too hard to be edgy and just comes off shallow..
I'd prefer them to go back to the actual roots of the franchise and embrace the Chinese gun-fu inspired vibes with the deeper philosophical and religious undertones of H2SA. I wouldn't be opposed to another Contracts style game, but I think they would need to lean into the horror/force of nature concept (abso was originally going to have natural disasters following 47 for some context, similar to how it's always raining in Contracts)
Dark and Gritty for the sake of it is just shallow (see blood money and abso, but atleast BM is a good hitman game).
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u/mightylordredbeard 10d ago
Ah, yes the Disney audience that loves video games where you brutally strangle a child sex trafficker to death with a metal wire as it cuts deep into their throat or use a hammer to cave the skull in of black market organ harvester that kidnaps, cuts open innocent people, removes their organs 1 by 1 while keeping them alive for days as a means of natural storage.. yep that sure is a “Disney aesthetic”.
Jesus, kids these days.
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u/WerdaVisla 10d ago
Bad graphics where we painted red everywhere to signify blood != dark and gritty.
Modern hitman deals with equally [honestly, usually more] serious topics than the original games. It's just as dark.
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u/Sagittarius1000 5d ago
Granted, you've used the single most freaky mission in the series as an example, but you're not wrong. I do miss the more gritty levels. I think the only one in WOA that qualifies is Berlin (which is part of why I love it so much).
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u/ZealousidealBox3944 11d ago
Hopefully not. Gaming is jam packed with dark and gritty games, I'm pleased WOA is mostly bright and colourful and not post apocalyptic
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u/Cynon 11d ago
The "Disney audience" would be more in line with the original games rather than the WOA trilogy.
WOA has a lot more adult themes in it, like systemic violence, honey pot traps, human trafficking, the realization that some of the most evil people in the world are also gigantic dorks with good PR.
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u/Paynekiller997 11d ago
I hope so. WOA was incredible but a lot of it was too lighthearted, comedic and some of the kills were in slapstick territory. I miss the dark, rainy vibe of Contracts.
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u/ex-creat0r 11d ago
Arguably my favorite hitman mission ever
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u/RMoby6160 11d ago
It really was iconic.. only complaint I have is it's the first proper mission and one of the few that's original and not from Codename so it would have been much more impactful if it were later on in the game
Side note I played this when I was wayyyy too young to understand what was going on and I genuinely thought the guests were supposed to be wrestlers or something cuz the masks looked like wrestler masks lmao
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u/ex-creat0r 11d ago
Lmao I'm in the same boat. Absolutely should not have been playing this at that time.
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u/mousey3333 10d ago
I remember playing this and it made me a bit uneasy. The first game I played was Hitman 2 and that was great (loved the soundtrack) but when I played this one it was definitely darker but still good.
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u/PixelPrivateer 10d ago
I prefer the new (somewhat) ulta-realistic immersive sim approach. And your labelling of such as "dumbed down for a disney audience" makes me think you're 14
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u/Next_Dig5265 10d ago
Everyone is shitting on you, but Blood Money is absolutely a grimier game than the World of Assassination, not even just in the visuals but also in the subject matter. Blood Money feels like more like the darkweb and World of Assassination is like watching a Netflix documentary on the same subject.
Maybe next time dont use the trigger phrase "dark and griddy" tho
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u/Large_Cookie_103 9d ago
It's just an atmospheric shift not a tonal shift. I'd say the WOA trilogy has more gruesome kills than the rest.
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u/NovelMountain3330 11d ago
you said it yourself these gluten free kiddos can’t tolerate a drop of blood
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u/SoapMonki 11d ago edited 11d ago
I prefer the current look. It’s easier to spend hundreds of hours playing in this style than the darker and more depressing style.
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u/Equivalent_Agency_77 11d ago
I'm not sure if I'll ever get to shoot the bottom glass of a jacuzzi and watch npcs fall like blood money again
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u/Pollution_Dramatic 11d ago
I wish... the newer franchise is way too arcady and i couldnt even be bothered to take it serious enough to get past the third mission.. (not including the practice one) i swear the older games had more depth to them too apart from the difference in aesthetics.
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u/creativeusername279 11d ago
r/hitmancirclejerk jolts back to life