Interview with Hitman Absolution Art Director Roberto Marchesi

During E3 2012 I met Roberto Marchesi, an Art Director for Square Enix who is working on the new Hitman Absolution title .  I managed to get an interview with Roberto and learnt a lot of new interesting things about Hitman Absolution.  Check out the video after the jump. For those who wish to read the interview as well, a text version of the interview is also included.

Dan: Hi this is Dan from Push-Start and I am with…

Roberto: Roberto Marchesi, the art director for Hitman Absolution.

Dan: One of the things we noticed that with the new Hitman is the visual side of things has really upgraded itself. Has it been hard work to get a new setting for the game? How many new locations are there as well?

Roberto: The setting has kind of given itself for us we wanted to have a much more focused experience and we tried to have it only take place in a few locations, one of them is Chicago, and the other a fictional city called ‘Hope’ placed in South Dakota. This didn’t prevent us from having a huge span of locations inside the cities so the player will actually experience many different levels with many low class areas or high class and many things I can’t talk about right now.  From a graphical point of view we really wanted to push it and make every single level stand out if possible and for that we needed the new engine to help us create the mood, the setting and the graphical level that we wanted to achieve.

Dan: How open is the game going to be, will you be able to venture off and go to different locations?

Roberto: We’re building levels with checkpoints in them, but the checkpoints are extremely big in some of the levels. We’re showing here in E3 this year are two different levels; one is a hands on which contains one hit and several ways to take out your target and that is not one of the bigger levels, that’s actually one of the early levels of the game that’s supposed to train your mindset to help you take out a target, but it can give you many different outcomes. But we’re also showing the streets of hope demo which is a much bigger level where you have up to five different targets and one kidnap too, so you have different rooms, locations, areas that you can explore, and they will keep your hands full.

Dan: With the weapons in the game are there any different types we’ll  be using

Well we have a huge arsenal and that varies from classic firearms to much more mundane props. And that is what actually makes it special in our view, the fact you can turn everyday objects into weapons. What we are showing in the demo here is that you can turn a screwdriver into a lethal weapon in 47’s hands. He does also have access to explosives and more direct firearms  but anything goes when you’re playing Hitman.

Dan: Along with the single player, will there be any multiplayer aspects to the game?

Roberto: No, the multiplayer as people perceive it is just not a good fit for this franchise and the type of gameplay that we are trying to create. What we do have is a very competitive aspect tied into the scoring system and tied into our {preordering sense}, (3.36) where we’re introducing it for the first time. We do have friend leader-boards, national leader-boards and worldwide leader-boards .every action you take into the game has a consequence and that consequence does affect the score you get. What we wanted to create with Absolution was a certain competitiveness about how you complete a level; we have a scoring system that tracks what you’re doing. So if you complete your mission without being spotted or by taking down your targets in a way that doesn’t raise suspicion you will get more points. To that it’s also tied in how much time it actually takes to complete a level and how many bullets you fire during the play-through. This is all part of giving you a unique scoring system so you can compare in the leader-boards.

Dan: Will there be any sequences in the game where players will be able to use a car for instance?

Roberto: No, there will be no car sequences.

Dan: How far does the story take place after the last Hitman game?

Roberto: the story does take place after the events of Blood Money but the time is really not relevant compared to the story we wanted to tell.