Hitman: Absolution

In this gameplay screenshot, Agent 47 is disguised as a policeman. Disguises allow players to gain access to previously restricted areas.

Hitman: Absolution is a stealth game in which the player assumes the role of a hitman named Agent 47. Presented from a third-person perspective, the gameplay centers around completing set objectives within a series of levels.[8][9] Objectives can range from simply reaching the end of the level, to eliminating specific individuals.[9] The players choose how to complete each level, taking branching paths to get to a target or location.[10] Players may use pistols, bottles or bricks, assault rifles, shotguns, fiber-wire, or steel pipe against enemies if opting for the action-oriented approach, or avoid enemies altogether, not being seen, using disguises, blending into the environment, and only attacking the set target(s), if using the stealth-oriented approach.[11][12][13] Agent 47 also has the 'Instinct' ability that lets the player monitor enemies more easily.[10] There are also environmental ways to kill or distract individuals; players can use poison to spike coffee, pull switches to make a disco ball fall and break, cause a massive explosion at a gas station, pull a switch to cause scaffolding to fall down, cause fires, or set off fireworks.[10][14] Players complete chapters in order to progress through the story. The player journeys to various locations, including a mansion, library, strip club, gun store, wrestling arena, courthouse, and hotel during the story.[14]

The game introduces an online option to the series, 'Contracts', where players can create their own missions for other players to complete.[15] Players choose one of the areas from the game's story missions and decide which non-player characters (NPCs) are required to be eliminated, what weapon must be used to eliminate each target, what disguise is required, whether the body must be hidden or not and if the player is allowed to be spotted by the AI.[16] "Contracts" was shut down in May 2018 due to IO Interactive not owning or controlling the online servers but needing to comply with GDPR legislation.[17]

Genetically-engineered assassin Agent 47 (David Bateson) receives a contract from his employers, the International Contract Agency (ICA), to kill his former handler Diana Burnwood (Marsha Thomason), who betrayed the ICA for unknown reasons and sabotaged their funding and database, forcing them to reform. 47 confronts Diana at her Chicago estate and seemingly shoots her. Before dying, Diana confesses that she betrayed the ICA to protect a genetically-engineered teenage girl named Victoria (Isabelle Fuhrman) from a life of violence as an assassin, and asks 47 to look after Victoria in her place. 47 agrees, causing his new handler, Benjamin Travis (Powers Boothe), to brand him a traitor to the ICA.

After dropping Victoria off at the Redwood Orphanage, 47 meets disgraced ICA informant Birdie (Steven Bauer), who asks him to assassinate a local crime boss (James Sie) in exchange for information. After the hit, Birdie tells 47 about Blake Dexter (Keith Carradine), head of a home defense system company, who has taken an interest in Victoria. 47 sneaks into Dexter's room at the Terminus Hotel and learns that he is planning to kidnap Victoria and sell her to the highest bidder. 47 attempts to kill Dexter, but is knocked out, framed for the murder of a maid, and left to die in Dexter's suite after the latter sets it on fire. Escaping from the hotel, 47 kills Dexter's informant Dom Osmond (Jon Curry) at his strip club, but learns that Dexter has hired a group of mercenaries led by Edward Wade (Larry Cedar) to capture Victoria. Despite 47's efforts to stop them, they capture Birdie, who betrays Victoria's location to save himself. 47 defends Victoria at the orphanage and manages to kill Wade, but Dexter's son Lenny (Shane Stevens) grabs Victoria and escapes.

In the town of Hope, South Dakota, firmly ruled by Dexter's private military company, 47 eliminates Lenny's gang, the Hope Cougars, who were planning to kidnap Victoria from Dexter and sell her to a rival weapons company, and interrogates Lenny for Victoria's whereabouts. After killing Lenny or abandoning him in the desert, 47 infiltrates Dexter Industries' laboratory to kill the scientists who examined Victoria and destroy their research data on her, and later kills Dexter's deformed bodyguard Sanchez (Isaac C. Singleton Jr.) in an underground cage fight. While recuperating at a hotel, 47 is attacked by "The Saints", Travis's personal hit squad, but manages to eliminate them.

47 eventually finds Victoria in the Hope Courthouse jail, but is captured and tortured by Dexter, until the latter is called off to a meeting with Travis, who wants to buy Victoria for $10 million. 47 escapes into the streets and pursues Hope's corrupt sheriff Clive Skurky (Jon Gries), who is on Dexter's payroll, while avoiding ICA agents searching for him. 47 corners and interrogates Skurky, who reveals Dexter is meeting with Travis in Chicago, before killing him. At the Blackwater Park in Chicago, 47 kills Dexter's secretary Layla Stockton (Traci Lords), before pursuing Dexter himself to the top of the park. Dexter tries to escape with Victoria via helicopter, but 47 mortally wounds him and rescues Victoria. After lamenting the loss of his son and money, Dexter is left to die alone.

Several months later, Travis and his men visit Diana's grave, suspecting she has faked her death, but 47 ambushes them, as he was tasked to do so in a letter left by Diana, which also mentioned that Victoria was created by Travis's funding without his ICA superiors' knowledge. After 47 mortally wounds him, Travis rants at him for wasting Victoria's potential for the ICA, and asks whether Diana is really dead, to which 47 responds "You will never know" before finishing him off. Sometime later, 47 observes Diana and Victoria from a rooftop across Lake Michigan, confirming that Diana faked her death with 47's help and is now looking after Victoria. The game ends with a message from Diana to Agent 47 welcoming him back to the ICA and thanking him, as his actions have helped purge the ICA of internal corruption. In the final scene, Detective Cosmo Faulkner (Jonathan Adams), who has been tracking 47 since the Terminus Hotel fire, is having trouble discovering 47's identity until Birdie appears and offers to help him for a price, as the door slowly close.

Though plans to continue the Hitman franchise were first announced in 2007,[18] it was not until May 2009 that Eidos confirmed the game was in development.[19] Certain plot details for the game were rumored in 2009, stating that the game's story would lead Agent 47 to a low point from which he would have to rebuild himself.[20] On 20 April 2011, Square Enix filed the trademark for the name Hitman: Absolution in Europe, leading sites to speculate that it would be the name of the fifth Hitman game.[21] On 6 May 2011, a teaser trailer was released, confirming the title Hitman: Absolution. The trailer briefly showed Agent 47 attaching a suppressor and a rattlesnake coiled around his signature Silverballer pistol.[22] It has been reported the game will be a "familiar and yet significantly different experience from other Hitman games."[23] On 9 October 2011, a full gameplay trailer entitled "Run for Your Life" was released.[24]

Originally William Mapother had been cast as Agent 47, replacing original voice actor David Bateson. Bateson had not been notified of his replacement and only found out when the first trailer was released. However, following fan backlash, Bateson was rehired just six months before the game's release. Mapother's motion capture performance for Agent 47 is still included in the game.[25]

In 2023, chief creative officer of IO, Christian Elverdam said that Absolution "is fundamentally a really good stealth-action game" and that many of the lessons learned in creating it can be seen in World of Assassination trilogy.[26]

The Professional Edition of Hitman: Absolution features Professional Clamshell packaging for the game, a Hitman art book, making of DVD and the "Agency Gun Pack" DLC.[27]

• Official website