Agent 47 is about to become much more dangerous. With Hitman World of Assassination By queuing his PS VR2 shot on March 27, the designer of senior games Eskil Mohl and the main and main technical designer Toke Krainert understood the mission – and delivered essential information on the game.
What are the nice things that players can do now in the game via VR?
Eskil: We now have an incredible quantity of new interactions. There is a scene where you get a safe combination and you can read it visibly in your hand. The tactile feeling of looking at a note as this is incredible. Each little game in the front game was a button press, and now you hold your hand and touch things. We were originally afraid of not holding visually and audiblely, so we were very surprised. Another is that you can look away or use your arm to hide your eyes in flashbang grenades.
Puff: There are so many ways to play the game, and I think it improves in virtual reality. It opens this toolbox even more.
Eskil: The other day, Toke had one thing in his left hand, and another to his right, and he threw them and caught them. And he suggested that he would try to juggle three things – he was like, technically, it is possible, right?
How was the fight changed by putting the game in VR?
Eskil: It is considerably improved. You can now use a wheel of articles and weapons instead of taking a break. And with the weapons, you feel much harder to cook. Before putting it in VR, getting into battle was almost a state of failure because of the frequency to which you die, but now it's very fun.
You can enclose your weapon on your back, and you must also manually eject the magazine, use your other hand to take a new one, insert it, then prepare the weapon. It took a long time to implement, but it is so rewarding.
Was there a temptation to keep the whole game in the first person?
Eskil: Absolutely. For example, in a scene where you stir from the soup, we created a first -person prototype, and it seemed clumsy and a little disorienting. And in other places, you could not really get this useful overview of the area in which you are, especially when it comes to knowing where the enemies are. Thus, some scenes should look more like a safe place where you can get a strategic advantage, and this was actually felt better in the third person.
Did you have the impression that you had to do more interactive things, since players now saw the world of game differently?
Eskil: Yeah. When you are in the first person, it changes your perception of the game and the tactility of what you interact. But when balancing the game, we could not make everything interactive.
Puff: We inherited things from the original version of the game, and when I was a level designer, we dressed locations with articles and try to find a good balance of things to pick up. But not all, because then you are just strewn with accessories. And if we were doing all interactive in VR, you would also have an entire room full of small toy blocks that you can launch. It would be a bit silly!
Did you have to change the balance of difficulties since players now use more touching and intuitive controls?
Eskil: It was a huge concern for me. Now you can double everything, and things and fast functionality make you much deadller and agile.
Puff: But although you have more freedom, you also have more responsibility for the execution of actions that were previously automated. Thus, the aim requires more deliberate movements, recharging takes time and you must keep track of the place where the elements are, physically.
Eskil: Yes, so that probably explains why he rose, in a way.
Were there specific points during the development when you felt a “Eureka” moment in the transition to virtual reality?
Puff: At the beginning, while we still determined the degree of loyalty in the game, we were a doe foot in a door for the first time and it opened. Suddenly it was physical. Like: “Oh, now it's a VR game”. This has become an indicator of how we have done all these other world interactions.
Eskil: Yes, it was a great time. And when we cause keys in the game, we initially just asked the player to hold the key to the door and she will open. Then Toke made him go to the upper level and said that we could have it so that you can put the key in the lock and turn it to open the door. It was incredible.
Has one of your favorite missions changed due to the way you experienced it in VR?
Puff: For me, it's probably the train level. It is very linear. The players had mixed feelings on this subject and I too, even if I worked on it, but now that you can play with all these incredible VR weapons, it has become a playground. We give you a cool weapon after the next, and things to throw away, with many armored enemies that come to you, you must therefore really practice these mechanisms. It's really fun now.
Eskil: This is the kind of level that is not a typical Hitman level. It's a little too much Gamey action – but now in VR, it changes. I had the same feeling in the colorado section of the game. Players often note it near the bottom in popularity. But making flamboyant firearms is so fun.
Hitman World of Assassination launches on PS VR2 on March 27.
