Hitman: Absolution game director Tore Blystad has revealed that the new game will offer more levels than any previous Hitman title, and that many of those levels will take Agent 47 well outside his comfort zone.
"We tried to pick the most diverse kind of locations that we can within the setting of the game," Blystad told us during an E3 presentation, noting that some levels were "really unusual". Io hopes Absolution will "stand out from the previous games".
"There's a very big contrast between them," he said. "Most of our fans, they really like to talk about the game - how they did this, how they did that, and we're trying to find levels that are very easy to reference. You can tag them very easily for comparison."
"There's quite a lot of them," Blystad went on. "There's more levels in this game than any other Hitman game."
Dropped level ideas include Io's own offices in Copenhagen, Denmark and the Electronic Entertainment Expo show floor in Los Angeles. "We actually thought about it! But the trouble is from a graphics perspective there's so much diversity here, all these booths, it's very hard to do. But it's been on the table several times."
Fans eager for more level details should check out the game's roster of improvised weapons, as these "are very much based on the locations". The library level we were shown, for instance, presented players with a coil of electronic cable, a marble bust and, most eccentrically of all, a bong. Hitman: Absolution - taking the war on drugs over the threshold.
Gameplay director Cristian Elverdam calls the use of improvised weapons "a style choice" rather than a necessity for players. "If you really want that ultimate assassin feeling, that's a style choice, but we also know that people see these improvised weapons as kind of expressing yourself if you will. It's a little bit sinister in a game where you're killing people!
"We find that if you set up the environment with props that are fitting, it's actually quite satisfying to see if you can find all the items, see if you can apply them to the AI."
Slated for release in 2012, Absolution is the fifth Hitman game. Io has said the new Instincts mode will not soften Agent 47's act, and that the AI is "way more complex".