00:13Il prologue è venuto per un po' diversi ragazzi.
00:17I mean, first of all, la storia ha molto a do with 47's past.
00:22And I think it sort of foreshadows that we wanted to put people in the right mood, so to speak.
00:29And then there's, you know, introducing their relationship and their long professional career for new players.
00:37I think it does so very nicely.
00:39And then, of course, there's the practical reasons about, you know, gameplay and tutorials.
00:43Tutorials can be notoriously awkward, especially with 47, if you say, you know,
00:48this is the world's top assassin at the prime of his career, and then you have to do basic training.
00:53It just feels odd, right?
00:55Oh, I completely agree.
00:55And then, you know, setting it in the past, it gets us past that in a way we can justify
01:02the training elements much better.
01:04And as you said, I think it does foreshadow one of the themes of what we're doing, right?
01:10Because we said that in the present day of the storyline, 1847 and Diana are sort of, they are at
01:19the pinnacle, right?
01:20They are very good at what they do.
01:22And then it becomes really interesting to describe some of the journey that took them there and some of the
01:30events that shaped them.
01:34And then it felt natural, right? That we say, okay, but if there is this time period where 47 has
01:40escaped the asylum and we know that, you know, one year later he shows up in Hong Kong and he's
01:46working for the ICA.
01:47What is that about? That became really an interesting topic, as you said, both because it can do something with
01:53the characters, we can get a good meeting there.
01:55And also because it allows us to evaluate the player and Agent 47 in a credible sort of fiction, where
02:02you don't go like, but isn't he supposed to know all these things?
02:06But you are actually training and being evaluated by the ICA.
02:10And I think we even discovered stuff along the way, like for instance, how the mini story arc of the
02:17beta actually explains how they develop their unique style with the accidents and the disguises and all that, which feels
02:23rather nice.
02:24Yeah, I love the part where when you take a disguise in the very first part of the training, Diana
02:30goes like, hmm, you took on his clothes?
02:33That's a first.
02:34Yeah, that's a first, yeah. And yeah, it's such a good way of describing the two and Diana is obviously
02:40fascinated with this. Also, first of all, obviously, because 47 is really good at what he does, but she can't
02:48really resist this whole mystery, right?
02:52They can't really figure out where he came from, even if they try. I think it's really interesting.
02:58Yeah.
02:59And something we can't really wait to tell more about, I think, is in the sort of, in the overarching
03:05story.
03:09Yeah, so the chronology probably requires a bit of an explanation.
03:13Yeah, absolutely.
03:13The game actually takes place in 2019.
03:17Yeah.
03:18It's sort of the eternal five years from now, I guess.
03:21Yeah, yeah.
03:22And the prologue takes place 20 years before that.
03:25Yeah.
03:27When did the other games take place? We don't know.
03:30Well, that's the thing. Yeah, that's the thing. We know we have all the work from the previous games. We
03:38have a lot of events and a lot of things that have happened.
03:40But we also want it to be, as you said, in the eternal five years from now, because it allows
03:45us to open up for thinking about contemporary society, what's actually going on with both technology, politics.
03:53Yeah.
03:53In this effort to make the game feel like it's contemporary.
03:58And then we actually say the events of the previous games have happened. We actually embrace them and we want
04:05to work with them. But as we've done, and I think some fans have been debating back and forth about
04:10what's actually going on.
04:11We say that that's our present day, 2019. It's going to be 2020 soon.
04:17Yeah. And then we say 20 years prior to that, which is roughly on the timeline of Codename 47. That's
04:24where you did your first training. But who knows, we might even go beyond that.
04:29Maybe. We might travel a little further back in time as well, which should also be interesting.
04:35And all of this is obviously because I think for a big sort of franchise like Hitman to be continuously
04:44relevant, we need to sort of break the bonds a little bit.
04:48We need to be free to sort of articulate who is 47 for the series to come. It's a few
04:55seasons. And also in terms of what does he look like? What does he feel like?
05:00We really spend a lot of time just thinking about how to make him feel like he's in his prime.
05:06He's elegant, sophisticated, he's powerful. Much like I think Absolution's interpretation of him is actually, it took sort of a
05:14different extreme where he was, especially if you look at some of the trailers, he was very scarred and very
05:20sort of physically mangled almost and very, very down and out.
05:25And that was super important for that game because it needed to portray him like that. But I think the
05:29journey from Blood Money to Absolution also took some freedoms and we've been doing that.
05:35And our freedom this time is to say, he's in his prime in this everlasting five years from now.
05:41Absolution was true to its genre and we're true to ours and that's why he looks different. There's really not
05:47much more to it than that.
05:49And we need him at his peak, right? We need to travel the world. We have so many places to
05:53visit.
05:54And as you said, we of course acknowledge the major beats of the old games and the past events. That
06:01doesn't mean we have to acknowledge every single little detail that happens. So it's very much, it's the broad strokes,
06:06right?
06:06Yeah. And I think also when we did the legacy opening cinematic, we reinterpreted some of the classic hits, if
06:15you will.
06:16We, let's say we changed a little bit in some of the sort of the settings or we reimagined them,
06:22I would say. And I think people are up for that.
06:25I think people have a really sort of strong connection to what happened in the previous games and I think
06:30we need to be sort of within the spirit of that very closely.
06:34But I also think the legacy opening cinematic was just that, an example of how cool the events of the
06:41previous games are, especially if you're not afraid to look at them with a more contemporary eye and actually try
06:47to give them a touch of what we can do today.
06:52Yeah, and I know, I mean, we've been debating the sort of the storyline of the entire franchise quite a
06:57bit. And some things are, there are obviously some story elements where you can go, hey, how does that fit
07:05into this and all that and debate it.
07:07And I think there we allow ourselves to say, hey, there are some things that are just facts. I mean,
07:1247 was created by Ortmeier, we know that.
07:15And, you know, the different games unfolded like they did, but we might add a little nuance to some places
07:22where it makes sense.
07:23Yeah, it's really the auteur approach in films, like if you take a franchise like Alien, they are all very
07:29different for that simple reason that the director has changed.
07:33You know, he's got a different vision, but it's still a continuous chronology. It's not like a reboot every time,
07:38but they feel very different and the tone is different, they look different.
07:42Same with Mission Impossible, I think. Yeah, same with James Bond. There are so many examples, Sherlock Holmes. The list
07:47goes on, basically.
07:49But I also, I can see obviously why people are asking questions about how does everything fit, but I hope
07:55this at least helps explain it.
07:57A little bit. Yeah, a little bit, yeah. So I guess the question is, will Mr. X or Agent Smith
08:02return to the series?
08:05Will? Yeah, yeah. What do you think, Michael? It's spoiler territory. It's not impossible.
08:13No, I wouldn't rule it out at all.
