Only 20 percent of players will finish Hitman: Absolution, predicts game director Tore Blystad

Director of Hitman: Absolution Tore Blystad does not seem too optimistic about the percentage of players who will stick long enough with the latest title in the franchise to experience its last level.

In a recent interview with The Official PlayStation Magazine UK, the game’s director predicted that less than a quarter of the players, 20 percent to be more precise, will make it to the final level of Hitman: Absolution.

Blystad explained that the 20 percent figure was reached by using metrics, which IO Interactive, the developer of the upcoming Hitman title, has been using a lot lately in order to predict the impact and response to their games.

He conceded that the IO Interactive team is already feeling sad about the inevitable fate of the game as they had put a lot of effort into designing its level.

“It’s horrible to know. It makes the people working on it really sad. I guess people can’t commit to taking all those hours to finish one product; they get tired of it. It’s not just for this game, it’s for any game,” Blystad said

He did, however, acknowledge the fact that the short span of a player’s commitment is not just limited to Hitman: Absolution, but takes its toll on other games as well. Players become fatigued of the experience too quickly and hence move on.

The game director went on to add that Hitman: Absolution was something that had been designed in such a way that it would not die anytime soon. There is just so much content on offer in the levels that players would not be able to experience all of it by just going through the game once and therefore are expected to come back for more.

Blystad admitted that the studio was faced by a tough challenge of increasing the replay appeal of the game so that players would return to the levels even after they end the game and put in an effort to discover the content that the developer had so painstakingly put in.

“A battle we have is that we want to put all this stuff in, but we also know that because the game is up to the player there’s a lot of people that will never ever see it. The only thing we can do is incentivise replay-ability in different ways,” stated the game director.

Hitman: Absolution will see the return of Agent 47, a merciless assassin known for his stealth tactics and covert approach to take down his target. However, the latest title in the franchise has been confirmed to feature a different gameplay than its predecessors, promising more action and gunplay than before.

Hitman: Absolution is slated to release for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC on November 20, 2012.