With the announcement of IO Interactive’s Hitman Absolution earlier this year, and subsequent teaserly trailers and reveals, the gaming world has been waiting for its first glimpse of in-game action from the studio’s next stealth-action title, and during an El33tonline-attended presentation of the game, we got this sneak peek, and more!

Representatives of Square Enix London and IO Interactive were in South Africa recently to show off a level of the game in which the predatory (series protagonist) Agent 47 is the subject of a citywide manhunt in the metropolis of Chicago.

The police have corned Agent 47 in an abandoned, derelict and considerably large city library made up of a sequence of multi-levelled halls and passageways bathed in shadow, currently succumbing to the elements with fallen bookcases, piles of detritus, aging pillars, broken banisters and numerous dark corners in every direction – in short, the perfect playground for Agent 47 and his brand of neck-breaking, sneaking action.

The demo began with a close-up on Agent 47, which portrayed him in an almost villainous light. On the outside, this man is a cold-blooded killer and nothing shown during gameplay made us believe otherwise. The two-dozen policeman scurrying around the murky hallways of the library are constantly (and audibly) muttering to themselves, and to each other, to remind you how dangerous you are, and there’s definitely good reason to be scared of you.

At its core, and gameplay-wise, Hitman Absolution is a third-person cover-based action game, and in the same vein as similar games like Uncharted, you’ll have further movement and traversal options at your disposal, with the ability to climb up walls and shimmy along ledges. To avoid the ire of your pursuers and stay in the shadows, you’ll need to stay crouched and sneaking from bookshelf to fallen desk to waist-high wall, with a snappy cover-to-cover switch ability available, too.

When enemies are blocking your progression path and you have no option other than ‘remove’ them, as Agent 47 you’ll naturally have access to a deadly array of takedown manoeuvres allowing you to silently (and humanely) put people to sleep (by choking them) or very quickly snap their necks, before dragging limp and lifeless bodies out of sight.

Agent 47 is a pretty resourceful guy and can make use of any old thing in order to more efficiently remove enemies from his path, including power cords (perfect for strangling), statuettes (great for busting skulls open in stylish slow-motion), police batons (good for cracking necks in a pinch) and bong pipes (for a literal smack to the head). Items carried are shown on the heads-up display (HUD) on the lower right of the screen, and for the purposes of the demo Agent 47 could only carry one item at a time.

Environment traversal seems quite effortless and clambering up onto a doorframe to evade detection or mantling across a ledge and wrenching an enemy down to the ground below looks very fluid and easy to perform – but what else would you expect from Agent 47?

You’ll also be able to use your environment to your advantage in order to clear your path. In one section of the demo, Agent 47 was able to sabotage the fuse box powering the faulty lighting system in the library, returning the already dimly lit hallways to darkness, further increasing your chances of escaping unseen. The lighting effects in Hitman Absolution, in particular, so far seem extremely well implemented, put to good use to further set the apprehensive mood.

Small visual touches like cobwebs, flashes of lightning through the high ceiling windows, general grit and scattered objects add to the richness of the world and make it a very believable place to be in – immersive, one could even say – which is so important in enhancing the game’s atmosphere and keeping that tension high.

Agent 47 seems to have picked up a trick or two since his last outing, and by burning down a special ability meter, players will be able to sense (or predict) the movement paths of enemies through the world with visual identifiers showing up on screen. If an enemy is going to walk down a hall, turn left and then stop, you’ll be able to know this information using this ability, but the meter is limited so you’ll need to use it sparingly. The developers weren’t ready to reveal how you fill the meter and continue to gain access to this sensing ability.

Enemies will also mutter to themselves and talk to one another to give players even more clues about their next actions, so using the sense ability and these audio clues together will help you inform your future movements. Additionally, if you get too close to an enemy, a cone in the middle of the screen will grow to reveal your proximity to a potential threat, and even though I was told that the art depicting this extra sense is temporary, it looks like it does a great job of warning you of impending threats.

Like other Hitman games, however, Hitman Absolution isn’t all about sneaking, silence and sabotage – it’s also about all-out action, powerful set-pieces and audacious brazenness! Action like an intense stand-off with a dozen police officers as you hold one of their number hostage as a human shield before running for your life in a rooftop chase. Set-pieces like a rocking encounter with a helicopter intent on your destruction, that rains down rounds of gunfire while ripping tumbling boxes (and frantically flapping birds) to shreds all around you. And brazenness like dressing up as a police officer and walking straight past dozens of other officers, and an entire squad of special forces, hiding in plain sight.

A rollercoaster of emotions is promised in Hitman Absolution, to be sure, helped along by the perfectly timed and selected musical accompaniments, ranging from booming chord strikes and raucous rock music to moody background melodies.

The demo concluded as Agent 47 successfully evaded his uniformed pursuers and merged into a crowd of hundreds of commuters impatiently waiting on a train platform. As the camera pulled out on the gloomy, soaked city scene and the final echoes of foreboding brass blasted through the speakers, it was made clear that Agent 47 is an extremely dangerous force to be reckoned with… and the police have just set him loose in the city.

Even in its pre-alpha state, IO Interactive’s proprietary Glacier 2 engine is doing amazing things graphically, while gameplay already looks very responsive and well paced. If this single showpiece level is anything to go by, Hitman Absolution is going to hit big in 2012.

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