>> [Narrator] Live from Los Angeles, it's The Cube,
covering E3 2018.
Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media.
>> Hey, welcome back, everybody.
Jeff Frick here with The Cube.
We're actually in the Warner Brothers games booth.
This humongous booth, we're kind of in the inner sanctum
here at E3 in the LA Convention Center.
Lot of stuff going on with Warner Brother Games.
A lot of really cool combinations
of brands and games and movies.
But this is a very special one, Hitman 2.
We're all excited to be here
and learn more about it with Jacob Mikkelsen.
He's actually the game director for IO Interactive.
Jacob, great to see you. >> Oh, thank you.
>> So let's just get to the basics.
First off, when is Hitman 2 coming out?
What do people need to know, we'll get that out of the way,
and then we'll get into it. >> Hitman 2 is out November 13.
And if you pre-order now, you have a special pre-order bonus
where you get access to a new game mode
called Sniper Assassin, which is a sniper-only mission.
And then for the first time in Hitman history,
we also have a co-op mode where you can snipe alongside
a friend, into the mission and create all sorts of havoc.
It's still deeply founded in the roots of the game's DNA,
where it's all about getting away with the sniping
without anyone noticing that you're there.
So it has a very, very strong puzzle element to it.
So it's about peeling off the layers of an onion,
without anyone noticing you're there.
>> So you talked a little bit before we turned on the cameras
about the freedom that a player gets,
not like in a traditional game,
where they can can choose a lot of different options
of how they're gonna do the mission.
So how do you guys come up with that?
How is that all determined?
And how do you actually still keep
the game true to the mission?
>> Well, the thing is that as you say,
it's very much, we call that hyper-detailed sandbox.
So when you play a Hitman mission,
we don't give you a linear path
through the level that you follow.
We give you an open sandbox where you have to figure out
how do you want to approach this mission.
And in the case of the mission we're showing here at E3,
it's a race event in Miami.
And your target is one of the race drivers, actually.
That's our half of the mission.
And she's roaming around the track.
So the whole thing in the demo today is like,
"Okay, so how do you get close to Sierra's car?"
And then in order to do that,
then you need to obtain disguises,
which is a key element in the Hitman franchise,
that you can disguise as
the characters you meet in the scene.
So you can knock them out and become,
take their uniforms on, and then infiltrate the areas.
Some guards are more suspicious of you than others,
so you have to mingle your way through the level.
So it's very much up to you if you want to sneak in
and try not to do the disguise stuff,
or you can go for the disguise stuff and then make your way.
And then the game adapts, in a way,
because we have to foresee all these
different permutations of play.
So there's a lot of things you can do in the game,
in terms of which way you take and how you get there.
>> So I'm just curious from a game development point of view,
in terms of building in difficulty,
'cause you want to have enough difficulties
that it's a challenge and people feel
satisfaction in rising to the challenge,
but clearly you could make it
so they just got wiped out every time.
You could make it an impossible game.
So how do you find that balance?
How do you tune that balance?
What are some of the things you think about
when you're trying to get in degree of difficulty?
>> Well, that's a really, how difficult should it be,
that's a really hard question to answer in a Hitman game,
because of the many ways that the players can do it.
So we have an initial idea about
where we want to challenge the players
and where we want to give them a bit more leash
where they can just roam around.
But once you get a new disguise,
then it's a different scenario.
And we have to account for that in our design.
So we do a lot of iterations on this.
Okay, so if I went to the right and went this way
in through the level but there was no resistance,
I didn't have to do anything,
I could just walk straight in the main door,
then we have to go back to the drawing board
and then jiggle around the characters, maybe add
some new ones, remove some, and change the amount of guards,
so the player will have challenges
no matter how they approach it.
But in the end, the crazy thing is,
no matter how hard we make it or how challenging we make it,
they will always find crazy ways of bypassing the systems
and bending the rules of the game so much.
And that's what makes Hitman great,
is that you can do all of these things.
Just, okay, can I do this?
Yes, and you go and try it, and maybe it worked out,
maybe it was not a good idea in the end.
But it's very much up to you, as the player,
to figure out how you want to be creative in this.
>> So we're doing this series as part
of the Western Digital data makes possible.
And data is such a bit part of what you guys do.
And really, as gaming has moved off of the pure console
into the connected world, gives you an opportunity
as a developer to see really,
how are people interacting with the game?
How are they making decisions?
So how did you guys look at the analytics?
You must be doing more and more and more analytics
on all these various movements
and potential options that they have.
>> We have systems in place to figure out
where people get spotted, so we can actually see that.
The tricky part about metrics is that during development,
there's actually not that many people
playing the game besides ourselves.
So we rely heavily on user testing,
where we subdue people to the,
we place people in front of the game in very early stages,
to see if our core ideas are working.
And then based on that, we then look at video footage,
interviews, and all that stuff.
That feeds back into the design loop of the process.
>> And have you mapped every potential option,
or are you using AI?
You just used the example, some guy's too smart,
we really need to have more guards for this guy.
Is there AI and intelligence in the game that you can make
little fine-tuned adjustments along the path
as people actually play the game?
'Cause you're gonna have a whole lot more data
by December first than you have today.
>> Precisely, the amount of data we get
is pretty wild in the end.
But the core of the game, the characters are AI-driven.
They have their own plans that they want to do.
And the way it works is that we then build
stories on top of this core AI.
So the designers, they have freedom
to create custom moments.
But at some point when things go
in the fence for the player, you get spotted
or someone sees through your disguise,
then the AI takes over.
And I dare to say that we have some of
the most complex AI systems in the industry.
We go to great lengths to have them be
very living and communicating a lot.
So if one guy finds a body, then it's one situation.
If he has a friend, then they begin to talk
about what they've just experienced.
And they work together to figure out
what is actually going on.
So there's a very high level of AI
running behind the scenes in the Hitman game.
>> Now, do you do that at the level of the characters?
So it's really how a character responds
to different stimuli-- >> Yes.
>> Versus just a generic overlay for the whole game?
>> Well, it's a mix.
Some of them are different kinds of characters,
guards or civilians, and they have different behaviors,
based on what happens.
But each character is more or less himself.
And then he is not hive-mind controlled.
It is a lot of agents that are running around in the world,
trying to figure out what this player's up to,
creating havoc behind the scenes.
So it's a lot of fun to work with it,
because it's also so unpredictable.
And then all of a sudden,
something happens that you didn't expect.
>> Right, 'cause you can't possibly scenario
every potential outcome, right?
>> Exactly, we have some control,
but it's systemically based.
So we kind of, the way we normally say it is,
we encourage the characters to do things.
And then they might do it.
For instance, you and I having an interview right now,
that requires that you're standing in your spot
and I'm standing in my spot.
If I were to create that scene in the game,
then there is a certain chance
that one of us is lying in a dumpster somewhere
and never shows up for the interview.
And then the next question is, okay, so what do you do?
So we have to construct the game in a way
so that you won't break down and stop here.
I don't know if you remember in season one of Westworld,
if you've seen that? >> I have seen season one.
I haven't caught up on season two yet,
but yeah, season one.
>> I haven't seen season two yet.
But in season one, there's this scene
where there's a bonfire scene that breaks down,
where all the characters just stop.
And then it turns out that the guy
who went for firewood has been killed.
So he never returned with the firewood,
and thereby, the entire bonfire scene just grinds to a halt.
>> [Jeff] Just freezes.
>> That is Hitman gave development in a nutshell.
Then we have a bug when that thing happens.
And that can happen during development, we do that stuff.
>> It's gotta be so cool, to discover how people
actually work their way through the game.
>> Absolutely.
>> 'Cause the other thing I think it's interesting
that you guys always have to balance
is you have narrative, you want to have a narrative.
You have a story, you have characters, and a look and feel.
At the same time, you have individual operators,
the players, that bring in their own
point of view to the game.
So how do you balance?
When does one take priority to the other?
How do you keep it on that narrative flow?
>> It's been one of these returning
challenges of making a Hitman game.
And with the previous game, we narrowed in on,
okay, so how do we do this?
So we have a main story that is told outside the levels,
which the levels don't directly affect.
So the overall main arc and storyline is set.
But what happens in the levels
stays in the levels, so to speak.
So in season one, we actually managed
to go through the main story
with some characters left alive, which is good.
Because now in the second, in Hitman 2,
we're going to get closer to them.
And the story evolves around Agent 47,
and we get a glimpse into his past,
which is a bit of some things we haven't told yet.
So that's going to be very exciting to see that, as well.
>> Right, well Jacob, thanks for spending a few minutes.
And good luck with the launch, congrats on the new product.
>> Thank you very much, nice talking to you.
>> He's Jacob, I'm Jeff, you're watching The Cube.
We're in the Warner Brothers games booth
at E3, LA Convention Center.
Thanks for watching.
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