It’s Weird, But Hitman Is Scratching My Baldur’s Gate 3 Itch

My subscription to Xbox Game Pass is an expense that I’ve started to struggle with lately. In the wake of a somewhat foolish financial decision I made recently (I impulse extended my vacation at the last minute because I didn’t feel like going home), I’ve been peering a bit more closely at my finances and wondering if my recurring costs are all quite worth it. I’m subscribed to Game Pass Ultimate because I used PC Game Pass before I purchased my Xbox Series X, and I didn’t want to lose save data for the games I’d gotten halfway through before switching over to Xbox. I was working my way through Mass Effect for the first time when I got my console – I know I’m a decade late, don’t start – and I wasn’t keen on my progress going missing due to a lack of cross-platform saving.

I haven’t had the time to go back to any of those games since, and to be honest, I’d rather replay them from the start than jump back into a half-finished file. So I’ve made the decision to cut my losses. I’ve switched to the console-only Game Pass now, which saves me a little money, but it still feels a bit painful to be spending money on it.

For one, I’m barely playing anything in the library of games available because I’m so focused on new releases. On Game Pass, I’m playing Jusant and Cocoon, and I’ll likely try out Like A Dragon Gaiden before the end of December. I’m playing Yakuza: Like A Dragon in preparation for Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and I played enough of Starfield, the year’s biggest and most disappointing release, to decide I don’t like it. That sounds like plenty, but when I look at the full catalogue of games available to me on Game Pass, I feel like I’m not playing much of anything at all. So many of Game Pass’ offerings are very worth my time, and I don’t have the time to play any of them.

It was this realisation that led me to download Hitman: World of Assassination. It’s a game I’ve always wanted to play but, again, never had the time. I didn’t expect to enjoy it quite so much, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Against Editor-in-Chief Stacey Henley’s advice not to cram games in order to write GOTY lists, I have been trying very hard to play all my colleague’s favourite games before the end of the year rolls around. I’m still working my way through Alan Wake 2! I haven’t finished Baldur’s Gate 3! There are so many good games that came out this year that I feel the need to play, and still I can’t stop thinking about Hitman.

That last game, the sneakily mentioned Baldur’s Gate 3, is the most important of 2023’s good games to me. I’m desperate to finish playing it, but as I’ve already written, I’m refusing to go back to the game until it releases on Xbox. Since I started it months ago, I’ve been thinking about it a lot, but picking up Hitman, strangely, is scratching my itch to return to the well-loved CRPG.

It has something to do with the sandbox quality of Hitman – knowing I can solve a problem in many different ways and the game will allow me to mess around with how I combine tactics reminds me of the flexibility of Baldur’s Gate 3. There’s the knowledge that my actions have consequences as well. Killing people who don’t need to be killed in Hitman will lead to worse outcomes, and Baldur’s Gate 3 is generally the same. Everything you say and do to other characters has an effect later on, which is the coolest part of the game.

Even Hitman’s combat reminds me of Baldur’s Gate 3. Both are highly strategic, and though Hitman is a stealth game and BG3 is a turn-based Dungeons & Dragons game, both really are about planning and placement. I’ll hide in a box in Hitman and spring out to kill a passing guard, the same way I’ll separate my entire party in BG3 and have them sneak to different corners of the room to ambush a group all at once.

Putting down Hitman to play other games has been painful, because it’s my rebound for the game I really want to be playing. It’s helped tide me over in the interim, but knowing I’ve got to give it up for the foreseeable future is making me kind of sad. I don’t usually hope for lull periods in gaming, but I’m hoping to start working through my backlog of games next year, especially since the release schedule is so empty right now. Once I finish every other game 2023 had in store for me, Hitman is getting decimated.