Hitman’s online/offline save issue — saves from online games won’t work in offline mode and vice-versa — isn’t a bug and won’t be getting fixed, it sounds like.
Speaking with Eurogamer, a spokesperson for IO confirmed that the separate on/offline saves are intentional, and will not be changed:
“When we announced Hitman, we explained to fans and to gamers everywhere how we are creating a live game.
“This is a constantly evolving, living world of assassination, that will grow alongside the community with frequent content updates in between the launch of each location. This live content includes new contracts, escalation contracts, elusive targets, and even additional challenges.
“It is possible to enjoy the locations offline, but in order to ensure player-progress of the live content is correct and up to date, the save states for online and offline are kept separate.”
Our review of Hitman raised issue with the always-online element of the game and the problem it causes with saves:
“By far Hitman's biggest problem is that, if you drop an internet connection while playing, you're kicked out of the mission and back to the main menu. Hitman doesn't have always-on DRM—an offline mode is available—but challenges, and the post-mission unlocks that you receive for completing them, are all tied to online mode. Worse, the game uses different saves for offline and online, so, if you can't reconnect, you won't be able to reload your existing run.”
But it would appear this issue isn’t going to be changed — I’d say ‘fixed’, but it’s clearly something of an intentional decision to do things this way, so that’s probably the wrong way to look at it.
Even so, Hitman is still good fun and worth dipping into. We’re still waiting on the first Elusive Target, but the Intro Pack’s replayable nature and the amount of experimentation you can get up to is keeping a lot of players happy for the time being.
You just won’t be able to switch between online and offline games at will, unfortunately. That’s something that, like the rest of the game, will need a bit more planning on the player’s part.
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