I was not born to be a hitman. After a dozen attempts at completing two missions in Hitman, that has been made abundantly clear to me. I can’t stalk or follow anybody, I can’t blend in, I can’t even come up with good or creative methods by which to kill my target. I can’t even reach my target. My preferred method of killing in video games is fast and loud with everyone nearby watching me (and probably killing them too). That method doesn’t work in Hitman. At all.
I am remarkably bad at stealth games because a great many of them rely on sound detection and never in my life, not in games or in real life, have I done anything quietly. Quiet is not a concept I do well with. The very best thing about Hitman, and the thing that should make me excel at it, it that it is 100% visually based. You wear disguises, you use your super hitman power that highlights enemies and suspicious individuals, you have to hide your weapon or at least carry one that doesn’t scream “Hey I’m here to do some murdering!” I played Hitman for about an hour before I said f*ck it and went back to Skyrim. I didn’t enjoy myself in Hitman, not in the least. BUT that isn’t because it’s not a game made with deaf players in mind. In fact, Hitman can at times feel like its various functions and systems were made especially for deaf players, which was a nice thing to see.
The visual cues in this game are very clear, from everything to enemy location (both using your Hitman sense and not) and whether your equipped weapon is visible or not, to suspicion level and certain quest markers (opportunities, if you choose to track a specific one, are marked). Actionable items glow a faint yellow when using your Hitman vision (I really don’t know what that ability is called) and are marked with a tiny square when using normal vision. The visual cues are obvious but not in such a heavy handed way it takes away from the feeling of freedom you have to kill your target however you like. The visual cues are more subtle hints than anything.
The thing I most appreciate (perhaps because it’s what I saw the most often?) is that when you’ve been made and enemies are attacking you, the sound of the gunshot and the direction it’s coming from are very clearly indicated. I imagine this feature allows deaf players that are better than myself to escape the enemies by running away from the red sound indicators (me, I just stand there and die because I’m usually surrounded by red gunshot indicators, see above).
Also helpful are the indicators when you near objects that can either help you lure your target or guard of some sort to steal their uniform for a disguise, or dispose of a dead/knocked out body, to cover your tracks.
The world is also full of signs and details that I imagine one would use in real life when stalking their target, which allows you to play without any HUD on screen at all (and I believe all of these things can be toggled on and off). When I review a game, I play through some of it and then have my (hearing) partner play through the exact same part and then we compare notes to see what I may have missed, what parts sound provided for better immersion that wasn’t provided in non-auditory ways, and then she plays through it again on mute to see if it was significantly harder for her. Hitman is the first game in 30+ where she has determined that playing the game on mute didn’t make one bit of difference in how easy it was or how well she did. In fact, she said playing on mute made it easier to concentrate on the mission at hand and not be distracted by all the ambient noise of the very real feeling game world.
The one shortcoming in Hitman is the subtitles. All cutscenes are subtitled but they’re pretty small and non-cutscene subtitles can be a bit hard to see because they aren’t the white on black that they are in the cutscenes. The other minor issue (and I don’t know if this is a bug or intentional) is that some dialogue is captioned while some isn’t. The majority is captioned, which is what makes me wonder if it’s just a little buggy.
Even though I didn’t actually enjoy playing the game, because I’m just that terrible and not a creative killer, I highly recommend this game for deaf and hoh players because of its great accessibility.
Bottom Line
Despite the small subtitles, Hitman is a great game for deaf and hoh players because you can rely entirely on sight to do well in the game.