4. Level Design
Can you imagine playing the Heaven and Hell mission from Hitman: Blood Money within the Absolution engine? It absolutely would not work, because while Blood Money gave players the freedom to explore the whole level in a free-roam style, Absolution breaks its missions into 3 or 4 different sections. The consequence of this is that if you murder everyone in one section, any ramifications of this are erased in the next one; it gives the player far more safety and confidence, diminishing the tension that characterised the previous games and basically just making it too easy to play through. While one can applaud IO's decision to give the player more freedom to play the game as Rambo if they so wish, they have really gotten away from the very essence of Hitman and turned it into something entirely different.