I was wondering if you could help me with something. You see, there’s this problem I’ve been having. This thing that’s been bothering me, and I feel like if I just write it down it might help me figure it out. Do you have a pen? Oh great, that’s wonderful, thank you very much.
Columbo is an American TV show enjoyed peak popularity in the 70s. It follows the bedraggled Lt. Columbo, a man who is seemingly forgetful, out of sorts and not altogether capable of solving anything, as a detective investigating various murders of the week. Columbo is the very definition of a formulaic TV show; each episode you watch will follow the same standard structure and will stand alone as its own story. You will see a murder unfold, yourself a witness to the characters involved and their motivations for the terrible act they commit. At which point Lt. Columbo, a true blue collar detective, enters to investigate. From there the question isn’t ‘Who did it?’, it’s ‘How will Columbo catch them?’.
Hitman (2016) is a soft reboot of the Hitman video game franchise made by IO Interactive and originally coming to popularity throughout the 00’s. It follows a somewhat nondescript Agent 47, a man with a bald head, barcode tattoo and piercing blue eyes. Hitman was an outlier amongst traditional video games releases as it followed an episodic output throughout the year of its release. Every couple of months a new level of Hitman would drop. This allowed players to really sit with a level and explore it in many ways for a long time until the next level was released and the player moved on to the new one. Each episode followed the same standard structure, a target is profiled, detailing the characters involved and their motivations for the terrible acts they’ve committed. At which point Agent 47, the world’s greatest assassin, enters to eliminate them. From there the question isn’t ‘Who do I kill?’ it’s ‘How will I kill them?’.
Team Eurogamer vs. Sean Bean – Hitman 2 Elusive Target gameplay Watch on YouTube
On the surface, Columbo and Hitman could not seem more diametrically opposed to one another. But scratch that surface just a little and you’ll see that those differences are, in many ways, the only differences. In fact, Columbo and Hitman are very, very much alike and it all stems from one simple choice in how these products have chosen to tell their stories, for theirs is a tale of comeuppance.