Hitman III Assassinate-All

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Hitman III released yesterday and there wasn't a thread about it, so now there is one. It's available on PC (Epic), Xbox, Playstation, Stadia, and, apparently, Switch (?!).

The 2016 Hitman reboot and Hitman 2 were both great games, even if I spent much more time watching them played than actually playing them myself. I'm excited to get into Hitman 3 when I have the chance, although I hear there were some extra missions added to Hitman 2 over its life that may have story stuff I should explore first? I have investigating to do.

Hitman 3 (I felt compelled to use the Roman numerals for the thread title since that's the way the game styles it, but I find that tedious when actually writing about the game) has a feature that will let you import your progress from Hitman 2 if you're playing on the same general platform (Xbox One -> Series X, PS4 -> PS5). Last night, when I tried to jump into the game, this tool was totally broken, a web-based tool that was clearly just getting pummeled. This morning I tried again and it told me it successfully imported my (somewhat meager) progress from Hitman 2, but when I got to the game that progress didn't show up, so, I'm going to take another run at figuring that one out.

I'm excited to get digging into this game and will be interested to hear your stories as you all play, and welcome any fun videos and streams of wacky happenings in the game.

It was a bad launch, just like Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2. Some people are worried that the Carryover site only allows you one try, so if all progress doesn't carry over, you may be screwed. Hope that's not the case.

IO Interactive have this strange attachment to Always Online. They've tied all progress in your game to it. For me, in a Single Player game, it is atrociously anti-consumer and a terrible design choice. I have heard multiple reasons why they do it this way, from being Anti-Cheat, DRM, keeping pure leaderboards, and even that their publisher Square Enix made them. Well, the leaderboards were broken way back in Hitman 2016, Hitman 3 was cracked on day 1 for pirates, and they are no longer under the wing of Square Enix. So, they must keep it this way because they just don't like the people that pay money for their product.

Now, I will step off my soapbox and say that the Hitman games are some of my favorite of this console generation. It's like a puzzle game and 3rd person game and comedy game all rolled into one.

I've put a hundred or so hours into Hitman 2 and I like that they do allow you to bring over all the old maps into the newer games. I've gotten to a point where I kind of know how the gameplay works enough to feel pretty confident in getting access to whatever I need to in a mission and I implore anyone to play up till you feel this way. It opens up so many possibilities in each map and allows you to be creative and get some hilarious outcomes. For example.....If you know where a target will meet someone you can run there ahead of the meeting, place a remote explosive on the wall, and blow everyone up while not even being near the meeting area. Or maybe you know they walk underneath that chandelier at a certain point? Or that....maybe they really like their pet hippo, but she won't eat right now...... Or maybe the target has golf practice with a coach and you know where a "trick" golfball is?

This is, by far, my favorite game to watch my friends play. I love seeing how they try to figure something out during their first run at a target. Usually ends up with Agent 47 being shot at and us laughing hysterically.

FWIW, I booted up Hitman 3 again yesterday evening and found that the progress import that I seemed to have completed yesterday morning that did not show up is now registering on my account.

I messed around with the first mission last night. It's a Hitman game! I was following the most obvious "mission story" prompt I had stumbled into, but I got to a spot where I either didn't understand the instructions it was giving or perhaps it was bugged? There was a server room I had to get into, and once I got in there, I needed a key to unlock it. I got the key where the game prompted me to find it, inserted it in the pillar that came up to accept my key but then...nothing. I'm hoping I'm just being dense, because if it's a bug, that's the sort of thing that can make the game maddening, the "am I doing this wrong or is the game just broken" debate is not one you want to deal with.

I am very confused about how the prior levels get incorporated in the game. When I bought Hitman 2, I was able to import all the Hitman 1 levels because Hitman 1 was on Game Pass at the time, which was nice. I had thought that was permanent, even though the game isn't on Game Pass anymore, but I suppose it's possible I no longer have access to those levels in Hitman 2? I was also looking at the missions that were added to Hitman 2, but apparently those were a part of some expansion pass. This is all to say that, looking at the interface and trying to figure out what I have to click to get access to the Hitman 1 levels and the Hitman 2 Bonus Levels is confusing and does not inspire confidence in me. It's okay, though, I am not one of those who will put hundreds of hours into this game, so I will probably be just fine playing through all of the new campaign missions a couple of times.

So far I have thrown some objects at people's heads to hilarious effect--I don't understand why a hunk of meat is one of the few options 47 can bring into the mission with him, but it is funny to throw at people--grabbed some fun outfits, and explored a fancy building, but I haven't gotten to the truly absurd and/or chaotic scenarios yet. That's what weekends are for!

mrlogical wrote:

There was a server room I had to get into, and once I got in there, I needed a key to unlock it. I got the key where the game prompted me to find it, inserted it in the pillar that came up to accept my key but then...nothing.

I believe there is an action you need to do to use the computer in that room. The key swipe makes it “more” obvious which of the 4 choices you should pull. I say “more” obvious, because it’s still not very clear. If you look at the 4 things in the room 1 will be different now and that’s the one you interact with, in order to be able to access that computer fully.

Ah, I get what you're saying, thanks for the tip--there was a "look closely" prompt in the dialogue, but I didn't spot anything obvious, but now that I have a better idea where to be looking I think I will solve it.

FWIW, I am on PS5 and at least in Thailand (Hitman 2016), I am seeing a lot of wonkiness. Boats in the water jumping around, bad rainbow rendering artifacts occasionally indoors. Anyone else experience this? Even on other platforms?

So I bought this today and as I hadn't played any of the previous Hitman titles, I'm off to a slow, but fun start. Since it came with the pass for Hitman 1 GOTY, I'm starting at the beginning and just completed the Paris runway mission. So far pretty good fun! I'm going to buy the GOTY import thing for Hitman 2 so that way I have all the missions.

Yeah, it’s a good time to jump in. The whole package is so much good content.

Hitman 1 still has some of my favorite "open sandbox" missions in it. As the games progress they close the windows of opportunities and ability to freely walk around environments, which both heightens drama and hinders exploration.

People really seem to love the Hokkaido map and I just don't have much fun trying to do Challenges in it due to the way all exploration is tied to specific outfits.

I've barely scratched the surface on exploration of the Hitman 3 maps, but there's a couple that I can already tell are going into the Top Tier.

I'm playing on Series X and the game looks great...with the major exception of the cutscenes, which look terrible! It seems like they were pre-rendered on an Xbox 360 or something. Everything is smudgy and gray and there's artifacting and the models look notably worse than when running in game. It makes no sense to me why it would look so much better than playing than when watching recorded cutscenes. Are others seeing this on Series X, and/or is it the same way on PC and other consoles? Very weird.

I finished the Dartmoor level last night. I am always torn in Hitman between exploring every nook and cranny, figuring out how to do a mission story just right, and just getting the mission done and moving forward. I played that level as the investigator, of course, and I had figured out who the culprit was, but I discovered that I could also complete the mission by offering a different solution, even though it was not the correct one. I went to try that, just to see what would happen, and found it would allow me to complete both my objectives easily and also avoid a noticed kill. I ended the level with a pretty good score, but it felt unsatisfying, too. With these games, I have a tendency to complete the first few missions in like three different ways, but by the end I'm just flinging kitchen knives at people's heads and racing for the exit to get a one star completion. I really think the episodic release format would work better for the way I engage with the game. I think I'm going to push forward to the third mission and then maybe I'll spend a little time working backwards to explore other fun completion paths.

I've been playing this slowly and just playing one mission at a time. As I'm starting back at one I am now at Club 27. Been pretty fun so far slowly planning and finding the hidden stories which let you do different things.

I've watched a couple of videos after I've finished a level and some people had a lockpick.... I don't seem to have one of those for some reason? Am I missing something?

The lockpick was just awarded to me after achieving a certain level on my overall Hitman career score, and so now I'll have the ability to select that as one of the items when planning a mission. Hopefully if you keep completing objectives it'll unlock for you too.

Hmm, can I ask what level? I'm about level 20 I believe...

I believe I'm around level 36? Somewhere in the 35-40 range I'm pretty sure.

However, it may be an unlock specific to your score on each level. I just completed the third mission this morning and noticed that my challenge scores for that level appear to have unlocked a bunch of specific things for the mission. I vaguely recall that there's some stuff you unlock globally and some stuff you unlock for individual levels (starting points, stashes, etc.). I'm not sure whether a lockpick would be a global unlock or specific to a level...feels like it should be global, but, I dunno.

I completed the third mission, Apex Predator, the Berlin rave. I didn't love it at first, especially because, for story reasons, it is a little more open than the previous missions. But once I understood that your various targets aren't all that connected and you can set up different scenarios one at a time, I got a better feel for it and settled in. I got my first Silent Assassin rating so far, and managed to make all of my kills unnoticed. I got a few costumes that seemed fun but couldn't figure out what to do with (drug dealer, Florida Man), and have a few more scenarios I'd like to come back and explore (I want to be the DJ at some point, I want to figure out what I can do with the lighting system that is suggested by notes I found and conversations I heard). Not my favorite scenario, just the volume of targets made it feel stressful to me, I like being able to spend more time out in the open not worrying about being caught.

Also, I have no idea what is happening in the story. I thought I tracked it more or less last game, but now, nope. There's a person I helped out in the cut scene at the end and I don't know who she is, and she references someone else and I don't know who she means. Oh well!

BlackSabre wrote:

Hmm, can I ask what level? I'm about level 20 I believe...

I believe the Lockpick is tied directly to the ICA facility missions. You can go into each location and it will tell you the rewards for doing certain things. Some are for completing specific missions or challenges, some are for Level Mastery.

mrlogical wrote:

Also, I have no idea what is happening in the story. I thought I tracked it more or less last game, but now, nope. There's a person I helped out in the cut scene at the end and I don't know who she is, and she references someone else and I don't know who she means. Oh well!

I've played through the missions from 1 and 2 dozens of times and I am only now starting to get an idea of the bigger picture of the story. It's not overly convoluted, but it's just exposed at a really strange pace. There's a mission in Season 1 that has a lot of weight to it, but only if you remember a person mentioned briefly in a couple cut-scenes from the ICA Facility.

But overall the story is.....

Spoiler:

You were a contract killer before Diana Burnwood recruited you to the ICA. She recruited you despite another ICA member not wanting you. You start noticing a thread between your targets in Season 1 and the Season culminates in your target being someone you and your handler are familiar with (which could be why the ICA would be against you two working together). Enter the "real" enemy of the game...Providence. A group of elites that seem to run the world from behind the scenes. Most of the targets in Season 2 are Providence operatives. Eventually you "go into business for yourself" and start tracking down targets without contracts on them from ICA. That leads to Season 3 where we are now. If you haven't played the DLC for Season 2, then I can see why it would be confusing when you interact with the woman from the Berlin map. There is also a little bit of backstory between Agent 47 and another main character of the cast, but I don't want to spoil that. It leads to wondering exactly which way the story will turn toward the end of Season 3.

The biggest problem with the storytelling technique, to me, is that in Season 1 the Mission briefs and Missions tell the story from Diana and Agent 47's viewpoint and the Cut-scenes tell the story from the Shadow Client's viewpoint. This can be confusing. Also, if you don't read the files of the targets or don't play through multiple story missions and hear dialogue, it's easy to miss how certain characters or targets are connected.

I’ve played a bit of Hitman 1. I completed the tutorial mission and the mission before Paris. I’m new to this game/genre. I’m having trouble wrapping my ahead around on how to approach the game and missions. Can someone share some general advice on how you approach a level? Do you wander around and look for patterns and listen for npc dialogue? Perhaps I’m used to just “doing”stuff right away in a game and there is a different pace to Hitman. I welcome advice.

Thank you,
Chad

The way I played Hitman 1 and 2 was to follow one of the level mission stories (opportunities? I forget what they were called in the first game). Once I'd completed the level that way, I'd go back in and do things more free-form, maybe following other opportunities here and there to get costumes or something but generally not following them all the way to completion. After a few plays I'd be comfortable enough with the level layout to start trying really random stuff (I wonder if I can assassinate the person like this?! -- the answer is always yes).

The first game came out in episodic format, and it's clearly designed for you to play through each level multiple times. I think something has been lost by 2 and 3 releasing all at once, but there's no reason you can't just refuse to move on to the next level until you've mastered the one you're on.

Good advice. Thank you.

Does anyone have a tip on whether it is worth playing on an OG PS4, or should I just hold off until I eventually get a PS5?

chooka1 wrote:

Can someone share some general advice on how you approach a level? Do you wander around and look for patterns and listen for npc dialogue? Perhaps I’m used to just “doing”stuff right away in a game and there is a different pace to Hitman. I welcome advice.

Thank you,
Chad

I will echo what billt said upthread. I always do the Missions first. They usually walk you throughout a map and lead you to discover ways to get through certain areas.

Once I have some mission done, and have some map memory, then I I focus on getting different Outfits and seeing where I can go while wearing each one. Most Maps have a certain Outfit that is like a skeleton-key that allows you to move freely within much of the Map. I use those outfits to just walk around, listen to conversations, and watch NPC routes. After I spend some time exploring, then I start looking at Challenges. The Challenges, to me, are where these games really shine. They give you an idea to pull off, but don’t tell you how to do it. That’s where the creativity comes in. Sometimes I’ll spend 40 minutes just going around the Map trying to “set up my dominoes” for that perfect execution. Most time it ends with me bungling something or running for my life, but when I manage to pull off those Silent Assassins.......wooooo boy! There’s no game that makes me feel as accomplished as that.

Thank you. Great advice.

My girlfriend hates watching me play this. She says all I do in this game is "walk around". Not true. I'M OBSERVING MY TARGET! Non-hitpeople just don't understand.

Felix Threepaper wrote:

Does anyone have a tip on whether it is worth playing on an OG PS4, or should I just hold off until I eventually get a PS5?

Also curious about this as I'm in the same 'might get a PS5 in 2021 if they're ever available' boat and the cross-gen issues with AC Valhalla put me right off.

I ended up finishing this a few weeks ago, and have ended in the same place I have with basically every other Hitman game--I really liked the experience, in my mind I would *love* to run back and re-play the earlier missions in different ways and try out the escalation missions and explore other details of this...but it seems more likely I will never touch it again? It's funny, for as obvious as it is to me that these games are about exploring and experimenting, there's a part of my brain that keeps telling me "you did this already, that was your story, you're done!" If Game Pass didn't give me so many other things to play, I might be quicker to return to this...

I am so terrible at this. I went through and played all the Hitman 1 and 2 missions in Hitman 3, then did the first H3 mission… I have no patience. I can rarely get my target alone, so I just pop them from a place where I hopefully won’t be seen and then walk away. Sometimes I’m noticed and sometimes I’m not. I did manage to push my target off the balcony in the first H3 mission. I had to time it right because the two guards both saw through my disguise so I needed to walk as soon as they turned their heads, push the target and walk the other way.

My plan is to play through each mission not caring too much how I get it done. If I replay missions after unlocking new options with XP, does it become easier to complete the missions in more creative ways, or if I suck now will I probably continue to suck? Do you get ideas by looking at the challenges?

robc wrote:

My plan is to play through each mission not caring too much how I get it done. If I replay missions after unlocking new options with XP, does it become easier to complete the missions in more creative ways, or if I suck now will I probably continue to suck? Do you get ideas by looking at the challenges?

The levels of this game are described as being a nautilus shell with Swiss Cheese in it.

I would honestly suggest you start playing Paris from H2 first. It is the level they used to design the new engine and shows off a LOT of what their engine can do.

Once you have played Paris a few times you will notice all of the different ways you can take out the targets.

This week I went back to play HITMAN 2, having not played for a long time and not getting that far through the game. I remember enjoying my time playing the bald headed assassin last time but I ended up moving on to other games and not going back.

The first time I played, I rushed quickly into the main missions without fully learning the stealthiness skills, and then simply trying to complete a mission as quickly as possible. Going in this time I decided to start over (from HITMAN imported missions) and do the ICA Facility training mission with all the challenges.

I've now moved onto the Showstopper (Paris) mission and completed my first mission, this time taking it gradually while exploring my surroundings and taking in all the useful information in order to setup the 'perfect' assassination. Well, it wasn't perfect but I had a lot more fun this time around and rather than wanting to jump straight to the next mission, i'm replaying this one to see what other fun ways to make this mission play out.

I expect I'll be putting a lot more time into the HITMAN trilogy and plan to import my progression into HITMAN 3 to continue with the latest game engine and play through those missions. I also read the following recent announcement from the dev team, so anyone that's interested to play HITMAN for the first time may want to pick up H3 to get all the H1 & H2 base content for free when the changes take place.

HITMAN 3 to become ‘World of Assassination’

As of 26 January 2023, the following changes are planned to come into effect.

HITMAN 3 will become ‘HITMAN World of Assassination’, which will also include access to HITMAN 1 and HITMAN 2 through our existing Access Pass system. Current HITMAN 3 owners will get a free upgrade to HITMAN World of Assassination on all platforms.

We’re drastically simplifying the purchase experience for new players. HITMAN World of Assassination will be the single available option to start playing.

Essentially, these two changes will mean that all new players and existing HITMAN 3 owners will have the same base content ownership. There will be no more confusion over which edition to buy, what content you own, how to redeem Legacy packs or import locations, etc. We’re done with that.

Today is Hitman Freelancer day! I am super excited to dive back into it. I got a chance to play the beta in November and devoted every spare moment to playing it, I suspect I will do the same when this opens up around noon EST.

I am finally getting around to playing the whole trilogy. I played through H1, but only a mission or two in H2, and none in H3.

I'm now making a run through all 3 games worth of content within H3 (or, I guess now, Hitman: World of Assassination, though they have yet to rename anything in Steam).

I've always liked the series, but prior to H1 2016, the only Hitman I actually completed was the real H2, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin.

Freelancer looks so cool, and really looks like it forces players out of the must-always-stealth-or-it's-a-fail gameplay. But I am going to complete all base content before I go there.

mr_n00b wrote:

Today is Hitman Freelancer day! I am super excited to dive back into it. I got a chance to play the beta in November and devoted every spare moment to playing it, I suspect I will do the same when this opens up around noon EST.

Hitman Freelancer does look fun! I've held off trying it as I plan to complete and get more practice playing the campaign. I'll definitely try out Freelancer then.

*Legion* wrote:

I am finally getting around to playing the whole trilogy. I played through H1, but only a mission or two in H2, and none in H3.

I'm now making a run through all 3 games worth of content within H3 (or, I guess now, Hitman: World of Assassination, though they have yet to rename anything in Steam).

I'm doing the same, now that I've got Hitman 3 / HITMAN World of Assassination and imported my progression. I've been running through the campaign from the beginning and I'm about half way though it (all H1,H2 & H3 content). I've been enjoying repeated playthroughs of the maps but I'm itching to get to the end of the campaign and then try out Freelancer. There's so much content and replayability in this game!

Forgive my obtuseness on this aspect of Hitman 3, if I were to purchase a digital code for Hitman 3 what ultimately happens to Hitman 3 and what content is included? I am not clear if it turns into WOW and automatically includes Hitman 1 and 2 maps.

Thank you,
Chad