Hitman 3

In the year 2000, Danish game development studio named IO Interactive worked alongside Eidos Interactive to release the first entry to a long running franchise, Hitman: Codename 47. Trying to create a stealth experience different from other from other genre entries at the same time. It was an experimental title, but just because it was experimental doesn’t mean the execution was good. Hitman: Codename 47 was a good proof of concept, but technology at the time prevented it from reaching its full potential. It also came out at a rather poor time as within the same year two other stealth games released, Thief 2 and Deus Ex. The latter is regarded as one of the greatest games of all time and published by the same company, Eidos Interactive. Hitman: Codename 47 was a rough start for the Hitman franchise, but as time went on IO Interactive would improve. Partially due to technology for games getting stronger which allowed them to reach further into creating what they hoped for back with Codename 47. They made Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Contracts, Blood Money, and Absolution. However, it was around 2009 that the company started to face a rocky road. Eidos Interactive went bankrupt and projects they were working on either had to be scrapped or be repurposed into something else in the future.

Both Eidos and IO Interactive would get picked up by Square Enix, and after that IO Interactive was scrambling. Hitman: Absolution despite being received well among reviewers became the lowest rated game in the series. IO Interactive had to ask themselves if the Hitman formula was starting to get stale, and if they should continue down the same path in risk of going bankrupt as well. They went back to the drawing board, and as the 8th generation of consoles crawled around they prepared for a complete revisionism. An evolution of everything the team had learned at this point. They made Hitman. We’re gonna call it Hitman (2016) because that was the year it came out and naming conventions for this franchise are weird. Hitman (2016) is a very well regarded game with a lot of hype leading to its release. Sandboxes where the player could kill their target in any way imaginable as long as they have the patience, creativity, and planning to do so. The reveal trailer IO Interactive showed off during E3 2015 looked promising, and excitement was out of the roof. Then Square Enix stepped in and the way Hitman (2016) released did not benefit the game at all. They followed an episodic release schedule where levels came out every month. With a two month gap break taking place between level three and four.

They wanted to excite players in the same way cinematic storytelling games like Life is Strange or any of the titles by Telltale Games would. The thing is though it works for them because they have stories to excite players. Get them wondering “What will happen next?” A feeling you can’t get with Hitman as it’s always been focused on the gameplay and what they do. To be fair, levels are meant to be played over and over, but not being able to play them back to back or progress until the developers say it’s time for more content sucks. Hitman (2016) didn’t sell as well as the developers hoped, and it led to Square Enix eventually letting them go in fear of the series not being one worth investing in. IO Interactive would then get picked up by Warner Bros, have an even smaller budget for Hitman 2, and the developers had to play their cards carefully or else the trilogy they planned would go under. Things could’ve gone terribly especially when you have a company like Warner Bros handling the property. Surprisingly that is not what happened with the second game. The team decided not to follow the episodic release format of the first game, and any funding they had was spent towards the game itself rather than advertising or any expensive cinematics. Hitman 2 put a heavier prioritization on content and quality of it, and the results were much better. Hitman 2 sold better than the studio had hoped for, received higher praise, and the reception was so good Warner Bros gave them the funding they needed to support the game for a while and make sure the development for Hitman 3 was grander and fancier than before.

They also have a very convenient motto of letting players play the levels from the previous titles in the latest game as they all run on the same engine. IO Interactive was on a roll with the reboot trilogy of Hitman titles, and deemed it the World of Assassination. A collection of games that’d allow you to do anything anywhere if possible. They had finally created the Hitman game they wanted to back in 2000, and they’re considered the greatest Hitman installments to date. Quite a wonderful site seeing Hitman be given the love it deserves. A new giant for the stealth genre, but it’s maybe because stealth games are kinda dead now. I remember playing Hitman 2 in 2019 and quite enjoying my time with it. One the first few games I reviewed on this website, and I haven’t thought about it much since. In 2021, I did plan to pick up Hitman 3 but held off due to how little innovation I was told was added. Recently I decided to treat myself. Bought the whole trilogy, played them back to back, and had one heck of a time. Hitman (2016) is really good once you get the full package, Hitman 2 is much better than I remember it being, and Hitman 3 despite me keeping my expectations low was also much better than I had hoped. This review is mostly going to be about Hitman 3, but treat it as a coverage of the whole trilogy in general. Let’s talk  about why the Hitman: World of Assassination trilogy is great and why it deserves your attention.

Story

Spoilers for Hitman (2016) and Hitman 2, but I’m doing this so you can understand how we got to the starting point of Hitman 3. In 1999, an assassin named Agent 47 is contacted and taken in by a private group known as the International Contract Agency. The ICA for short, and their goal is to hopefully dismantle a group organization known as Providence. The rival group is made up of dozens of billionaires, celebrities, and powerful figures from across the globe. Pulling strings behind the scenes for how society works and developing weapons that can kill dozens of people. The ICA takes in Agent 47 despite having no background, because they see him as the perfect weapon for bringing Providence down. Sending him on elite missions to kill high priority targets and learn of what they plan to do. The World of Assassination trilogy’s storyline is a reboot, but there are hints towards the plot of previous games. With a twenty-year gap between 1999 and the events of the new trilogy. Agent 47 is a stone cold killer and he likes to handle his work as smart and professionally as possible. Hitman (2016) sees 47 and his handler Diana Burnwood learning of the Shadow Client, he’s been using the ICA, trying to figure out who he is, and also attempting to take down members of Providence. Slowly getting towards their ultimate goal.

In Hitman 2 you learn the Shadow Client is Lucas Grey, 47 and he were orphans brainwashed and trained to be killers, he knows who is really in charge of the madness spreading across earth, and they both work together to stop it. They manage to kidnap the Constant, Janus, get info out of him and that is how we get to the events of Hitman 3. Which opens with you skydiving into a skyscraper to kill two high profile targets. Agent 47 is no longer part of the ICA after Diana and him disobeyed orders. They’re operating by themselves now and believe they have a chance to finally expose Providence to the world. They’ll take whatever risks they can to achieve this goal, even if it means making unfavorable ties. The end is coming upon us. Time is running out and all you can do is hunt. Be the apex predator you always were and slay your quarry. Good luck.

Gameplay

The recent Hitman games play a lot more differently than the stealth games you may have grown up or are familiar with. Each mission has you choosing your starting location, the equipment you want to bring, and locating the targets in an area. For each new mission your starting equipment is a suit of your choosing, a garotte to choke people to death quietly, coins to cause distractions, and a silenced pistol. So two items and a gun of choice. New guns, items, and tools will have to be picked up as you explore each stage. Once you enter your objective is clear. Kill the targets on the map and get out. While the objective is simple, the way you obtain it is the tricky part. The design philosophy of the recent Hitman games is similar to that of immersive-sims like Prey or the previously mentioned Deus Ex. I’ve seen people claim Hitman is an immersive-sim and for pretty good reason. The most straightforward way to solve problems in Hitman isn’t the easiest to obtain. The areas you play in are heavily populated by folks. People you don’t want seeing you and reporting the crimes you commit. There’s some folks who won’t let you into specific areas, and if you get caught in a place you’re not supposed to be you might start getting shot at. Hitman has combat similar to that of third person shooters, but it’s not optimal. Enemies aren’t afraid to gun you down all together or run behind where you’re taking cover to shoot from.

Hitman has a very specific way of play, and that is to analyze the world you’re in and find a small opening to do what you need to do. Isolate figures you need to take down, do it silently, and get what you need to progress. There’s a genius mechanic that is the disguise system. You can knock out individuals and take their clothes. Disguising yourself in a certain position so you can gain access to areas you normally wouldn’t be able to go into. It changes how people view you, but it doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. As some people may see through your disguise, you may not be able to access different areas now, and performing strange acts lures attention. Blend in with the crowd, blend in with your surroundings, and do things you normally wouldn’t do in stealth games like Dishonored or Metal Gear Solid. Once you locate a target you can decide how to kill them. The most common answer is a weapon of choice, but there are far better options. Unique to targets are story missions. Fancy ways of killing them instead of the usual bullet to the head or knife. Paying attention to conversations allows you to learn of opportunities, and you can use these to kill targets and slip away easily. Versus bopping them in the head and running. One good example is the Miami level. There’s a race car driver and interdisciplinary engineer. You could disguise yourself as a pitcrew member, sneak into the garage area, adjust the bolts of the driver’s car and watch her crash. Locate some files, dress up as a mascot, and have a private meet behind an alleyway. Let one of the engineer’s inventions shoot him to death, or knock him onto the race track just when the driver is driving by.

Once you make it to the exit you’re awarded points based on what you did and how well you did. More points are given if you manage to play fancily or kill less people aside from your targets. You also unlock different loadout options for missions such as starting points and gear. Now you have an option. Either progress onto the next mission, or replay the one you just did. Hitman is well known for its high replay value, and not everything can be done in one playthrough. You may want to discover different ways to kill your targets. Pursue all the story opportunities, or try to obtain tricky bonus objectives playing with only the classic suit or sniping each target. These games are wonderfully designed and there’s an even balance between limitations and creativity so you can get crazy without it getting too confusing or restrictive. I understand why Hitman has become so beloved within a short period of time. These are very fun games to play and you can dump dozens of hours into singular levels alone just for the content on offer. Hopefully you can kill your targets, leave undetected, and live up to your name of being the deadliest assassin.

Thoughts

It’s been four years since Hitman 3 was released. Four years since this epic trilogy concluded and thankfully it did not disappoint. In the intro I mentioned I held off from this game back in 2021. Sixty dollars felt like quite the asking fee for a game that hasn’t changed much since Hitman 2. I remember that being the most major piece of criticism among players. It’s just more Hitman 2, but playing these games back to back I realized something. Yes, it’s a valid critique, but the same statement can apply to Hitman (2016) to Hitman 2. They all run on the same engine, the same mechanics, and follow the same formula. These games have been the same since the release of Hitman (2016). That is not to say they haven’t improved since Hitman (2016), but you get by point. The formula is the same for all three games, and you know what that formula is really good. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, or push it in new ways through different levels and ideas. Hitman 3 is tied with Hitman 2 for being my favorite Hitman game, because just like Hitman 2 it has a lot of really cool mission ideas and ways of solving problems with simplistic solutions. The game design of the World of Assassination is great, because you are rewarded for mastering the ins and outs of a level. Planning things out, exploring, knowing where to go, getting what you need, and then executing the steps in your head until you kill the assigned mission target.

It’s a game with a lot of preparation versus simply sneaking by and killing dudes one by one like Dishonored or Metal Gear Solid. I don’t think Hitman will click for everyone as it demands a lot of patience and time. The average mission can last thirty minutes to an hour depending on how many times you have to retry or if you know what you’re doing. Sometimes impatience leads the player to taking the simplest options. Shooting their targets and leaving. This is a viable solution if done well. I’ve done it a couple times, and the challenge comes lining up the shot correctly and bopping them in the head without anyone noticing. It’s fun doing this and slipping away, but as you walk away you wonder if you could’ve done it differently. This is where the magic slips into play. You explore more, discover those story opportunities, piece them together, and pull it off. A very satisfying feeling because you had to use prior knowledge and thinking skills to do it. Then you start wondering if you can do it faster and more efficiently. The new Hitman games have a score system, and while I never really cared for score systems I think it’s a fun way to motivate the players to try levels again and again. Experiment with different tools and loadouts. There’s a reason why people can sink one hundred plus hours into this game and it shows.

I like how the game controls and what the engine is capable of. You can get creative and there is enough flexibility with the mechanics and options at your disposal. However, it is not flexible enough to allow for everything. If the game did just that you could pull the solution of choice in a short period of time.Again, it’s patience and knowledge that rewards you. There’s enough of a balance between creativity and limitation, and IO Interactive struck that. Creating a style of play you are forced to with ease and enjoy for several hours. Speaking of the engine of Hitman there is a lot to be said with how they recreated locations and settings in these games. I’ve seen a lot of praise for how Assassin’s Creed recreates locations, but not enough for how Hitman does it. The locations here are lively, colorful, and despite not having as much detail as other Triple A titles they did put a ton of attention to what happens in them. Similar to what happens in the world of Dishonored. Characters have schedules, interactions with each other, sometimes their behavior changes of what occurs before and after, and it makes every made up place believable. Like it is somewhere you would actually walk into if you were to journey to their countries of origin. I’d say the locations of Hitman 2 are still my favorite, but Hitman 3 still hits with its locales.

When it comes to the mission ideas I can’t determine whether I like Hitman 2 or Hitman 3 more. I think Hitman 2 had more creative story opportunities and there’s less here in Hitman 3. I can’t help but feel they were starting to run out of ideas, but at the same time Hitman 3 has some really good fundamentals with its levels. There’s a mission where you have to infiltrate a rave club to kill five targets, but the targets are ICA agents disguised as normal party goers. So you have to be careful wandering about and keep a close eye on who could be one of the agents. Then try to decide how to kill them without alerting people in this heavily populated condensed space. The mission is set in China where one target works in a lab in an apartment, but the others are contained within an underground sector. One you have to learn how to get to and work around, as each of the doors have security locks you can’t go through or have to hack. The winery with the public event happening on the top floor, the facility they can clearly see below, and wine fields. I love how targets vary from ones contained within certain spaces and the others who roam. They have a term for them, roamers and isolators, and it adds variety to each mission instead of doing the same routine each time. Then there’s my favorite mission, and oh god I can talk about this for hours. That being the second level, Death in The Family.

If you’ve played Hitman 3 you know which one it is. There is a mansion, one of the relatives has died, and one of the opportunities you can take is to disguise yourself as the hired detective. You can question each of the family members, ask them what they did the night before, search each of their rooms for evidence, and collect enough until you have a usable answer. There are seven family members I believe and three solutions you can work towards. Neither of the three are the correct choice and you have to determine which one you think is best. You need to do this as one of the mission’s other goals is to collect a file. A document that isn’t given to you unless you do this opportunity and gain your target’s trust. This mission is f*cking genius and I would love to play a game entirely like it or Return of The Obra Dinn again. You can collect evidence in any order you like. There’s no mission markers so you have to actively search the manor for evidence or the family members you need to question. Slowly you forget there was a target you had to kill in the first place. You lose track of what’s going on and you just play it like a detective game rather than a Hitman game. It’s a very anti-Hitman level and that’s why it’s my favorite. It took me one hour to beat that level alone and it was the most fun I had with one of these games.

Moving on I do want to express some changes I saw between Hitman 3 and the second game. I like how with missions that start off in heavily populated areas or a gateway where you get frisk you don’t start with anything at all. Whereas in the previous game I remember being in Miami, having a silenced pistol equipped, and then having to walk somewhere to dump it. Feels more convenient this time around. The newly added camera gadget is a cool one I’ll give it. Scanning things in the environment to either learn more about the world or gain info on the target. Nice, but it’s not implemented as well as you’d hope. The two levels that make the most use out of the camera are the China level with the laboratory, and the manor level I spent a paragraph gushing about. These are the second and fourth stages, and after that you probably never have to use it again. The game runs a lot smoothly and compared to Hitman 2 they were able to condense the storage size of this game. I believe Hitman 2 with all its content was 150 GB, but here it’s 70. I got a copy of Hitman 3 with all three games built in, and the fact IO Interactive was able to do this with just three years of development is astonishing. The game engine is better than ever, but it does still have a few faults. Sometimes bodies bug out especially when you load a save, the NPCs get stuck in geometry, or physics don’t work the way they should. I once picked an apple off a plate for the whole plate to shatter instantly, and I stood there confused.

I don’t get why these games need you to have an internet connection all the time. I understand it is for the high score system and to verify access to content, but this is a single player game. I am going to be playing by myself all the time. Why do I need this? There’s connection issues here and there, but overall the game runs wonderfully. I love how they continue to support the game through weekly elusive targets and two years ago they added Freelancer mode. Transforming the creative sandbox mission to mission structure into a roguelike. Now that’s interesting. My last criticism is for the story. I remember not thinking much about the story in Hitman 2. It was very forgettable, but now after playing all three games I say I clicked with it more. There’s some good plot beats, twists, and the politics are fascinating enough. My opinion is that I don’t like how it took three games for the story to actually work. Not just because they don’t make sense if you try to play them out of order, but because of how it’s structured. Hitman (2016) as good as it was has an incomplete narrative. It’s the beginning of a series, and that beginning offers little to nothing. Still a good game, but the story is just there. Then you hit Hitman 2 and it starts to do something with its narrative twist between Agent 47 and Grey. Then you hit Hitman 3 where it’s about the relationship between 47 and Diana, they try to have some hinted romance, and explore 47 as a complex character. Yeah, it is good to see this stuff. Agent 47 is a great character. He’s the result of conditioning a child into a weapon. A result of people doing evil things behind the scenes. How they will continue to destroy lives just like they did to him.

Its storyline got me to care a little with Hitman 3 and the ending is epic enough to leave me not feeling disappointed. However, I feel bad for anyone who plays these games out of order or takes a break between each game. Then the story feels really disjointed. Yet again, most people will most likely play these games back to back like I did especially if you buy the trilogy bundle. The only way now is to play Hitman (2016) and Hitman 2. Those servers for the older versions are up and you can still acquire copies, but digitally you have to buy them all together, which in some ways I kinda like. At the end of the day, Hitman 3 and World of Assassination trilogy in general is something I can easily recommend. It’s different compared to most stealth games out there and I don’t think there will ever be a game like it ever again. Although I am happy IO Interactive are now working on a James Bond game. The story of Agent 47 may now be over, but I hope to see some gameplay DNA carried over. Feels right when you’re making games about elite agents who are trying to save the world. In the end I am going to give Hitman 3 a 9/10 for excellence at best.

9/10, Excellence