I am writing this while still riding the wave of a gaming high unlike anything else I’ve experienced recently. Six years and three releases after the Hitman series rebooted itself, those three titles were united as one game under the “World of Assassination” banner. IOI also introduced Freelancer: a rogue-like mode where the familiar locations are used but your targets are randomized; optional objectives are procedurally generated, and you are limited in what weapons and tools you can bring to a mission by what you’ve acquired in prior Freelancer missions. Even after 6 years of learning and understanding Hitman’s systems and AI and interactions, Freelancer mode is a damn hard challenge.
The set up is simple: Agent 47 has hung his own shingle and is working on his own to take down Syndicates, loosely organized groups of criminals. A campaign involved you choosing a Syndicate to go after: arms traffickers, “big pharma,” drug dealers, etc. you’re then presented with three locations to choose from, each with 1-2 targets to eliminate. Finishing the first two results in the Syndicate leader being at the third location, and one of 4 Suspects. You’re given a physical description (hair color, necklace or not, hat, earrings, tattoos, etc), two behavioral “tells” like smoking, bookworm, nervous, or foodie, and an agenda they’re trying to complete, which indicated another action you’re watching them to take. You then have to identify the correct target from the 4 possibilities and eliminate them. There’s a small penalty in just killing all the possible targets, so that’s not a truly viable strategy. Completing this loop takes you to the next stage of the campaign, which is the same loop but with 3 lead-in missions and a leader, and then 4 lead-in missions and a Syndicate leader, and finally - you guessed it, 5 lead-in missions and a Syndicate leader to end your campaign.
Am I still feeling the high of successfully completing a full campaign? Oh hell no. I successfully completed the first three missions, taking out one Syndicate leader. This took me a week of applying everything I know about Hitman’s systems and simultaneously trying to break every habit nice developed in 6 years of playing this series. There are a million ways to play the story campaign, but the “canonical” way or most incentivized way is to try to earn a “Silent Assassin” rating: you kill only your target, you are never identified by enemies or NPCs or even seen on surveillance cameras dotted throughout the world, if you incapacitate a non-target their body is never found, and your target’s body is not found unless you manage to make them die via an accident.
Stealth is still the name of the game, but the random nature of your targets means you have to become okay with being spotted and with collateral damage. One mission set my target as a housekeeper in the map’s mansion. This target stood on a balcony and smoked and talked to another non-target housekeeper. I tried every trick I know and had available given my limited inventory to lure either one of them away to knockout the potential witness and kill the target but had no luck. I had to eventually just assault them both with a crowbar, snap my target’s neck, and dump both bodies in a conveniently placed crate. This was nothing compared to a mission in a Japanese hospital where my target was a staff member whose entire behavior loop was watering three plants in a heavily trafficked cafe/sushi bar area. She was never alone even for a second, there was no way to get her alone that I could see, and clearing out the other 20 or so NPCs in the area wasn’t a viable option. I threw caution to the wind and disguised myself as a sushi chef which allowed me to carry a kitchen knife around (although this had its own risks as another sushi chef NPC in the area could, if I stayed in his eye line long enough, recognize me as an imposter), and waited for my target to be as close to the level exit as she would get. I chucked that knife at her head and booked it to the exit as fast as I could with guards radioing in my description and opening fire. Thanks to a short, unguarded path to an exit, I escaped. Stealth be dammed, it was exhilarating.
My Syndicate leader experience seems almost tame by comparison. I infiltrated an underground facility in China where three of my four suspects were located, ran into one straight away who fit the description to a T, followed her until I had a split second alone with her and quietly stabbed her with a lethal syringe I’d procured between missions. I breathed a sigh of relief when the game confirmed I had killed the proper suspect and walked out with no one the wiser.
Don’t ask how the next phase of the campaign went; I’m not ready to talk about my gross miscalculation regarding another unisolatable target, the path to the exit, and the reaction to an exploding baseball. But I’ve got an idea of how I’ll handle a similar situation in the future, and I see a long future for me with this game mode.