Hitman 3 Freelancer mode’s roguelike twist on stealth is shaping up to be a perfect fit for the series
Ordinary people do terrible things. The tenet is just as accurate in IO Interactive’s Hitman series as it is in real life, and while that truism may cause distress for some, for Agent 47, it’s a chance to earn a bit of extra cash untethered from his usual employer. Hitman 3 Freelancer mode forces you to adopt a hybrid approach in the stealth game, improvising nearly every move and hoping for the best. Based on our time with the closed technical test, Freelancer mode feels more Hitman than the actual Hitman campaigns at times, only without the elaborate stories and sinister cabal of villains.
Removing the restraints on harming non-targets introduces a welcome element of Hitman: Blood Money. One of the more frustrating aspects of recent Hitman games is acquiring an arsenal of bizarre and effective weapons, from exploding ducks to ninja stars, and having almost no opportunity to use them without incurring some kind of penalty beyond just attracting unwanted attention.
ICA, the group that employs Agent 47, frowns on unnecessary bloodshed. 47 the freelancer doesn’t. While you still don’t want to run around firing potshots without a care at every guard or hindrance you see, removing the point penalty opens new ways to approach obstacles that complements Freelancer mode’s spin on Hitman stealth and encourages new playstyles.
One early mission saw me tracking down a Syndicate member in Berlin’s dance club from Hitman 3, a labyrinthine map that often necessitates a slow, methodical approach. The Freelancer mission dropped me on a quiet rooftop with an unsilenced pistol, a lone guard blocking my way forward, and no visible way off the roof.
Normally, the next thing to do is use a coin or some other distraction to lure the guard away, incapacitate them, and place them somewhere discrete to sleep off the excitement. With no distractions at hand, I checked my surroundings to ensure no one else was around, took aim, mentally apologized to this man’s fictitious family, and pulled the trigger. The same method helped me dispatch the target and clear the contract in under five minutes.
The next mission dropped me in Mendoza, where I adopted a similar approach and tried pushing a guard over a wall. In true Hitman fashion, though, someone, somewhere saw the heinous act, and my bold decision resulted in 47’s murder in under five seconds.
Stealth and smart planning are still central parts of every mission, but with no save options and the threat of an alert target escaping, Freelancer forces you to take risks you might not otherwise have felt bold enough to take – and not always with the results you hoped for.
Optional objectives, similar to assassination challenges, also prompt you to take extra risks and approach problems differently. One mission might reward you for getting a knife kill, which sounds easy until you realize the only knife is dozens of yards away from your target.
While I didn’t notice a substantial amount of difference between optional objectives based on the kind of campaign you choose, like IO Interactive previously promised, it didn’t really matter. The extra mercs and satisfaction of successfully pulling off a tough challenge make them worthwhile even without campaign distinctions.
That level of rashness naturally results in failure sometimes, but in its test phase at least, Freelancer is comparatively forgiving. If you fail a regular mission, you lose the items gained from that map and put the next territory on alert, which means you can expect more guards. Failing a showdown – the final encounter – wipes all progress in that campaign and puts you back to square one.
Annoying as that sounds, Freelancer mode has one boon that elusive targets didn’t: You can try again.
You only lose items and weapons, but starting a new mission with nothing but a simple weapon is pretty much what you do in every new Hitman contract anyway. That sentiment might change at higher levels and further into a campaign, where you have more to lose, but making campaigns against “ordinary” people and knowing you haven’t missed anything by failing means that it’s just an annoyance more than an active frustration or penalty.
The smooth incorporation of a new playstyle makes the clunkiness of arriving back home stand out even more. 47 can only keep a few items found from the previous mission on account of an equipment weight feature. It makes little sense in context. With a giant wall with slots for weapons, poisons, and the like, space to store things is the least of 47’s concerns.
Inventory quibbles aside, I’m keen to experience Freelancer in its entirety when the roguelike mode launches as a free update on PC and console on Jan. 26, 2023.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
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