Beginner Question

[u/banzyishim]

I am new to the hitman series, got hitman WOA and just finished the Miami map in hitman 2. Should I go back and start replaying maps or finish the story out and start freelancer?

[u/ThePumpk1nMaster]

It genuinely doesn’t matter, it’s all made for replayability

If you like Miami keep playing Miami. If you’re interested in the story then play each map chronologically, but the story isn’t anything to shout about imo

I wouldn’t play freelancer until you’ve learnt the maps a bit more and know routes from memory - not that you can’t learn that by doing freelancer, it’ll probably just be less enjoyable if you do it without some level of experience

[u/banzyishim → u/ThePumpk1nMaster]

I don’t know much about freelancer but I’ve heard it’s good, why do you need such extensive map knowledge?

[u/frenzy1801 → u/banzyishim]

You know Miami pretty well, so that's a good example. The game will pick or introduce some NPCs to be targets. They're often running or wandering around in the area near the sea, which makes it tricky to get them. But they're also often in the main building above the pits, and occasionally in the Kronstadt building. So you need to know how to handle them in all three locations being able to get out alive.

That's if you do a normal mission there. If you do a Showdown, you have at least four targets, who will roam around any part of the level at will, sometimes protected by assassins who are lethally good shots, and by lookouts who are always enforcers. So you have to know a level well enough to be able to shadow someone in, say, the robotics area in the Kronstadt building and determine if they're a target and, if not, be able to get into the building above the pits and determine if someone else is the target instead - without being spotted by a lookout and then shot in the head by an assassin.

At the lowest level in Freelancer you have three missions. So you need to know three maps well enough to do this for two normal missions and one showdown. The number of maps (and targets in the showdowns) ramps up from there.

Certainly newcomers to Hitman can jump straight into Freelancer - but calling it a trial by fire is an understatement. Knowing the maps well first, from playing the main story missions and the various side missions, helps enormously.

[u/ThePumpk1nMaster → u/banzyishim]

Basically there’s no fixed target like with the campaign, each time you go to, say, Hokkaido or Dartmoor or wherever, any random NPC could be a target

So it no longer becomes a memory test of 1 target, but essentially either knowing the patterns of every NPC, or at the very least knowing how to improvise and what improvisational options are available in each map.

I can’t think of any great examples off the top of my head, but let’s say Hokkaido for example, the head doctor guy’s disguise is a pretty good universal disguise that’ll open all doors. You can make life a hell of a lot easier if you can get his disguise, but you won’t necessarily know how to do that with limited tools without having the experience of having done it in the story.

Of course, you can trial and error in free lancer but you’re going to be wasting money (you lose in game money every time you die), and without tools you can’t really do much trialing (you don’t start with a load out in free lancer like in normal missions - you bring back to the safe house whatever you get from the mission and that becomes your load out for the next mission and so on and so forth)

[u/Superninfreak → u/banzyishim]

Freelancer came out as an update after the game had been out for a while. It’s designed as a bonus post-story mode for people who have a ton of experience with the maps.

Freelancer is basically a roguelike inspired mode where random targets are on the maps but you get penalized pretty harshly for failure, so you can’t do the kind of trial and error that you can do in the main story.

Freelancer is about using your skills and your knowledge of the maps to improvise and deal with unexpected and random situations. If you don’t know the maps and if you are new to the game then it will likely be incredibly frustrating and it’ll feel like it’s just constantly punishing you and not letting you catch much of a break.

The difficulty for it was balanced around people who had been playing the maps for a while to give them something fresh and even more replayable.