Freelancer - You are in control

HITMAN: Freelancer adds some new types of gameplay into the normal gameplay recipe of the main game.

An important example of this is what we call “strategic planning”.

Where the main game can be described as the VIP version of being an assassin, where the player has an organization that finds the targets and supplies both detailed briefings as well as gear, Agent 47 has a lot of the hard work taken care of for him.

In HITMAN: Freelancer, that’s not the case. It’s much more of an independent experience, where a lot of the surrounding work of being an assassin is put into the hands of the player.

Players will have to build and maintain an arsenal of gear, but also decide on what to bring to missions, weigh up the pros and cons of having a limited gear capacity and the risk of losing valuable and hard to come by equipment.

Another way that HITMAN Freelancer gives more freedom to the player is by giving them the choice of which Syndicates to go up against - all based on the players’ preferred gameplay style, favorite locations, and maybe even the personal dislikes of certain types of crime of the player. The opportunities for success against these syndicates will very much rely on the tools a player has available when commencing a mission.

Without a handler, players can also delve into the important role of carrying our their own recon and investigation work, by identifying targets in Showdown missions.

Everything is an opportunity that can be planned for, and exploited, by a player who is good at creatively combining information in the Safehouse and improvising when something unexpected happens on a mission.

The key here, is that HITMAN: Freelancer puts the strategic planning of a mission into the hands of the player. The game mode relies on randomized elements, that are rolled independently of each other. The game mode gives the player all available information, but there’s no guarantee that an objective, for instance, is possible when on the mission. To succeed, it is up to the player to ensure that a payout objective is possible, by bringing the right gear, or choosing the right combination of location, brought gear and objectives.

In that sense HITMAN: Freelancer is very different from the main game – there’s no hand-holding Mission Stories with scripted custom kills, that are always possible. Every iconic takedown in HITMAN: Freelancer is an emergent construct of systemic game mechanics and the foresight and creativity of the player.