The opening cinematic
for HITMAN is now online, showing off 20 years of creative assassination
from Agent 47 as IO Interactive gears up for the March 11th release of the next
installment in the series. The accompanying announcement invites PlayStation
Plus members to an open beta a week before the release, and also serves up more
details about what to expect. They also have a
new article
explaining exactly how the "live component" of the game will work, and here's a
portion of that lengthy post:
Elusive Targets
The Contracts that are available for a limited-time are what we call Elusive
Targets. An Elusive Target is the closest thing to the Hitman fantasy that we've
ever created. These targets will be custom-created characters that are added to
existing locations and are only there for a limited time in real-time. You'll
only have one chance to take them down. If they escape, they are gone for good.
If you kill them, that's the way that you killed them. There are no do-overs and
no second chances. When an Elusive Target leaves the game world (one way or
another) they never return.
Each Elusive Target will have a custom briefing video, a backstory and a unique
reason for being in that location. When you're actually playing in the location,
the Elusive Target will not appear on the map and will not appear in Instinct.
In order to find them, you'll need to use clues from the briefing video and a
photograph that you will be able to review. You'll need to explore, find your
target, learn their patterns and come up with a plan to eliminate them - all
whilst playing. The pressure will be on when you've got the target in your
sights. If you miss the shot and chaos breaks loose, you will need to have a
plan B, because the save-game is disabled during an Elusive Target. If you kill
the wrong person or die when trying to exfiltrate, that's it. Game over, the
target escapes.
As the season unfolds, you’ll earn in-game rewards for completing multiple
Elusive Target contracts. The rewards are signature suits from previous Hitman
games and versions of those suits with gloves. There’s also a version of the
signature suit from the new HITMAN with gloves.
We know that Elusive Targets are not going to be easy, they were designed that
way.