Hitman 3 (stylized as HITMAN III) is a 2021 stealth game developed and published by IO Interactive. It is the sequel to the 2018 video game Hitman 2, the eighth main installment in the Hitman series and the third and final entry in the World of Assassination trilogy.
In the single-player story, the game concludes the plot arc started in Hitman and follows the genetically-engineered assassin Agent 47 and his allies as they hunt down the Partners, the leaders of the secretive organization Providence controlling the world's affairs.
The game is presented from a third-person perspective, with a focus on interactive elements in 47's environment. Within each map, 47 can walk around the map freely. The player can complete challenges within each mission or complete side missions usually with one fixed target that get progressively harder known as "escalations" in order to unlock new items.
Hitman 3 was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Stadia (under the title Hitman: World of Assassination) and Nintendo Switch on 20 January 2021.
The game received critical acclaim, with some critics calling it the best in the series. It was particularly praised for its level design and atmosphere, stealth mechanics, and 47's abilities.
It was reported that Hitman 3 was the most successful game in the franchise. It won various awards including "PC Game of the Year" at the 2021 Golden Joystick Awards.
Gameplay
Like its predecessors, Hitman 3 is a stealth game played from a third-person perspective and players once again assume control of assassin Agent 47. In the game, 47 travels to various locations and carries out contracted assassinations, continuing the story of the last two games.
The base game features six new locations: Dubai, Dartmoor, Berlin, Chongqing, Mendoza and an epilogue set in the Carpathian Mountains, Romania. Owners of Hitman or Hitman 2 are able to import maps, levels, and their progress into Hitman 3.
The new locations in Hitman 3 include persistent shortcuts, a new gameplay feature to the series. Each stage includes several initially locked doors which can only be unlocked from one side; once unlocked, these doors stay open in all future playthroughs, allowing initially closed-off locations to be reached more quickly.
The game features PlayStation VR compatibility on the PlayStation 4 version, with support for PlayStation 5 via backwards compatibility, Support for VR on PC was later added on 20 January 2022. The VR functionality also retroactively applies to levels imported from the previous two entries.
Unlike Hitman 2, there are no multiplayer modes, with Sniper Assassin being purely single player, and Ghost Mode being removed entirely. However, Hitman 3 kept Contracts Mode, where a player can select up to five targets across the 24 maps in the series with rules and complications; this mode gives the player extra possibilities after the main missions.
On January 20, 2022, IO Interactive also added a new gamemode to Hitman 3 called 'Elusive Target Arcade'. This allows users to play previous Elusive Targets, and earn rewards related to it. If the player fails a contract, they must wait 12 hours before attempting it again.
Plot
During the events of Hitman 2, professional assassin Agent 47 and his handler, Diana Burnwood, defected from the International Contract Agency (ICA) and joined forces with rogue mercenary Lucas Grey to destroy Providence: an alliance of corporate executives and industrialists collectively wielding political, military, and economic influence.
While 47 and Grey seek revenge on Providence for turning them both into assassins, Diana is motivated by the death of her parents, unaware that 47 carried out the killings.
The trio kidnapped Arthur Edwards, Providence's intermediary known as the Constant, who identified the three Partners controlling Providence: Carl Ingram, Marcus Stuyvesant, and Alexa Carlisle. Edwards, however, later escaped captivity and seized the Partners' corporate assets for himself.
Working together, 47 and Grey eliminate Ingram and Stuyvesant in Dubai during the inauguration of the Scepter, the world's tallest skyscraper, and Carlisle at her ancestral manor in Dartmoor, England. Following the Partners' deaths, Edwards assumes control of Providence and deploys mercenaries who capture Grey and Diana. Grey commits suicide to ensure 47 is not captured.
47 arranges to meet hacker Olivia Hall, Grey's only other trusted ally, in Berlin. Discovering that the ICA is tailing them, 47 kills several ICA agents sent to eliminate him, before he and Hall decide to conclusively stop the ICA by exposing its crimes to the public.
47 eliminates Hush and Imogen Royce, the overseers of the ICA data storage facility in Chongqing, China, allowing Hall to steal and publish all of the ICA's operational data while deleting all records of himself and Diana. The ICA is irrevocably compromised and dismantled, ending 47's career as a professional assassin.
Meanwhile, Edwards attempts to convert Diana to succeeding him as Constant and seeks her betrayal of 47 by finally revealing his killing of her parents. Diana seemingly double-deals both sides, accepting Edwards's offer while inviting 47 to a gathering of Providence members in Mendoza, Argentina, where he is instructed to eliminate the only people opposed to Diana's succession—Tamara Vidal and Don Archibald Yates—so that she can dismantle the organization upon assuming control.
While he follows her instructions, 47's longtime trust in Diana is finally shaken when she incapacitates him with poison in revenge for the murder of her parents.
In a dream, a vision of Grey persuades 47 that Diana has not betrayed him, but rather helped to put Edwards within his reach. 47 wakes up imprisoned on a train travelling through the Carpathian Mountains, with Edwards also on board.
Though Edwards intends to make 47 into an assassin for Providence once more by wiping his memory with a serum injection, 47 breaks free, either kills Edwards or injects him with the serum, and flees into the wild.
Meanwhile, Diana assumes power as Constant and enacts a purge of Providence's members from leadership positions at major global corporations, dismantling Providence's power structure. A year later, 47 reunites with Diana, and the pair return to their former roles as assassin and handler, respectively, as a means of keeping the global elites in check.
In an alternate ending, if 47 injects himself with the serum while confronting Edwards, he passes out, and later awakens in a padded room, greeted by Edwards' voice telling him, "Wake up. Wake up, my friend. It's the dawn of a new day, and you have things to do"—akin to the opening of Hitman: Codename 47.
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