The Hitman franchise quickly became a firm favourite with stealth aficionados due to the tense takedowns and open world environments. Even though Hitman Absolution felt a little out-of-place, the game’s core mechanics were solid and provided an excellent experience. Its sequel was originally intended to be a standard full price release but this was quickly changed to suit an episodic business model. This sudden alteration raised concerns about the game’s content and value proposition. However, the reception for the first episode was overwhelmingly positive and looks like it helped improve the overall pacing.
Today, the latest Hitman patch has been released which includes a number of performance enhancements using the DirectX 12 render. This is vital because the DirectX 12 option created some performance issues on numerous setups. There’s also new challenges and a host of other content in the 1.03 update. Here is the changelog in full:
General game improvements
The Vampire Magician Challenge Pack : 10 new challenges that were inspired by how our community have been playing the game.
Continued improvements to load times: The improvements will be most notable when loading The Showstopper mission in Paris and we’re already working on improving all loading times even more.
Improved responsiveness for in-game menus and image loading: We’ve implemented an image caching system that will improve responsiveness and loading times for all images in the game menu.
Fixed issues with scoring: Primarily, this fixes an issue that resulted in many players earning a “0 second” time bonus and an incorrect score of 210,000. A leaderboard reset will be implemented at a later date.
Continued improvements to connectivity: Server stability improvements.
PC-specific improvements
General gameplay
Prompts for dumping a body now appear, regardless of the positioning of the game camera, both in Showstopper and Final Test missions.
47 no longer drops a body immediately after starting to drag it.
Unnoticed kills or subdue will no longer trigger a brief “compromised” state. This previously caused players to fail the ‘never spotted’ reward.
The ‘visibly armed’ warning is now always shown when 47 is carrying a large weapon on his back.
The light rig (Showstopper) and life raft (Freeform Training) can now be reliably dropped using explosives.
Opportunities in Showstopper and Final Test have been made more consistent.
Fixed an issue where the first few seconds of the game would appear to run at double speed.
Showstopper
Novikov will no longer get stuck in an infinite loop during the Rare Scoop opportunity. This would happen if the player gets Max Decker to call Novikov whilst he is on his way to the interview.
Novikov will no longer talk to Dalia on the phone when she has already been eliminated.
Fixed a rare issue that made the “In Seine” challenge impossible to complete. This would happen when the Private Meeting opportunity overlapped with Novikov on stage at the Fashion Show.
Fixed an issue where the Showstopper mission could not be completed if the player calls Dalia during the Fireworks show whilst disguised as Helmut Kruger.
Crash Fixes
Fixed various crash issues that could occur when doing the following: loading a new stage in Escalation Contracts, loading the game or after exploding a gas cylinder.
Fixed a crash that occurred when shooting at the target in Freeform training during the “Searching” state.
Fixed many other crash issues that were occurring during gameplay.
Options
Added an option to the game launcher that allows players to override the ‘default memory safeguards’ and allow them to use any available resolution and graphic quality settings.
Increased resolution cap for players with 3gb graphics cards from 1920×1200 to 2560×1600.
DX12
DX12 shader and pipeline cache now included in all Steam builds.
Fixed a graphical issue with transparent windows on DX12.
Improved vertex colours on DX12.
Misc.
Briefings for Featured Contracts can now be viewed at the planning stage.
The ‘Contract Assassin’ achievement can now be completed.
The mouse cursor is now always visible on the ‘Load Game’ menu.
Fixed an issue where the game would get stuck at 12% loading between the Prologue missions.
Fixed a rare issue where players were asked to (re)download the Showstopper mission.
Hardware
Fixed a rare issue where the game was switching between controller and keyboard controls, due to detecting specific hardware as a ‘game controller’.