Hitman World of Assassination Update Adds Freelancer Prestige, Exploding Pen

The ICA Facility is available in Contracts Mode, and an Exploding Pen tool becomes available after revisiting Patient Zero.

IO Interactive’s Hitman World of Assassination has received a new update on all platforms, which adds some new content and Prestige levels to Freelancer. The former includes the Black Bruiser suit, available after finishing Freelancer on Hardcore. It could take up to 24 hours to appear, so if you’ve already completed the campaign on Hardcore, sit tight.

Players can also unlock a new tool, the Exploding Pen, by taking down Craig Black in Patient Zero in “some specific and fitting circumstances.” Contracts Mode also includes the ICA Facility, so you can now partake in Contracts on the training mission’s yacht.

However, the biggest addition is probably Prestige for Freelancer. Upon filling your Safehouse with all the weapons, you can access the Prestige Laptop. It resets your items, gear, Merces and weapons while providing an increased payout for Prestige Objective Merces and bonus XP on mission completion. Both increase as you progress from Prestige Level 1 to 5.

Check out some of the patch notes below and the full notes here. Hitman World of Assassination is available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC and Nintendo Switch.

HITMAN – May Patch Notes

PATCH DETAILS

NEW CONTENT

Black Bruiser Suit

Complete any Freelancer campaign on Hardcore Mode and the Black Bruiser is yours to keep.
“Why take an aspirin after a rough night, when you can flip the coin and make it a look? A classic black suit with a bloody white shirt, to show the world that no one messes with you.”
If you’ve already completed a Freelancer campaign on Hardcore, you’ll automatically complete this challenge and won’t need to complete another Hardcore campaign – but please be patient because it may take up to 24 hours for the suit to be added to your inventory.

Exploding Pen

As the old phrase goes, ‘explosions speak louder than words’. That’s never been more true with the Exploding Pen you can unlock by heading back into the Patient Zero campaign and eliminating Craig Black under some specific and fitting circumstances.

Contracts Mode – ICA Facility

We’re expanding the offering of Contracts Mode to now include the ICA Facility location. More specifically it’s the Freeform Training mission that takes place on the yacht.

HITMAN Freelancer – Prestige

We’re adding a new ‘Prestige’ feature to Freelancer that will give you more reasons to play.

On the Mission Control table, there’s now a ‘Prestige Laptop, which allows you to progress through five Prestige Levels. Once you’ve collected all the weapons that can be stored in the Safehouse, you’ll be able to use the Prestige Laptop to advance your Prestige Level.

Increase the Prestige Objective Merces payout and grant an XP bonus for completing missions.
These bonuses increase from level 1-5 and do not change once you reach Prestige Level 5.
Add a Prestige trophy (a single trophy will display your current Prestige Level)
Remove all items in your inventory, all Freelancer gear, all weapons on the weapon walls and all Merces.

The design of this feature is very much focused on it being fun to collect all the weapons again, and being able to optimize the way that you collect them, based on your previous experiences.

*Some small details about Freelancer – Prestige listed here are different to what we published in our recent Patch Notes Preview. The preview was accidentally based off old information.

TECHNOLOGY

With the 3.150.1 patch, we’ve fixed an issue with GPU memory leak (VRAM) with DLSS enabled. There’s also been some updates to Nvidia DLSS from version 2.4.3 to 3.1.1.0 and Nvidia Streamline from version 1.4.6 to 1.5.2.

FREELANCER IMPROVEMENTS

These improvements are all directly linked to Freelancer mode. We’ve added this little paragraph so that we don’t have to put (Freelancer) after each and every one.

Timed Prestige Objectives

All timed prestige objectives will now complete once all targets are eliminated (as opposed to when you exit the mission). This should give players more time and freedom to continue exploring a location, for example to visit a vendor or locate safes.

Item Unlock Identification

We’ve added a small objective marker to the weapon wall to help players quickly find and identify a newly unlocked item.

Redecorate Prompt

We’ve changed the ‘redecorate’ prompt to ensure that 47 can access all Safehouse items and redecorate at his leisure. This was only affecting PC players, where the prompt to redecorate and interact with a nearby item was the same, which could cause the game to softlock in the worst cases. Now, the redecorate prompt has been remapped to Q by default to prevent this.

Fuse and Nail

We’ve made it possible to drop a nail that you have equipped in the Safehouse, so that you’re not forced to take it with you on a mission, or reload into the Safehouse to get rid of it. In the same vein, we’ve also added a fusebox in the garage right next to the fuse, so that you can store the fuse there after you’ve picked it up. For technical reasons, we can’t make the fuse ‘droppable’ but this solution won’t force you to keep it once you’ve picked it up.

Open and Close

In the Freelancer Safehouse, it’s now possible to open and close the wine shelf and the garage door.

Freelancer HUD Options

Under Options>Gameplay, we’ve added four new options for ‘Freelancer’ which allows players to customise specific HUD elements for this game mode.
The following HUD elements can either be toggled ON (default) or OFF:
– Lookout Proximity Indicator
– Assassin Proximity Indicator
– Alerted Territory Indicator
– Merces Indicator.

Safehouse Spruce

We’ve updated the location image for the Safehouse Location in the menu. When browsing the Freelancer game mode, the background image (behind challenges, etc) will display an exterior shot of the Safehouse, rather than the artwork featuring 47.

Lie Down

We’ve made it possible to lie down in (some of) the beds in the Safehouse. We don’t have fitting animations for all of them, so we’ve enabled the lie down animation where it makes sense.

Target Jingle

We’ve removed the ‘target nearby sound effect’ for Showdown missions, to avoid this being an easy way to identify the Leader. It will still play in other missions where you know the identity of the target.

Spycam Improvements

We’ve added an option to “Hide UI” when using the Spycam. This was in response to player feedback that the UI elements can make it difficult to identify the finer details of a character with the elements permanently visible.
Also, we’ve made the Spycam more precise, which should make it easier to target the correct NPC.

Perfect Shooter Tweak

We’ve made a change to the ‘Perfect Shooter’ objective (Do not miss a shot, you will fail if any shot misses a person), that will make an exception for security cameras or recorders. The objective text has also been updated. In short, you can now shoot security cameras and recorders and still earn the Perfect Shooter objective.

Do Not Change Suit