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 the Carpathian Mountains, Romania. A seventh map, the fictional Ambrose Island in the Andaman Sea, India, was added for free on 26 July 2022. 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. Hitman 3 added a new camera item available by default which can be used to take photos and is used for gameplay purposes such as opening doors on certain maps. Another new feature in the game is numerical keypads, where players have to find four-digit codes and enter them manually to open doors and safes.
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 added on 20 January 2022. The VR functionality retroactively applies to levels imported from the previous two entries. Unlike Hitman 2, there are no multiplayer modes, with Sniper Assassin being solely single-player, and Ghost Mode being removed entirely.
Hitman 3 features Contracts Mode, where a player can select up to five targets across all the maps in the series, add rules and complications like specific kill methods and share their contracts with other players. ‘Featured Contracts’ are regularly added, which may be a selection of community contracts on a certain theme (such as during the Seasons of Sin) or contracts made by specific gaming publications or YouTube channels like Kinda Funny or Eurogamer.The game features side missions created by the developers known as “Escalations” which are multi-stage contracts that get progressively harder as the player completes each stage.
Hitman 3 also features ‘Elusive Targets’ which are time-limited missions that can only be attempted once. On 20 January 2022, IO Interactive added a new game mode called ‘Elusive Target Arcade’. This allows users to play ‘Arcade Contracts’, with each contract consisting of a series of previous Elusive Targets that must be eliminated in order. Each contract has a complication, which may require the player to change their strategies. Players can earn rewards for completing contracts but if the player fails a contract, they must wait 12 hours before attempting it again.
source
