PC Requirements for Ray Tracing and Adaptive Supersampling
Realtime ray tracing arrives for our PC players with our 3.110 patch and will bring higher quality reflections and shadows to the World of Assassination. Through HITMAN 3, all locations in the World of Assassination will benefit from this new feature.
Ray tracing the detailed environments of HITMAN 3 is quite demanding on the GPU. To get the best experience it’s important to select graphics quality settings that match your installed GPU.
HITMAN 3 supports ray traced reflections and shadows.
Ray tracing can be enabled from the Graphics menu under Options in the main menu of HITMAN 3. Here you’ll find separate toggles for enabling ray traced reflections and shadows. When ray tracing is enabled, the Reflection Quality options appears and here you can control the reflection quality. Ray tracing must be enabled before you start a mission.
In general, for lower end hardware we recommend using low or medium Reflection Quality. Lowering reflection quality can greatly improve performance, but results in reflections with fewer details and occasional popping of small objects.
Adaptive Supersampling in HITMAN 3 on PC
Patch 3.110 also adds support for Adaptive Supersampling, such as NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution 1.0. It is highly recommended to enable DLSS or FSR when using ray tracing for a better and smoother experience.
HITMAN 3 – Year 2 The Road Ahead
HITMAN 3 – Year 2: The Road Ahead
It’s been a hot minute since we started HITMAN 3 – Year 2 and we’ve just reached the 3-month mark. A great time for us to give a deeper update on what’s coming up in the rest of the year.
If you’ve just joined the World of Assassination, or need a recap on what Year 2 is all about, you can catch up on the plans we shared earlier this year (link to Y2 reveal blog post). Today, we want to give an update on these exciting updates and when you can expect them to arrive in the game.
Freelancer
Let’s start with the most relevant piece of news first. We’re moving the release date to make the mode all it can be. Here’s more detail. We see HITMAN 3: Freelancer as the next evolution of Hitman and an entirely new way to engage with the world and characters that we’ve built into the World of Assassination over the last 7 years. We’ve concluded the main campaign with HITMAN 3, but the world has so much more to offer and we didn’t feel as though we’d quite achieved everything we wanted to with Agent 47 in this trilogy.
In short, this mode is quite expansive and involving. It’s built for players that want to dive deeper into what a Hitman game can be and for that reason, we’ve decided to give it more time. The truth is that it’s a luxurious decision for us to make. HITMAN 3 has been a success and with that, we’re able to give our team that extra time to tighten the bolts and make sure that the mode is as close to our ambitions as possible. We want it to land well and be a platform for Hitman players to enjoy this game world for a long period of time.
In fact, we’ve had several rounds of internal testing, and we’ve even shared playable builds with some of our trusted and core community members to give feedback and share insights after lengthy playtests. This was all done on their own machines and in their own homes to truly replicate what it will be like when we launch the mode.
The feedback from the playtests was largely positive and the mode is in very good shape. As we’ve said, we’re taking some extra time to tighten the mode up and improve several elements that we think will greatly improve the gameplay experience. Whilst we work on those improvements, we’re also preparing to dive deeper into the mode and share more of what you can expect. With all of that in mind, we’re now aiming to release the Freelancer game mode to HITMAN 3 in the second half of 2022. We think it will be worth the wait.
Spring Content
With the change to the release of the Freelancer game mode from Spring to second half of 2022, we’ve needed to adjust some of our plans for the next few months. It’s a relatively complex and fluid situation where we’ve been moving things around behind the scenes, but we’ve landed in a good place.
In our original plans, we had a patch scheduled for April that would have included fresh new content for that month and throughout May. Now, we’ll be introducing that content with our next patch, planned for May 24th.
As you can see above, the biggest change will be a few more rounds of Featured Contracts than we normally release over the course of a month – although we are brewing on some exciting ideas for how to make the most of them… When we hit May 24th, it’ll be business as usual with ET Arcade unlocks and HITMAN 3 ET’s back on the menu. We hope that sharing more insights and going more ‘in-depth’ about the choices that we’ve made along the way will keep you informed about what’s to come in HITMAN 3. We waited longer than anticipated to share these plans with you to make sure that we could share them concretely and accurately. Thank you for your patience.
Further Ahead
It's not just Freelancer that’s got a new release date. We’re actually bringing forward the release date of the ‘Rocky’ map that we first revealed in January. We’ve now got that scheduled in for a July 2022 release. This new map will have an intriguing narrative for Hitman fans, as it takes place before the events of HITMAN 3 and fills in a few gaps from the World of Assassination storyline. We’re excited to share more details in the run-up to release, and we’re even more excited to show you another look at the location in all it’s glory right now. This is Ambrose Island.
What’s next?
As we said above, the next milestone for HITMAN 3 will be the game patch that is scheduled to arrive on May 24th. As always, we’ll have detailed patch notes of what has been changed and improved.
We’ve tried to boil down the complexities and moving parts of our game into a comprehensible post, but you’ll be forgiven for wanting to scroll back up and makes sense of exactly what’s happening and when. To make it a bit easier for you, here’s what HITMAN 3 Year 2 looks like from here on out:
Today: May Roadmap May 24: Patch 3.110 arrives with PC RayTracing July: Ambrose Island map (aka Codename Rocky) Second half of 2022: Freelancer game mode coming to HITMAN 3.
The Berlin Egg Hunt
The Berlin Egg Hunt returns today as a permanent addition for all owners of HITMAN 3.
In this Easter-themed event, Agent 47 heads to Berlin to attend an exclusive Club Hölle event, where the location has been transformed for the Egg Hunt. Players must capitalize on their knowledge of the club’s exterior because the event is at capacity and all the action takes place in the less-explored surrounding areas.
Get ready for a seasonal twist to the Berlin location with new decorations and graffiti, a series of unique objectives, new gameplay items to collect and use (eggs!), unique targets, and unlock the Raver Suit, which is permanently added to your inventory when completing the eggscalation.
The Berlin Egg Hunt is available to play now. It is permanent for all owners of HITMAN 3 and timed for all HITMAN 3 Free Starter Pack Players, concluding on May 2.
HITMAN 3 is Steam Deck Verified
We're excited to announce that HITMAN 3 is Steam Deck Verified and will be playable on Steam Deck when it launches on February 25, 2022. When you get your hands on Valve's new handheld, you can bring Agent 47 with you on the go or play the current Elusive Target - from the couch.
HITMAN 3: Free Steam Upgrades through to February 19th 2022
Our HITMAN 3 launch on Steam didn’t go as planned. We were excited to bring HITMAN 3 to Steam with new content and we knew that anticipation and excitement levels amongst our Steam players was high, especially as the game had been an Epic exclusive for a year.
Ultimately, we didn’t meet our own expectations of a launch experience and we don’t like that our Steam community is beginning their HITMAN 3 journey in this way.
So, here’s what we’re going to do: Everyone on Steam who has already bought HITMAN 3, or anyone that buys the game through to February 19th 2022, will be granted a free upgrade.
-> All HITMAN 3 Standard Edition owners will get a free upgrade to the HITMAN 3 Deluxe Edition.
-> All HITMAN 3 Deluxe Edition or HITMAN Trilogy owners will get a free upgrade to the Seven Deadly Sins Collection.
Starting on January 27th 2022, this process will begin to automatically roll out via Steam entitlements. Simply launch your Steam copy of HITMAN 3 and the new content from your free upgrade will be waiting for you to enjoy.
