Please take this job seriously
Agent 47, consummate professional that he is (here’s a video of him kicking a toilet onto someone’s head), is always looking to improve. In his line of work, staying alive is a secondary objective right behind efficient killing. Now he’s a bit better at both of those.
Hitman developer IO Interactive has just rolled out update 1.12.1, and its main purpose is seemingly to make things just a little easier for 47. Combat has been tweaked to slow the fire rate of enemy pistols, reduce damage taken at mid- to long-range distances, speed up the lock-on animation with aim assist enabled, and increase rate of health regeneration.
However, these changes don’t alter the Professional difficulty, which is available much sooner as of today. Now, Mastery level 5 is required to unlock a level’s Professional mode. Before, it was level 20. Here’s where amateurs can find out how tough it is to be an elite assassin.
Otherwise, this patch is mostly full of fixes to make Hitman a better game (improved loading times on Xbox One is probably the most notable of them). It’s just in time for Season One’s final elusive target contract that releases tomorrow. Here’s the full list of update notes, as outlined by IO:
Xbox One Loading Times
- After a recent update, Xbox One users reported to us that the game was taking longer to load than usual, especially when restarting a contract.
We’ve looked into this and now have the Xbox One loading times back to where they should be. Thanks to our Xbox One players who reported this.
Combat Changes
- We’ve made some changes to combat across the game. The intended result of these changes is to make combat more satisfying and viable for all players.
Specifically, we have reduced the fire rate of NPC pistols, slightly increased how quickly 47 can ‘snap’ to the target NPC when ‘aim assist’ is toggled on, reduced the damage that 47 takes at mid to long distances and increased the speed that 47’s health regenerates. We are continuing to monitor and adjust these values based on our own impressions and we’re looking forward to feedback from our players when these changes go live. Please note that Professional Difficulty is not affected by these changes and still offers the ‘Lethal Combat’ that was promised.
Backstory: With an earlier update on June 23rd, the first iteration of our internal combat changes was unintentionally released. That first iteration simply reduced the damage output of NPC weapons and resulted in what some of our community have lovingly described as ‘Tank 47’. The changes that we mention above (and will introduce with 1.12.1) are based on the combat values before the June 23rd update. This is important to mention because we want to be clear that we haven’t made 47 more of a tank. Instead, we’ve looked at the combat experience that we’ve had in the game since launch and made the above changes to the long-standing values.
Professional Difficulty
- We’ve changed the unlock criteria for Professional Difficulty from Mastery level 20 to Mastery level 5. All players that currently have Mastery level 5-19 on each location will automatically unlock Professional Difficulty after updating their game to 1.12.1 (July Update). There are no changes to Professional Difficulty other than the unlock criteria.
Excuse me, I found a weapon
- We’ve fixed an issue that could cause guards to repeatedly drop weapons that they discovered on the ground. This issue was prominent on The Icon mission.
Bathroom Break
- We’ve fixed an issue that could cause the toilet in the Marrakesh school to behave erratically after 47 kicks it onto Zaydan. This could occasionally result in 47’s death. Seriously.
Cancelling Connecting
- We’ve fixed an issue that could cause players to inadvertently cancel the ‘connecting’ prompt and enter ‘Offline Mode’.
Opportunity Lost After Loading
- We’ve fixed an issue that could cause the Opportunity Marker (the little light bulb) to disappear after a save/load cycle.
Trespassing vs Hostile Area
- We’ve implemented a fix for a Known Issue from our June Update. The ‘Trespassing’ and ‘Hostile Area’ status messages on the mini-map now display correctly.
Maximum Mastery
- We heard that some players have had issues unlocking the trophies/achievements associated with reaching Mastery level 20 in various locations. We’ve implemented a change so that the game will re-check whether you have reached level 20 when you launch the game and award the appropriate trophies/achievements.
Trophy Typography
- We’ve made some necessary updates to the trophy descriptions on PS4; corrected a few typos and mistakes.
Unconscious Witness
- We’ve also implemented a fix for the other Known Issue from our June Update. The ‘Unconscious Witness’ status on the mini-map is know displayed correctly.
Miscellaneous Fixes
- We’ve fixed other minor issues across the board to keep the game in fantastic shape.
July Update Release Notes [Hitman]
