When Square Enix promised that the Hitman game would take you on a multi-continental journey, they really meant it. Across the Mediterranean Sea, trouble is brewing in the city of Marrakesh, Morocco. Agent 47 is tasked to prevent a military coup and defend the interests of corporations that invested in the country. This is the first time Hitman has forayed into the realm of political assassination, and I’m inclined to say that they have done a decent job of balancing difficulty with realism.
The story of Episode 3 in my opinion is the most intriguing and interesting of all the episodes so far. Unlike the last episode, where you eliminate the threat of a bioweapon straightforwardly, the Morocco episode has more dynamic relations of targets for elimination, such as why and how they are trying to achieve the coup. Like always, Agent 47, a shrewd opportunist, has a keen sense of spotting situations that can be manipulated to suit his needs. For instance, he can disguise as a rabble-rousing propagandist and infiltrate the stronghold.
Many objects befitting the location in Morocco can also interact with the gameplay, such as scooters that you can sabotage to make them leak oil, and hookah pipes that you can put poison in. However, I haven’t found a way to effectively use them to help me progress in the mission, mostly due to “overcrowding” of civilians in this map.
It is true that to actually portray an urban bustling Moroccan city, it is imperative to have densely populated areas. However, it makes this episode extremely challenging. I literally was rubbing shoulders with other civilians in narrow alleys and markets. For some odd reason, civilians don’t like that and they will call you out in the crowd and call the police and army. The sheer number of people roaming around in the map makes any form of takedown impossible on the street. This somehow limits the degree of liberty, making opportunity infiltrations the only viable options.
In terms of graphics, Hitman has improved significantly with this episode. Throughout my gameplay, I was shocked at the fact that it kept a steady thirty frames per second even in areas with massive amounts of people. However, enemy line-of-sight seems to have quite a few bugs, where I was spotted behind a tall barrel or a wall. They really need to fix that because it demonstrates an issue with the hitboxes or AI.
Summary
In all, Episode 3 of Hitman stays faithful to the quality standards of the previous episodes and has quite astonishing graphic improvements. However, the stealth required has also increased drastically, limiting possible creative playstyles. Nonetheless, it is still a great chapter that offers all you expect of a Hitman game.
Xian was a regular ICXM contributor between 2015–2017, publishing 162 articles across game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative.