Elusive Target #37: EMINƎM vs. SLIM SHADY (Year 6: 27 July - 23 August 2026)

[Heisenberg]

I think the idea is that, with all the time and money that’s gone into these celebrity ETs and the changes involved, they could have made at least one actual gameplay mission instead.

@Lewisnic1

Are we thinking this is possibly a Freelance hit or an ICA sanctioned target? I don’t think we’ve had any Freelance hits really a part from The Drop have we?

Depends. Based on the dialogue, The Disruptor almost certainly takes place during the Freelancer era, and the Infiltrator had no mention of ICA at all, leading me to believe it’s the same for that. While the Banker didn’t mention ICA directly, Smith’s comments and the inclusion of Murillo indicates it takes place near the beginning of H2 between missions while ICA and Providence try to find the Shadow Client, and the Splitter of course takes place even before Showstopper.

[Louis_Adelman]

My first thought is WOW. So the big celebrity elusive targets.

La Chiffe

Bruce Lee

Eminem vs Slim Shady

This will be interesting. Once again, we are teaming with someone, even though it’s Eminem’s evil twin, if you will. I wonder if there will be some interesting parameters during the arcade contract. Like how Bruce Lee was with all the eliminations by someone else.

As First Light gets closer, 1st of 3 three-game trilogy. It may be a while before we get a brand new Hitman game. I could see this celebrity every quarter until a new Hitman game is available.

I’m still shocked we are getting new content for a game that came out in 2016; they just keep adding content. They don’t want us to leave. I also thought, once First light starts. These roadmaps would end, but now with more celebrity targets getting involved. I see more coming. They will also continue to recycle the previous targets. Undying, The Splitter is coming back in December. I was hoping they would bring back McGregor’s elusive at some point, but I guess he is still in hot water with his drama.

Hope they have some plans for new Freelancer missions.

[Louis_Adelman]

Don’t forget The Drop Dimitri Vegas in Berlin. They used that map and changed the club for the mission.

I was hoping by now, we would have some celebrity elusive target in Hawkes bay / Romania, the maps with the least content

[Count.Rushmore]

@Louis_Adelman

I was hoping by now, we would have some celebrity elusive target in Hawkes bay / Romania, the maps with the least content

Those maps clearly not for Elusive Targets.
Hawkes Bay too small, basically nowhere to put it, would’ve been the same routes, and too much work to build the whole new layout.
Romania - too linear, even smaller, far too less options to put the ET with all those antourage.
Not suitable

[Dribbleondo]

@Louis_Adelman

once First light starts. These roadmaps would end

First light hasn’t started yet.

@Louis_Adelman

I was hoping they would bring back McGregor’s elusive at some point, but I guess he is still in hot water with his drama.

Yeah, why not bring back a known convicted rapist to the game to satisfy those who just want content back? That won’t be controversial at all!

I’ve seen youtube comments of a similar ilk, asking why the disruptor DLC was removed and if they’ll bring it back, as if they don’t already know the reasons and just want it back to play it again, and completely ignore all the politics of the situation.

If IO have any sense, he will never come back. I am not against reworking the mission, or replacing him with a generic UFC fighter or some other target, but that is money better spent on other things.

[anomie]

@Count.Rushmore

Hawkes Bay too small, basically nowhere to put it

There’s a lot of open space on the map they could work with. Consider how the Dartmoor Garden Show made little use of the house and the Berlin Egg Hunt closed off the main building, for comparison.

[Count.Rushmore]

Do you want the target to be in the open, so to arrive, shoot it in 2 secs and get away?
What’s the point then?
I doubt they will bother building some mazes, tents, plants, whatever.
Designs of Dartmoor and Berlin are totally different and already complete.
With Hawkes Bay you just have a desert with small house in the center

[Louis_Adelman]

They could even do a Vector type mission in

Hawkes Bay

[LandirtHome]

If it’s like the Infiltrator / Bruce Lee Pack:

• Playing the ET: Shady target outfit (maybe the overalls, mask on the back of the head)
• Pack: Eminem ally outfit (patrol cap)

I’m not certain for the target outfit though.
The overalls are on the promo, and central to the trailer.
But I think the mission will have a “Shady comes back” mechanic, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the one we are showed is a red herring.

With the announced “Houdini” performance in the mission, I could see a chain of target, with Shady continuously coming back / replacing NPCs.
The games does have a “make the body magically disappear in a puff of smoke” mechanic.
Maybe a possible option of “break what/who makes him come back / eliminate the prime one” mechanic.

It’s a subdued version of the Patient Zero infection mechanic, but people get transformed into Shady.

---

I wonder what the pack items will be.
Lee Pack showed IOI is ready to have new items with unique set of properties, and even mechanics and not just reskins, with the Kali Sticks.

I imagine “mom’s spaghetti” could be one, it’s iconic. And it has emetic written on it.
I don’t know if I see it as:

• A can of spaghetti that can work both as a non-lethal melee weapon and an emetic poison vial (akin to the doubly lethal Black Almond’s Dagger)
• An emetic “gum-pack”, as much as it would break freelancer

---

IOI is going to reference “one shot one opportunity” to explain the concept of ET, isn’t it?
And I know it won’t happen because of rights, but I could imagine Dre or an equivalent (Paul?) locked in place of Agent Smith, in the metaphorical basement of the morgue.

[Melusca]

@LandirtHome

With the announced “Houdini” performance in the mission, I could see a chain of target, with Shady continuously coming back / replacing NPCs.

As long as it’s got nothing to do with that Houdini FC like a timer that autofails the mission if you’re one second late :x

[JaqTaar]

@Louis_Adelman

They could even do a Vector type mission in

Hawkes Bay

That reminded me, there is a mod for that:
https://www.nexusmods.com/hitman3/mods/38

[TheChicken]

@Swangtheugly

IO managed to bag this opportunity and their whole thing of getting HITMAN Mainstream than this would be the one thing that will definitely solidify that.

Yeah I agree with Drib above here, Hitman is already mainstream.
Or at the very least, at a great mainstream-enough place.

Call me crazy, or this is an “old man yells at cloud moment” but, I keep expecting HITMAN to just… end. And yet it doesn’t. And that kind of frustrates me.

We’ve had a fantastic almost 10 years of World of Assassination stuff. An ever-evolving game that kept getting bigger, with new contracts and locations and twists on those locations.

It felt like everything was coming to a close with Freelancer. A full-package endless random-sandbox-mode to play till the end of time. And things started getting slower and more sparse after that.

Until they didn’t, and now we have massive celebrity targets every 3 months and its like… okay? Sure? This is what we are now? How does this all wrap up??

Sure I’m glad I can still pick up Hitman and get into something new these days, but as it is with the neverending live-service grind, it can get to feeling like a grind. And I’ve taken multiple long breaks this year already to help that.
Yet it persists.

I just hope the team at IOI can get to a point they can fix up some key issues, and wrap it up. Let the game live on its own without needing to “attract new demographics”. Ones who, most likely, provide a small bump in user activity, but I bet don’t often stick around long-term…

[Heisenberg]

Someone get out the vegetable oil and the oven mitts, because that chicken is cookin’!

[TheChicken]

@schatenjager

It’s not like there will be a mandatory “you must listen to this rap song” portion of the level…

Lol, I don’t think we can say that for sure yet. I’m SURE they will have some Eminem/Shady rap moment.

I remember The Drop had a unique rave track for that level. Was that specifically made by the featured celebrity? All the other celebETs have cheeky nods and references to their careers, so I’m sure there’ll be some moment Em gets to show off his fast rap skills.

@Heisenberg

Someone get out the vegetable oil and the oven mitts

…No, wait please don’t

[lukefsje]

See, I’m at pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum.

I’ve come to accept the fact that whenever Hitman WoA stops being supported, it will be with a whimper. No way to get the ET suits when the ETs have stopped running. No way to get the Twitch Drop Items after the Twitch Drops are done. No way to get the stuff from The Disruptor, Bruce Lee, and Eminem packs after they are permanently gone (and who knows how long the rights to sell the other celeb DLCs will last either). Whatever bugs are in the game in its final content update, that’ll be how it is for the rest of time. And most key of all, there will be no expansion to the offline mode to include anything beyond the almost bare minimum it’s at now.

IO have given no indication that they care about “future proofing” the game for the years and even decades to come. And therefore, since whatever they do to “wrap up” Hitman WoA very likely won’t be a good conclusion anyway, then I want the life cycle of the game to be as long as it possibly can be.

Why? Because the longer IO spends on the game, the bigger the chance that things may change and improve for the game in the future. It took them years, but they finally put the coin in Freelancer and fixed the “saving” bug on PS5. The ET Arcade’s been around since January 2022, and just a few weeks ago they greatly reduced the timer to something more reasonable. These are things that would never have happened if support ended shortly after Freelancer launched.

This year alone has been notable for having a step up in the game’s support, with significantly more changes beyond just small bug fixes. VR got overhauled on PSVR2 and PC to finally be semi-decent (and finally let people play Freelancer in VR). Some challenges this year made small additions to maps, like having pumpkins scattered around Colorado and having the new Hanami Hitman easter egg in Hokkaido. They added the ability to wield two Kali Sticks or Katanas on 47’s back. Not much, but nice to see.

And once IO feels that there aren’t enough potential new players to justify investing more into content updates, they’re going to stop and move all of the devs onto other projects. I know there aren’t a ton of people working on the game now, but at least right now if we give feedback like “I wish that Hokkaido’s map would finally get fixed to display the Zen Garden properly”, there’s a chance that someone from IO will see the feedback and actually work to get it implemented. Maybe even do some of the “future proofing” things I listed above. Maybe not that large of a chance of happening, but whenever support on the game ends, the chances of seeing any improvements or fixes drop to zero.

tl;dr I’m happy with IO adding things like Celeb ETs or the upcoming multiplayer mode (as long as the celebs aren’t a total POS like MacGreggor) because while they’re doing that, there’s also potential for bug fixes or other QoL improvements to happen.

[Codename-24]

@lukefsje

MacGreggor

Don’t think a laptop would make a good fighter

[thrison]

@lukefsje

I’m happy with IO adding things like Celeb ETs

I’m not, since they’re absolutely using it for nickel and diming at this point. If someone has purchased all the $5 DLC up until this point (including the delisted The Disruptor and Bruce Lee packs) - we’ve now reached up to $50 of DLCs (depending on if some was purchased on sale). For PlayStation 5 players that purchased the PSVR2 pack (which was included for free on PC…) that total is now up to $60.

Does that $50/$60 come close to offering the same amount of game as the initial $60 to buy H3? Nope.

Make the CelebrETs, but selling the Arcade contracts is getting scummy. Using FOMO and making them time-limited is even more so.

I’m glad that I made the call awhile ago to sever IO’s connection to my wallet. Haven’t purchased any of the DLCs this year - and I’m certainly not buying into 007 either.

[Lewisnic1]

@Louis_Adelman

As First Light gets closer, 1st of 3 three-game trilogy. It may be a while before we get a brand new Hitman game

Oh god, I bet it’s going to be the middle of the 2030’s when we get a new Hitman isn’t it?

@Louis_Adelman

Hope they have some plans for new Freelancer missions.

Let’s hope so! Ultimately, Freelancer was created as a long lasting game mode to tide us over until the next big Hitman game, so this makes the most sense!

@lukefsje

And therefore, since whatever they do to “wrap up” Hitman WoA very likely won’t be a good conclusion anyway, then I want the life cycle of the game to be as long as it possibly can be.

About 12 months ago, I envisioned the ‘wrap up’ period would be the 10-year anniversary of the WOA trilogy in March next year, but whether that happens or not remains to be seen I guess? Ultimately, the curtains have to be drawn eventually, but I suppose WOA is still taking in plenty of

[Heisenberg]

I wouldn’t even care about them nickel and diming it, if they’d just fix the damned issues with the game and actually communicated with us properly.

[schatenjager]

@TheChicken

I’m SURE they will have some Eminem/Shady rap moment.

Oh, no doubt, but it won’t be a mandatory puzzle element, is what I meant. Like having to play specific notes on a piano to unlock a door a la old school adventure games. Whatever music is in the level will be mutable without risking finishing the level, is my guess.