Imagine if killing a target in Arcade mode with Silent Assassin would make the contract available forever without the complications! That would be the dream! I’m more of a “story first, kill later” so the lack or briefings made me sad, but that’s okay! Now one can only dream of the rewards.
I haven’t played it yet but the choice of targets right now is great! :3
I was just happy to have smoothly killed the target and then the mission fails because the body is stuffed into a bodybag. These escalations mess with my mind
i forgor 
One cool workaround to the “bodies hidden” restriction is that you can tranq or sedate NPCs to get them out of your hair while you murder the target, and just leave the NPC bodies to be found by someone else. They’ll be woken up and you don’t have to stash the body. Big Brain Moves 101.
Not having the cinematic briefings is whack as hell. Come on IOI. At least give this mode the veneer of not being an escalation.
They do have the briefings available in text, word for word I think, so it’s at least something. Can always go to your career page and listen to the briefing for the available ones before loading up Arcade.
Does anyone know if using the tranq guns or the Sieker counts toward the no firearms rule? I’m afraid to test it while I still haven’t beaten a full contract, I want that unlock too much right now.
I’ve done it and it works fine as the complication is that you cannot eliminate someone with a firearm. As the Sieker and Kalmers do not eliminate, they’re still in play.
What would be nice, is if you unlocked each Elusive Target contract to play normally after completing them. Kind of like building a collection.
Thats what i tought will be… after one finish be parmanent to choose and challange and suits…
too bad we got lame one lol
That’s good and all but is still restricting freedom in gameplay with telling us what kills to do and what to wear or what to do which what some don’t want IO are best of allowing these missions as unlockables after you’ve completed them without restrictions so then everyone is happy
Huh? Sorry but usually you have decent posts I can agree with but this is totally bogus. Speedrunning is how the game is intended to be played. But also role playing. Also is guns blazing John wick style. Also is any other way someone chooses to play it. Hitman is a game with freedom of choice so I don’t understand how you can say speed running isn’t an intended way to play.
Ps, still waiting for your reply on which target you think is “puzzling” to give the electrocution phone to so I can make a video for you. 
Unless they put a lot of complications 
Today I got around to completing the three contracts, so here’s my (rather long) thoughts on the mode:
This mode with forced complications really only works if you have an idea of how to do the ET mission beforehand. I’ve done the Hitman 3 ETs through twice now so The Ellipses wasn’t that bad, I’ve also watched a ton of videos of people going through the Hitman 2 ETs so The Codices wasn’t that bad either. However, I had never played or seen anything on The Prince, The Identity Thief, or The Angel of Death, so I had a really hard time figuring those out while working around the complications. Because I had done The Fugitive and The Black Hat before, I had a much easier time with them even though they’re supposed to be the hardest tiers of the contract. I definitely agree that complications should be optional or allow you to pick which complication goes with which mission similar to Batman Arkham City.
I am glad that The Deceits only had 3 complications despite having 5 ETs, but I still think it would be better to release 2 separate contracts with 3 2016 ETs each. Also, the most obvious complication to make The Fugitive harder is by not allowing any non-target kills so you actually have to figure out the target’s identity, but they didn’t do that here. Maybe in a future contract.
It’s dumb that they got rid of the high-quality video briefings and replaced them with text saying basically the same thing, especially when they make errors: The Liability’s briefing just says “Eliminate Terrence Chesterfield” and that’s it. If they were going to replace them with text, I feel they should’ve tried to tie in a loose story explaining why you’re eliminating these specific ETs.
I definitely think there should’ve been a reward for each specific arcade contract. I’d just like some consistency for how the level suits are unlocked, instead of continuing to restrict half of them to the normal elusive targets where it’s unknown when they’ll do an ET on that specific level. Outside of repurposing the existing ET suits as arcade unlocks, there are a ton of guns and items in the game that are either unused or only available in missions but not unlockable.
I don’t think I got any experience for doing things in the levels, at least the typical small points for hiding bodies, eliminating targets, finding keys, etc. didn’t show up.
All in all, it feels like they had rushed to get the mode out for January 20, especially given the glitchy nature of the failure timers. Hopefully they’ll make some improvements to it in the coming months.
This mode is buggier than an entomology field trip, but I can’t say I dislike it.
I like the restrictions and that there’s no point doing it SA. Being a “good enough” assassin and playing only to the restrictions is a whole different playstyle. Improvising out of a screwup is much more interesting than save-scumming your way to perfection, IMO.
Other than that, the main problem is that, well, it’s just another kind of escalation. Here’s what Garamoth, armchair video game designer extraordinaire would have done.
ET Arcade would be three modes:
Freeplay: Just pick any ET and go. If you reaaally want to add a limit, give the player one “token” every 12 hours to play one ET.
Daily: Every 24 hours a new random ET with 2-3 random restrictions. You get one shot at the global leaderboard for that day.
Survival: An endless run of random ETs. Every new mission you get one new random cumulative restriction. Some restrictions can also level up. Ex:
1 pacification → no pacification;
1 costume change → no costume change,
Bullets cause double damage → triple damage → a single bullet will kill you.
The more annoying restrictions only show up after a few successful missions. You can also come up with a whole bunch of new restrictions that make sense in this context (enforcers spot you 50% faster, cameras are indestructible). Fail once and you have to start from scratch. The game records your longest win streak.
Speaking of recycling ETs, I’d really like a tracker bug: a 100% non-suspicious item you can tag anyone with so they glow, I dunno, green in instinct mode and on the map. It’s a worthy sacrifice of one item slot if you hate losing sight of an ET and also could be useful for tracking certain NPCs for challenges.
Yup! At least makes for intelligent use of sedatives so you maintain SA.
At least make the old ET rewards unlockable through this mode…
I really have no incentive to play it with these tedious and tiring complications.
Does “playing as intended” means “play go fetch with the target using 30 coin throws?” Because some ETs have such restrictive paths that’s the only solution for some of them when you add complications to it.
Having now played all 3 et arcades and finished all ets with sa within them (except for prince where i accidentily pushed a women into the water while making my escape) And i can say, i do not like this concept at all. i wouldve preferred it so much more if there werent any restrictions because of the restrictions im defaulting to easy strategies i found out using the et mod instead of experimenting because i dont wanna fail and have to wait 12 hours. Atleast it allows me to take screenshots of elusive targets officially
Wow, you had me at 'buggier than an entomology field trip." but you make some great points.
Those ideas for three separate types of elusive target arcade sound really good.
Going in my expectation of the mode was that it’d be like your description of survival mode. A randomised selection of targets & that you play until you fail.
Hopefully this idea evolves & we see ioi improve on it in the coming months!
The tracker is also a good idea especially if it’s an item that takes up a slot and that way isn’t o.p 
I played two of these “things” today: the first batch of H3 ETs and the one with those of 2016. I think I have a clear opinion about it now: in short, I’m not impressed, at all.
First of all, I don’t understand the escalation layout for this: those are the same, identical mission we already played numerous times, nothing changed. You could play these ET exactly like the special assignment of H2, but I don’t see how these mission can integrate each other on the escalation format: I can understand Dartmoor Garden Show, but these bunch of ETs played in rapid succession are definetly not the case.
The complications, most of times, doesn’t add anything to the previous experience: take the Liability, it’s still a lame mission. No matter you can’t use the disco ball anymore, now just sieker the idiot, wait he comes to the bathroom, kill him and drag the body on the near trash bin: sure, there is still the deliver boy there , but I don’t think he’s supposed to be a threat to any player.
Another case, the Angel of Death: in H3, 47 can climb pipes faster than the fucking Spiderman, so you reach her way before the soldiers are coming, and you have all the time to kill her, hide the body and leave, the soldiers are still on theyr way. All you need to do is to start on the school’s allway, clean the pipe from the school side with an emetic grenade, for making the two guards there leave, climb, execute, leave. With the right timing you get away with the murder, and it’s easy.
Basically, you can’t throw her anymore, cause the hide body complication, but it’s still easy to complete this ET. The complications does almost nothing, over than limiting the player’s approach.
Nowadays, in H3 everything is an escalation, from Dlc to a possible bonus mission like DGS: i feel the “concept” itself of escalations is no more the same as it was on H2016, it’s like… how I can describe it… Generic.
Personally, I don’t like the way Ioi is releasing new contents nowadays: with Patient Zero, when Square Enix has dropped IOi and they seemed almost on the edge, they give us an unique concept with the final mission in Hokkaido (basically, several targets are generated in real time while playing, thanks to the virus mechanic), and they did it with a good remix of an already existing map. Nowadays, they are still using the escalation format for making any type of experience that, most of times, it doesn’t even fit the core gameplay at all (looking at you, 7DS).
The ETs arcade is a big boomer for me, and I feel this game is placed in a sort of limbo, between some nice feature and great level design from a side, and a generally feel of mediocrity from the other side.
The marketing (and especially the hype) on this game was amazing, the product itself not so great.
Tried this thing today. What a broken mess. Before I even tried a contract it already stated I failed all 3. Off to a great start. However, I was lucky enough to start them from the main menu’s featured tab. Completed the stowaway and failed the revolutionairy bc I shot a civillian. Bullshit restriction but don’t really care tbh. Continued with the collector and after succesfully completing it the game locked me out of it and said I failed.
Fantastic mode you guys. Failed contract arcade is already at its peak rn.
i have completed two of them in a row but for some reason i failed man i wish we played ets in a same away offline mode
