Here’s the thing, the fact that it’s a sort of rouge-lite mode means that they REALLY should have quadruple-checked this thing before it went out the door, because making mistakes in a roguelike and losing your time and effort, sure fine, thats all part of the experience. But when the GAME itself is causing you to lose your time and progress…thats a bit inexcusable. The fact that it shipped like this after a year of hype, updates, CTT, all that, IS very amateur to me. You say you think “some bugs are allowed” but dude, the objectives, one of the main gameplay aspects of Freelancer, are fucking BUSTED. On top of the bat thing I posted theres also the whole issue(s) with the meeting phones, the collateral damage objective, the weird way some of the timed objectives work…this mode, as it stands right now, is a joke.
2nd-level Showdown, in Dubai on PS4.
I Kalmer’d a suspect, the “poison target - sedative” objective popped, the suspect/now-target got “alerted”, the guards around her went into alert, the target and guards ran for the exit, I threw a knife at her and got the “eliminate leader - during tell” prestige objective as she ran down the employee stairwell.
So yeah the Kalmer was supposed to be a safe(ish) bet to sedate your target without everything going into ALERT AND RUNAWAY mode, but, no. Proceed with caution, Hitmen & Hitwomen who would tranquilizer their targets from afar.
Also why the hell did the prestige objective pop? I feel a LOL is appropriate.
I can only imagine another “suspect” was calling her to make a deal or trade/handoff, and would’ve been on her way to do that had she not been (somehow) alerted. All a matter of perfect timing -perhaps? 
As for the alert… Think of body guards whenever you’re merely in view of them and have an illegal item out. Like Hush’s bodyguard. Make it to the room where they’re doing the mind control experiment - Suit Only, and brandish a weapon without him even having the yellow suspicion meter get to 5%. “Eat it! Eat it!” he’ll cry and the target will go into instant lockdown. 
Edit: I’m almost certain that’s got to be a bug. Because it really doesn’t make any sense.
You didn’t want to dive into the closet right there, wait like 2 hours for everyone to stop looking for you and then go take a police man outfit from one of the 2 guys in the vodka room?
That isn’t how it works.
The thing is, they probably did do all that, are fully aware of the bugs that came up after the tweaks they made following the CTT, and just couldn’t fix it all in time to meet the release date they promised that they were definitely gonna launch it by. They probably figured that they’d deal with those issues during the next patch, giving them more time to work on more issues, and that we’d be content with putting up with a few bugs for a while so long as we finally got the fucking mode that they’d been promising for over a year.
Well, I’ve done it, I’ve reached my singularity in Freelancer. I now have every item that can be collected during gameplay. From this point forward, providing I don’t die, it’s all about unlocking mastery, while making and keeping as much money as possible, in preparation for completing the challenges and unlocking the trophies. Now that I can start building up a huge sum of money, the mode should start to smooth out for me.
I do agree somewhat with this sentiment. When you have a mode that rides so heavily on consequence, bugs really shouldn’t be what’s ruining a run. Ideally, it should only be your own mistakes. So in that way, Freelancer does expose some issues with AI, consistency, etc., that really didn’t matter as much in the base game. But this isn’t the base game. It’s not what you paid 60+ dollars for. It’s extra content, that we had no idea we’d be getting.
For some reason I just haven’t had too many of those scenarios (at level 61 mastery). Most of the bugs I have encountered happened in the safehouse with the re-decorating, the double boat/helicopter, etc. Annoying aesthetic ones, mostly. The majority of my fails were caused by my own actions. The few times a game breaking bug did cause it, I just alt+f4’ed and moved on.
Well, each to their own, but I’ve enjoyed the hell out of it. We could very well just not have had the mode. Or Ambrose even? That’s the lens that I’m viewing all of this through, and I will make it my highest goal to remind entitled fans of that every day.
Also, considering that the definition of amateur is unpaid work, along with the fact of Freelancer being entirely free… maybe it’s not so bad when you think about it.
If you bring 2 large weapons to a mission, the game mode allows you 2 seconds of time to quickly place one large weapon on the ground, if you spawn right in front of NPCs. You can see that there was no suspicion meter. I tried it again after closing, and the suspicion meter started after 2 seconds.
You can later pick that weapon up from a crate where the summoned guard will drop it.
Freelancer doesn’t really feel like a beta to me.
Freelancer feels like it’s pushing the game structure to its limits, and makes it do things it was not created for at first.
As a consequence some of the mechanics feel like they are implemented the hard way, and not backed up from the base framework.
That’s why you have some item/objective inconsistencies (hum, no combat), some lag in the inventory loading if you bring too much, and in general an impression of being jury rigged.
That’s also why Freelancer is damn impressive for what it does. The game is at the end of what can be made for it, and doing more would certainly require to back them from the start
Agent Smith AI in Ambrose is another example of it : he is heavily scripted, on rail, behind a door-that-is-not-really-a-door and half protected form shenanigans, and other NPCs do not react naturally to him. Because there is no way to create a faction/prisoner/instanced AI in the game, so was created the rough way.
Out of interest, how come it’s taking you so long? Is work/life getting in the way or are you simply taking your time with it?
Just intrigued, since you’ve been playing since day one.
Both reasons. My play time is limited, and I refuse to just finish the missions in any old way; I maximize XP and Merces, and if it goes to hell, I disconnect and restart.
Just don’t actually drop the weapon on the ground. One of the NPCs will be like “Sir, you just dropped your weapon…Aghh somebody help me!” and you’ll be compromised.
Yeah that’s why I said “place” the weapon down, like you can see in the video.
Just noticed a flaw with the oil/water canisters. Can’t bring either of them along with a heavy melee weapon (which can’t be put on your back). Equipping one will unequip the other.
So basically this applies to the 3 baseball bats and the Sapper’s Axe.
Given that Freelancer is sort of the last hurrah for Hitman for awhile, I am going to savor it. Waiting for bug fixes in a patch update before starting Freelancer for real.
Played it for ~ 8 hrs realizing it is scary good and too good to waste without optimization and a patch fix.
Are there others like me who are holding back from playing Freelancer until the first patch?
Not exactly like you, but I share some of the sentiment.
I played to mastery 100, and really enjoyed it. I have all of the challenges, with the exception of the "grind x number of leader, x number of campaigns, and
In other words, I have 33 campaigns completed. And I then took the deliberate decision to stop, because I know that I will end up grinding them, but I wish to do so as the experience enhance. Patches obviously, but I was mostly thinking of potential new unlocks.
That was the issue I had on my enjoyment of the game during Year Two : the new unlocks were fun, but since I had already played everything, I never went and played with them as part of the normal gameplay. Which to confess, for me demands a goal, a purpose, all of them I already attained.
Just my personal opinion, but I think it would have been better if the “Silent Assassin” was not a prestige object, but rather something like the “Perfect Run” that is awarded as a bonus XP of about 1000 XP when achieved.
I may or may not achieve it.
On top of that, I think the Silent Assassin HUD should be standard equipment.
Instead, I wonder if the prestige object could have “Silent Assassin - Firearms”, “Silent Assassin - Accidents”, and “Silent Assassin - Explosions”.
You can cheat, save scum, cheese and repeat until you get it right for all Hitman content: elusive targets, escalations, missions in every map.
Then I played Freelancer. It went really, really well with tons of emergent gameplay requiring puzzle solving and then I had a single epic failure in a terrible split decision and lost everything. I thought wow. I am into this - high risk - high reward aspect.
Really isn’t common in a lot of games. Credit to IOI for having the guts to go the Dark Souls route and be unforgiving.
I want to tackle it when Freelancer is optimized in a patch. Hard mode is apparently very hard. Go figure. I want to savour the soul crushing experience…
“Perfect Run” bonus XP (completing all optional objectives NOT including the Prestige objective) is actually 2500 XP! That’s why it sucks when they conflict with each other (1 target + 2 different kill objectives e.g.) because you get screwed out of that XP boost.