I've played hitman a whooole lot over the last year or two, but it's been almost exclusively the roguelike mode. It was only very recently that I decided to properly go through the singleplayer campaign - and not just go through it, but do every mission story on every level.
Having just finished Hitman 1, I feel like I've started to see some interesting design throughlines and thought it'd be fun to talk about and pick apart the mechanical decisions involved. Just be warned; this is going to be very, very long.
It's Gonna Be Long
Mission Stories in Hitman are basically telegraphed opportunities. In a game that's by-and-large a wide-open sandbox, they carry a lot of responsibility as some of the most-bespoke content - They loudly announce themselves to the player when 47 approaches their start location, and it's clear that the game's design team expects them to be the first things you pursue when entering a new level for the first time.
I think it would have been easy for IOI to focus on making these all about spectacle - similar to how Hitman: Blood Money's One Accident Per Level setups are generally the hardest thing in the level - but the truth is that Mission Stories are designed in a way that is extremely economical. Nearly every element of them is designed with two goals in mind; to embed the player in the game's setting, and to put the player on the path to independence from them. To this end, they are highly modular.
Toolbox
First, let's look at the knobs the studio's designers have access to when building these out. When creating a system, "what is tweakable, what is flexible" is key to knowing how much variety you can build into the system.
The Basics
A mission story is generally composed of several phases which involves a sequence of Asks that the player must satisfy in exchange for Rewards in the final phase - benefits that either directly accomplish their core level objectives or, indirectly facilitate their accomplishment. Many of these Asks will also help the player help themselves, such as guiding the player through the acquisition of new outfits, keys, or keycards that will help them get around in the future.
A few off-the-cuff examples from the first level, Paris;
- A Drink to Die for is a great example of a standard-sized mission story; It's contained mostly in a small area and doesn't require more than one risky maneuver out of the player. The start of the story is in an area directly accessible from the first few minutes of the level. First it asks an item retreival in the basement, which is a higher security area than the player's starter outfit, but can be fairly easily stealthed to (easy Open Access ask). Then they need to steal a waiter outfit and some poison (Guided Access, a little tricky). Lastly, the player is directed to mix a drink with said poison for their target, and then the mission story completes and the player is left to their own devices to follow the now-vulnerable target to the bathroom and murder them somehow. (Opportunity reward w/ no associated risks)
- 15 Seconds of Fame is an example of a story that takes the previous elements, but asks more and rewards more. Once again starting from a level-0-security location, The first phase asks the player to infiltrate a low-security area (Open Access ask) but places them directly near a glaring free opportunity to grab a relevant disguise. Once they've overheard some information, the next step requires them to chase down, knock out and impersonate a target in a fairly risky location under a time limit (New Target ask, hard). If the player accomplishes this, they're rewarded with a lengthy walk-in to the higher security areas of the level followed by a personal meeting with the target in their inner sanctum and a free kill. (Major Opportunity and Familiarity rewards, minor Setpiece, no asks)
Let's deconstruct a bunch of the elements I just laid out.
Rewards
The main reason you do a Mission Story is for the reward at the end. How does the designer incentivize - and tutorialize - the player through these rewards?
- Access: One of the two core obstacles that the player has to face in Hitman is access. 47's starting outfit usually provides little-to-no ability to reach his targets or set up opportunities. Giving the player access to somewhere they can't currently reach via disguises or shortcuts is a pretty key reward avenue. Note that this is also one of the most-flexible types of rewards because it persists after the story's Rewards are dispensed - the difference in player capability between a Mission Story that ends with a low level of Access vs a high level of Access can feel substantial.
- Opportunity: The other key half of the equation, many targets spend their time in busy areas that make it more difficult for 47 to get away with a clean kill. Providing a chance to make a kill and get off scott-free forms the basis of the vast majority of Mission Story rewards in the game. Opportunities can also circumvent Access requirements by moving a target to a lower-security location.
- Window: A lesser version of the Opportunity, the key element of the Window is a chance that is missable or fumble-able. The Window typically moves your target over towards a place you could have previously set a trap or otherwise cleared of witnesses, but doesn't directly flag that you could have done so. Unlike the Opportunity, which is generally free or trivial to execute on and guaranteed to preserve your Silent Assassin status, the Window requires you do some extra legwork without guidance if you want to get away with it.
- Setpiece: Either the least or the most of the rewards depending on the type of player, setpieces generally involve flashy visual effects, massive collateral damage, or funny direct interactions between 47 and his target. these are experiential rather than mechanical rewards and tend to be designed for showcasing in "can you believe that?!" type videos.
- Familiarity: This is a subtle reward but an important one for first-time players. Most mission stories take place in non-overlapping zones and, by pushing the player through those zones in a guided manner, helps familiarize them with their layout and whatever happens to be available locally. The designers almost always make sure that a player that pursues every mission story will be swept through probably 80% of the map, making them fairly experienced with its basic layout and ready to explore on their own. The remaining 20% is left for people who like exploration and discovering alternative routes.
The above rewards can be combined in various amounts and levels of extremity to create a variety of scaling reward levels for the player. A mission that provides just an Opportunity is a lot less rewarding than one that provides both an Opportunity and a high level of Access - the latter player is in a much stronger position to pursue their second target. Similarly, the designer can provide an inferior Opportunity that's not entirely free to get away with if they feel the player isn't being asked to work too hard.
You might be wondering at this point... isn't something missing? Yes.
Item rewards! Mines! Keys! Sniper Rifles! Why aren't they a thing? If you're a designer generally you want access to every knob you can think of, so why not use this to add a little more variety? I think the answer is pretty simple - avoiding dilution. This hard line is what distinguishes Mission Stories from the more freeform Challenges.
Mission Stories are supposed to be direct. Any mission story that provides the player with a deadly item immediately directs the player on how to use that item. This furthers the goals of tutorialization as well as clarifying Mission Stories as completely self-contained. Once the player knows where those items are, they can utilize them in alternate ways to accomplish Challenges, which are more piecemeal and expect more thought from the player. By keeping these goals and ideals separate, the identity of each system is better-reinforced.
Asks
Next up, let's discuss the difficulties the player faces. What can mission stories ask out of the player in exchange for the above rewards? Asks are very carefully designed in that they all generally work to familiarize the player with elements of the level. An experienced player is then able to utilize the same methods they learn here, but without guidance.
- Access: Yup! We're back here! The absolute bread-and-butter of Mission Stories, nearly every single one of them requires the player elevate their access by at least one level from where the story begins. More expansive mission stories will generally ask two disguise-changes from the player. Any more than that is functionally unheard of - it would complicate the progression too much and give the player too many options afterward. That said, there's actually some sub-types of Access asks!
- Guided Access: A staple of missions meant to familiarize the player with the basics of the level, Guided Access usually insists the player pick up a specific type of outfit and then highlights a likely generic NPC to stalk for it (but you can steal an outfit from someone else, if you like). This is nearly always reserved for Story Missions that begin at security level 0 (47's default suit), and helps familiarize the player on the fundamental parts of early level infiltration.
- Open Access: On the flip side, more-advanced missions usually instead simply tell you to infiltrate an area, usually by directing you to acquire an item in that zone. Rather than point the player at learning methods of disguise acquisition, these are generally designed to show players new uses of those disguises they might not have realized, such as side rooms or item locations that aren't otherwise highlighted.
- Distract-cess: This is a rare type of access ask where outfits aren't enough and you're going to have to do something in plain sight like pickup a forbidden item, walk past a disguise-killer guard, or damage a machine you're not allowed to. These are primarily used to remind the player of Distraction objects (throwing stuff, turning off generators and lights, etc) and, due to their moderately-riskier nature, generally feature in more difficult Mission Stories.
- New Target: Another common challenge, this functionally introduces an additional non-assassination target for the player to either get out of the way, or KO and impersonate. These are always unique NPCs who have specific opportunities available to remove them from play, just like the real assassination targets the player faces.
- Means: Generally a more-advanced ask, demanding Means from the player generally requires them to bring their own tools. The most common ones here are poison, remote explosives, or screwdrivers/wrenches for manipulating machinery. Because this is an ask that insists the player already have something prepared, it's mostly reserved for missions targeted at players already familiar with the level - and is thus useful for pushing the player to memorize where those generally-useful items can be acquired.
- Setup: Another advanced ask, Setup is a common feature of missions where the reward is either a Window or an inferior Opportunity, and demands the player realize there's something they need to do on their own without being asked. This is very, very frequently used to tutorialize environmental objects like oil barrels, generators, etc - by kind of gesturing at them but insisting the player do the real work, the player is primed to start looking for those opportunities on their own in the rest of the level.
Fundamentals
Assumptions
Lastly, there are some fundamental assumptions about how Mission Stories are designed that are codified into the game's UI.
- Missions are directly associated with one of your assassination targets. (There are exceptions, but we'll get to that.)
- Missions are mutually exclusive - Accomplishing one of your target's mission stories invalidates the other options, and the player isn't expected to combine multiple to get at one target.
The Principles
With all this above information, we can distill a theoretical list of "Designer's Principles" for what a good mission story - mechanically speaking - does and does not do.
- A good mission story is self-contained. It takes the player from its start point to a clear and obvious win of some kind at the end. It should never leave the player wondering "What now?"
- A good mission story should showcase. It should focus primarly on a location in the level, an activity, or an aspect of the target's character. Barring these, it should at least be extremely flashy.
- A good mission story should not duplicate. If it demands a specific outfit, other mission stories shouldn't demand that outfit. Ideally the core activity locations should overlap as little as possible as well.
- A good mission story should not invalidate. If one target's story requires you to work for Access to an area, that outfit should not trivialize another target's Mission Story asks.
There are some tricks that the designers use to facilitate #4 here. Specifically, an outfit that gives you full access to target A should never give you full access to target B. Either they have separate sanctums with separate outfit progressions, or, alternatively, one target has the primary outfit security progression and the other is in a highly-public space where high security outfits don't actually aid you in taking them down. That's more of a level design thing. But, of course, level design and mission design in Hitman are very tightly tied together.
Mission Story Archetypes
So we've seen what makes a theoretically good good mission design. There are other elements - making the set dressing and narrative elements fun, funny, and flashy are of course core to making these actually interesting to play, and not just MMO sidequests. But the simple design language here allows them to be very modular about it, and I think if you look you can spot out a number of overall Types of Mission Stories that the designers prefer to deploy. Let's spell em out!
The Direct Opportunity
The Direct Opportunity is, by a very, very large margin, the primary type of Mission Story in Hitman. They all follow a specific pattern. You acquire the basic information about the mission, you do a series of asks that include at least one Access escalation, and then you end with a clear opportunity to kill your target. They come in a lot of subtypes.
The Basic Direct
The basic Direct is the game's bread and butter. Their key elements are that they don't ask OR reward too much, and they focus on a single location in the level.
The Basic Direct:
- Can be placed anywhere in the level, but tend to cluster around security level 0-1.
- Always results in an Opportunity that is guaranteed to maintain Silent Assassin status.
- Demands between 0 and 1 substantially risky Access or New Target actions (usually an outfit switch) and an indeterminate number of low-risk actions (item collections, or walking past disguise-breakers).
The Basic Direct will never:
- Ask 2 or more outfit switches
- Ask you to bring in outside items
- End before you've got an obvious kill resolution
- Grant you access to an inner sanctum
Classic Example: Colorado, where due to a fairly flat security layout and there being almost no safe zones, every single mission story is a Basic Direct where you either pick up an item and then trick someone into killing themselves with it, or lure someone to a private location where they'll conveniently dismiss their guards.
Weird example: Hot Springs in Hokkaido, which asks either 2 outfit changes OR a tricky set of stealth infiltrations of you, but otherwise meets all the criteria
All Examples:
- Paris (A Drink to Die For, A Private Meeting)
- Sapienza (Memory Lane, The Good Son, Beyond the Grave, By Candlelight)
- Marrakesh (None)
- Bangkok (None)
- Colorado (All 6 mission stories)
Hokkaido (Thrill Seeker, Tell-tale Heart, Hot Springs)
The Late Direct
A weird subcategory of Direct meant to cater to players who've gotten a high tier disguise on their own but maybe aren't sure how to leverage that into a satisfying climax. Late Directs can't ask you to escalate your Access level and so instead either send you after a New Target or ask you to do a bunch of high-risk Distract-cesses.
The Late Direct is:
- Always in a near-max security area
- May be harder than a Basic Direct
- May provide inferior Opportunity rewards with a risk of being seen, or a Window with risk of collateral damage
A Late Direct will never:
- Ask you to sidegrade to a different generic outfit
- Draw a target out of an area you don't have access to
Classic Example: A Quick Break (Paris), which provides a trivially easy opportunity to players who've climbed the outside of the building but nearly guarantees the body will be seen unless you do substantial setup beforehand.
Weird example: Hostile Environment (Sapienza), which is more of a tutorial for destroying the virus easily than an actual mission story.
All Examples:
- Paris (A Quick Break)
- Sapienza (Hostile Environment, Memento)
- Marrakesh (Bad Blood, Golden Touch)
- Bangkok (Intervention)
- Colorado (None)
- Hokkaido (None)
The Long Direct
An extended take on the Basic Direct that usually has either multiple moderate-risk actions or 1 extreme-risk action (often encouraging two outfit switches as well) and takes you through more of the level. Always ends in the target's inner sanctum, but may or may not provide extended access to it. Most levels have one of these.
The Long Direct:
- Nearly always starts at security level 0
- Always results in an Opportunity that is guaranteed to maintain Silent Assassin status
- Always ends in the target's inner sanctum
- Tours 2-3 distinct sections of the level
- Asks more risky behaviour and more steps of the player than a Basic Direct
The Long Direct will never:
- Ask you to bring in items that aren't somewhat at-hand nearby
- End before you've got an obvious kill resolution
Classic Example: Prime Time (Marrakesh), which has you infiltrate a restaurant (needs a unique item or outfit) for a tricky knock-out-and-disguise followed by a nearly free full sanctum infiltration and accident kill
Weird Example: On the House (Bangkok), which has the rare take of drawing a previously publically-accessible target into a vulnerable sanctum with you
All Examples:
- Paris (15 Seconds of Fame)
- Sapienza (Catharsis)
- Marrakesh (Prime Time)
- Bangkok (On the House, Are Friends Electric)
- Colorado (None)
- Hokkaido (None)
The Power Direct
A rare variant on the Long Direct that focuses on a New Target with an extremely high level of access. The Power Direct is substantially more demanding, usually either because of a time limit or multiple high-risk outfit changes, but rewards the player with nearly full-level Access and a clean Opportunity. Arguably bends the rule about trivializing other targets' Mission Stories.
The Power Direct:
- Rarely starts at Security Level 0
- Demands the player take substantial amounts of initiative on their own (may require up to 3 outfit changes)
- May ask you to gain access to secure areas without any telegraphing as to how (Means req)
- Always involves taking down a high-security secondary target and utilising their large degree of Access
- Always results in an Opportunity that is guaranteed to maintain Silent Assassin status
- Always ends in the target's inner sanctum
The Power Direct will never:
- End before you've got an obvious kill resolution
Classic Example: Guest of Honor (Paris), which puts you up against a secure room and a strict time limit, but gives you full access to the entire mansion afterwards.
Weird example: Man Machine (Bangkok), which feels for all the world like a more traditional Direct but for some reason this drummer man is allowed to go anywhere he damn well pleases
All Examples:
- Paris (Guest of Honor)
- Sapienza (None)
- Marrakesh (None)
- Bangkok (Man Machine)
- Colorado (None)
- Hokkaido (Ghost in the Machine)
The Grand Finale
An exceptionally rare variation on the Direct line that asks more than a typical direct and in return provides a giant setpiece finisher. Has a weird habit of causing massive collateral damage that voids your Silent Assassin. Probably great for youtube videos.
The Grand Finale:
- Can start at any security level
- Usually asks for at least one high-risk action
- Kills or KOs a bunch of non-targets where everyone can see it
- May allow you to draw both targets to where you can kill them simultaneously
The Grand Finale will never:
- End before you've got an obvious kill resolution
- Be private or subtle in any way
Classic Example: Lights Out, which unavoidably kills like 50 bystanders when you trigger it
Weird example: Down the Rabbit Hole, which for some reason denies you the flashy ending if you didn't read a random unmarked piece of paper earlier
All Examples:
- Paris (Lights Out)
- Sapienza (None)
- Marrakesh (Down the Rabbit Hole)
- Bangkok (Bugman)
- Colorado (None)
- Hokkaido (None)
The Indirect
A very rare Direct variant that leads to a an Opportunity but ends before telling you how to take advantage of it. Usually used to tutorialize environmental props. Shares most attributes with a Short Direct otherwise.
The Indirect:
- Can be placed anywhere in the level, but tend to cluster around security level 0-1.
- Demands between 0 and 1 substantially risky Access or New Target actions and an indeterminate number of low-risk actions.
- Always results in an Opportunity that could maintain Silent Assassin, but requires you to figure out how to bring it home (Setup req)
- May insist you bring level-available items to manipulate objects or poison cups (Means req)
The Indirect will never:
- Ask 2 or more outfit switches
- Hand you a clean kill before ending
- Bring you into an inner sanctum
All Examples:
- Paris (A Rare Scoop)
- Sapienza (None)
- Marrakesh (None)
- Bangkok (Tick Took)
- Colorado (None)
- Hokkaido (None)
The Exceptions
So! We've gone through the common types. But there's actually some others. Most of these others are defined by a single uniting element: they don't necessarily lead directly to a telegraphed kill.
Let Me In
Exclusively featuring in levels where the jump between Security Level 0 and 1 is substantial, the Let Me In tends to be positioned near the start location and gestures at an easy In for the player, provides them with an outfit, and then ends. Occasionally, it may also telegraph a window.
The Let Me In:
- Almost always starts at Security Level 0
- Generally escalates 47's disguise access by 1-2 levels
- Asks, at most, one moderate-risk action of the player
The Let Me In will never:
- Reward the player directly with a clean Opportunity (it may gesture at a Window)
Classic Example: First Day on the Job (Sapienza), which screams at any player who walks even gently to the right from the start and hands them a free outfit with no KOs necessary. Leads into a kill window if the player can figure out the rest on their own.
Weird example: Open Sesame (Marrakesh), which gives the player an actively detrimental outfit with no access benefits and a key and then expects them to figure out a pipe climb that is the actual route in with literally zero assistance
All Examples:
- Paris (None)
- Sapienza (First Day on the Job, Absolution)
- Marrakesh (Why We Fight, Open Sesame)
- Bangkok (None)
- Colorado (None)
- Hokkaido (Makeover, Malpractice)
Draw-Out
Very rare mission story that pulls an embedded target out of their inner sanctum to security level 0-1 but leaves the rest up to you as a big question mark. Tends to be low-investment, low-reward.
Examples:
-
Paris (Playing with Fire): Asks absolutely nothing of you, draws both targets onto their balconies and then shrugs and ends. Mostly used to enable challenges.
-
Sapienza (A Case Most Peculiar): A weird hybrid that pulls a target WAY out of her sanctum and then quietly transitions into a Direct if you hang around and see the ruse through for long enough after the mission story marks itself as complete.
Cross-up
A variation on the Draw-Out that speeds up completion of the level. Starts in the inner sanctum of target A, and draws out target B to a vulnerable location. Brazenly breaks the rule of not trivializing other targets' mission stories.
Examples:
- Marrakesh (Cherry Blossom, Honeycomb): Mirrors of each other that require a moderate amount of work in one target's sanctum to trivialize the second half of the level more than it already even was, given that both targets share outfit access already.
- Bangkok (The Smoking Gun): Weird Cross-Up that sends the target from a highly public 0-security area into a less public low-security area, forcing you to quickly come up with a new disguise if you want to take advantage of it
Final thoughts
- Colorado really is boring!! It doesn't have anything going on!
- Marrakesh's complete lack of Basic Directs is probably why it feels so much like suffering. The vast majority of its content takes place at a high security level.
- The EXTREME variety on paris's setup really shows how much it was meant to be a sandbox.
- Basic Directs start to become by far the most common type in the last two levels of the campaign - I wonder if it's because they're the simplest to spec out and implement? Or maybe they're just popular because they're so modular?
I'm planning on keeping this up as I go through the next two games. Hope this was interesting! Sorry that it's 11,000 words!!!!

