IO Interactive's newest Elusive Target went live today. Agent 47's mark is Dr. Cyrus Cane, an eccentric entrepreneur launching a cookie brand called Morsizzles, played with the likeness and voice of Snoop Dogg. The mission is set on Haven Island and runs until September 26.
It costs nothing, and you do not need to own Hitman: World of Assassination to play it — the Free Demo is enough. Several outlets rounded that up to "Hitman is free-to-play now". It is not, and the difference will decide whether you are disappointed on September 27.
Free means borrowed, not kept
Elusive Targets are timed by design. When the window shuts, the mission leaves, and historically your one attempt is all you get. What survives is the paid Herbalist Pack, at $7.99 or £6.99, which is the only way to keep the content:
- Permanent access to The Visionary Arcade Contract featuring The Herbalist
- Permanent access to The Herbalist Assignment
- Cosmetic items
A father and son in the same contract
Snoop Dogg's son, Cordell C. Broadus, also appears with his own likeness and voice work. Celebrity guest targets are an established habit for IO — Sean Bean's The Undying is the best known, and it returns in this same roadmap — but a father and son appearing together in one mission is new for the series.
The mission opens the Season of the Herbalist roadmap, announced at gamescom on August 25 and delivered in patch 3.280. It brings two new challenges, fresh Featured Contracts batches, two new and two returning Twitch Drops, and the return of several Elusive Targets including The Undying Returns.
Why the Free Demo detail matters
The Free Demo is the part most summaries skip, and it is the reason this is worth thirty minutes even if you have never bought a Hitman game. IO's demo is a real client rather than a trial timer, and routing an Elusive Target through it turns a marketing beat into an actual on-ramp: a new player can install nothing more than the demo and play a full, current, celebrity-led contract.
Setting it on Haven Island helps. Haven is one of the more forgiving maps in the World of Assassination — open, sunlit, generous with disguises — which is a sensible choice for a mission that will be a lot of people's first contract rather than their fiftieth.
