Hitman’s new roguelike freelancer mode (opens in new tab) is pretty excellent, giving you the opportunity to hunt Agent 47’s criminal quarry across almost all of the maps from the first, second, and third games. But what if that’s not enough? What if you want to play in the additional variants of those maps—like Sapienza’s bonus nighttime mission—rather than their standard iterations? Well, then you’ll just have to install Hitman’s Freelancer Variations mod (opens in new tab).
Spotted by Dominic Tarason (opens in new tab), the Freelancer Variations mod beefs up Hitman’s new mode by chucking each possible destination’s alternative versions into the mix of potential levels. You can now freelance across the Hokkaido Snow Festival, Dartmoor Garden Show, and pretty much every other map variant you can think of, rather than being stuck with the default mode. It even adds “alternate times of day” for maps “where no bonus missions existed”.
It’s not just a change in lighting, either. The uploader, Chucky (opens in new tab), says they tried to “bundle in at least one ET/Special Assignment” on top of each new variant. They’ve also slipped in “little bonuses” and Easter eggs into the added stages, promising a bigger variety of NPCs and “some unexpected cameos” in the new levels.
The Freelancer Variations mod requires Hitman’s Simple Mod Framework (opens in new tab) in order to function correctly, which is (true to the name) pretty easy to install: You just download and activate an executable. You’ll also need to download OrfeasZ’s Modding SDK (opens in new tab) and drop it in your Hitman 3/Retail folder. Once you’ve managed that, it’s just a matter of grabbing Freelancer Variations’ .dll and .json files off of Nexus Mods and dropping them into the Mods folder in your Hitman 3/Retail directory.
Then launch the game, tick “FreelancerVariations” in your mod list, and you’re off to the murder-races. Be warned that Chucky says “major bugs” might still lurk in the current version of the mod, since they’ve not been able to verify that every map variant works flawlessly, and there are a few comments from users running into glitches and crashes. But it’s not really a big deal to uninstall the mod if you run into problems. And if one particular map variant is causing you trouble, you can download a new .json file that deactivates it over at the variant picker website (opens in new tab).
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