Hitman WOA - Patient Zero

 Hey there, people! Michael here, and welcome to our next look at the Hitman WOA trilogy. This time, we'll be looking at....

So, just for context: Patient Zero is a small 4-mission campaign that originally came out as DLC for Hitman (2016).

It then became part of the game of the year edition, which in turn became part of Hitman 3, which in turn got rebranded as Hitman WOA. Bottom line, it's a free extra campaign thrown in with the package.

We'd never actually touched this before, so for the first time in this series, you're getting our proper first impressions!

(.... which is generally true going forward, since we also never played Hitman 2 beyond the intro mission)

Interestingly, this campaign doesn't have mission stories as a feature. Or rather, the technical mechanic of mission stories isn't present, though there are definitely certain steps you can follow in order to create opportunities. So it's like mission stories -are- there, it's just that they don't "officially" count as mission stories.

Actually, that means it's just like any scripted events from the pre-reboot Hitman games. We're alright with that.

Anyway! Let's dig in and talk about this campaign. Starting with...

Mission 1 - The Source

So, the first mission of the Patient Zero campaign! It takes place in Bangkok. The band from the story mission has left, and the hotel staff is busy cleaning that wing. Meanwhile, the top two floors of the -other- wing are now occupied by an art exhibition and/or cult meeting, led by your primary target, Oybek Nabazov, as well as his second on command, a certain sister Yulduz.The reason they're being targeted is because their cult is planning to release a virus, with the aim of starting a worldwide pandemic and ultimately destroying society.

....... anyone read Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six? Mhm, yeah.

Anyhow, in terms of gameplay, this first mission..... kinda left a bad first impression, to be honest. 

It's incredibly simple. I know i said there's opportunities to do stuff, just no "official" story missions, but to be honest, in this first mission..... we found just one special way of taking out Mr. Nabazov. For Sister Yulduz, the only thing you can do is dress up in a certain diguise to make her follow you, but there's nowhere specific to lead her, so you just kinda have to walk her around a corner and poison/strangle/shoot her or some such.

No fancy accidents to set up for her or anything. At least not that we found.

The entire thing is also fully focused on just the one part of the map. We did go exploring the rest of the hotel to see if we're missing something, but we didn't find anything much. Just business as usual, Hotel staff doing their thing. Some stuff's moved around since the main story mission, but well, some hasn't. The exterminator's still around, for example. In the other hotel wing, there's even some of the band's crew members still hanging around. Not sure if that's intended, or if they were just "forgotten".

But yeah, honestly this first mission felt less like part of a paid DLC and more like a fairly lacklustre bonus mission. Just a touch better than the Hokkaido Snow Festival.

Though one could argue that it probably wasn't meant to be a big, impressive showpiece, considering that the real story of the DLC campaign (and also the actual title drop) happen -after- this first mission. Still, with a 4-mission campaign, using the entire first mission as a simple introduction seems a bit wasteful.

Thankfully, it gets much better from here, with...

Mission 2 - The Author

This one takes place in Sapienza, so you know it has to be better! And yeah, that actually holds true.

Taking out Oybek Nabazov had unforeseen consequences. A kill-switch activated, and an automated message was sent to cult members/agents around the globe, instructing them to release and spread the virus.

Obviously, mankind meeting it's end would be rather unfortunate (and likely bad for business!), so Agent 47 is dispatched to Italy, where the first identified cult activity is happening.

The targets are Craig Black, a novelist who's creatively frustrated because he wants to write science fiction, but only seems to find success by catering to the YA novel crowd. (True horror. We can sympathize!) He's become a member of the cult as a result and is intending to release the virus at an upcoming convention.

Before that however, he is to receive a sample of it from brother Akram, an operative of the cult who's staying in town while Black holds a small invitation-only event at the local church.

This mission is also relatively compact, with it entirely taking place around the lower part of town, and especially the church itself, but ho boy, it's got -a lot- more interesting stuff going on, compared to the previous one.

The targets meet at midnight, so there's actually a set amount of time in this mission before the church bell tolls and both targets make their way to their meeting. Which of course, is an opportunity in and of itself.

But you can generally manipulate things and create opportunities for yourself with this mission. It's not as fleshed-out as a main story mission, but it's pretty good.

For instance, you can disguise yourself as either target and attend that meeting yourself. There's also a way to move the meeting forward, and even a properly funny interaction between 47 and Craig Black if you disguise yourself as a certain someone in the basement.😉

There's also a lot more interesting environmental design going on. It's still just some smaller modifications on the existing Sapienza map, but take brother Akran's "redecoration efforts" in his room in town, for example: 

I mean, this is a part of the map you might not even go and see, if you just wait for him to come down to the meeting. So hey, big respect to whoever designed that!

So yeah, after the first mission left us pretty cold, this second mission inspired a lot more confidence in this campaign!

And then, mission 3 happened, and did something..... -unexpected.-

But it was Amalia who first played that one, and she kinda went mad and obsessed about this mission for a couple of hours, so imma let her take the floor and tell you!😉

Mission 3 - The Vector

Right, thank you!

And he's right, to be honest. I got a little hung up on this one. In a good way!

See, what happened here is that the developers took the Colorado destination which, if you recall, wasn't exactly a fan favourite, and effectively turned it.....

...... into a Sniper Assassin map.

Didn't see -that- one coming, didya? But yeah, an entire mission in this campaign is actually set in a different game mode.

Well, sort of. Mechanically speaking, there's a few small differences. You -can- actually move around for example, it's just that you're limited to the top of the tower 47 has chosen as a perch.

Unlike sniper assassin, there's also no different ammo types to choose, and you don't have unlimited ammunition, either.

That said, it's not like sniping on a normal destination map either, because they've modified it to where you can shoot targets so they'll fall into bushes, over ledges etc. You can also shoot things in the environment to cause "accidents".

So it's mostly Sniper Assassin, but with some normal mission DNA left. Interesting.

Anyway, Agent 47 is sent here to take out Bradley Paine, a medical doctor who's already infected a few of the militia members at the camp. You'll have to take out said infectees as well, to make sure the virus cannot spread.Honestly, the main target in this mission is essentially just some guy. You're too far away for him to have any voice lines and all he does is go around the camp to take notes on how his infected victims are doing. He's basically just some guy you shoot, with no characterization.

Now, the infected militia members are where things get interesting. You see, there's a special mechanic in play, here. There's 4 people infected, and it actually randomizes who they are!

What happens is that Diana Burnwood (your handler), will look through her data and feed you information about the targets. Where in the compound they are, what they might be busy with, notable details. For example:

In the top left of the picture, we can see that the target is outside the main farmhouse, and that they do cardio. Diana's voice lines are a bit more elaborate, suggesting you should look for someone jogging or the like.

Now we -are- looking at a target jogging, but there's actually 2 people running around the main house. So to be sure, we'd need to wait for the third hint in order to safely identify our target.

Mind you, as you may see from our video up above, another surefire way to identify a target is when the doctor (As in, your main target) talks to them and takes some notes, afterwards.

But yeah, unfortunately, there's not much more to this mission. I quite enjoyed it and did all the challenges, but that's because there's only a handful of them. And to be fair, at least it doesn't overstay it's welcome, i suppose.

Taking one of the least-liked maps in the game and turning it into a sort of minigame of a niche game mode is..... interesting. Not sure if my opinion is popular or not. Michael feels a bit more neutral about it. Oh well.

Still, we -both- think that the Patient Zero campaign finishes very strong with...

Mission 4 - Patient ZeroOkay, last mission, and it's set in Hokkaido.

Agent 47 arrives to take care of 2 people: Owen Cage, the man who actually -made- the virus, and has subsequently infected himself with it in order to spread it, as well as Klaus Liebleid, a doctor/researcher working for the Ether corporation, trying to reverse engineer the virus so his employers can profit from it.The main guest and staff areas of the facility are largely unmodified, though quite notable, there's a few NPC voice lines, mumbling about a quarantine in the hospital area, and what might be happening. And then you look at the hospital area itself:

It's a full-on biohazard makeover! Production quality's pretty high, here. It actually feels like a main story mission, in some ways!

There's a catch, though.

See, your two main targets aren't actually all that involved. If you play it right, there's quite literally a convenient button you can press to incinerate them both, and all you have to do is wait for the right moment to press it.

Look, we can show you, because we did a super-clean run of this mission:

Pretty neat, huh? However, what this video doesn't show you is that this mission has a..... rather special gimmick.

You see, Owen Cage -is- actually infectious.

As in, anyone who gets close to him without wearing a CBRN-suit will catch the virus, and those people, in turn, can then infect others.

Now, this won't kill them in-mission, the virus isn't that fast-acting. But it -will- mark them as an additional target you have to take out in order to avoid a global pandemic.

Now the developers were nice enough to place a certain NPC in such a way that she -will- get infected early on. That lady we distract with a coin in the video. We do that so that she won't be in the room at the same time as Mr. Cage, and thus won't get infected.

But unless you specifically stop her, the virus can and will spread from person to person, giving you more targets to deal with.

Also, if Agent 47 gets too close to someone infected without a CBRN suit, he -can- be infected himself. Mind you, this doesn't fail the mission instantly, but you do have to get down to the morgue within 5 minutes to grab a special vaccine that Dr. Liebleid has developed for himself. You can even grab the vaccine preventatively, immunizing yourself.

Oh, and if you get infected, do be careful not to get close to NPCs, because they can catch it from you, too. And again, every NPC that becomes infected becomes another target you have to take out.

It's an incredibly cool mechanic, actually. Kinda feels like a game mode of it's own!

Oh, and do yourself a favour when playing this mission: Do not alert the guards. The first time we played this mission, it devolved into an utter mess, because we had already waited too long, and allowed too many people to get infected just by normal NPCs coming close to each other during their routines.

Inevitably, with like 10 targets marked things got loud, which then made the situation a million times worse, because when the guards get into their alert state and start running around all the corners of the map, the infection gets spread all over the place. We pretty much had to do a clean sweep of the entire map in the end. Wasn't very pretty at all.

.... seriously, it actually got pretty dark. Because remember: These people were effectively already dead, we just sped up their demises to...... save humanity. Yyyeeeeah, that felt seriously grim.😬

..... buuut that's the punishment for not containing it sooner. And yeah, it's a truly awesome gameplay gimmick for this mission.

Honestly feels like it should be it's own game mode.😉

But yeah, it's a very strong finish for Patient Zero! And with that, we reach our....

-Conclusion-

Well, the Patient Zero campaign was clearly a bit of a test-bed for ideas IO Interactive wanted to try out. Thankfully, most of them worked!

It started pretty weak, it has to be said, setting some pretty low expectations with it's first mission. Following on from that, mission 2 was still a bit simple, but just generally better made and more fleshed out. Mission 3 being a sniper mission was a bit of a curve ball, but a welcome bit of variety, and mission 4 was a great way to finish with a bang!

And yeah, that's about all we have to say about Patient Zero. We hope you enjoyed your read and look forward to our next post, when we'll be getting started on Hitman 2!

Until then, stay safe, don't join any doomsday cults, and have a good one!😉