Hitman PC gets promised patch to reduce load times, add Vampire Magician pack

The PC version of Hitman received the promised patch to bring fixes to issues reported since launch.

Now that Hitman players on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have been enjoyed the latest content update for the game, and the included fixes, it's time for PC players to catch up.

IO Interactive has released update 1.03 to the game with PC-specific changes, as well as the addition of the Vampire Magician Challenge Pack.

One of the biggest issues the community has had with the game since launch is long loading times, which have been improved, according to the developer, but work continues. DirectX 12 performance improvements have also been made.

Find all the patch notes below:

General game improvements

The Vampire Magician Challenge Pack – 10 new challenges that were inspired by how our community have been playing the game
Continued improvements to load times – The improvements will be most notable when loading The Showstopper mission in Paris and we're already working on improving all loading times even more
Improved responsiveness for in-game menus and image loading – We've implemented an image caching system that will improve responsiveness and loading times for all images in the game menu
Fixed issues with scoring – Primarily, this fixes an issue that resulted in many players earning a “0 second” time bonus and an incorrect score of 210,000. A leaderboard reset will be implemented at a later date
Continued improvements to connectivity – Server stability improvements

PC-specific improvements

General gameplay

Prompts for dumping a body now appear, regardless of the positioning of the game camera, both in Showstopper and Final Test missions
47 no longer drops a body immediately after starting to drag it
Unnoticed kills or subdue will no longer trigger a brief “compromised” state. This previously caused players to fail the ‘never spotted' reward
The ‘visibly armed' warning is now always shown when 47 is carrying a large weapon on his back
The light rig (Showstopper) and life raft (Freeform Training) can now be reliably dropped using explosives
Opportunities in Showstopper and Final Test have been made more consistent
Fixed an issue where the first few seconds of the game would appear to run at double speed

Showstopper

Novikov will no longer get stuck in an infinite loop during the Rare Scoop opportunity. This would happen if the player gets Max Decker to call Novikov whilst he is on his way to the interview
Novikov will no longer talk to Dalia on the phone when she has already been eliminated
Fixed a rare issue that made the “In Seine” challenge impossible to complete. This would happen when the Private Meeting opportunity overlapped with Novikov on stage at the Fashion Show
Fixed an issue where the Showstopper mission could not be completed if the player calls Dalia during the Fireworks show whilst disguised as Helmut Kruger

Crash Fixes

Fixed various crash issues that could occur when doing the following: loading a new stage in Escalation Contracts, loading the game or after exploding a gas cylinder
Fixed a crash that occurred when shooting at the target in Freeform training during the “Searching” state
Fixed many other crash issues that were occurring during gameplay

Options

Added an option to the game launcher that allows players to override the ‘default memory safeguards' and allow them to use any available resolution and graphic quality settings
Increased resolution cap for players with 3gb graphics cards from 1920×1200 to 2560×1600

DX12

DX12 shader and pipeline cache now included in all Steam builds
Fixed a graphical issue with transparent windows on DX12
Improved vertex colours on DX12

Misc.

Briefings for Featured Contracts can now be viewed at the planning stage
The ‘Contract Assassin' achievement can now be completed
The mouse cursor is now always visible on the ‘Load Game' menu
Fixed an issue where the game would get stuck at 12% loading between the Prologue missions
Fixed a rare issue where players were asked to (re)download the Showstopper mission

Hardware

Fixed a rare issue where the game was switching between controller and keyboard controls, due to detecting specific hardware as a ‘game controller'