Hitman players have gotten a lot of mileage out of the Elusive Targets recently, which have pit players against the likes of Slim Shady and Bond villains while teaming up with stand-ins for Bruce Lee. The latest mission, “Patient Zero: Requiem,” takes things in a creepier direction by sending Agent 47 to a remote mansion in England where an aspiring CEO of a mysterious company becomes the assassin’s newest target.
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However, there’s far more to Milla Jobovich’s Lilith than meets the eye, and it sets up a truly massive experience for fans. Hitman: World of Assassination Senior Level Designer Martin Ansdal sat down with ComicBook.com to discuss what Milla Jovovich brought to her character of Lilith Devereux as an Elusive Target, the joy of bringing Hitman into different genres through these limited-time missions, and teased that IOI Interactive is only going to be “ramping” things up for future releases.
Bringing Milla Jovovich Into Agent 47’s World
Bringing Milla Jovovich to the world of Hitman: World of Assassination proved to be a great challenge for Lead Designer Martin Ansdal, who embraced the new tones and tenors it introduced to the Hitman experience. Previous Elusive Targets have been played by musicians like Eminem, UFC fighters like Conor McGregor, and action legends like Jean-Claude Van Damme. The latest such target is the mysterious Lilith Devereux, who is the central focus of the mission “Patient Zero: Requiem” and played by Resident Evil star Milla Jovovich.
Given her career and some of her most iconic roles, it’s no surprise that Agent 47’s encounter with a Jovovich character would take cues from the horror and action genres. Making the missions feel consistent with the attached talent is a big part of what makes the missions so effective, according to Ansdal. “When we do these celebrity targets, when we’re thinking of doing it with this person, we will look at everything that they have made. We want to make the mission feel within their wheelhouse. That’s what fans want. In this case, fans of Milla will know that they will be getting something they will enjoy when they play the mission. That’s how it came about with “Patient Zero.” Milla has a filmography that includes action and horror. So there’s an action and horror tone to the mission to reflect that.”
While “Patient Zero” may have some of the horror imagery or tropes that players are more accustomed to seeing in something like the Resident Evil series, it was crucial to Ansdal and the rest of the team at IOI to make the mission “feel like it belongs in the world of Hitman.” To that end, the team couldn’t have picked a better partner than Jovovich, who seriously impressed Ansdal and the rest of the team during development and production.
“It’s always really fun to write Elusive Target missions because, obviously, these have to be bad people. That way, there’s delight and fun in the assassination… Milla really did an amazing job with Lilith Devereux. This is one of the longest scripts we’ve ever done, and during the recordings, Milla was amazing. She wanted to really get into it, to make it really good. I think that actually says something about the substance of the character and how much character is in the mission.
“This character has layers. There’s an initial amount that you know about this corporate climber who’s about to be appointed as the CEO of Ether Corp, our bioengineering company. There’s a public persona, and then there are secrets and private conversations that you can uncover by exploring the mission. You can not see it all on the first playthrough. That’s just the tip of the iceberg with the character.”
The Craft And Future Behind Elusive Missions
The Elusive Missions have become some of the most engaging content released in the long-running series, with plenty of fun and fresh approaches that reflect the creativity and dark humor the Hitman series is known for. The missions can be spy thrillers set against the backdrop of a James Bond villain or surprisingly surreal, as when Eminem hires Agent 47 to kill his alter ego, Slim Shady. That sense of variety is vital to “Patient Zero: Requiem,” and true for all of the modern Elusive Target missions.
“I think one of my favorite things about Elusive Targets,” Ansdal explained, “is that you can take Agent 47 and put him into wildly different genres. For example, in this one, it’s a murder mystery happening in the mansion. That’s something completely different from what we’ve done before. With Hitman, that’s just his thing. Agent 37 is a chameleon. You can slot into any human role, and it almost becomes more fun when the genre gets wilder.” That approach has given Ansdal and the rest of the team a chance to experiment with form and function in level design.
“We have a dedication to the craft of level design, which is at a very high level. I love that I get to take players to these places and reinvent things and try something completely different from the original game. I think so many games have a lot of resources that go into building these things, and [it feels empty.] I think there’s a real value to be respected there… This is what you experience as the character, where you become the master of the level. You become the elite Hitman over time, playing and approaching it all from multiple different angles and finding different secrets and conversations you could never find in one play-through. It’s something that feels unique about World of Assassination.”
Looking ahead to the future, Ansdal couldn’t reveal what the next Elusive Targets will be or what style of mission awaits players down the line out of fear of messing with active negotiations. “I shouldn’t say anything. We have stuff coming up that I’m very excited about, and I don’t want to spoil anything.” However, Ansdal did explain that the primary motivation in picking out new targets for the game is finding people who bring something new to the experience.
“If I can get someone who brings a really strong playable fantasy that you haven’t seen in Hitman before, I’m happy. I mean, when we worked with Mads Mikkelsen for the Le Chiffre mission, I got to build a casino. There’s a playable fantasy in there that you can’t find in any other game. I love any collaboration that brings something like that to the game… we have other experiences that I’m very excited for. I think they’ve only gotten wilder. The play time is longer, the amount of dialogue is greater, the set pieces, the animation, everything is ramping up, rather than winding down. We have plenty more to come.”
Building out those missions is exactly what Ansdal loves most about the game, and seeing how players respond to these twists and turns is a big part of what makes the experience worthwhile for the developer. “Maybe it’s a bit of a developer nerdy thing, but I had the luxury of having more people help me on this mission and plan out the production. Something happens in the middle of the mission that changes everything. Every NPC in the level behaves differently after it. We call it the “rabbit hole.” After you go down the rabbit hole, each of those segments has a different feel, a different tone, in a really cool way.”
“It’s almost changing genres within the mission. I love movies that do that, and I love that we got to do that. But we don’t ever want to take control from the player. The player has total freedom. The player can eliminate the target before the rabbit hole even happens. You could not even see that part! As a designer, I’ve come to love and accept that. That’s where replayability comes in. I don’t sweat it if players don’t see everything in the first go. I love that you can put all these contrasting things in there and trust that the players will discover it on their own.
“Patient Zero: Requiem” is now available to play for Hitman III.
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