Hitman 3 has just received a ray-tracing patch on PC, but not all setups will be able to handle it. IO Interactive’s latest entry in the popular World of Assassination trilogy has been lauded as an example of finely tuned game design and satisfying puzzle-style game mechanics that present a distinct gaming identity. This praise has been delivered in spite of Hitman 3‘s horrible Steam launch, which prompted free upgrades from the developer.
From the moment a player boots up a game in the World of Assassination trilogy, it’s clear that visual fidelity and presentation have been placed at the forefront. The series’ sparse cinematics are somewhat standard, but the level design is more detailed than even the most technically advanced video games of the modern era. The impressive graphics of the franchise, which became most polished in last year’s Hitman 3, are elevated by the diversity between each environment. True to its name, the World of Assassination trilogy takes players to multiple different locations across the globe, allowing for carefully crafted levels in urban environments, rural landscapes, and everything in between. The arrival of Hitman 3 also marked an upgrade for the franchise’s previous two entries, boosting their framerate and resolution on new-gen consoles.
More PC players have gotten their hands on these experiences since the Hitman trilogy was added to Game Pass, and now some of those PC users will be able to enhance their experience with ray-tracing. Through a recent update, two new graphics settings have been added on PC: ray-traced shadows and ray-traced reflections. The results are impressive but, according to Eurogamer, implementing these enhanced visuals can come at a dramatic cost to performance. Specifically, the Eurogamer piece explains that running the game at ultra RTX settings, rendered in 720p, can make the framerate plummet down to 30FPS. This test was done on an impressive PC build as well, one equipped with an i9 processor and an RTX 3090.
Needless to say, the impact on performance is staggering, and more modest PCs will likely not be able to run ray-tracing on Hitman 3 at all. While this may not cause the same bad publicity as Hitman 3‘s terrible VR mode, it will certainly be disappointing for players without intense hardware, as they will not be able to enjoy these enhanced visuals.
Ray-tracing in Hitman 3 should be expected to take a pretty major toll on performance. More than most games, the modern Hitman releases are filled to the brim with detail, and each level contains dense crowds and movable objects. This means more objects appearing in reflective surfaces, and more objects casting shadows, than the majority of RTX-enhanced games. Still, Hitman 3 fans would likely welcome some greater optimization of this ray-tracing feature in future updates.
