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Hitman is getting an ultra hard Professional difficulty mode next week

Comes with its own mastery track, unique rewards and leaderboards.

Hitman will receive an all new extra challenging difficulty setting to coincide with its retail release on Tuesday, 31st January.

Called Professional Difficulty, this will make the game harder in a myriad of ways. Unlockable only for main missions where you've already hit the Mastery Level 20 cap for that locale (excluding the tutorial stage), Professional Difficulty will spruce things up with enhanced AI behaviour, limited saves, stricter item rules, more lethal combat, and "advanced security camera logic", whatever that means.

To further encourage players to revisit these stages, Professional Difficulty will have its own separate mastery track with unique rewards. So even if you've played a level to death (pun intended), there's still a draw to attempting various challenges in this harder mode.

Professional Difficulty will also have its own leaderboards too, separating it from the default difficulty, which is now just called Normal.

It's worth noting that Professional Difficulty will only be applicable to the main missions and not the game's "live content" like Elusive Targets and Escalation Contracts, which will only be available in Normal Difficulty.