Hitman 3 has pretty much everything to make it the ultimate assassination sandbox game. While the are some restrictions that have been put into the title to keep it from being too easy or difficult, there are others that might make the game more enjoyable. At the very least, they’ll add in new options for certain situations, like the Carpathian Mountains mission where you can’t really do much else other than fight through a train of enemies. One thing that the Hitman 3 community has been discussing is the potential addition of a human shield mechanic in Hitman 3 Year Two, and I don’t think that it’s such a terrible idea.
If you’re completely innocent, the idea of a human shield is that Agent 47 would grab an NPC, pull them close, and then hold them in front of him. His face would be visible so that he can shoot at anyone in front of him, but any bullets shot his way will be absorbed by the living person he’s holding in front of him. This is what mad gunmen do when they know they have no other option, but Agent 47 could use it for a lot of other reasons.
First, this reminds me of what Sam Fisher could do in Splinter Cell. You could grab human shields and then use their faces in door scanners to get them open. This was imperative when a scanner required a living person to open it. I also think that Agent 47 could use this when there’s no opportunity to change his suit. I suppose that you’d need a new difficulty to make it impossible to change your disguise, which means that Agent 47 would need to grab and pull enemies to doors to get them open. However, this would mess with the silent assassin mechanic unless you could then kill the NPC because they were a target.
I think that there’s a lot you could do with a new mechanic like this, particularly with the new levels being designed in Hitman 3 Year Two. If they’re designed with a new mechanic like this in mind, then it’ll make it easier to put things in place to make it worth using.