Our first official Contract Curator for 2020 is here! As we introduced on the January Content Calendar – his name is MulletPride and he was tasked with picking out 10 contracts to be Featured in HITMAN 2 as part of our January Content Calendar.
Now, we’re ready to find out more about him and the Contracts that he has chosen to be featured – they’ll be live in HITMAN 2 on January 23. Before you get the chance to play the 10 contracts that he’s chosen tomorrow, we’re putting him under the spotlight to find out more about him. Let’s go!
Hello MulletPride!
Greetings Clemens, Travis, and all of the other awesome people at IO Interactive. It’s an honor to chat with you guys.
Can you give us some intel on who you are?
Appropriate question seeing as how I haven’t been in the Hitman community all that long. I go by Mullet! And before you even ask, no I don’t have a mullet… not anymore. Decided to get rid of that when I became a father. But now I have a fancy moustache, and most of the community members like to tease me for that. I am soon to be 27 years old and live in Ohio in the United States. Besides grinding your game, I also like to write/play music, I play disc golf religiously, I play in an indoor soccer/football league and one day I would like to publish a book! I work as a project manager in a factory where we build heaters, and I also work as a farmhand part-time in the spring and summer.
Where can people find/watch/follow you online?
You can find me on Twitch where I like to stream Hitman and a variety of single-player campaign games. Most recently I played Horizon Zero Dawn and HITMAN 2 on stream. I also try to make good HITMAN content on my YouTube channel. Frote7 inspired me to do speedrunning videos, and Urben inspired me to do funny/montage videos. I play HITMAN on both PS4 and XB1 and can be added/followed there too. Lastly, I have a Twitter account that I can be followed on.
When did you first stumble upon the Bald Assassin?
Back when I had an Xbox 360, Hitman: Absolution was made free with the ‘Games With Gold’ access, so I downloaded it and played it through twice. Even though it’s not one of the fan-favorites in the series, I have a special spot in my heart for it, since I would never be around the newer HITMAN games without it!
What is your favourite Hitman game, and why?
HITMAN 2 (2018) is my favorite Hitman game, and it goes back to what I said earlier. I haven’t been in the Hitman scene/community for a very long time. I played Absolution twice through, and then I played HITMAN 2016 as a completionist; I went for all of the challenges in each map, but I didn’t even know what Elusive Targets were, or even try the Contracts game mode. I followed the game and community much closer upon HITMAN 2’s release and learned that there is much more to the game besides playing the main missions repeatedly.
What’s your favourite map from HITMAN 2?
If we’re speaking strictly new HITMAN 2 maps, I would have to say Miami. If you want to extend that to the Legacy Pack, I would have to say Sapienza. Miami has a wonderful energy to it across the entire map; I love the vibrant colors, the racetrack is a unique addition that we hadn’t seen before, and I’ve played countless contracts that I thoroughly enjoyed from here. Sapienza is the same for similar reasons involving the aura, colors and contracts. Sapienza also has many biomes that all have a nice setting for featuring contracts, may it be the mansion, the beach/church area, or the underground cave.
And what’s your favourite moment, in HITMAN? Can be anything, from in-game to something you’ve seen, played etc.
Obviously being the first curator of HITMAN 2 and first curator of the decade. Haha. I actually have to give credit to Frote7 again for this one. He was streaming HITMAN 2 on Twitch and mentioned wanting to set up his own Speedrun Competition. I told him that I could set up a Discord server for him to organize this event, and I could also make him promotional art to help spread the word. This was back in August 2019 and not even five months later, the community Discord has risen to well over 400 members. Frote7 and I have hosted 3 Speedrun Competitions and a Ghost Mode Tournament, all of which have brought in some of the most skilful and competitive HITMAN players across the globe. I guess the TLDR would be, co-hosting events with my buddy Frote. [Editor’s Note: Want in on the Speedrun Discord? Click this link to join.]
NOW – Contracts time!
How did you go about choosing/creating/finding the 10 contracts, what was your process?
I had a private message from Clemens immediately after the last IO Monthly, asking if I would like to be the curator. After a brief OMG moment and accepting the role, he told me to keep things on the lowdown, while also giving me almost complete freedom on selecting contracts. Rather than selecting contracts that I had already played, I actually asked specific friends, content creators and contract masters to make me a new contract. I didn’t tell them that it was going to be used in the Curator Batch, but rather told them to make a contract similar to previous ones that I had played. So other than maybe one or two of these contracts, I will be playing them for the first time with the rest of the community!
That’s definitely a different way to do it – and that’s your call as the Curator. Tell us more about the contracts you’ve chosen to give our community an idea of what to expect.
I can group some of my contracts into different categories based on why I like them. The first style of contract/gameplay I want to highlight is speedrunning. I’m in no way one of the best speedrunners, but I really do enjoy this style of play. My favorite types of contracts to speedrun are “Any Method, Any Disguise” or maybe limiting to one method and/or one disguise. I enjoy freedom in a contract because it gives many different approaches to the same few targets. Hitman is, after all, a puzzle game, and I just like to put the puzzle together as fast as possible. This leads to my next type of contract/style of play, which are elaborate puzzles or roleplaying contracts. Have you ever played a contract and just thought for a while: “How in the hell do I go about even doing this?” I love these contracts, and it is very satisfactory to finally complete them.
Let’s talk a bit more about how you like to approach a Hitman level – is there a particular item that you just *need* to have in your loadout?
Honestly, I always enjoy having a briefcase with me. I would say that I always want to bring a sniper rifle with me, but that isn’t always the best means of eliminating targets. The briefcase is great for concealing whatever items, especially a sniper rifle, but also doubles as a great throwable melee weapon. Besides that, the briefcase just looks professional while wearing a suit, and I like that professional assassin look!
Now is your chance to share or say one last thing before you go. Have at it!
A special shoutout to Mr. Ding, Scroob and Penny. The group of us created our own campaign within HITMAN 2, called APA: A Contract Series. There is a full story written throughout the briefings, one contract in each location (minus Hawkes Bay). These contracts have been expertly put together using our APA conditions: Accident Kill, Pistol Kill, Any Method. They have been exposed on Hitman Forum already, but I want to shout them out again. We did APA Part 1 in the Legacy Pack maps and wrapped up the series in APA Part 2 in the H2 maps. Some of these are simple and quick, some of them are very puzzling. Hope you enjoy them! [Editor’s Note: If you want to find the APA Contracts, this HitmanForum thread that Mullet mentioned above has all the ID’s]
Thanks Mullet!
Thank you guys for having me and thank you for doing what you guys do. I’ve never played a game with a live service such as HITMAN 2 and I think it is underappreciated. Can’t wait to see me as an NPC in the next Hitman game (hehe, come on, do it), and also hyped for the new IP, whatever that may be. THEE U!
