It is important to get this out of the way; HITMAN 2 is not released in the episodic format that its predecessor took. From the very beginning, all of the game's six locations are available for play. The content can be played at one's own pace without worrying about release schedules or being wary about a season pass that may fall short of expectations.

Jumping into the first location beyond the prologue/tutorial, the sheer vastness of the locale becomes very apparent, a trend that all others continue. It is rewarding to explore the level thoroughly, uncovering infiltration pathways, gathering intel from bystander conversation or various collectibles, and scouting out possible avenues to pull off a clean kill. Areas with only one method of entry are far and few between, giving a lot of freedom to players and eliminating the sense of restrictive gameplay. For a couple of maps, the idea of vastness works against them due to marks being so separated from one another that it feels two different instances within one world locale. The various locations offer a decent variety, taking place in regions such as India, Colombia, and the United States. While impressively large in scale, I may have preferred a larger quantity of smaller scale stages to help alleviate the limited instances of broken cohesion and keep the action area focused.