IO Interactive released the first major patch for Hitman 3 today, bringing with it a raft of changes to the assassination game, including some much-needed updates to the environment. The patch also corrected some Arabic text in the game’s opening level, which was written incorrectly.
Shortly after Hitman 3 was released last month, players spotted incorrect text on the placards in “Top of the World,” the mission set in a fictionalized version of Dubai’s tallest building. Arabic text is written right-to-left; in “Top of the World,” the text was written left-to-right. Some translations were also inaccurate.
IO’s patch notes today read, “We’ve adjusted the Arabic script used on the information boards around the location. The text is now displayed in the correct way and with improved accuracy for some of the translations.”
As game developer Rami Ismail points out on the website isthatarabic.com, writing text the wrong way is one of the most common mistakes companies make when trying to translate Arabic text. Other common mistakes include writing the wrong Arabic script, using disconnected characters, displaying wanton scribbles, or simply rendering English in a typeface that looks somewhat like Arabic text.
“Another reminder that there’s hundreds of millions of us, and they’re all either thinking this or tweeting this,” Ismail wrote in a tweet last month in response to a player showing a picture of Hitman 3’s Arabic with the hashtag “#notarabic.”
In a response tweet at the time, IO Interactive’s Morten Elgaard said a fix was incoming. It’s available in today’s 3.1.1 patch.
The patch also introduces a smattering of gameplay tweaks, including new escalation missions. There are also smaller updates, fixing things like invisible walls in Dubai and invisible washing machines in Chongqing. Updates to the Silent Assassin HUD—which tells you whether or not you can still unlock that achievement for a given level—will now tell you whether or not you need to find and erase video camera recordings before leaving each level. The patch also introduces connectivity and stability fixes—a boon for Hitman 3, which was marred with rocky connectivity from launch.