- Update v272497:
- Combat
- Improved parry responsiveness, and reduced enemy sluggishness.
- Improved enemy targeting logic, reducing the risk of enemies being either too passive or swarming and overwhelming the player.
- Enemies could sometimes attack while being grabbed by the player, this is no longer the case.
- Added some Health damage and heavy Posture damage on the automated counter-attacks that you perform after a Perfect Parry.
- Improved reliability of tripping interactions and railing hazards.
- Refined visual and movement glitches in player evades.
- Parry animations now play more reliably during combat.
- Jobs & Chapters
- Rebalanced traffic density during the Chapter 12 “Rosary Requiem†car chase to improve the daytime gameplay experience.
- Job “Skulls and Crowlanesâ€: Fixed cases where collectable bags would fail to spawn in.
- Job “Skulls and Crowlanesâ€: Objective markers now appear more reliably when completing objectives.
- Miscellaneous
- The player will no longer play the wrong animation in rare cases after climbing
- Added the ability to delete save games directly in-game.
- Improved obstacle traversal and overall jumping responsiveness.
- Combat magazine collection can no longer exceed the intended maximum limit.
- Improved trunk interactions and refined, smoother vehicle enter/exit animations.
- Players can now slowly regenerate Health while sitting on benches.
- City
- Fixed an issue causing visual distortion of certain trees and other foliage assets.
- Addressed a missing collision area in the world that could result in unintended player deaths.
- Performance
- CPU Side Performance Optimizations
- Update v271263:
- Game Modes
- Introducing 3 difficulty modes
- When we originally launched the game, we knew we wanted it to be challenging and, to some degree, punishing. Having said that, there are many different ways to enjoy the world of Samson, and with the introduction of 3 difficulty levels, you now have more choice in what kind of experience you want. More details below:
- Crook
- Caters to a slightly more casual play style, with lower level enemies, more generous loot drops of Painkillers, and losing less cash when knocked out (50%). All Mission Retries are free (0 AP.) In this mode you can expect to more easily defeat enemies, and to have plenty of Painkillers at hand from fallen foes. The free Retries also mean that you can generally keep trying if you fail a Mission. But Tyndalston is still a dangerous place, so don’t relax too much.
- Hustler
- The difficulty mode that most closely matches the original design of the game. Enemies and loot drops and Mission Retries are unchanged. In this mode, you now lose 75% of your hard earned cash when knocked out (original design was 100%).
- Enforcer
- A truly brutal experience if you want to challenge yourself above and beyond: Higher level enemies, less loot drops, and 100% cash lost when knocked out. Also, in this mode, Mission Retries are only ever allowed in Street Trials, so make those Action Points count! We added a new Achievement for celebrating when you manage to become debt free and complete all Chapters in this mode.
- A general note on cash lost when knocked out. This can be alleviated by the four “Hidden Stash†skills that stack for 10-40% cash kept safe when knocked out. There is also one Night specific Perk that can save you from losing some amount of cash on top of this. It can also often be a good idea to take the most dangerous Jobs early in the day to minimize the amount of cash at risk.
- Combat
- The combat camera is now getting a major and very welcome upgrade. One of the biggest pieces of feedback from players has been readability during larger fights, especially when surrounded by multiple enemies in tight spaces. This update is our first big step toward making every brawl feel more controlled, more cinematic and far more intense.
- The camera now dynamically pulls back during larger encounters, helping you keep track of incoming threats, enemy positioning and the overall flow of the fight. The goal is not just to make combat easier to read, but to make every punch, dodge, takedown and desperate street fight feel bigger, heavier and more satisfying.
- Samson has always been built around brutal close-quarters combat and chaotic urban brawls. We want fights to feel raw, dangerous and messy without becoming frustrating or visually confusing. This new camera work is designed to support that vision and lay the groundwork for where we want to take combat in future updates.
- And this is only the beginning.
- We are continuing to work on combat feel, responsiveness, enemy behavior, pacing and overall presentation. The combat camera will keep evolving alongside those improvements. Your feedback has already helped shape this update and it will continue to shape the next ones.
- Jobs
- Three new Jobs have made it to Tyndalston. The new Jobs have wilder setups and combine features from previous Jobs into a more interesting, high risk, high reward package.
- Jack: Skulls and Crow Lanes
- You know those skull jacket scumbags. Word is they’re meeting some Crow Lane trash for a tradeoff. Hot goods for stepped-on product. Find 'em, tail ’em, see if it’s true. If it is, wreck the deal and take everything.
- Beatdown: Upstarts
- Goons from Crow Lane are muscling in on our turf. Show them what happens when you mess with the Ditch.
- Contract: Not ACAB
- Every cop in South End is crooked, except Max Riley. He wants White Whisper gone and he’s feeding us intel to do it. Problem is, his cop buddies can’t know. Rough him up a little, make it look legit, and he’ll “drop†the leads. And relax: You ain’t working for the cops. You’re working against ’em.
- Debt Collectors
- St. Louis is getting even more restless, and debt collectors are no longer exclusive to your apartment and the parking lot. They can now turn up in various locations across the city if you fall behind on your payments.
- Stability/Bug Fixes
- Overall stability and performance improvements, to help reduce crashes and offer a smoother experience.
- We've also done a lot of work on fixing various bugs.
- Update 5:
- Combat
- Enemies now navigate combat spaces more smoothly, are less likely to get caught on objects, and can be boxed into corners preventing them from evading, making positioning and crowd control more effective.
- Bulky enemies now use a wider variety of attacks, making their combat behavior more dynamic and less predictable.
- Environmental Hazards will now trigger more reliably when used from a short distance away.
- The Stuffed Bird Weapon is now available outside of its original Chapter mission, making it easier to obtain. You can find it in the “Slayboy Mansion†Beatdown. It will now respawn each time you play this Job, which was not the case previously.
- Vehicles
- Exiting vehicles is now smoother and more responsive, allowing for quicker transitions between driving and on-foot gameplay.
- Enemy interactions when attempting to pull players from vehicles have been refined, resulting in more consistent behavior.
- Map navigation now provides more reliable routing to destinations located beneath highways.
- Traffic networks have been expanded in areas that were lacking, creating a more connected and consistent road network across the world.
- Miscellaneous
- Vaulting and climbing is now more responsive and reliable, making traversal across the environment smoother. As an example, it is now easier to enter climbing and vaulting while sprinting.
- The “Night Owl†Skill now grants its bonus consistently only once per Night, and missions will remain visible when players have sufficient AP from bonuses to activate them.
- The “On a Roll†Skill had an issue where you would gain its reward even if you went to sleep with 0 Action Points remaining. This has now been fixed.
- Character placement in the world has been refined, reducing instances of them clipping into the environment or facing the wrong directions.
- Players will no longer be transported out of bounds when interacting with some Point of Interests.
- Using the phone is now disabled during combat while at home, ensuring more seamless gameplay during active encounters.
- Various fixes where players could get stuck or fall through the world.
- Chapters & Jobs
- Further polish has been applied to Chapter 12 “Rosary Requiem†to ensure a more fluid experience: Volkov’s dialogue now triggers reliably after the takedown, his presence and vehicle persist correctly, and the mission flow clearly resolves if he is eliminated before the car chase.
- Players will no longer become stuck in The Double Tap after the shooting sequence in Chapter 1 “Blood On Tap†even if the cutscene is skipped.
- For Chapter 13 “Evil†– Trafficking victims will no longer join the Beatdown event, ensuring the encounter unfolds as intended, which will also prevent the player entering a Wanted state during the mission.
- Fixed rare cases of old missions becoming active again when they had been previously completed.
- The final fight in Chapter 14 “Am I My Brothers Keeper†now maintains its intended narrative tension, with the enemy no longer running away mid-dialogue.
- Chapter 2 “Silver Bullet†– After failing the mission and retrying the next day, the dialogue with Paulie now consistently begins as intended.
- Chapter 14 “Am I My Brothers Keeper†– The Beatdown sequence now consistently plays when replaying the mission on a subsequent day.
- Chapter 9 “A Walk Down Memory Lane†– Enemy spawns in the dialogue scene are now positioned to ensure they no longer appear directly in front of the player during the sequence.
- Job “Taxi Snitch†– The mission now correctly ends in failure when the car reaches TYPD HQ.
- Players are now placed in a paused state when interacting with mission starters, preventing damage or death while the interaction is active.
- Tommy’s animation in the bar during Chapter 9 “A Walk Down Memory Lane†now plays as intended.
- Stability
- Stability improvements that help reduce crashes.
- Ongoing performance improvements that help reduce hitches.
- Update 4:
- Missions & Jobs
- Addressed some issues which prevented Story Chapters appearing if the player's game got into a bad state, this should prevent this from occurring in the future as well as for those currently affected
- Various issues addressed for Chapter 8 "He Has Risen" to make the logic more robust and prevent future issues occurring
- Addressed an issue which prevented Objective descriptions and markers showing for Chapter 11 "Crucifix Connection"
- Player should no longer be able to get locked in the Containers during Chapter 12 "Rosary Requiem"
- Addressed various issues with dying, accepting defeat then replaying missions the next day that would prevent or confuse progress, if you still encounter a case of this please do let us know on our Discord or Steam Bug Reporting discussion group
- Ambushers should now spawn properly during the "Not too old for Shit" Job. This should also fix most cases in other Jobs where expected combatants were not spawning in.
- Jack missions should now show the correct number of required items to be collected in the HUD
- Vehicles
- Several changes to how Enforcement encounters work to make them feel more fair and less frustrating. Rather than knowing exactly where you are at all times, instead the Player will generate Breadcrumbs that the Police can follow, the Police will consume these breadcrumbs while pursuing the player and once the last is consumed, if they then still don't see the player, they will start to search for them in a more "random" manner. This should reward the Player for more effectively hiding from the Police and make the experience more engaging
- Further tweaks to lower the time required to escape during Wanted events further on each subsequent time the Escape Cooldown is triggered. Lowered to 3 from 5 seconds for each escape, max reduction is lowered to 12 from 20 seconds.
- Raised the weak spot health of the recently added Drift & Rallycross variations to make them more robust for using in the various activities
- Improved traffic & civilian navigation
- Cost for refiling Nitrous will be correct even when you have multiple Nitrous Tanks
- Speedometer will now work correctly when reversing the player car
- Cars should no longer be reversing on their own when you first enter them
- Smoothened the experience when being pulled out of vehicles
- Police Patrols should be more frequent and follow their intended routes
- Made the police react when observing the player stealing a car
- When the engine has been turned off you can start it by reversing, just as you do with going forward
- Combat
- Increased players chance to hit when varying the attacks
- Decreased NPCs chance to defend against shoves
- Decreased NPCs overall chance to defend
- Addressed an issue preventing the NPCs counter attack after parrying predictable attacks
- Worked to prevent jittering NPCs during fights, especially against very defensive enemies
- Tuned parries to show more of the punch animations before the parry animation kicks in
- Prevent excessively rapid follow up strikes when light punches get interrupted
- Fixed an issue where NPCs could throw a Heavy then immediately Parry if they were interrupted during the Heavy
- Preventing enemy NPCs from spinning around after being hit
- Fixed an issue where we showed the incorrect character level border icon. This is what you should see:
- Smooth circle: This enemy is way below the player character in level and will have lower defensive capabilities
- Circle with horizontal spikes: This enemy is roughly equal to player level and will have balanced defensive capabilities
- Circle with many spikes: This enemy is way above the player level and will have greatly increased defensive capabilities, such as their ability to evade, parry, and counter attack
- Interface and Accessibility
- Added a user setting to be able to toggle on/off Vehicle Healthbars along with the Enemy Healthbars
- Various improvements to the Satnav and GPS markers to handle elevation better, should make it more accurate when you're traveling to a location on or below a bridge for example
- Added an option to skip the in-game cut scenes
- Race UI should now always be displayed correctly during Street Trials
- Increased the range at which we show the POI interact icons to make them generally easier to find when exploring the city
- Miscellaneous
- Make the Hidden Stash skill available for users that had previously unlocked the skill prior to the last patch
- Ongoing improvements to the Localization content including various missing prompts, UI elements and incorrect or missing translations
- Ongoing fixes & polish for NPC placement and behaviours as well as world art and environmental issues
- Improved NPCs enter vehicle behavior. Fixed contention over seats. Added fallbacks if the wanted seat is unavailable.
- Performance & Stability
- Added a Low Video Memory warning for players running at too high settings for their available VRAM, when this occurs they would get poor performance and hitching
- Continued general improvements to performance as well as reducing potential hitches encountered by the players
- Several crash fixes
- Update 3:
- Vehicles
- Updated Rallycross and new Drift car variants can be found at garages to cater to more driving styles.
- Several improvements for Keyboard & Mouse controls for driving vehicles.
- Adjusted vehicle impact damage and scoring logic to be more consistent and reliable. The goal with this update is for you to be able to finish vehicle jobs with less damage, reducing the need for costly repairs.
- Added a police siren warning for minor vehicle collisions before an actual chase is triggered.
- Enemy vehicles can now overtake dead teammates so they won't get stuck behind the first vehicle in the group if you take that out first.
- Fixed issue where police characters would fail to exit their vehicle.
- Updates to UI for Street Trials and Police Chases.
- Adjusted Samson's car model so the exhaust no longer intersects with its rear tires.
- Melee Combat
- Tuned parry timing and improved parry interval for better reliability.
- Reduced character sliding during melee Takedowns.
- Trimming hit reactions for faster, more fluid combat flow.
- Adrenaline Rush action now forces interrupt on incoming attacks.
- Improved animation management to prevent lost animations and improve action feedback.
- Melee Weapon Collector achievement now correctly tracks the Police Baton.
- Fixed so that the melee takedown icon now displays the correct keyboard input to initiate takedown (Q) when playing with mouse and keyboard.
- Updates to Enemy Healthbar UI.
- Missions & Jobs
- Resolved teleportation and spawn issue in Chapter 12, "Rosary Requiem".
- Police vans are now correctly told to stop after the Chapter 12, "Rosary Requiem" mission, so they don't run Volkov over.
- Fixed a rare issue preventing Chapter 11, "Skulls And Crossbones", from unlocking.
- Fixed an issue when using old save files that prevented a dialogue with Floyd at the start of Chapter 2, "Silver Bullet".
- Fixed an issue where Steve Macnamara could be spawned dead when you re-attempt Chapter 4, "Dirty Scripts" on a later day.
- Fixed mission stall in "Shipping Showdown" by adjusting enemy spawns.
- Unlocked the toilet door in the Euro Trash mission to prevent soft-locks.
- Street Trial retry cost is now 0 AP, making it easier to replay, improve your runs, and grind for better results.
- Fixed several cases where sometimes enemies would not spawn due to streaming issues.
- This should fix for example the case in the Job "Not Too Old for Shit" where sometimes the combatants would not spawn, thus making it impossible to complete the Job.
- We believe that this should fix most similar cases in various Jobs, but if you keep seeing similar issues, please let us know which Mission is affected.
- NPC Behavior
- Fixed NPC's taking a seat mid-fight or breaking out of combat to do similar idle animations.
- Resolved several instances of NPC's clipping into the ground/walls/concrete.
- Enemies now walk into the church during mission "A Walk Down Memory Lane", instead of spawning in the player view.
- Enemies will properly scale their combat decisions (blocking, evading, and throwing weapons) based on their level relative to the player's level.
- Interface and Accessibility
- Added support for platform-specific gamepad icons for PS5 and enabled support for PlayStation Controllers without the need for Steam Input.
- Added options to adjust subtitle sizes.
- Removed UI overlaps between Street Trials and the Wanted UI.
- Added a Walk button (toggle) for Keyboard & Mouse players.
- Made Mission warning messages like "You need a working vehicle" and "You are too far away" appear in center of screen initially to draw more attention to them so they are harder to miss.
- Performance & Stability
- Improved rendering performance during Evening.
- Disabled Garbage Collection Timeout to prevent crashes during prolonged loading screens.
- Fixed a potential deadlock/contention issue related to UObject pooling.
- Miscellaneous
- Fixed numerous spots where the player could get stuck in the terrain, fall through the world, or clip into objects.
- Fixed the Hidden Stash skill, so that the cash safe on KO works properly, and the stacking bonus behaves as it should.
- Save Games metadata is tracked in the save file itself so it will display correctly in the Load Game menu after being cloud synced or copied manually.
- Fixed an issue preventing the player from sitting on benches placed too close to walls.
- Fixed some issues with destructibles that were unbreakable.
- Fixed a geometry issue with one of the Gas Station walls.
- Addressed visual Z-fighting and minor collision traps in numerous locations.
- Update 2:
- Performance & Stability
- Improved performance and reduced stuttering.
- Tentative fix for a crash related to the in-game movie streamer.
- Fix for shader compilation crash.
- Localization
- Much improved translation coverage including missing characters for Turkish.
- Much improved translation coverage for German
- Much improved translation coverage for Italian
- General localization polish for Spanish and French
- Localized text has been added to the controller help screen for all supported languages.
- Missions & Jobs
- Fixed a bug in the "Hot Iron" mission where the Weapon Dealer Antwan might not spawn after mission failure/abort.
- Players should no longer be able to get locked in the bathroom of the Mansion during replaying the mission "Evil" (Chapter 13).
- Fixed a serious issue in the Volkov mission where the mission could fail if Volkov became aggressive before the dialogue could start.
- Hotfix April 16th: Fixed yet another issue with Volkov not spawning into Chapter 12 mission.
- Fixed the visibility issue in "Looking for Volkov" (Chapter 12).
- Fixed various issues with states not being reset when replaying missions after having Accepted Defeat and replaying them again the next day.
- Getaway Jobs: Resolved an issue where warning messages from previous missions (e.g., "You left the guys in the car") could incorrectly appear in later Jobs.
- ACAB: Expanded the boundaries of the combat area to allow players more freedom during the fight.
- If the Kids Are United: Increased the size of the Beatdown area to give players more strategic options for the fight.
- Combat
- Improved reliability of Takedowns.
- Decreased risk of interruption from Takedowns.
- Increased window for successful parry.
- Reduced repetition of heavy attacks resulting in increased variety.
- Balancing of combat encounters.
- Gameplay
- Reduced the AP cost of Street Trials by 1 AP. This makes them less punishing to attempt and retry, addressing low engagement due to difficulty. It also lets players use leftover 1 AP at the end of the day instead of wasting it. It's also the first step in the bigger effort to further balance the game loop as a whole.
- Reduced the engine start delay when entering a vehicle, allowing you to drive away faster.
- Fixed an issue that prevented players from using vehicle interactions if the car was flipped over.
- Fixed a bug where a notification would fail to appear if a vehicle call failed because the vehicle was wrecked.
- Vehicles (except Samson's car) will now properly restore their state after an End-of-Day reset.
- Removed damage taken on undercarriage impacts on your vehicle while driving. This is a first step toward improving overall vehicle gameplay balance.
- Tweaked placement of pickups that previously couldn't be picked up.
- Made sure the normal bat in your wardrobe reappears next day if you are wielding it when you go to sleep.
- Consecutive escapes from Police and Gangs for the same crime will reduce the required escape time by 5 seconds each time, up to a maximum reduction of 20 seconds.
- Controls & UI
- Mouse and Gamepad now have separate settings for inverting the camera axes.
- The "Use Painkiller" action can now be successfully reassigned in the Keyboard settings.
- The Takedown action is now correctly displayed in the controller help menu.
- Fixes & Bug Squashing
- Resolved an issue where non-starting dialogue would occur after restarting various missions.
- NPCs will now consistently react when you hit them with thrown Weapons.
- Corrected the total amount of Sandwich Boards on the Collectibles screen; the correct total is 163.
- Ensure the Police Radio can be heard properly when driving at speed.
- Fixed various misspelled names in the credits section.
- Fixed an issue where the weapons would visually pop away before the trunk was fully closed.
- Various fixes for floating or misplaced NPC positions.
- Fixes and Improvements to the Multi-Slot Save system.
- Ensured that Save Game files synced via the cloud are recognized correctly by the manifest. This means slots used will be visible as intended on the Load Game screen.
- Tutorials
- Added a new tutorial specifically for the Shove & Grab combat action.
- Added a new tutorial detailing how to perform Side Rams when you start your first Vehicle Takedown Job.
- Made HUD & UI hints for various moves stick on screen to make them clearer to the players.
- Update 1:
- Performance
- Several performance fixes focusing on PSO related hitches (Fixes stuttering related issues)
- Fixed some misses with Slate
- Fixed landscape RayTracingDynamicGeometry misses
- bIgnoreMaskMateria & bRequireRTDynamicGeometryUpdate was not set correctly from landscape PSO precache dispatch since 5.7
- NaniteLumenCard & NaniteShading misses
- Fixed PSO misses due to FStaticMeshComponentHelper::CollectPSOPrecacheDataImpl fetching materials from LOD levels depending on MinLOD even for Nanite-enabled meshes which will render with LOD 0 materials
- Crash fixes
- Crash fix for clearing UseDestructionHelp for vehicles with a timer
- Fix for potential case where attempting to update a failed dispatch when losing warp governance could clear the callback lambda as it was being executed, causing a dangling this pointer and crash
- Fixed various audio-related crashes, including one when closing the game
- Avoid race conditions caused by writes to bIsCachedRayTracingInstanceValid and bDynamicRayTracingInstanceCachedDataDirty from parallel tasks
- Force separate storage unit between ray tracing and non-ray tracing bits
- Force separate storage unit between bIsCachedRayTracingInstanceValid and bDynamicRayTracingInstanceCachedDataDirty
- Physics
- Fixed issue with Physics destructables behaving like solid objects and not getting destroyed when playing on high framerates.
- Mission
- Ice Fish – NPCs spawned in the Beatdown are no longer only Level 1
- Thrill of the Fight and Running on Fumes – now functional after save/continue
- Suzy Red no longer gets multiplied during "Stitches for Snitches" mission completion
- Hit 16 (No Return Fare) – passenger now gets into the cab at the pickup location
- Dave Shultz Tailing Job – Dave now spawns close to player, avoiding near-instant fails for being too far away
- Story Chapter – No Whisper Dealers – no beatdown triggers when eliminating enemies, preventing mission failure
- Hot Iron – fixed issue where the fail radius for the reach dealer objective was too small
- Progression blockers for mission "Hot Iron"
- Progression blockers for mission "Consulting Doctor"
- Fixes for the controller sensitivity setting being experienced as slower
- Day 3: Oonagh Welcome Home – call now comes after story mission Blood on Tap rather than Dirty Scripts
- Fixed issue with the “Hot Iron†not being replayable after failing and retrying the next day.
- Improved traversal and removed collision traps by White Whisper stash close to the priest's house in Park Avenue.
- Fixed the Cumberland barge wall
- General Gameplay
- NPC fall damage added as a failsafe for dropped NPCs
- Day 3 Pickups – raised interact range to allow easier pickup if an item is dropped under a body
- Let outsiders check if the driver can be pulled out of the vehicle
- Fixed issues where enemies were not advancing towards you in group encounters
- Fixed issues with AI running onto roads to inspect dead bodies
- Fixed issue where police siren sometimes did not work
- Polish
- Fixed smoker alignment in Double Tap and Suzy's
- Fixed vehicle voices
- Added a dedicated "remote dialogue" bucket for voice lines without a visible speaker (e.g. phone calls or police radio chatter)
- Added separate dialogue buckets for police vehicles and remote dialogue
- Fixed door kick spam
- [Audio] New day stinger now plays before dialogue
- Increased volume for NPC vehicles
- Prevented corpses from popping back up or being launched into the air after takedowns, hazards, or railing interactions
- Improved lean-on-wall alignment
- Blocked bark gestures or one-offs during ranged combat
- Fixed Vivian holding a folder in the doctor's office instead of nothing
- [Audio] Added "outside vehicle" dialogue lines to NPC non-combat efforts
- Fixed several grammatical errors
- Removed the facility marked on the map for no reason.
- Improved French localization, adding a whole lot of strings that were missed in translation.
- Combat
- Fix for unreliable combat barge. If you tried to do a combat barge during the 4-second cooldown, it would just drop you out of combat stance instead.
- Fixed issue with Enemies failing to pull the player out of a vehicle if misaligned even slightly.
- Balanced Police escalation detection ranges to make it fair to the player.
- Fixed issue with player falling through the floor, dying.
- Usability
- New "Controls" screen for showing game input from the pause menu
- Correct text for Carpe Diem: First Job costs 0 AP.
- Added Heal to combat hints
- Fixed so we toggle Grab / Throw when you pick up an item in the combat hints
- Fixed issues with changing the Deadzone setting not changing the way sticks respond
- Fixed issues with turning off vibration in the settings.