Notoriety

Notoriety - why doesn't that sound like a good thing? The big new feature for Blood Money is the notoriety system - depending on how you tackle your current mission, you'll alter the course of the future ones (i.e. how you must play them). After each mission, you'll be taken to a newspaper report on the recent assassination.

If a bystander sees you performing a suspicious action, once the hit has gone down, they'll squeal to the law. Not only will Guards/Police on future missions be issued with your current description, newspapers detailing your exploits will also start appearing during missions (meaning just about everyone will be aware of who you really are).

At first, the descriptions appearing in the papers will be as vague as hell ("a bald man"), but as your notoriety increases, the better the description becomes (being caught on camera and not retrieving the tape awards much higher notoriety and a more accurate description than even multiple witness reports).

Notoriety also affects the reliability of your disguises; if you're dressed as a Guard and security are looking for a bald man, you'll still rouse suspicion (because you'll still match the basic description). If, however, your disguise includes a hat or something that obscures your face, you'll blend in more.

It isn't the end of the world if your notoriety hits the roof, because with a bit of cold hard cash, it'll all go away. After every successfully completed mission, you will be taken to the bribe screen. From here, you can choose to lower your current level of notoriety (by a fixed amount) by paying-off witnesses (-15) or even the Chief of Police himself (-40).

If that still isn't enough for you, you can pay out a whopping $200,000 to purchase yourself a completely new identity (-100). The cheaper, more time consuming method is to replay the mission that you messed up on and achieve a lower score than the time before.