IO Interactive’s assassination sim is back for the third instalment in its World of Assassination trilogy. When Hitman originally launched close to five years ago, we were wowed by its scope and stylish presentation as well as IO’s new vision for the series. The Danish studio’s episodic approach to releasing Hitman was a stroke of genius (though one that not everyone gelled with), giving fans just enough time to pick apart one of their murderous, maze-like maps before the next one arrived.
Hitman 2 moved away from the model in favour of something more traditional, launching with a series of missions that could all be played back-to-back without the waiting in between. However, post-launch, we saw IO return to that drip feed of fresh content with Hitman 2’s expansion passes.
Along the way, we’ve seen Agent 47 take out a string of high value target employing a myriad of techniques. What we love about Hitman is how it juggles its super serious subject matter with the hilarity that often comes from botched kills and some of the wonderfully staged “accidental deaths”.
Naturally, Hitman 3 will be the culmination of IO Interactive’s work, the studio allowing players to chart their entire careers through the trilogy. While pushing the series forward in terms of new tech and features, all of the content from those past two games will be available here, importing the old levels along with your progress and achievements. As long as you own the base games and/or specific expansions packs, you can drop right into past favourite locations such as Sapienza and Miami.
Of course, we’re also looking forward to seeing where Agent 47 will visit in 2021. Hitman 3 will feature six locations at launch with Dubai, Dartmoor, and Chongqing having all been confirmed. Each one comes with its own targets and opportunities that extend well beyond the campaign. Once again you can take on side contracts, challenge yourself in Escalations, and hunt down those time-limited “Elusive Targets”. Hitman 3 will also be the first game in the long-running franchise playable in virtual reality thanks to PlayStation VR.
With a release date of January 20th, it’s one of our first major games of 2021 and one that will launch on a glut of systems including new and last-gen consoles as well as PC and Google Stadia.
MrYd
Surely Hitman 3 is the 3rd game playable in VR? Since the first 2 are also playable in VR.
It’s actually very tempting to pay full price and get it digitally, just for convenience. A whole new game with 6 levels, plus 7 from the first game (including the training facility level) and 8 from the 2nd. A whole 21 levels, with whatever udates they’ve done, and playable in VR, and you get both the PS4 and PS5 versions included. Although that’s the case whichever version you buy, phyiscal/digital, PS4/PS5.
About £2.60 per level. Quite a bargain. And with all the levels, it takes up around 100GB, apparently. So about 40GB more than the first 2 games. (Although they’ve not said if that’s the PS4 or PS5 version – could end up being 200GB if you want both installed on a PS5 so you can play the VR version or the flat PS5 version)
Stefan L
On one pedantic hand, yes the levels from the first two games will also be playable in VR, but on the other pedantic hand, you can only play them in VR by virtue of DLC packs for Hitman 3. I think the second pednatic hand has it.
MrYd
What if they do what they did with Hitman 2 and we end up with a free “starter pack” and then you can buy the rest of the game separately, and use whatever levels you’ve purchased from the first 2 games? That would make it something more like a free VR update to the first 2 games.
As it stands, it’s a paid update to the first 2 games to allow VR that just happens to include 6 new levels.
Whichever way you want to look at it, it’s bloody good value for money. 21 levels playable on PS4 or PS5 and in VR or flat.