In a recent interview withIGN,IO InteractiveCEO Hakan Abrak said that the studio’sProject 007game could eventually become a trilogy. If that happens, then it looks like the most recentHitmangames have led to IO discovering its own bizarre version of early access. I’m all for it, but let me explain.
Hitman Took Years To Become World Of Assassination
The most recent Hitman games were likewise released as a trilogy. After Hitman 3, IO assembled all three games into one complete package, dubbedHitman: World of Assassination. If you want to purchase the games on digital platforms, you need to buy World of Assassination first, which now functions as a launcher for all three games.
Having played these games as they were released individually, it’s a little surreal to see them retrofitted into one united product. But, along the way, IO was always treating each game in the series as part of a whole.
Hitman was an episodic release, with new maps launching from March through October in 2016. Hitman 2 and Hitman 3 were traditional releases, but each time IO put out a new game, it was backwards compatible with the previous games, allowing you to load the maps within the newest release. And, as the new games came out, IO included quality-of-life changes for old maps, too. Hitman 2 introduced tall grass that Agent 47 could hide in, and IO retroactively added the feature to the 2016 game, too. When 3 arrived, it marked the end of the trilogy, and IO started tying all the games up in one neat little bow. When the studio announced the World of Assassination name change, the process was complete.
Though each of those games was a finished, commercially released project on its own, this process isn’t dissimilar from the approach that games like Hades and Baldur’s Gate 3 have taken throughout early access. Hitman: World of Assassination’s approach was different in that it never presented itself as a game in progress. But, when you look back on it with hindsight, it’s clear that IO used each new game in the trilogy as a stepping stone in the same way that Supergiant is doing right now with Hades 2.
Hades And Hitman Hurrying To The Finish
Hadesentered early access all the way back in 2018. Over the course of the next two years, the studio took the feedback and data that players provided and built the best version of its game for the full release. Now, when you play Hades, you play the whole thing, not the unfinished version Supergiant was adding to from 2018 to 2020, in the same way that, if you want to play Hitman 2 on Steam, you can only play it as part of World of Assassination. What happened to Hitman is exactly what happens when a game exits early access. The segment you played in those early days ceases to exist. They’re bothShips of Theseus.
So, as IO prepares to release its first James Bond game, I hope that it’s bringing with it the knowledge it gained on the Hitman trilogy. Instead of making each game as an individual product, I hope it’s thinking about how to bring it all together as one united game a few years down the road. The Hitman games are extraordinary, but there are ways that the three games don’t really cohere together, primarily in how they handled their stories.
Each presented its narrative in a completely different way. Hitman (2016) had triple-A cutscenes, Hitman 2 scaled back to motion comics, and Hitman 3 went back to cutscenes, but cutscenes more cheaply produced than the first game’s. Planning a Bond trilogy out from the beginning could let IO establish a unified aesthetic. It also, ideally, would make it easier to add new features to earlier games.
Hitman: World of Assassination, when considered as a total package, is one of the best games ever made. But, planning to make Bond a package from the beginning could allow IO to up its ambition to new heights. Higher than the Burj Al-Ghazali? That remains to be seen.
