Teased by Square Enix at E3 2015 with an aesthetically pleasing announcement trailer was the upcoming installment of the Hitman franchise, confusingly titled HITMAN. Also relevant is the recent–and second–attempt to bring Hitman to theaters with the debut of Hitman: Agent 47, which showed a lot of promise for fans of the series but didn’t do as well as expected in the box offices. Released to the public to see this past Friday was a video containing fifteen solid minutes of gameplay that was shown to attendees of Gamescom earlier this month. Now that the world has seen it, excitement is brewing among fans.
The series began way back in 2000 with Danish developer Io Interactive’s first Hitman game, Hitman: Codename 47, published by Eidos Interactive. Io and Eidos would continue to publish three more Hitman games together through 2006. Besides a three pack game containing three of the first four Hitman games, the series wouldn’t see another installment until Hitman: Absolution‘s release in 2012 under a new publisher, Square Enix. Fast forward to the present where we have the upcoming HITMAN set to be the second Hitman game published by Square Enix.
Each Hitman game is an exercise in stealth and customization in regards to tactics and strategy. The games are divided into missions, each with different settings, which are large open sandboxes in and of themselves. Each mission has a set of required and optional objectives that the player must complete. How to get these objectives accomplished is not given, and leaves open the opportunity for the player to make the most interesting decisions the game will pit you with. As demonstrated in the demonstration, players can simply put a bullet in the target, or be more subtle or obnoxious about their approach and drop a giant light fixture on his head. These sorts of decisions are what the series is famous for.
Those interested will be able to play on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC via digital download on December 8th, 2015, and physical copies will become available early 2016.