Yet another game delayed to 2016. This time around it’s IO Interactive’s latest Hitman game, announced by the developers today that the game’s initial release date will be pushed to March 2016 from it’s initial December 2015 release.
The move, announced on the game’s official site, was due to the overwhelming large scale of the game in contrast to prior games of the series. “It’s safe to say HITMAN is the biggest venture we’ve ever undertaken at Io-Interactive. Not just in terms of scope and ambition but also in terms of the size of the game world itself” the development team explains.
An example posted along the announcement of the move demonstrates exactly how ambitious the development team is in terms of the game’s size. The largest level in Hitman: Absolution “Streets of Hope” is compared side by side with the largest level in the new Hitman “Paris – The Showstopper” in which the latter is a whopping 6X larger by scale. A comparison of the amount of targets for Contracts Mode is listed as well.
Apart from the move the team further detailed their release model for the games missions. “On top of that, we’re going for a new release model where we put out a good chunk of the game when it begins and then release the remaining locations over time. We want to make absolutely sure you all get the best possible experience when you join, so we’ve made the difficult decision to move the initial release date to March 2016.”
Fan reaction has been mixed thus far in regards to the new release model but with the recent delay the hope is to have the game filled with more available content at launch.