As the release date for Hitman 3 nears, Danish studio IO Interactive (IO for short) has released new gameplay footage for the game.
Like the previous games in the series (which kicked off back in 2000), Hitman 3 will feature a mix of action and stealth, with protagonist Agent 47 having to infiltrate luxurious places all over the world in order to hunt down some pretty shady characters, whom you get to kill in often comical ways…
Hitman 3’s new gameplay footage shows the first 5 minutes of the game’s Dubai mission, which is titled “On top of the world”.
In the video below, Agent 47 begins the mission outside a huge skyscraper in the Middle Eastern location, but soon finds a way inside using one of his new gadgets (a camera which he uses to open a window lock, one of the new items found in this upcoming Hitman game).
Other locations featured in Hitman 3 include a manor in Dartmoor, England, and there’s also a mission set in the streets of Chongqing, China, a location IO Interactive showcased last November.
Those looking to take the plunge and get hold of the game when it arrives on January 20 will also be happy to know that IO Interactive has reduced the file size not only for Hitman 3, but also for the two other games in the “World of Assassination” trilogy (Hitman 2016 and 2018’s Hitman 2).
According to a member of the Hitman team posting on forum website ResetEra (via PCGamesN), the three games in the trilogy (including all DLC) will occupy about 100 GB of disk space.
“We have managed to get the size of the game down significantly. All three games with all content will take up around 100GB”, said an IO developer who uses the handle “A Path Finder” on ResetEra. According to the developer, IO was able to shrink the file size in part by using “newer and better compression for textures”.
Extra use of compression doesn’t mean Hitman 3 will look any worse, though. Actually, IO Interactive has upgraded the game’s graphics engine with the addition of screenspace reflections, meaning things should look quite a bit prettier than they did in the earlier games (the Dubai gameplay video is also proof of this graphical upgrade). This graphical upgrade will apparently also be available for the previous two games in the trilogy, 2016’s Hitman and Hitman 2.
“We upgraded the engine with screenspace reflections … Best thing? It’s backwards compatible with the previous two games in the trilogy and lots of surfaces has [sic] been upgraded”, said the IO Interactive man.
It remains to be seen, though, whether Hitman 3 will be the glorious conclusion to the “World of Assassination” trilogy that fans of the series are hoping it will be, or whether the series will end with a whimper as IO shifts to working on its upcoming James Bond game, the mysteriously titled “Project 007”. Here’s hoping for the best, and that Hitman 3 ends up being one of 2021’s early surprises when it ships later this month.
Read more: Hitman 3 will be another Epic Games Store exclusive on PC