Following the release of the World of Assassination update for the trilogy as well as the Freelancer mode, fans of the Hitman franchise have been wondering about developer IO Interactive’s future plans for the IP. In a new interview, the studio has revealed that while the World of Assassination will continue to grow and expand, a new mainline title is “a little bit on hiatus” as resources have shifted over to the “Project 007” James Bond game.
Discussing the turbulent journey of the company in the last decade, IO Interactive co-owners Christian Elverdam and Hakan Abrak spoke at length about applying the lessons learned from the lukewarm reception of Hitman: Absolution to the World of Assassination trilogy. Now that it is “not about survival” for the studio following the trilogy’s success, the studio is looking to spread its wings with the Project Fantasy and Project 007 IPs.
As for what that means for the Hitman IP, Elverdam revealed that while support for World of Assassination will continue as in with the Freelancer mode, development of a full new game is on hold due to the studio’s Project 007 commitments:
I hope we can have our cake and eat it too, in the sense that we have such a wonderful platform where we can keep experimenting with what the formula can do and what people expect of it. And then at some point, obviously, as any creative, it would be nice to then go in and say, “Okay, well, with everything we’ve learned, what would that be if we had to re-articulate a sandbox – what would that look like?”
[But] right now a major, major new Hitman game: that’s a little bit on hiatus as we’re building another agent fantasy that’s also taking up a lot of our time. But obviously we’ll come back to beloved Agent 47. He’s still very much in the heart of this company.
Project Fantasy and Project 007 are both early on in their respective development processes, and a teaser for the latter (which features an original James Bond origins story) can be checked out here.
Source: Eurogamer