Warner Brothers Games has likely teased too much as a Hitman 2 logo was on WB Games website. WB Games official twitter account sent a cryptic tweet yesterday, teasing the audience to tune in for a live reveal of something on Thursday, 10:00am. Apart the text message, only a short video loop of a racing scene was showed, likely to throw off curious minds.
Let the countdown begin//72:00:00
Watch the LIVE reveal Thursday, 10:00am: https://t.co/cV6AxRxO06 pic.twitter.com/JCbuRVHVel
— WB Games (@wbgames) June 4, 2018
In their efforts to divert concrete speculations, Warner Brothers Games made a big mistake on the very website they linked to however. A prominent logo of Hitman 2 was visible on the website. This obviously makes it very likely that WB Games is going to reveal something related to Hitman. Maybe a second season or a separate second game?
Developer IO Interactive was one of the few bigger developers which tried an episodic game release with their newest Hitman game, starting with Episode 1 in 2016 and the last Episode 6 seven months later. This did not mark the only innovation of what has become called Hitman 2016. With its predecessor Hitman: Absolution from 2012, IO Interactive made the decision to simplify their long-standing murder simulator to draw a broader audience. Sadly, this change of direction did not bring the studio the desired results but instead alienated longtime fans which lead to Hitman: Absolution becoming the black sheep of the franchise.
IO Interactive thus made the difficult decision and brought the game back to its roots, with wide maps, deep systems with huge amounts of tactics and player choice. The gamble paid off. Fans and critics were delighted by the depth of the game, lauding the developer for fitting the game exquisitely into an episodic format.
This wasn’t enough for publisher Square Enix who in early 2017 ended founding of IO Interactive. What could have led to yet another studio closure luckily resulted in IO Interactive buying themselves free of Square Enix and becoming an independent studio, plus gaining the rights for the Hitman franchise.
Ever since, IO Interactive has been supporting Hitman with new missions, updates and most recently a Definitive Edition on consoles, containing all episodes with help of Warner Brothers Games as a publisher. IO Interactive was very clear about a sequel to Hitman 2016, with studio boss Hakan Abrak openly writing about their work on it. So it comes as little surprise that we would be seeing a Hitman 2 sooner or later.
This E3 season is already very fruitful for new game reveals and it hasn’t even started yet officially. Stay tuned for more news when E3 is about to kick off in the coming days.
