Yesterday, Hitman 3 developer IO Interactive teased that a new location for the game would be revealed soon. Now, a trailer uploaded today confirms said location to be Chongqing, a municipality located in southwestern China.
While the trailer provides a first look at the location, presenting it as a dark and moody locale set during a rainy night, with Agent 47 having to stick to the shadows as he sneaks from apartment building to apartment building, commentary from IO's community developer Clemens Koch focuses on highlighting the Glacier engine, the technology used to power Hitman 3.
Aside from boasting improved rendering, animations, and other technical achievements to make the game world more immersive (e.g. the rain falling on Agent 47), the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC releases will also be able to feature more than 300 active NPCs at once, as demonstrated with a massive and packed gala. Koch adds that these versions will be able to run at 4K resolution and 60fps with HDR.
While the PC version won't have ray-tracing at launch, a separate IO blog confirms that it is partnering with Intel to provide the best possible performance and optimization for PC players, with various updates and tweaks planned throughout 2021, including ray-tracing.
What's more, Hitman 3's aforementioned rendering, animation, and AI upgrades will also be retroactively added to the missions from the previous two games, as those missions can be played in Hitman 3 as well.
Fans shouldn't expect these upgrades to come to the more recently confirmed Nintendo Switch version, as it's not as powerful as the PS5 or Xbox Series X. It's because of this that Hitman 3 isn't releasing physically or digitally for Nintendo's console, but instead as a cloud-based version, meaning an Internet connection is required to play it.
Unlike Chongqing in the trailer, the future seems bright for IO Interactive. Earlier this month, it was confirmed that the Hitman series had reached 70 million players, just in time too for the series' 20th anniversary. And with Hitman 3 already managing to excite long-time fans, it's very likely that those player numbers will increase once the game releases early next year.
Not only that, but IO also announced that it is making a James Bond game, currently titled Project 007. Though the teaser trailer didn't reveal anything about the title, nor did it show any gameplay, IO did confirm afterwards that it won't be an adaptation of any of the movies and instead be its own origin story for the character.
Hitman 3 will release on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: IO Interactive