Hitman 3 released recently to a great critical and commercial response. A finale to the World of Assassination trilogy, which started in 2016 with Hitman, Hitman 3 arguably has the best collection of levels in the series.
The game has already recouped all of its development costs within a week of release, which has likely delighted everyone involved. IO Interactive has since revealed its plans regarding the future of the game via a DLC roadmap, further setting the game apart from the ones that came before.
Hitman 3's DLC Roadmap Is Already Promising
Hitman 3 already has a meaty DLC content roadmap lined up for the month of February. The developer has already suggested that players shouldn't expect entirely new levels, and instead the focus would be on reimagining the existing Hitman locations. This isn't bad by any means, since the game has almost no filler or lackluster levels. February will bring players two new Deluxe escalation contracts, one of which features the ninja suit as seen in Hitman 2016's Hokkaido map and Hitman 2: Silent Assassin's Hidden Valley.
Along with this, two more escalation contracts will be made available to players with Hitman 3 standard edition as well. Featured contracts are popular contracts made by the community, which are also included in the lineup for February's DLC, while Hitman's Elusive Targets will also appear. In other words, the cup runneth over with exciting content.
How It's Different From Other Entries
Hitman 3 seems to be going towards a different route than the ones that came before. Earlier titles in the trilogy had post-launch content that was mostly based around the Elusive Targets, which started strong with the inclusion of popular celebrities such as Sean Bean.
However, the community has been divisive towards them due to the limited availability of them, as a prominent chunk of the player base couldn't really spare the time on a regular basis to tackle them. Many have also criticized IO for undercutting Hitman 2's Ghost Mode, as the servers were shut down last year without including it in any more levels as promised.
Hitman 3's DLC model seems to be addressing most of these issues. Elusive targets are still there, but they don't seem to be the focus now. Escalation and featured contracts look to have interesting new pieces of content intent on celebrating the game's craziness and not being subject to timed availability. These newer additions also seem to give players a reason to go back to the earlier games' levels, such as Sapienza, and spend more time hunting down newer targets and completing additional tasks.
With the studio already hard at work on the recently announced Project 007, another entry in the Hitman series is probably quite some ways off. If IO Interactive manages to keep the momentum going, Hitman 3 could very keep fans content for way longer than the previous entries have.
Hitman 3 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.