i feel pretty confident in saying that, in most games, the mechanics tend to precede the narrative. the former is devised first, the latter is added later as an in-game justification.
for example, when designing a mission, i believe ive read somewhere that they start with “where would be a cool place for a hitman mission” and work from there. the narrative justification comes later. like, when coming up with the berlin mission, i doubt they were thinking about the most narratively appropriate location for the story to go, rather “let’s do a cool nightclub mission with loads of enemy agents!”
i just don’t see anything indicating they’re going to shake things up that dramatically for the next game. might they add a prep phase or summink? sure, but they’re not going to fundamentally alter the mechanical formula and handcrafted level design that has brought them their biggest success to date, and i don’t think there is any solid basis for thinking they will.
if freelancer set the world on fire, you might have a reason to believe that, but otherwise, nah.
I don’t either to be fair, although this was an interesting article which is from Feb 2021.
Screenrant interviewed Mattias Engström regarding Hitman III and asked if the gaming formula would evolve when they returned to the franchise, to which he replied they will likely do a new take on it when they return to the franchise. Not sure what that means in reality? But you could say that has applied to all the evolving Hitman games as they’ve progressed. I know the WOA trilogy has been broadly the same, but things evolved from Blood Money to Absolution and then to HITMAN (2016).
I know you’re working on Project 007 and Hitman is done for the time being, but do you think that whenever you decide to return the gameplay formula for Hitman will evolve?
I think we will do a new take on it. I have no idea when, but it’s probably in going to be a new Hitman game that moves away from the World of Assassination trilogy in some ways. We don’t know when, we don’t know how, we wanted a bit of closure in Hitman 3 and a moment of hope. You can kind of see that maybe we could pick it up again from there and just do a completely new thing from there with a new espionage thing or whatever. But we could also say, ‘Yeah, it’s done.’ We could just do a complete reboot and start over again. Anything is possible. We don’t know yet but it’s in our DNA and Hitman is not going away.
I know Mattias said IOI could literally pick up the story from where HItman III concluded in the next game, so you could also say this is now an outdated article as we’ve had Freelancer that is post Hitman III, but wanted to share in case anyone missed it.
Outside of the usual AI evolution (ie, why prison level is currently impossible), and better release / inventory management (ie, not having to take into account everyone having all the poisons they want and not into the level) there is one place I could see the formula be changed : self contained level as foundation.
Currently the game is based around the idea of having self contained level you can replay, but with no consequences between level. Freelancer toys with it, but in a pretty binary way (alerted or not).
So I could see a formula like codename 47 where you have a series of levels with an overarching objective. Some even without main assassination, just preparations. Again, Freelancer toys with it (and do I wish we could purchase, find phones in the takedown levels, have heist takedown, or potential bonus missions from the right trigger).
Hitman 3 sometimes feels like the current formula was at an end. It was well refined enough to be as smooth as possible, but there are moment when it felt like the devs wanted to do a bit more but were restrained by the obligation of the level being self sufficient / contained / with a main target. With all the obligations, and restrictions, to the level design coming with it.
I thought this way since Hitman 3 release, and I think Freelancer is a bit of an indicator, letter of intention.
