That’s returning players but what about new players who are buying the expansion passes for hitman 3 and playing them that way , they are paying for them. Don’t they want to attract new players with the prospect of the complete trilogy as one thing?
Surely if they ever put it all onto one disc as a complete edition,as one product, at that point they would be forced to rework the unlocks so as to not have three of the same thing. 
The thing is, Hitman is no Star Wars. This whole MK2 thing burned on a tiny little flame, reviews almost never talked about it, influencers didnt too. If I was working for IOI, I would call it a day and closed chapter and instead work on other things, like Elusive Targets, Bonus Missions and additional unlocks. A few weeks ago I “primed” my Hitman 2 and wrote down the inventory and gadgets to see if they cut something, and if so, what. There are about 16 MK2 things, 6 of them guns, 10 of them gadgets. Thats not much. Overall, Hitman 2 introduces 39 new guns and meely items, 41 new gadgets, and also reskins of the original guns, turning them from purple to black. If out of 96 new items, 16 are MK2, thats nearly nothing.
To me that’s quite a lot of overlap when there’s not that much stuff in total. (While the total might seem quite high if you just go by the number, I’d say it only looks high because its watered down by a lot of " duds". Eg. Meat bone. +Melee items that are just reskins of others with the same reused animation. I’d minus the duds as well as the dupes)
Perhaps not much fuss because the wording got changed so that they were more like separate games and you’re just importing the levels.
But if they ever do want to package it as one cohesive complete thing as per the original vision, I’m sure people buying that would complain at all the duplicates.
Meat bone is an example of a melee item with a unique animation lol, not sure why you used it as example of an item with “same reused animation”.
Silent attack with meat bone from behind will make the body fall directly behind, while silent attack with a wrench or hammer etc will make the body swing to the left.
This can make a difference in some niche scenarios.
Meat bone wasn’t used as an example of reused animation but an example of a dud item. When would a hitman bring a meat bone as a weapon.
The way they fall could be situationally useful, but that just raises more questions. If it potentially has a viable use why manifest it as a meat bone in the loadout screen instead of turning the loadout version into some kind of weapon. I get you can find it in the level as is, but wouldn’t you make a weapon similar and have it so he’s using the bone as a makeshift version of the loadout weapon instead of making them be one and the same?
Maybe I will never grasp their their core unlock philopshy if I haven’t by now
I’ve been hyped for months and am super excited for Wednesday. To the new work of my favorite game makers. There is a lot of heart and passion in the creation of these great levels. I’m even more excited because I remember the days after Squaxit. I almost thought IO would have to close down because of “poor sales”.
The studio had to HALF to be able to continue at all. That’s why Hitman 2 is so “slimmed down”. IO just couldn’t live up to its full potential. It had to be saved so that it can continue. That’s why I can forgive as a fan of the Hitman series also things like the MKII sticker, 1 year chaos in terms of rating, the bad updates and beginning with horrible Featured Contracts. I think IO has cleverly managed to survive through creative recycling and still deliver great content and permanently bring new items and challenges.
Now Hitman 3 is coming and I am hopeful that it will be the best Hitman of all three parts.
I’m happy to pay for Hitman 3 because I really appreciate this game and its developers. If I had to pay an extra 12€ for Hitman 2 to be able to play it in Hitman 3, I would do it with joy because IO earns money from it and can continue to do so.
IO is not a studio that milks or rips off its players. They are honest but messy. But the contracts between Epic and IO seem to leave IO no choice but to do it this way for PC players. It’s messy and communicated way too late, okay. It’s apparently not technically or contractually possible otherwise. You can also wait a year and then buy on Steam. But let that spoil the hype for Hitman 3?
A clear no!
Why not better be happy that it’s coming in a few days. With that said, I say goodbye to the whirl of negativity around Hitman 3 and its release 
yeah, i agree, i’m more relaxed than yesterday. Still…
Could not have said it better!
Nobody likes to pay more and when it comes to the big companies, I refuse to.
However, IOI really went hard with supporting HITMAN 2016 back when they were under the umbrella of Square Enix. Thanks to that company, we almost did not get a HITMAN 2 or 3. Still they managed to persevere somehow.
I enjoyed HITMAN 2 thoroughly. Was it perfect, no, of course not? It is, however, still fun to this day. IO rewarded us by putting the first game in the second. Whether you had to pay for that or not, how many companies put the first game IN the second? Now they are putting the first two in the third.
The EGS deal SUCKS for Steam faithful PC players. But IO is trying to survive to keep bringing us these games we keep complaining about (yet still play).
As long as Wednesday comes and I get a functional, enjoyable game, I am OK with the money I spent. Hopefully, it goes to making an amazing 007 game and future HITMAN titles.
I really do not get the negativity. As gamers, there are bigger fish we should be frying.
Couldn’t have said this better myself. IOI have done a fantastic job in my opinion. I respect every single IOI employee for what they’ve done with the Hitman franchise.
You know maybe this isn’t the place to say this but with sniping still most likely voiding silent assassin do you think we could get the return of the wall bang? Then again at least they nerfed that instead of “retiring” it.
I’ve been quite negative these past few days but these leaks I’ve been watching are awesome. So I guess that Hitman 3 is another case of IO having amazing devs but piss poor suits.
I was excited until the access pass announcement.
You can say whatever you want about the ‘various circumstances’ but the fact is IO promised something that they weren’t sure that they could deliver. They did this in order to assuage the primary concerns of their potential PC customer base, and secure more pre-orders. It worked for me, it was the first game I’ve pre-ordered in probably twelve years. They then dropped the bomb five days before launch with the hope that they would retain enough business and sell enough passes to justify the dishonesty. This is the conduct of your typical board-driven trash developer, which is a shame because I know IO is better than that.
In my opinion, this situation can be most politely framed as over-stretched marketing that bodes poorly for IO’s newfound independence. In a somewhat more traditional interpretation, they lied.
I’ll wait for the steam sale.
I’m not dialled right into the H3 communities here and on Reddit for example but the buzz I’d observed around the game (aside from the usual EGS noise and of course the H2 access pass drama) is very postive. Good hand-on previews, great looking media and releasing on schedule.
I have seen and spoiled for myself the twitch playthrough and am very excited. In short it is less of a silent assassin type game and will throw you into dynamic immersive action sequences, but there is still opportunity to play as a boring silent assassin if you wish. However it looks more fun to play as the game intends.
3 more days!
IO interactive is a small, independent, developer of < 200 employees and has made financial decision to help them with shoring up funding up front to ensure Hitman 3’s release.
Eidos Interactive and Square Enix have provided this funding up front for IO Interactive since 2004 until they went independent in 2017. Since going independent, IO Interactive has bills to pay out of the cost of turning independent.
It was a smart financial move to team up with Sony with a timed exclusive PSVR for Hitman VR and with Epic game store for PC release.
Hitman VR will be on all headsets and Hitman will be sold on Steam … eventually.
IO Interactive is looking at a long tail in sales of Hitman over the next decade to support paying for Project 007 and other new IP. Project 007 is expected to be a big money maker, and it does not require a large advertising budget to sell the public on 007. Expect something more like Hitman Absolution with more visual set-pieces and linear game progression, than the open sandbox of the Hitman Trilogy (2016-2021). You might be able to choose the order of your missions, but likely there will be more linearity, and more Call of Duty, shoot-em up than the stealth based Hitman Trilogy.
Eventually the Hitman Trilogy (2016-2021) will be sold as a package. It will have a complete story arc by the end of the third part of the trilogy.
IO Interactive is banking on a large volume of sales over the long term of the Hitman Trilogy, and is less dependent on the first week or first year of sales.
That is why IO Interactive is choosing to take the funding for timed exclusives in spite of temporary blowback by some of its fans.
Bro, ~200 employees is not small. IO are bigger than Remedy which make really high level games.
Please do not spread misinformation or state your hopes as facts.
I am in agreement, Bro…? IO interactive is making a triple AAA game, despite its small size in comparison to a typical AAA franchise. The quality of the Hitman franchise punches above the company’s size.
I was making a complement.
Input costs even for a couple hundred employees over many years to make a video game is high.
Capital has to come from somewhere, and if you don’t have a “sugar daddy” like Square Enix looking after you financially, then making a bit of cash up front from a timed exclusives really helps.
Hey, I am not spreading anything here.
It has been stated on this forum (e.g. BernardoOne) how VR is easy to port onto different headsets. So, we can assume that VR will be ported onto all headsets once a timed exclusive deal is done with Sony.
This is opinion, but not a stretch to believe that Hitman VR will eventually expand outside of a PSVR exclusive, given that IOI would make more money to have Hitman VR accessible on all headsets.
PSVR is owned by 5 million users, but the tech is old, and is not at as technically capable as Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 for the same price.
From a financial standpoint, there are enough current PSVR owners for IO interactive to profit off of what they have invested in developing Hitman VR so far, especially with the Sony exclusive deal.
IO interactive has had a small team of 10 to 12 working on Hitman VR.
It is clear from the recent Game Informer interview, it was a senior writer at IO interactive who brought the idea of Hitman VR to the company. It turned out that Hitman was easily portable to VR, despite that Hitman wasn’t developed with VR in mind.
I have a very good feeling Hitman 3 will blow most people away. Sure people will thrown negativity at it like in all games, but I think a lot of that trepidation some people have will be gone once the game launches.
PSVR is not part of the OpenVR standard, and so it’ll need extra work to make it PC compatible.