The recent reboot of the Hitman franchise has been rather successful, released to both critical acclaim and positive sales figures globally. Between that and the resurgence of Hitman, Tomb Raider and Deus Ex, Square Enix must be feeling rather chipper about their studio acquisitions.
The latest iteration of Hitman has been drip-fed throughout 2016 in an episodic format, which has not been always been popular with the general gaming public – they see it as somehow disingenuous, a method of milking money from fans – but where Hitman is concerned, the episodic format has been spot on.
Point of order: Hitman is episodic. Other games, however, with continuing storylines (like Telltale’s adventure games) aren’t in fact episodic, and are often mislabelled as such. They’re periodical, even though each instalment is (correctly) referred to as individual episodes. The clue is that if storylines happen contiguously from one episode to the next, it’s periodical. If something happens, then by the following instalment its all reset or may as well not have happened (like so many 80s sitcoms) then it’s episodic.
Right, now that we’ve cleared that up, we can continue with the news.
Hitman: The Complete First Season has today been confirmed by Square Enix and developer Io-Interactive, with a boxed, physical release making its way to all supported platforms on January 31, 2017, for a recommended retail price of $59.99 US.
Hitman: The Complete First Season will contain all of the episodes, contracts and locales, totalling up to around 100 hours of gameplay, plus the following extras:
- 3 Bonus Missions Pack which includes The Icon and A House Built on Sand missions, plus the brand new upcoming Landslide mission.
- Official Soundtrack featuring the original game score.
- The ‘making of’ HITMAN documentary charting the journey from showing the game to our fans for the first time before E3 2015, through to the digital launch in 2016.
- HITMAN Requiem Blood Money Pack* which includes the signature Blood Money white suit, white rubber duck and chrome ICA pistol.
- The PlayStation®4 version includes the 6 additional exclusive The Sarajevo Six contracts.
Hang on. Wind back just a second. Does the fact it’s being referred to as Hitman: The Complete First Season effectively confirm that there will be subsequent seasons of Hitman, delivered in an episodic format, in the same engine as the current game?
We reached out to Square Enix’s PR team to find out, and got the following response:
“No details yet on future seasons. For now, we are focused on the current game.” Was the polished and professional response.
Hmm. We’re clearly dealing with professionals here. That’s inconclusive, perhaps deliberately so and rather well-rehearsed, but the language – “future seasons”, “current game” – is consistent with the physical release being referred to as Hitman: The Complete First Season.
We pressed on, and were pointed to this tweet from the official Hitman Twitter account by the kind PR folks over at Square Enix:
@bergf89 Of course, our plan is to have three seasons. Although Season Two hasn’t been confirmed yet.
— HITMAN (@Hitman) August 6, 2016
