The next installment in the Hitman series is being developed by a new studio at Square Enix Montreal . It's a trade-off that Absolution director Tore Blystad likens to the one between Call of Duty's major studios. “It's like with Treyarch and Infinity Ward,” Blystad told OPM . “You have an IP that has been developed. They will feed off each other, as well as somethings that stand out. I think with these big franchises it takes a long time to develop just one game. If you can, work a little bit in parallel at least and help each other out”.
Blystad implies that there's a trick to allowing a new studio to bring their own flavour to a series, without mangling its signature mechanics. "We've been talking about these similarities to some of the big movie franchise like Aliens, where everyone's doing it their own way," he explained. "Every time someone gets their hands on a franchise they do something different. So rather than doing the same thing again you get another take on the character from a fresh perspective.
“There's a lot of these problems you encounter with these sort of productions, some of them are really fundamental problems, or they have a big effect on the game – like how you do a mechanic for instance. If you change a mechanic too much then the whole gameplay will be modified”.
IO are staying in touch with Square Enix Montreal to stop the series going too far astray. “There are talks between us and of course it has to be somewhat in sync but it's the first time you could say Hitman has gone out of the house,” Blystad added. “Luckily it's with someone we know. Some of the key developers came from IO and have been working on previous games so it's not like it's in completely new hands."
It could be said that Hitman has already gone astray with introduction of Absolution, which takes a step away from the big sandbox missions that made the series great. Find out how in our Hitman: Absolution review .
