Despite being a game that showed some of the qualities of an early access or episodic game at E3 2015, the new Hitman coming from Square Enix and IO is apparently not that. That is, according to an air clearing Q&A recently posted on the Hitman site.
“All of the content we release live to our players will be complete and polished”
In which the IO says that Hitman is not an early access game. “Early access can often mean something unfinished or unpolished. That’s simply not the approach we’re taking. All of the content we release live to our players will be complete and polished, whether that’s the locations and missions we release on December 8th, the live events or the locations and missions that we will release in 2016. It will always be a polished Hitman experience,” reads an excerpt from the Q&A.
Naturally, then it must be episodic, right? IO says “it’s not really a term to describe what we’re doing.” “We think the word ‘episodic’ sets up the expectation that we will sell individual content drops for individual prices but that’s not something we’re planning to do. That said, there are some episodic elements to the story in the sense that it’s delivered in chunks over time, so experiencing the story will probably feel episodic. But there is also a ton of other content including live events, which have nothing to do with the story. We’ll also be improving and changing the game constantly whilst you’re playing it. Our ambition is to have a stream of content available from December 8th until the story arc is finished.”
While the precise plans for Hitman are still somewhat unclear, IO says that to experience everything in Hitman, you’ll pay only the $60 or regional equivalent.
