Amid news on 007 First Light and MindsEye, IO Interactive also had a lot to say about Hitman: World of Assassination during the first-ever IO Interactive Showcase. But the one that caught my eye most of all is a Hitman co-op mode. IO told me in an interview after the show how its existence is a sign of how the Hitman team is still exploring new ways to expand the game.
“Even the early prototypes [of co-op mode] that we showed a little bit of [on stage], it’s just a different experience to play with a friend in that world,” Christian Elverdam, CCO of IO Interactive told me. “And I’m sure, if you know the game, you could imagine a gazillion ways [to play differently]. Like, ‘You could do this, I could do that!'”
Elverdam told me the game’s ambitions have led to the team being on a perpetual “journey of discovery,” the same journey that spawned the roguelite Freelancer mode two years ago. I asked him how long the team plans to support the game, and he didn’t have a timeline. “We’re not done figuring out what this thing is. Because [Freelancer was made by] a fairly small team that went like, ‘We have this killer idea about what we could do with all of this body of work. What if we did this?’ I think co-op will do some of the same things. And so we’re super curious about that. I feel we have super fertile ground to keep innovating.”
Although Elverdam admitted that the co-op mode is far from finished and still taking shape, he made it clear that it’ll be a mode within Hitman: World of Assassination, the all-in-one Hitman hub that houses everything the series has released since 2016. “It’s still early days, but it’s clearly inside the World of Assassination. Stone and Knight already exist as characters. So we just felt it was fun to do a little bit of a different take, and we’re still exploring that. So, I mean, we honestly will come back when we know a little bit more. It’s not particularly clear. It’s a different dynamic. When you have two players, and it’s not going to be Diana and Agent 47, it’s something different, and it’s super interesting.”
The co-op mode is far off, but you can experience Hitman continuing to build on itself as early as today and continuing later this year. Two more celebrity Elusive Targets have been teased for later, while the first of this new trio is out now and free for all players. In it, Mads Mikkelsen reprises his role as Casino Royale’s Le Chiffre.
