Hitman‘s first episode launched earlier this month, and we are already due for the second one soon. The episodic model seems to have worked out largely well, even though there was a lot of apprehension about how it would translate to a game like Hitman pre-release.
Speaking to EDGE, IO Interactive’s Christian Elverdam said that the team was aware of this worry and skepticism going into the game’s launch.
“We were expecting people to be skeptical up front,” Elverdam said. “There’s this old quote: ‘Everyone loves progress, but no one really likes change’. We can’t really persuade anything that this is a good idea, I think. We’ll have to let the game speak for itself.
“I recently toured around with the preview code for [Episode Two] Sapienza, and the feedback was really good. When I look at forums and general chatter about it, I see much less worry about it after [Episode One] Paris came out than before. Before, people were really talking about how much content there would be, and I think if you really dig Hitman and you turn off the hints you don’t need, there are a lot of hours in Paris, and I think it starts to click with people why it’s a good idea that the next episode then comes out and there’s a new, fresh level instead of just barrelling through.”
On the whole, the success of the first episode, and IO Interactive generally being on the ball with keeping the game constantly updated, has led to far less skepticism about the game now than before. Hopefully, IO don’t drop the ball, and continue to work on delivering a truly live, episodic game like they want to.