Hitman 3 is coming out soon! Like real soon. Some preview footage has been making the circuit but I thought Giant Bomb is probably interested in a professional impression of the game from a true video games-man. Known YouTuber and Twitch streamer Dan Ryckert has put up a 15 min cut of playing the first mission of the game and it seems as good as ever. Maybe it's a bit early to make any judgement calls but it doesn't seem significantly different from the previous two games? I know there has been a big deal made about being able to unlock shortcuts in the levels to expedite the murder which is a great new feature, but other than that it seems like more Hitman. The level shown does seem massive and I think hotel-like areas have historically been the best missions in Hitman games.

Anyway here is the video if anyone cares to watch. Gotta say, some pretty good editing on Dans side.

At first I was a bit disappointed when hearing about this game as there isnt as much of an improvement as 2 was with working mirrors and all that, but then I seen this and immediately got excited. More Hitman is never a bad thing, and that Dubai level looks fantastic.

Thanks for posting this here, I'm so happy Dan got to preview this game. It looks like more of the same, which is perfect as they nailed it with Hitman 2. I am so hyped for Hitman 3, I played the previous two installments to death and I can't wait to get back in there. IO deserve so much credit for revitalising this series, especially after Square Enix dropped them.

As a person who grew up loving Hitman but has only appreciated the new games through Giant Bomb videos, I’m thinking this might be my jumping (back) in point. I’m intimidated by them because I remember how meticulous and intricate the design was in the old games, and while I loved playing a level over and over perfecting a path until I got the best ranking when I was 15, as a thirty-something I have a lot less patience for that kind of thing. I just want to turn a game on and play through it, then start the next thing. But looking at the way Dan plays and how he gets enjoyment out of it, well then I suppose they aren’t too demanding of your patience.

@ape_dosmil: it’s also cool that if you own Hitman 1 and Hitman 2 all those levels and progression will carry over and be playable in Hitman 3. I own Hitman 2 and only ever played the race level because i kept doing it over and over to unlock as much as I could and then some other game released and I never got back to it. Now I can get Hitman 3 and sort of just pick up exactly where I left off in the second game.

I'm still not sure how my Steam Hitman 1 and 2 gets into EGS. Have they cleared that up at all yet? Any time I look I just find the same Reddit thread that says "info coming soon"

If you keep all of the guiding settings on, those things will literally take you through the levels step by step and you'll probably be done with the whole game within the same day you bought it.

But even with all of that off, I wouldn't say any of the levels in 1 and 2 were *that* hard to get through, assuming you aren't aiming for the Silent Assassin rank. So it's still going to be a relatively short game, if you don't care too much about replaying the same levels to get all the challenges.

As crappy as the current situation of the world is, I kinda hope some of the crew (like Brad) will be encouraged to do some solo Hitman content, because I have a fear Hitman 3 might fall off a cliff pretty fast, what with not going back to release model of Hitman 1.

Honestly, that's one of the few times where ray-tracing has actually wow-ed me. That looks absolutely gorgeous.

@glots: From what I've gathered in the video coverage, the new games do seem a lot nicer than the old games. So that is good to know.

I heard this has a dark souls like thing where you can open up shortcuts for later replays which is awesome.

@jesus_phish: The Hitman 3 site says any previously bought levels tied to your IO account will be available in your Hitman 3 game when you log in - regardless of PC launcher they were originally in. I don't know if you could play either without creating an IO account, that might be the only issues I could see arising for people in importing things over. My IO account shows all my Steam purchases so, in theory, when I first log in to my IO account on the Epic Launcher they should all be there in 3.

Hitman 2 did not have as memorable levels as Hitman 1 did, but seeing Dans footage of the Dubai level leaves a much better impression on me on the memorability front.

I have not seen any gameplay of other levels, im saving everything so i can experience it myself.

Hope there is something in there that can rival Sapienza/Paris

It's funny (?) that Dan possibly got an earlier look at this game now as an influencer than he might have as a staff member at GB.

From the layman's perspective this looks a lot like Hitman 2 but it still looks like a heck of a lot of fun.

Cautiously optimistic, I think Hitman 1 ended up being my GOTY, well over a hundred hours in, but I found 2 to be extremely underwhelming. I think tying all the progression together was actually a mistake, and the switch to full release from episodic really makes learning the levels less natural. Great gameplay though

I'm glad these have been coming out pretty reliably every 2 years or so because that's how long it takes me to think "I should play Hitman again." I honestly don't care if they change anything beyond the locations because I don't come to it for something new and exciting, I come to it because I enjoy the known quantity and I could use more now than when the first two games came out.

@youeightit: Yeah, right now it's about the only game franchise I am pretty happy to pre-order. I'm not crying out for much more than new maps, new escalations and so on housed in the same way as Hitman 2. I seem to be in the habit of re-installing the previous games every six months or so (or if I catch a GB Hitman video on GB Infinite and feel inspired) and ticking off a few more challenges that have evaded me. It might be because of the stricter lockdown that's now in place in London but I am literally watching Epic Store to see if "unavailable" becomes "install" every hour like some magic breach of release date will happen.

It's no Sapienza Trailer, which is probably still my favorite one to come from the new Hitman games, but it's still pretty slick.

I'm still a bit indecisive about which platform to buy this on. The whole 'having to buy earlier games again' thing (which they are fixing) aside, this game looks really gorgeous and it's kinda tempting to buy it on PS5 to get 4K, 60FPS and HDR (plus ray-tracing at some later point), that my PC couldn't handle. But if Hitman 2 is anything to go by, it's still going to run and look great in 1080p and playing Hitman has always felt easier with a mouse and keyboard.

@glots: Now that you mention HDR I'm tempted to get it for my Series X instead of PC, if only to have some more games to play on that system apart from the fun small stuff I play through Game Pass here and there. Now I'm gonna have to look up the chart and try to figure out if my Steam unlocks carry over to the Series X version..

I'm a little confused about how the old levels integrate into the new game. It seems like that's going to be right off the bat...does that mean that you can play the old games in the new game (i.e. is there story stuff that you'd need to go back for or would you just play the older levels in the new game?) Also they said they're selling access to the old levels even if you don't have the old games but they haven't put out the pricing for that?

I feel like the messaging on how the older stuff integrates is very confused. I've never played this new trilogy but would like to get into it from the beginning and I just don't know the best way to do that from what they've put out there, at least that I've seen.

@bigsocrates: I imagine it'll be similar to the way H2 integrated H1 campaign levels. It was just a campaign sub-section of the main Campaigns area:

When you drill down into "Hitman" you have the full list of campaign levels and cinematics as they appeared in the original to play through, sort of like each game is an episode of Hitman.