For years now, rumors have swirled that Hitman creator 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:IO Interactive was quietly working on a fantasy RPG. The Copenhagen-based developer finally confirmed that rumor yesterday with for Project Fantasy, a "bold new online fantasy RPG." This will be fundamentally different from Hitman, the series IO has spent🥀 the bulk of the last 23 years working on. But, in many ways, Hitman has pꦅrepared IO to make exactly this game.
IO has dabbled outside the Hitman series over the years. It made the third-person shooter Freedom Fighters in 2003, the grimy Kane & Lynch games in 2007 and 2010, and the cartoony action title Mini Ninjas in 2009. Its future will also involve trading in one secret agent for another as it preps its upcoming 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:James Bond game, Project 007. Still, an online fantasy RPG will be the studio's biggest departure from Hitman yet.
But what makes Hitman work so well isn’t necessarily at odds with what makes for a great RPG. Western role-playing games are defined by their approach to character choice. In some, like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fallout: New Vegas or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Outer Worlds, you build your character from the ground up. In others, like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Witcher 3 and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Horizon Zero Dawn, you are a specific person with a largely predetermined personality. And some, like the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Mass Effect trilogy, fall somewhere in the middle, giving you freedom to shape a character who still ultimately has to fulfill certain expectations. Whether they allow for total freedom to determine your character's look, backstory, and personality or for a smaller degree of defining choices, the Western school of RPG design is generally geared toward letting you adopt a role that you make your own through decisions, big and small.
By that metric, Hitman is already a great role-playing game. Agent 47 doesn't have dialogue choices, but the player is constantly deciding how they will approach a mission. While other games have set solutions that must be accomplished in a linear fashion, Hitman levels ask you to choose certain opportunities and reject others. In picking your route to an assassination, you decide if 47 is a calculated killer, a sloppy amateur, or a bit of both. You select how 47 will present himself to the people he encounters in a level. Will he disguise himself as a chef and prepare poisoned food for a target? Or sneak into a bathroom and choke out a waiter to steal their uniform? Maybe he’ll stick to his suit, tie, and the secrecy of the shadows.
Those are role-playing choices, and IO's proven ability to design levels that can accommodate dozens of different approaches gives me confidence that it has the goods to deliver an RPG with tons of room for player choice. The use of the word "online" in the announcement leaves me with questions, though. Will it be online in the way that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:World of Warcraft is online, an MMO where the world you inhabit is shared by tons of other players? Will it be online the way that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Borderlands is online, with a cooperative cam🍎paign you can tackle with a party of friends? The description given in the job listing — "This idea – that a diverse group of individuals with different skills and strengths can work together and become more than the sum of their parts – is what inspires us."🔴; — makes it seem unlikely that it will be online in the way that Hitman is. In the World of Assassination the requirement for an online connection is a basically unnecessary feature for a game that you exclusively play by yourself.
That said, IO's experience with Hitman gives me confidence that the team has the experience it needs to deliver a stable live-service game, whatever that looks like. Fantasy will be a departure from what they've done before, but so has each Hitman level. Sapienza's idyllic seaside town was a departure from Paris' crowded party; the suburbs of Whittleton Creek was a departure from the hustle and bustle of a Miami racetrack. If any team has proven it can tackle new genres, it’s IO. Though the studio has worked with the same character for decades, it has constantly immersed him in brand new worlds.