A new game is in development at the new studio Square-Enix Montreal.
Developer IO Interactive is talking about the next game in the series although Absolution just released two days ago. Hitman: Absolution’s director Tore Blystad spoke about the games' movement to a new studio. He compares it to Call of Duty: “It’s like with Treyarch and Infinity Ward,” he said. “You have an IP that has been developed. They will feed off each other, as well as some things that stand out. I think with these big franchises it takes a long time to develop just one game. If you can, work a little bit in parallel at least and help each other out.”
“We’ve been talking about these similarities to some of the big movie franchise like Aliens, where everyone’s doing it their own way. Every time someone gets their hands on a franchise they do something different. So rather than doing the same thing again you get another take on the character from a fresh perspective.”
“There’s a lot of these problems you encounter with these sort of productions, some of them are really fundamental problems, or they have a big effect on the game – like how you do a mechanic for instance. If you change a mechanic too much then the whole gameplay will be modified.”
Those changes will not affect the reputation of the franchise, because IO Interactive and Square-Enix Montreal will be in contact during the development of the new game: “Well there are talks between us and of course it has to be somewhat in sync but it’s the first time you could say Hitman has gone out of the house. Luckily it’s with someone we know. Some of the key developers came from IO and have been working on previous games so it’s not like it’s in completely new hands.”
