![]() ![]() "Just to showcase that." Elverdam says: "We just celebrated Freelancer launching, and one of the producers who was a big part of that launch dug out of the old archives a video we made back in 2013, which is called Hitman: The World of Assassination." | Image credit: IO Interactive / Hitman Absolution Maybe it's because the character is supposed to be anyone and everyone. It's actually quite hard to find specific art for him today. He's much more blank-slate and neutral now. "When we say it now, it feels like, 'Ah, yeah, that's almost self-evident,'" he says - "'that would be a good place for Hitman to go.' But back then, a lot of scepticism and self-doubt and external doubt."īut the big idea was one grand, unifying vision of Hitman as one ever-expanding platform - a World of Asssassination. Humour, or satire, was another crucial ingredient he wanted to add in. You get this feeling of being the best of the best, and you get to travel the world, which to me is like an aspirational fantasy." "So from being down and out and vengeful, you're more this high profile assassin. Elverdam had long wanted "to change the feel of the Hitman universe into something more aspirational and more humoristic", he says. What were the ideas they had for Hitman's future? One of them was a change of tone. Abrak is now the CEO, incidentally, and the other co-owner of IO. The year was 2013, Elverdam was promoted to studio creative director to lead the new charge, and Hakan Abrak, production director at the time, would help him. So, IO cancelled everything that wasn't Hitman, including Kane & Lynch, and set about mapping out Hitman's future. Nevertheless, he and IO realised something significant had to change. Though, for what it's worth, Christian Elverdam still believes Absolution "is fundamentally a really good stealth-action game", and says a lot of what the studio learned building that game can be seen in World of Assassination today. That's the backdrop to what was riding on Absolution's release, and why its apparent miss stung so much. The upshot: lay-offs - significant, emotionally draining, lay-offs. To top it all off, Microsoft cancelled an unknown game IO had been working on for it. And during those years, IO's original founders began to peel away, taking other IO staff with them. It was acquired by Eidos in 2004, before Eidos was acquired by Square Enix in 2009, and both acquisitions brought changes in leadership and direction, and an amount of restructuring. IO was having a hard time behind the scenes because of it. Both tanked commercially, and the family-friendly and very average action game Mini Ninjas, that IO put out in between, did nothing to help the studio's fortunes. The follow-up in 2011, Kane & Lynch: Dog Days, was much worse. The first Kane & Lynch game, Dead Men, was okay, but the campaign was short and it ended up feeling, as reviewer Kristan Reed said at the time, like "a very big missed opportunity". These years were dominated by Kane & Lynch, the studio's loud new IP that was all guns-blazing ultra-violence and no subtlety. The wilderness years that followed Hitman: Blood Money had really shaken IO's fans. I'm always inspired by the passion for games that pulls people through.Įlverdam gets it. Besides World of Assassination and Bond, there are some lovely discussions about their first impressions of Hitman, and their roundabout routes into the industry. Manage cookie settings The full interview with IO co-owners Christian Elverdam and Hakan Abrak. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. ![]() "Many Hitman fans said, 'Well, that's not a Hitman game.'" Or worse: "We had a fanbase who were like, 'Can you even do Hitman any more?'" He's the chief creative officer and co-owner of IO Interactive. "That game was not well received within our audience," Christian Elverdam tells me. "Absolution isn't its finest hour," Tom Bramwell wrote in our Hitman Absolution review. But it wasn't the return to form people hope for, and memories of Hitman Blood Money from 2006, a series high point, loomed large and distant. Remember, this was the first Hitman game in several years and expectations were high. The story begins with the release of, and feedback to, Hitman Absolution in 2012. But all the time the vision was there, a vision of what Hitman could be, and World of Assasination is it. It survived a management buyout during which the entire future of Hitman was in doubt. World of Assassination is the culmination of a plan that was 10 years in the making - a plan that survived enormous upheaval at the company. But on the inside, at IO Interactive, much more was going on. On the outside it looked like a simple thing: Hitman 3 would now be known by this name and include levels from Hitman 2 and 3 - the trilogy would all be in one place. When Hitman 3 recently changed its name to Hitman World of Assassination, I had no idea how meaningful the moment was. ![]()
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