Feeling a bit cautious about Hitman 3…

Don't get me wrong, I'm as relived as anyone that the game is coming out and that the trilogy will get a proper conclusion after the difficulties IOI has gone through, and the seemingly low sales of the previous two games.

But I'm a little bit worried that the third game might see the paint flaking off the franchise. I'm a bit surprised that its being made so quickly, Hitman 2 only came out in November of 2018, they continued releasing DLC through 2019, this game will come come out in January 2021. That means there's only been a couple of years of development on the title, assuming that they started very soon after Hitman 2 and also assuming that the DLC levels for Hitman 2 didn't eat into development for Hitman 3 (which seems doubtful to me).

I bring this up because I think that suggests they don't plan to reinvent the wheel with this title, they probably don't have the time and resources to try something really new with the franchise. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but I was kind of hoping that Hitman 3 would see the introduction of some major new game play elements and perhaps some significant polish on the AI to keep things fresh. As it stands, I'm kind of expecting the new game to be a glorified map pack, which is honestly what Hitman 2 was. I didn't really mind that in 2018 since I thought that Hitman 2 was a great distillation of the concepts of the first game, especially the way they sharpened up the level design, at the time I wanted more of the same, but after that game and the DLC I think I'm worried that the current Hitman framework could get pretty stale with another title that's basically identical to the last but with new levels.

I know I'm assuming a lot of things, but I find it pays to be cautious, I hope that they iterate on this in such a way that we see some major shakeups in the formula so that its not the same old tricks and same old expectations. There's lots of things that could be added, maybe guard dogs, or NPCs noticing blood, or NPCs being more mindful of their friends disappearing, or NPCs being able to check closets and crates in highly suspicious circumstance, or more involved blending in mechanics, myself and others have discussed to death the kinds of things that would be cool to add to the game, I hope IOI has taken on some of the ones they think could add to the experience but frankly I'm not really expecting anything major, like the tall grass in Hitman 2 was welcome but it was one of the only major changes between games and wasn't that impactful overall.

I'm sure that the game will be great and I definitely looking forward to it, but I'm just trying to temper my expectations since I've seen lots of other franchises get stuck in a rut when it feels like the sequels don't distinguish themselves enough from each other (ie, Assassin's Creed had a major problem with this).