IO Interactive's final flourish with its Hitman trilogy was to bring it all under one roof, with Hitman 3 morphing into Hitman: World of Assassination and adding a roguelike mode alongside everything from the first two games. Or it felt like the final flourish anyway, with the game being maintained and patched since but no new additions (and even IO itself saying Hitman "is a little bit on hiatus").
The studio has now announced a new elusive target is coming to the game this fall, free for all players, as part of IO's 25th anniversary celebrations. The target will be superstar DJ Dimitri Vegas, who's lending his likeness and voiceover to a character called The Drop loosely based on himself: the Hitman Vegas will be a DJ-turned-druglord who's "bent on controlling the scene one way or another".
Amusingly enough, the announcement was made during a set by Vegas and Like Mike at Tomorrowland 2023, a big EDM festival. One can only imagine how excited the revellers were at the announcement of DLC for an immersive sim interrupting a set.
"I’m extremely excited to be a part of the Hitman universe," said Vegas. "It’s always exciting to be involved in creative projects and I’m looking forward to seeing how everyone reacts to my character when the mission launches later this year."
"This will be the first Elusive Target mission that we’ve created in two years," said Hakan Abrak, CEO of IO Interactive, "and we’re very happy that our passionate community and newcomers to the game will be able to enjoy it for free later this year as part of IO Interactive’s 25-year anniversary celebrations."
Elusive targets are characters that turn up in the game for a limited time, with the secret sauce being that players get one shot at taking them out: fail and the chance is gone, in some cases forever (a few elusive targets have returned down the line, but not all). They also appear in the Elusive Target Arcade mode, where players have to kill them one-by-one but failure means a complete reset of progress.
There's no specific date on when The Drop will arrive in Hitman: World of Assassination but, given the company was founded on 16 September, 1998, in Copenhagen, that's where the smart money may go. If I was a betting man I also wonder if this is when we may hear a little something more on IO's James Bond game, which was first announced almost three years ago.
