Remember a few weeks ago when someone botched a Robocop: Rogue City update on Steam and revealed the existence of an entirely new game called Hunter: The Reckoning? Now it's official, thanks to an actual, intentional reveal during today's Xbox Partner Preview showcase.
Hunter: The Reckoning - Deathwish, as it's known in full, takes places in the streets of New York City, where you've gone to escape the ghosts of your childhood. Alas, there's no escaping fate: You are a hunter, and baby, this is duck season and wabbit season.
From your safe house, an old bar in the heart of the city, you'll stalk your prey, uncovering clues through infiltration, hacking, threats, and other such tools of the trade. Every action has consequences, which must always be kept in mind because that prey is so much more powerful than you are. Specialty weapons will help balance the scales, as will your hunter companions, who bring their own unique abilities, fears, and failures to the hunt.
It's all pretty preliminary at this point: The reveal trailer is a cinematic, the screens are all environmental shots, and the system requirements are still "to be determined." Hunter: The Reckoning - Deathwish also isn't slated to come out until Q3 2027, well over a year away. Altogether, it makes me wonder if perhaps this reveal dropped a little earlier than planned because of the whole Robocop thing.
But at the same time, I also think "so what?" because I am absolutely interested in what's cooking here. Not that I have any great desire to play as a hunter, the Billy Buzzkills of the World of Darkness, but as I said when Hunter: The Reckoning first leaked, Teyon cranked it out of the park with both Robocop: Rogue City and its previous game, Terminator: Resistance, demonstrating a real talent for picking what works and what doesn't out of licensed properties and then adapting them to an interactive format.
The Hunter: The Reckoning - Deathwish Steam page (I really have to come up with a proper abbreviation for this thing) suggests it will have more of an RPG angle than Teyon's previous releases, but even that feels more like the studio spreading its wings than trying something entirely new. Its Terminator and Robocop games both offered meaningful non-shooter elements and a supporting cast of NPCs who didn't constantly get on my nerves, and believe me, that's not nothing.
The one potential stumbling block I see lies with publisher Nacon, which recently filed for insolvency. Hunter (Deathwish? HtR:DW? Help me out here) is far enough out that Nacon's situation will presumably be resolved long before it launches, but if things go very badly on that front, it's possible the project could end up moving to a different publisher, which I imagine would have the potential to delay things to some extent. I've reached out to Nacon about that and will update if I receive a reply.
