IO Interactive will be releasing HITMAN 3, the third and final part of the current and celebrated rebirth of the long-running franchise in January 2021. They will be self-publishing the game, following Warner Bros publishing HITMAN 2, and have announced that this will be an Epic Games Store exclusive. Further to this, the first of the current trilogy will also be given away for free starting next week, from the 27th of August to the 3rd of September.

　　This is a one-year exclusivity deal for the Epic Games Store, with the game also being released on Google Stadia and home consoles. What we also know is that IO Interactive and HITMAN 3 is benefitting from this deal with Epic Games. As has been shown from other titles, the benefits from this exclusivity go back into the game. This has been stated again by Hakan Abrak, CEO of IO Interactive, who has said:

　　Self-publishing HITMAN 3 is a big step for IO Interactive in achieving our highly ambitious goals as an independent studio. Furthermore, this partnership with Epic has given us the freedom to create the game exactly as we imagined, for our fans and for our community uncompromised.

　　For our long-term fans that have supported us on the World of Assassination journey, we’re happy to have mastery and location carryover from their existing progress into HITMAN 3 on Epic Games Store.

　　As well as this new announcement, IO Interactive have released a new trailer showing a new area coming to HITMAN 3. Quite similar to Dubai in climate and scenery, the next trailer takes you to Dartmoor, United Kingdom, for a mission in Thornbridge Manor.

　　Nick Price, the lead writer of HITMAN 3, has this to say regarding Thornbridge Manor:

　　HITMAN missions are very complicated affairs with plenty of moving parts and lots of characters you are able to interact with in a huge variety of ways. In Dartmoor’s murder mystery, we are dialing all of that up to 11.

　　Every member of the family is a possible suspect and it’s been quite the challenge to make sure everything doesn’t fall apart just because the player wants to play around. In fact, that sort of behaviour should be rewarded in a HITMAN game, so we have been working hard on making sure that depending on what a player discovers during their investigation, outcomes might differ. It’s going to be great fun to see how everyone tackles this particular problem next year.

　　You can see the first trailer for the game here. We also earlier covered how the game will help immerse players with PSVR.