Hitman 3 already looks like the definitive Hitman title. It’s got everything the franchise is known for — beautiful locations, targets to assassinate, and funky weapons. But what really elevates Hitman 3 above the rest is its inclusion of content from past games in the franchise. Owners of Hitman 1 and 2 will find all those levels with heaps of visual improvements in Hitman 3.
The changes coming to the levels of Hitman 1 and 2 have been detailed by an IO Interactive developer on Resetera. With users in a thread speculating how reflections in a recently released trailer for the game worked, the developer chimed in. Those fancy reflections are actually the result of Hitman 3‘s upgraded engine. Specifically, Hitman 3 has screenspace reflections, which improve over the past games’ way of rendering reflections. However, the best part according to the developer is that “it’s backwards compatible with the previous two games in the trilogy.”
Hitman 3 hasn’t shied away from showing off its numerous visual improvements. A trailer from this past November revealed a new location and multiple lighting changes. Set in the neon-lit city of Chongqing, it’s hard to not admire the work IO Interactive has done.
More Hitman, less drive space
I know there are some folks out there that get nervous about fitting all the content of 3 Hitman games on their rig. But don’t worry, IO Interactive has figured out that problem already. In the same Resetera thread, it was confirmed that the game will only take up 100 GB of space. IO Interactive apparently pulled this off by messing around with data management and file structures. Those changes, along with newer, better compression software for textures, apparently shaved gigabytes off.
Levels from Hitman 1 and 2 won’t just come with the game though. Hitman 3 owners will have to own the previous titles to access improved versions of past levels.
Hitman 3 is set to release on January 20 via the Epic Games Store.
