Hitman 3 is taking strides to reduce the amount of storage space it takes up; the game and its two prequels combined will take up around 100 GB with all DLC included. This is a wonderful piece of good news in the modern video game environment; files are getting larger and larger, and expansion cards are getting prohibitively expensive. Call of Duty is a particularly notorious offender in this regard; the first person shooter franchise churns out some truly titanic game files, with the recent Black Ops Cold War taking up around 135 GB on next-gen consoles.
Hitman 3 doesn’t have too much in common with Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, but it has plenty of reason to take up a lot of console space. The upcoming stealth title is gearing up to bring the franchise’s iconic assassin Agent 47 to some truly remarkable and exotic locales. The first five minutes already see the titular hitman arriving at the tallest skyscraper in the world, and that’s just the first mission. Designing these elaborate set pieces, and filling them with the dynamic NPCs and interactive tools fans have come to expect from the World of Assassination trilogy, would seem to demand a lot of processing power.
But apparently the good people at IO Interactive are very good at slimming down. A post surfaced recently on a ResetEra forum which seems to be from a developer. The user, titled A Path Finder, claims that Hitman 3 has been slimmed down to the point that the full World of Assassination trilogy will take up only 100 GB. This is less than certain AAA games on the market now, including the aforementioned Call of Duty. This is a remarkable feat for such detail-heavy titles.
There’s certainly a lot for stealth fans to look forward to in Hitman 3. The developers have promised that the Chongqing location, for instance, will be the series’ most visually impressive yet. With this much content, one wonders how IO Interactive managed to slim down so much. It should be noted, though, that the forum member who posted this update only claims to be a member of the development team; they are not verified (though they acknowledged that they should be) and fans really have only their word to go off of. Still, as false claims on the internet go, the file size of an upcoming game isn’t an especially bold one to make.
Fans will find out for themselves just how big Hitman 3 really is when the game launches later this month. Hopefully, with content like the Bhurj Khalifa and the Chongqing setting, as well as the stunning addition of VR compatibility, Hitman 3 will be worth the wait, no matter how much space it takes up.
