Hitman 3 is on track to receive ray tracing support following its official debut in 2021.
IO Interactive confirmed as such on its official website, announcing a partnership with Intel to “provide the best possible performance and optimization for our PC players in Hitman 3.”
The developers are working to continue to optimize the game for launch and far after that. They have a veritable laundry list of tweaks they’re working on to do just that, as lined out in the blog post.
“These optimizations include enhancing HITMAN 3 for PC players with 8+ core CPUs, for example you’ll be able to spot more crowds in Dubai or experience more complex destructibility in Dartmoor. We’re also introducing Variable Rate Shading (VRS), a technique that allows us to prioritize GPU resources where they have the biggest impact. On top of that, we will also implement Ray Tracing after the launch of the game, later in 2021.”
IO Interactive is also celebrating Hitman’s 20th anniversary right now, as the franchise launched back in 2000. Codename 47, the first game in the series, was a marvel for its time in terms of both content and concept. IO notes how important the game was to its roots and how it has developed its own technology over the years as well as its Glacier engine since then.
Hitman 3 is headed to next-gen consoles in early 2021, and will serve as the conclusion of the “World of Assassination” trilogy, which first began in 2016. It will follow Agent 47 once more throughout a variety of different missions and assassination attempts that take him all over the world. From what we’ve seen so far, it’s taken a bit of a grittier tone than before, but you can rest assured it will likely feature that same, good old Hitman attitude we’re used to.