It’ll round off the “ultimate globe-trotting experience.”

IO Interactive has – sort of – confirmed that Hitman 3 is in development. The kind-of-confirmation came at the tail-end of Noclip’s documentary of the rise and fall of Hitman. The first part of the four-part documentary also refers to a wholly new game that the studio is working on, though lips were very tight on anything concerning the new project.

The first episode of The Fall & Rise of Hitman focuses on, as you’d expect, the split between IO Interactive and Square Enix last year, where IO’s CEO Hakan Abrak spoke about layoffs, the strain that budget-cuts put on Hitman 2, and the issues the studio had in drawing in new players for the game. In the closing moments of the first part though, Abrak mentions that the studio’s plan is to see the “World of Assassination” motif that recent titles have will culminate in a compilation that – as Abrak says – will be “one game, with all the locations starting with Paris from Hitman 1 to the last location in Hitman 3.”

Noclip apparently pressed the issue of Hitman 3 further with Abrak off-camera and explained that the third instalment could very well return to the episodic format of Hitman 2016. The general reception of Hitman 2 was very positive – and I was over the moon with it in my review – though the move back to a complete selection of levels to play from the go, meant that a lot of the replay value that players found in Hitman 2016 wasn’t as effective. Hopefully, if IO does opt for a return to episodic levels, it’ll deliver the same surprisingly positive results that the 2016 reboot had.

IO also released the August roadmap for Hitman 2 today, with a selection of new escalation contracts arriving alongside a couple of legacy Elusive Targets, a new challenge pack and batch of featured contracts, plus a handful of new weapons for expansion pass players. It’s not the most exciting of roadmaps for Hitman 2, but hopefully knowing that a third title is on the way will help you forgive the meagre August in Hitman 2.