"It feels very, very familiar - even more than the leap from 2016's Hitman to 2018's Hitman 2," Machkovech said. Indeed, Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech offered one of a small handful of middling reviews on the basis that Hitman 3 feels more like an expansion pack than a full sequel - or, perhaps, the third season of episodes that were not originally intended to launch as standalone games. Like the second, it eschews the episodic, TV-season structure from 2016 for a more familiar package, but the critical reaction indicates that IO is following the same plan it laid out back then. Hitman 3, which launches today, is the third game in that trilogy. "It feels very, very familiar - even more than the leap from 2016's Hitman to 2018's Hitman 2" Ars Technica Interactive for Hitman 2, which released the new missions in a more conventional boxed package. Back in 2016, the plan was to have multiple seasons in this bold structure, but IO split from Square Enix in 2017 and switched to Warner Bros. The structure, on the other hand, was quietly brilliant a "season" of content in which the game's famous puzzle-box missions were episodes, with live-service elements keeping players engaged in-between. The plain-spoken title, Hitman, reflected a clear desire to return to the series' core identity after the uneven, story-driven approach of Absolution. The next entry in the series allowed those fans to breathe a huge sigh of relief. While fans of the series were delighted to hear that Agent 47 hadn't completed his last contract, these appeared to be troubling times for the Danish studio - on the ropes, with no choice but to cling to the very franchise that had just publicly faltered. A few months later, IO announced it would be cutting half of its workforce and cancelling several projects, with a pledge to focus entirely on Hitman going forward. Indeed, with Hitman: Absolution in 2012, it fell a good way short of publisher Square Enix's commercial expectations. IO Interactive managed to inspire a Hollywood movie, but it seldom exceeded its sales targets with any given release. Starting in 2000 with Hitman: Codename 47, the series has always been admired by critics and game designers, but 20 years and seven different games never brought the breakout hit that often seemed to be just around the corner. If we're being brutally honest, the Hitman franchise has never quite lived up to its commercial potential.
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