Today, IO Interactive announced it is working on a new game, unrelated to Hitman or its past titles, codenamed “Project Fantasy.” And unlike Hitman, this upcoming game will be an online fantasy RPG with a focus on teamwork and comradery, with IO further confirming that, after Project Fantasy releases, it will “expand” for “many years.”
IO Interactive is best known for its long-running Hitman series, whose games star Agent 47, a bald-headed super-assassin who will do whatever it takes—even dressing up as a duck or using an explosive golf ball—to kill his targets around the world in exotic murder sandboxes. The games are fun, and the most recent trilogy is made up of some of the best stealth games ever made. However, after Hitman 3 came out in 2021, IO Interactive let Agent 47 take a vacation and moved on to new projects. One of those is a 007 game. And, as we know now, Project Fantasy.
“We are building a new world, a new IP – an online fantasy RPG,” IOI explained in a blog post. “A world and a game built from the core to entertain players and expand for many years to come. It feels familiar, yet at the same time IOI is going on a journey unlike any we have been on before.”
IO wants to recapture the feeling of working together with others on some grand adventure. It further cites tabletop RPGs—presumably like Dungeons and Dragons—and choose-your-own-adventure-like Fighting Fantasy books as inspiration for this upcoming, still-untitled game.
“This idea – that a diverse group of individuals with different skills and strengths can work together and become more than the sum of their parts – is what inspires us,” IOI said. “It inspires the fantasy world we are building – and it inspires how we build it.”
Of course, there’s really not much else to the post, so don’t go looking for hints at a release window or any specifics as to how this online RPG will work. Instead, the post is both an announcement and a recruiting tool, something we’ve seen from other developers in recent years. With that, I don’t expect we’ll play this next IO Interactive game anytime soon. But I am excited to see the studio shake things up, and hopefully, the end result is something cool.
