Following a management buyout, IO retained the rights to the series and partnered with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to produce a sequel titled Hitman 2, which was released in November 2018.

He can use his specially equipped garrote wire to strangle his victims[8] or disguise his killings as accidental deaths, such as poisoning the target's food[4] or drowning them in a toilet.

Players can eavesdrop on conversations from non-playable characters (NPCs) to obtain clues about the location and routine of targets, and uncover opportunities for creative infiltration and elimination.

[19] IO Interactive introduced a "live component" to Hitman; new content, which was regularly delivered in downloadable form, includes time-limited missions called "Elusive Targets".

Using the files to identify Providence's secret operations, the Client sends an anonymous warning to MI6 of an impending IAGO auction of a stolen non-official cover (NOC) list that will take place at a Paris fashion show by Novikov's label, Sanguine.

As a result, MI6 hires 47 to prevent the sale; he assassinates Novikov and his business partner, IAGO's true leader, Dalia Margolis, at the fashion show.

The company hires 47 to eliminate General Reza Zaydan, the mastermind of the coup, and fugitive bank CEO Claus Hugo Strandberg—both of whom are undercover Providence operatives—in Marrakesh.

Deploying forces from a private militia under his control, the Client kidnaps Thomas Cross from Jordan's funeral and kills him, then steals billions of dollars from his offshore bank accounts.

Seeking to eliminate the Client for his manipulation, the agency orders a premature operation due to the intervention of Soders, a member of ICA's executive board.

In this alternative storyline, 47 receives contracts to assassinate the six former members of Sigma, a deniable operations paramilitary unit of the private military contractor Cicada, who committed war crimes during the siege of Sarajevo but evaded prosecution by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

A doomsday cult, "Liberation", that masquerades as a self-help group is using an upcoming exhibition at a luxury resort in Bangkok to provide cover for a bio-weapon attack.

As 47 makes his escape, Diana notices a series of digital messages being transmitted from the resort's network, which are revealed to be signals meant to activate the cult's sleeper agents worldwide as a contingency once Nabazov's death is confirmed.

The ICA identifies two sleeper agents, Brother Akram and celebrity author Craig Black, who are meeting at a private event in Sapienza to exchange a weapon identical to the one in Bangkok, which 47 retrieves after eliminating the targets.

ICA intel then confirms the origin of another signal, which leads to a mercenary camp in Colorado where Dr. Bradley Paine, a CDC specialist and secret cult member, has already begun infecting personnel.

Diana's analysts intercept a memo, indicating Japanese authorities have recently detained a man on a flight to Australia who showed signs of infection, and have ordered him to be quarantined at a hospital in Hokkaido.

[27] Absolution was controversial for removing many of the franchise's traditional gameplay elements and being linear rather than the large, open sandbox levels of the older games, despite being more accessible.

[1] The major story beats and the destinations were decided by a small group of development leads, after which a team would be responsible for each level's design, rules, targets, and other details to create a self-contained game world.

[29] The first concept was named "Swiss cheese"; according to the team, the term means players would be presented with an ample options, and there were multiple ways to move in and out of a level.

Elverdem described this level as the "pinnacle" of the Swiss cheese design because the map has a lot of verticality and the pathways are interconnected, ensuring players will not find a dead end.

Despite this complication, the team believed these subplots allow players to discover creative ways that change the AI loop in a meaningful and organic manner.

The first half of Season 1 has very little story content because the team wanted to ensure players can relate themselves to Agent 47, a merciless assassin who travels around the world to kill targets assigned to him.

[44] Elusive Targets were designed to be memorable; they do not always have connections to the main story, which gave the team more freedom to create characters that fit the setting and theme of each map.

This mode's longevity encouraged IO Interactive to re-evaluate the release model of Hitman, which they envisioned as a "digital platform" that is similar to a Netflix series.

[27] Originally, the game was to be released in an "intro pack" that would include all of the base content and locations, six-story missions, three sandboxes, forty "signature kills", a contracts mode with 800 targets, and access to regular events held by the developer.

New content would be released monthly; this would include the remaining two cities of the main game (Sapienza and Marrakesh) in April and May 2016 respectively, which would be followed by the previously planned Thailand, US, and Japan expansions in late 2016.

[66] In addition to the ICA Facility level, which serves as the prologue and a tutorial to the game, Hitman features six locations, including Paris, France; the fictional town of Sapienza, Italy; Marrakesh, Morocco; Bangkok, Thailand; Colorado, United States; and Hokkaido, Japan.

[114] Critics generally agreed Paris was a promising start to the series, though Sapienza was often named as the game's high point due to the map's complex layout, location variety, and creative assassinations.

Marrakesh and Hokkaido were released to a generally positive reception but Bangkok and Colorado were considered to be weaker levels because the assassinations are less creative and the art style is less striking.

[29] Hitman: The Complete First Season was the fourth-best-selling video game at retail in the UK during its week of release, behind Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017), Grand Theft Auto V (2013), and FIFA 17 (2016).

[131] IO Interactive partnered with Dynamite Entertainment to create Agent 47: Birth of the Hitman, a six-issue comic book miniseries that ran from November 2017 to June 2018, and was later released as a graphic novel in 2019.