Do me a favor and take a look at the Steam page for Hitman 3. Don't buy anything—just scroll down a bit and lose yourself in the endless, confusing mess of access passes, DLC, legacy packs, and deluxe editions. If your head is spinning by the time you're done, you're not alone. The game itself is one of the few remaining titans of the stealth genre, and ranks as one of the best ever made, period, by its fans (myself included), but the process of actually buying it – and knowing what you're buying – feels like trying to bargain for your soul with an evil wizard.
Not for much longer, apparently. From the outset, the first rebooted Hitman game—aptly named 'Hitman'—was envisioned as a sort of modular platform for all future Hitman content, with future sequels being released as 'seasons' of episodic levels. The overall experience, once all content was complete and implemented, was to be known as the 'World of Assassination', a concept the initial game was marketed pretty heavily around. Developer IO Interactive's deal with publisher Square Enix fell through mid-development, however, meaning that only Season 1 ever materialized. The next two were published as complete, standalone sequels named, predictably enough, Hitman 2 and Hitman 3. But now, the promise of the World of Assassination seems to finally be arriving. IO Interactive has recently announced the rebranding of Hitman 3 as Hitman: World of Assassination, bringing the three games together into one giant mega-game through which all content will be playable- just like what was promised back in 2016. It only took two changes of publisher and seven years!
