In brief: With Hitman 3, IO Interactive has done a lot of work under the hood with the Glacier Engine to optimize it for better performance on a wide range of system configurations. The publisher says it is working with Intel to increase the level of detail in the game’s environment for people who happen to have a CPU with eight or more cores.
Hitman 3 developer and publisher IO Interactive is currently working to bring the game to PC (via the Epic Game Store), consoles (PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One), and cloud gaming services like Google Stadia on January 20, 2021. And you’ll be able to use it as a central hub where you can import locations from the two previous games and enjoy the same improvements in terms of rendering, animations, and AI found in Hitman 3
Thanks to the Epic Store listing, we know the game will have fair system requirements, as you’ll be able to run it on an Intel Core i5-2500K CPU (or an AMD Phenom II X4 940 CPU) paired with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 graphics card (or an AMD Radeon HD 7870), as long as you also have 8 GB of RAM and 80 GB of free storage space.
The recommended configuration includes an Intel Core i7 4790 CPU paired with either an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 or an AMD Radeon Vega 56, as well as 16 GB of RAM.
Today, IO Interactive announced it is also working with Intel on “enhancing” Hitman 3 for those of you out there who own 8+ core CPUs, which means you’ll be able to experience more densely-populated maps (up to 300 NPCs in a single location) and more complex destructible objects.
The developer is additionally working on enabling variable rate shading, a DirectX 12 feature that was introduced in 2019 to squeeze some extra performance from graphics cards, especially at higher resolutions such as 1440p and 4K. Unfortunately, ray tracing won’t be supported at launch but IOI says it is coming “later in 2021.”