Hitman 2 still has a lot of new content on the way. The 2018 sequel was one of the best releases of the year, but now developer IO Interactive is adding even more to its world of assassination. Tomorrow, June 25, the studio is launching New York, a fresh destination that takes Agent 47 — the titular assassin — to a Wall Street bank. This introduces an entirely new campaign mission called Golden Handshake as well as a number of new unlocks and challenges.
To get The Bank and Golden Handshake, you’ll need to own the Hitman 2 Expansion Pass. You can get that for $40 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, or PC. That covers the cost of both Expansion Pack 1 and Expansion Pack 2.
In Golden Handshake, Agent 47 must track down and eliminate Athena Savalas, the director of Wall Street bank Milton-Fitzpatrick. Savalas is a cutthroat capitalist who has deliberately alienated people in her personal life to dominate the business world.
As with most targets in Hitman, Savalas is also the worst. She’s willing to do anything to succeed. That includes exploiting loop holes, working with organized crime, and helping the rich evade taxes.
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But in addition to taking out Savalas, Agent 47 must also steal some sensitive data. That may lead you into Milton-Fitzpatrick’s secure vault.
Building on Hitman 2’s themes
Hitman 2 is an excellent game that built on the foundation of its 2016 predecessor. But one of the key ways that it stuck out was through its story and characterization. Hitman 2 is about ultra-wealthy robber barons. That culminates in the final level of the base game where the 1% of the 1% try coldly calculate whether they should do something about the global climate change that they are fully aware they are causing.
IO Interactive seems like it’s continuing some of those themes in New York.
“Over the years, Savalas has also developed a refined disdain for the middle class, reducing customers to numbers on sheets of paper with no thought to the things she destroys with her constant “less is more” approach to small and medium-sized businesses,” reads IO Interactive’s website. “Rumors of wanton gambling with client money and the bank’s finances are beginning to catch up to her and with the board of directors looking for a new CEO of Milton-Fitzpatrick, Savalas is eagerly covering her tracks, using any means necessary.”
We’re barely 10 years out from the Great Recession, and a callous banker who gets ahead at the expense of regular folk is still fertile ground for a villain. Sure, Savalas can evade justice for knowingly selling toxic mortgaged-backed securities. She can even blame poor people for her crimes. But there’s no escaping Agent 47.
