This time the marketing section from the creators of HITMAN (SQUARE ENIX / IO INTERACTIVE) had a very extraordinary idea to promote the latest game episode that plays in Thailand, Bangkok. Many of you probably have seen the music video of the Brooklyn-based alternative rock band “The Class” with their song “Are We Stars”. HITMAN fans don´t have to think twice to notice that something is wrong with the band. But you have to admit – the first time watching the video you weren´t sure if it´s a real new band or not.

The band has got a Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud account and on the Bandcamp website you can download their three songs for free. Well, three guesses who wrote the songs. We are very proud to announce that we were part of this great marketing strategy and promoted the new Thailand episode. Additionally to that we wrote the in-game music for the Bangkok episode that was also used in the trailer. The video shows the first impressions of the new levels in Bangkok and integrates some slight leads what players can expect about the mission of agent 47. The fictional lead singer of the band is Jordan Cross. His name appeared several times in different episodes but only in background dialogues. This time he is the target person for our agent. The mission “Club 27” takes the players into the opulent Himmapan Hotel and Resort at Chao Phyraya River outside Bangkok.

There are two things about HITMAN that distinguishes the game from others: On the one hand HITMAN occupies an enormous game depth. For example you can checkmate the subject in many different ways. The players feel “relieved” to discover another such crazy method to accomplish the mission. On the other hand you get agent 47 in an “appetizer format”. Each mission is characterized by great challenges, escalation contracts, exclusive subjects and a lot of opportunities to achieved one´s aim. Later in 2016 the final two episodes USA and Japan will be released.

The three songs for the latest episode in Thailand (“Are We Stars” • “Shine A Light” • “Gun Show”) were written by Felix Diekhake and produced by Christian Hartung. Felix gave us some insight into their work:

“Writing the songs for HITMAN was a real pleasure – after some stops in Italy and Marrakesh (more on that later), we were asked to create the music for the virtual band “The Class”. IOI gave us an elaborate briefing on the band’s backstory and character and some input on the desired style and we set to work – the first track we pitched was a pretty grungy number with rather psychedelic lyrics alluding to the events preceding the Bangkok episode (something along the lines of “I saw your pale hand wave goodbye as the crimson king got crowned….”) which ultimately didn’t fit what IOI were looking for, so we pushed the style to something more pop/electronic driven and the lyrics to something a little less oviously vague, which, after a few rounds of feedback, became “Are we stars?”. Once that one was done and approved, the other two tracks (“Gun Show” and “Shine A Light”) practically wrote themselves. Writing the songs was both a challenge (how much of the story can we reveal in the lyrics?) and a lot of fun. To see them come to life, first in the stellar production done by Christian Hartung, then in the game and the release through a “real” band, was really, really cool and something I’m very proud of. This is actually the first time ever that music I wrote came out on vinyl – I can’t wait to get my hands on that record :)”
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Felix Diekhake