![]() On November 19, 2000, less than two years after the Scavenger crash, Hitman: Codename 47 hit store shelves. Jesper Kyd, who'd stayed behind to open a studio in Manhattan, gladly came in to compose a sharp techno soundtrack matching the game's new, sophisticated vibe. With his encouragement, Io deviated from their original idea of a John Woo-style bullet ballet to craft an intelligent shooter where infiltration, patience, and planning were key. Game publisher Eidos, still riding high from the success of its Tomb Raider franchise, picked up the project and assigned producer Jonas Eneroth, fresh off the highly popular stealth-shooter Thief: The Dark Project. That idea took hold, and the entire game changed. Even cooler, he'd do it by stealing a guard's clothes and simply walking out the front door. During the design phase, the Io team decided it would be cool to open the game with 47's escape from the laboratory that created him. Before long, Jorgenson scraped his previous designs and modeled Agent 47's features on Bateson as well. His crisp, mid-Atlantic tone instantly locked into the character. South African actor David Bateson heard about the project through some friends at a Copenhagen sound studio, and that it needed voice talent. As it turned out, the perfect look walked in the door looking for a job. ![]() Everyone loved that, but everything else felt off, and Jorgensen experimented wildly to find the perfect look. For fun, Jesper Jorgensen added a barcode (ending in the number 47) to the back of the character’s neck to denote the clone's status as a lab rat. A newly invented 47th human chromosome would give him advanced strength, intelligence, endurance, and a name. Soon, the team latched onto the idea of making him an augmented clone designed specifically to be the ultimate assassin.and able to defy his creator's intentions. “Basically a guy in a suit blasting away in a Chinese restaurant.” Design centered around a gritty, burned-out mercenary with thinning hair, a surly disposition, and a pin-striped suit. “We decided to do a quick game inspired by Hong Kong action movies like The Killer and Hard Boiled,” recalls Andersen, who stepped into the Game Director role. ![]() ![]() Nordisk’s parent company felt Rex was a little too ambitious. Game publishers were fairly scarce in Denmark, but Nordisk, a film studio, took an interest in Rex’s demo. They formed Reto-Moto and almost immediately created a second company, Io Interactive, as part of a joint-venture deal with Nordisk Film. Now they decided to partner again to shop an ambitious project two years in the making: Rex Dominus, an open-world, high-fantasy, online-multiplayer game. Jacob Andersen worked as a design lead at Lemon, another development team orphaned by Scavenger’s sudden demise, and he'd collaborated with Zyrinx on Scorcher. Fortunately, they didn't go empty-handed.or alone. Without a publisher or resources of their own, most of the Zyrinx guys headed home to Denmark. A dispute with publishing partner GT Interactive forced Scavenger to declare bankruptcy in 1998 and close up shop. Two more followed (Red Zone in 1994 and racing game Scorcher in 1996) before the money vanished. Scavenger relocated Zyrinx - programmers David Guldbrandsen, Karsten Hvidberg, and Jens Bo Albretsen, graphic designers Michael Balle and Jesper Jørgensen, and musician Jesper Kyd - to their Boston offices even before they completed their first game, a punishing physics-based shooter called Sub-Terrania for the Sega Mega Drive.
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