After four films, John Wick ranks among the most discussed assassins in action movies, yet audiences have seen almost nothing of his career before he retired.
Consider how much of the series is built on hearsay. Former friends and former foes keep referring to the impossible jobs, the bloody feuds and the relationships that made him the Baba Yaga. The movies keep describing who he used to be but never actually show it.
Saber Interactive’s untitled John Wick game aims to fill that gap. It tells an original story set years before the Impossible Task, which means players meet John while he is still an active assassin. That is long before he becomes the grieving retiree Keanu Reeves plays at the start of the first film.
Hex was a clever experiment, but fans wanted something different
John Wick’s previous video game went in a direction nobody saw coming. John Wick Hex, which came out in 2019, recast Wick’s fighting style as a timeline-based tactical strategy game. It was an inventive, intelligent interpretation of the character and earned a 74 Metascore.
It also divided players. Because gunfights were planned out on a timeline, you rarely got to feel Wick’s action the way the films present it, close up and in the moment. That was a strange compromise for a franchise that lives and dies by its choreography.
Saber’s game abandons the strategy layer and commits fully to action. Lionsgate and franchise director Chad Stahelski are involved in its development. The game promises a hard-hitting gun-fu combat system, cinematic camerawork, driving sequences and environments designed to make you feel like you are controlling Wick inside one of his movies.
This change matters, and fans have waited a long time for it. Hex asked you to think like John Wick from a comfortable distance. The new game hands you the gun and expects you to keep pace with the fast, brutal gunplay that turned the series into a hit. To be honest, it sounds like the John Wick game most people imagined from the start.
Keep an eye on the timeline
Combat will be the game’s main selling point, but its setting is what makes it intriguing.
A brief recap of the canon: before the first film, John wanted to leave the business and build a life with his wife, Helen. Viggo Tarasov agreed to release him on one condition, which was that he complete an assignment that seemed impossible. John succeeded, and that job locked in the reputation that follows him across the entire series. Later, Helen’s death leaves him in mourning, and that grief sets everything else in motion.
Still, the movies have never truly depicted the years that turned him into the Baba Yaga. That period remains one of the story’s biggest gaps, even though four films have fleshed out the High Table, the Continental and the rules that keep that vast network of killers under control.
The Impossible Task is (probably) off the table
Placing the story years ahead of the Impossible Task gives Saber plenty of room. According to the studio, the game will expand the franchise’s lore with both familiar faces and brand-new characters. That creates space to explore John’s earlier relationships, his past missions, his connections to the Continental and the High Table, and whatever finally left him desperate to escape.
Don’t expect to play through the Impossible Task itself, though. The time jump suggests the game cares more about shaping the John Wick who would one day accept that job.
That may turn out to be its smartest choice. If it succeeds, players will finally see why a quiet life with Helen mattered so much to a man like him that he would attempt something everyone around him considered impossible.