Months before its official North American release, business is picking up in the world of Hitman: Absolution; the latest issue of the Hope News Times, a fictional publication released on a weekly basis that gives players their first glimpse into the game’s many new chapters, was highlighted by a shocking headline that indicated the death of a citizen named Gavin LeBlond. His demise seemed to be the result of a prank gone wrong, but, in the world of Hitman: Absolution, few things are ever as they seem.

Alongside the fictitious newspaper came a pair of screenshots detailing the aforementioned scene. The first shows a police officer’s discovery of the crime scene while the second of the two pictures outs a more probable cause of death for the ill-fated Gavin LeBlond. I’ll try not to spoil anything, but let’s just say that it seems as though more than just juvenile tomfoolery was afoot in the fictional town of Hope, South Dakota.

Hitman: Absolution has a tentative Q4 2012 release date for PC, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360.