'Deceit 2' was created as a standalone sequel to give the developers more freedom.
Developers World Makers had considered "large a set of updates" to the original 2017 title but decided the number of changes being made to make the game "more sandbox-like" - as well as using the Unreal 5 engine - meant it was better served by treating its predecessor as "almost like an early access way".
CEO James Thompson told GameSpot: "True, the term 'early access' does get used a little bit too much.
"But I think 'Deceit 1' - though it definitely did well - wasn't quite right. You had a gun when you first started the game in 'Deceit 1'.
"It was a very action-focused experience and we wanted to make it more broad, more sandbox-like.
"We definitely consider [Deceit 2] to be repositioning a little bit towards its ideal feel as well."
Meanwhile, the decision also gave the devlopers freedom to "reframe the design" in their own minds instead of trying to 'fix' the original game.
Executive producer Jord Fox explained: "Also when we made the decision to do Deceit 2, it allowed us to reframe the design in our heads instead of thinking of how to apply these updates to Deceit 1.
"It basically gave us a clean slate to take the best parts of Deceit 1, add all the new features we wanted to do, and just generally upgrade everything into this new package that we can now present as Deceit 2."
