E3 2015: IO Interactive announce Hitman, marks the "start of a new journey" for Agent 47, 'launches' December 8th [UPDATE]

UPDATE: First gameplay footage shown in new trailer.

Ahead of the Square Enix E3 Conference, developer IO Interactive has spilled the beans on the new Hitman game, like the fact it’s just called ‘Hitman’. It’s not a reboot, but it is the ”foundation for future” instalments.

We’re controlling a younger Agent 47. IO want a ”pure assassin fantasy” and felt the simplicity of just calling it Hitman fit. We’ll take out targets in ”more detailed, more populated and much larger” areas.

No more checkpoints system, says the team, and they’ll be going into detail about the Contracts mode later in the year. Saves are now back and can be made anywhere in a level, and they’ve ”revamped pretty much every system in our Glacier engine” to support the new Hitman.

Interestingly they have taken a somehwat episodic approach as they’ll be releasing more locations and missions ”over time at regular intervals through 2016,” and there’ll be one-off live events in between these major content updates.

”Imagine a target appearing for every player in the world, for a limited time only… let’s say 48 hours. Where your one shot counts. And when that target is gone, it is gone forever. A shared experience where we imagine the HITMAN community will come together every time a new mission or new location appears.”

The full game is priced at $60, so it’s not free-to-play, but will also not come complete at launch.

We’ll find out more at the Square Enix E3 Conference in a few hours. Hitman releases on PC and console December 8th, or at least ‘the beginning’ of the new game arrives.

[center]<iframe width="640" height="360" data-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kA_Mx3-ZMGE?rel=0&showinfo=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/center]