The Hitman website announces HITMAN, a new installment in the assassination series coming to Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 on December 8th. The back to basics title reflects "the start of a new journey" that developer IO Interactive insists is not a reboot, but will offer some new twists, including elements of a connected online experience. Here's word on that: "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. For $60 you’ll get full access to all of this content – everything we release as part of this story." The plan includes eventual beta access for preorders on PC and PS4. They offer an announcement trailer and promise a gameplay video today at the Square Enix press conference. Here's word:

So what is this new game? Well first off HITMAN is still a creative stealth action game, featuring the greatest assassin out there, Agent 47. As an operative of the International Contract Agency, his job is to take out high-profile targets all over the world, supported by his long-time handler Diana Burnwood. Each location in the game is a living sandbox, a place where every NPC has a name and every room matters. We’ve focused on making sure you, the players, have complete freedom of approach over how, where and when you decide to take out your target. Creativity from players is fully expected, you have the power and intelligence of Agent 47 at your fingertips and it is your choice whether to use brute force or orchestrate a genuine masterpiece of assassination.

Locations are more detailed, more populated and much larger than ever before, full of things to experiment with and targets to kill without any checkpoint systems in there. Contracts mode, which we’ll talk more about later in the year, returns and really shines in these big sandboxes. We’ve brought back save games, so you can save your progress anywhere, and we have revamped pretty much every system in our Glacier engine to enable this HITMAN experience. We promised you these things a while back and we’re sticking to them because they are important – and because your feedback is important. In fact, it’s so important we’re taking things a step further.