One of the games introduced this past week during Sony’s E3 press conference was Hitman, the self-titled return of Square Enix’s popular series focusing on anti-hero Agent 47. In the game, he once again returns to take out a series of new targets, putting his assassination skills to the test every step of the way.

A new Hitman game shouldn’t be a surprise, considering both the popularity of the series and the face that the movie Hitman: Agent 47 will be releasing on August 21. However, what should be a surprise is what format the new game will take when it arrives for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on December 8th.

Speaking with Videogamer.com, Square Enix had indicated that the game will be released as scheduled, but not “complete,” as the company intends to add new content regularly, well through 2016. However, it will do so with “no DLC or microtransactions,” as all the content will be free of charge. That makes sense, considering that the game will release at a full retail price of $60.

There may be some concerns about this, but IO Interactive studio head Hannes Seifert offered an explanation. “It is fully complete at launch but it is not finished,” he said. “What we do is we start the journey on December 8 and what we put out there is going to be a big game. But over the course of 2016 we’ll add more locations, more missions and we’ll have things like targets that only appear for, say, two days. That’s something you can only do in the live world.”

Releasing a game in an “unfinished” state sounds like something fresh out of Valve’s Early Access program, or the new indie label that Microsoft will introduce for its Xbox One console later this year, where users can try out unfinished games before buying them early. However, Seifert was quick to say, “We’re not an Early Access game because Early access games are unfinished by definition – you’re part of the development.

“Everything we ship on December 8 will be completely finished, it will be a very polished experience. It’s also going to be a very big game. There are other products that sell a game for $60 and then try to sell you a Season Pass for another $40 on top, so you spend $100 or $120 for all the stuff that happens later on. We said no, we don’t want to do that,” he continued.

“We think it’s wrong to approach players like that because players want to be part of that experience but they don’t necessarily want to be ripped off. What we’re going to see is all of that but it’s for a one-price package.”

However, there is one question regarding how much content players will get on day one. “We haven’t really decided yet what will come out at what point in time but I can promise you that it will be a very big release on day one,” Seifert continued. “There will be hours and hours of gameplay. You will travel the world to different locations. We start with Fashionable Paris that you’ve seen and you’ll go to the bustling market of Marrakesh and the Italian coastline and way beyond that. What we can tell people is that we will have content coming every week. There will be an event every week and people can actually engage right away.”

Seifert reassured that this will be a full Hitman experience, though. “This is a full-fledged Hitman,” Seifert promises. “Actually it’s a bigger Hitman game than ever before, it will be more than Absolution. Our biggest levels are way bigger than anything we had in Blood Money. The AI entities, we have about 300 of them when we used to have 40 or 50 in the previous games. So it’s a very big game [that] we will keep updating. It’s $60, no dollar more, no DLC or microtransactions or stuff like that. You will buy it and you will have entertainment for a few months on top.”

We’ll see how this strategy plays out when the game arrives later this year. The trailer for the game is below.