Hitman fans were confused Wednesday when pre-order cancellations started popping up, and now publisher Square Enix has an explanation: The game is switching to an episodic format.

The game's Mar. 11 release date is still in place, but now what's coming that day is just a prologue mission plus the first full assassination, set in Paris. Missions in Italy and Morocco will follow in April and May, respectively, followed by Thailand, United States and Japan settings later in the year.

Hitman (that's the title of the 2016 release) switches the emphasis from story, which was arguably the focus of Hitman: Absolution, to inventive murder sandboxes. You get a target and a large, lively space filled with props and scenery to interact with. How you complete the mission is up to you.

That's not to say there's no story at all in the new Hitman. As Io-Interactive's Hannes Seifert said in a statement on the new episodic format: "The main driving reason is that this will allow us to create a living game that will expand and evolve over time and establish a foundation for the future. This is the first game in a storyline which will continue and expand with future Hitman games."

Io is also planning to keep the fun going with monthly and weekly updates that add new assassination target to previously released maps. It sounds like an evolution of Absolution's "Contracts" mode, which allowed players to engineer their own, elaborate assassinations — based on what they could complete themselves — in a sadistic game of H.O.R.S.E..

The prologue/Paris mission "Intro Pack" launches on Mar. 11 for $15. Subsequent missions will release at $10 apiece. Players also have the option of buying everything in advance for $60 or waiting until fall 2016, when everything will be released on one disc.