Blood Money’s one flaw is 47’s portrayal. Hear me out…

Classic Hitman Games
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People always love to point out how 47 was more evil in the older games but when asked to specify they default to Blood Money. As if C47, SA and Contracts didn’t happen.

The 47 in WoA feels like the 47 in the first three games to me. Or rather that 47 with character development. He actively seeks out Ort Meyer and kills him. He gives these monologues in level openings that give us an insight into his thoughts. These monologues were in 2SA too. They make 47 feel like an actual character and that hint of emotion can be seen.

In 2SA, our dear bald headed assassin went as a far as trying out christianity. That’s how desperate he was to find a purpose and the disgust and anger he felt for his existence. The reason he goes back to killing is literally out of care for Father Victorio. 47 felt very human in this game.

Contracts delve into a much deeper part of his mind, how he sees and remembers the hits he did. Dark, raining, more fucked up than the reality. After 2SA, he seems to have devolved into a killing machine. “There’s a bullet for everyone, at a time, at a place.” Feels like he hit a low point and basically gave up his autonomy for ICA/the job.

For some reason he’s way more of an asshole in BM and that game also has my least fav out-of-character moment in the series when 47 calls Diana “Bitch”. That word somehow doesn’t suit him at all. I’m oretty sure BM47 has the least amount of lines out of the entire series. He kills innocents, kills his pet bird (tho understandable, had to hide himself), and his lines feels robotic than usual. And has developed an unsual amount of greed towards money lol.

Just compare how alive he felt in 2SA to BM.

Now I could think of two reason why he’s portrayed as so:

  1. BM is told by the main antagonist, so he is an unreliable narrator describing an exaggerated crueller myth of 47.

  2. He has devolved further from Contracts. He kills for the sake of money which he doesn’t need. A walking tool. Lowest point.

I think its the 2nd option (and hopefully not just bad writing.)

Despite the hate Absolution gets, I’ll always love it for bringing back the old way more emotional 47 and expanding Diana’s morals as well. He finally gets character development after so long being in limbo. He makes a personal choice yet again to save a girl, just like 2SA. And WoA further beautifully executes the dynamic duo, with Diana acting as his moral anchor and him having way more autonomy now. That’s good character development.

But yeah, on replays, Blood Money’s 47 is very cardboard and comically evil and greedy. Most out of character he’s been unless justified by the two possible reasons.

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As I’ve pointed out before on this subject, due to the timeline, and when in the game we see 47 become harder in behavior, it’s likely due to his being shot in Contracts. He nearly died, by someone trying to assassinate him, having figured out who he was and where he was going to be. He faced his mortality, had his status as a ghost who was perfect in every way, directly challenged. He was left shaken, not knowing who to trust or if he could even trust himself. He got the code red delivery, he kills the delivery man. Smith pops up in the back of a van that nobody was supposed to know he was driving, he hauls him out and puts a gun to his head. Diana, the person he’s spoken to most since his time out in the world, comes to him begging for help and offering a plan, then sticks him with a needle. He wakes up surrounded by enemies and people who now know his identity, requiring him to kill everyone in order to make sure nobody knows who he is or how to find him.

Can anyone really blame 47 for being how he was? And was he really even being “evil”? Killing the deliver man was due to ICA protocol with the code red, and killing the priest and reporter was self-preservation since they knew his identity and that put him in danger. Everything else, he’s not being “evil”, just grumpy. His cold decision in killing those men is really no different than letting Malcolm Sturrock live despite being the killer of his client’s daughter, just because Malcolm wasn’t a target of the contract. Blood Money 47 is no different than any other version in his brutality and ruthlessness, he’s just more angry because of the attempt on his life, and the devs decided to remind people that he’s not a hero or a villain, but just a professional who kills who he is told to.

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That’s how I headcanon his behaviour in BM too. I for one, am glad they course corrected back to his 2SA self with Absolution and WoA. In Absolution he challenges his own identity aswell as risks his myth and safety for the morally right choice, to save someone yet again, this time, someone just like him, he could relate with the anger of being created just to kill.

And WoA wonderfully caps off that trajectory.

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I would prefer they go back to a colder, more practical and professional 47. We already have a million anti-heroes who do bad things but against bad people and who operate on a moral code. We don’t need yet another. Better to have 47 be strictly what he is - a professional killer who does what other people tell him to do because they’re paying him what he asks for - than to go down another cookie-cutter vigilante road.

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I am fine with 2SA, C47, Contracts, Absolution or WoA 47. As long as it’s not the BM 47 that’s as interesting as a cardboard lol.

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His more cynical behavior is precisely what makes him interesting.

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Woa already made him take that route of becoming a vigilante. It would be regressive to the character if he just returned to not caring who the target is, deleting all character development so far.

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They’ve done it before. Besides, his main thing is wanting difficult targets who think they’re untouchable. That doesn’t necessarily equate to just killing bad people, that’s just how it would normally go. And since it’s established that he trusts Diana to not send him a contract that isn’t justified in some way, he can indeed simply go back to just accepting the contract, and his whole priority being completing it with perfection.

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Disagree tbh. He was so stripped down in BM he downright felt like a self insert character.

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That’s… the point. That’s what 47 always was, prior to Absolution.

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Let’s agree to disagree then.

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I think the problem is that people often judge 47 based on whether they agree with his actions, instead of asking what the games are trying to portray.

I think the ICA’s philosophy is perfectly encapsulated in The Meat King’s Party in Contracts. Diana and 47 discover that the original target isn’t actually the murderer, and yet Diana immediately redirects 47 to kill Campbell instead of Malcom because that’s who the contract is. The revelation itself becomes almost irrelevant. They don’t stop to pursue justice or reconsider the morality of the situation. The contract has been amended, so they execute it.

That scene is important because it strips away the player’s expectations. You’re watching professionals operate according to a system whose internal logic exists independently of conventional morality. Whether it’s “right” is beside the point. The mission is the mission.

I don’t see 47 there as a more “evil” version of himself. The game deliberately treats him less as a conventional protagonist and more as a legend. Nearly everything is filtered through the perspective of people trying to reconstruct the myth of the world’s greatest assassin. We experience his actions directly, but they’re constantly framed by newspaper reports, witness accounts, and the narration of someone attempting to explain an almost supernatural figure.

That’s why 47 feels more distant and opaque than in Silent Assassin. We know almost nothing about what he’s thinking, we only see what he does and the impact he leaves behind. That distance serves the game’s tone: he’s an urban legend whose existence is measured by the trail of impossible murders left in the news.

That’s also why I don’t think Blood Money should be used as the baseline for judging whether 47 is “out of character.” It’s presenting him through a completely different narrative lens. Silent Assassin and World of Assassination all let us spend more time inside his perspective. Blood Money instead asks what 47 looks like to everyone else. He’s meant to feel like a ghost, not emotionally accessible. I personally feel this representation is more unconventional and original, and that they should bring back that kind of tone to the franchise.

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:backhand_index_pointing_up: :100: THIS.

Although-

I think you meant the contract hasn’t been amended. 47 even asks Diana after discovering the truth if this new information changes anything and she confirms that it doesn’t; the terms of the contract don’t allow for a change of targets if it’s learned that someone else kidnapped and murdered the client’s daughter. The client paid for two specific men to die, and for 47 to either rescue the daughter or prove that she’s dead, nothing more and nothing less, and so 47 does exactly that, because that’s what he agreed to do by accepting the contract.

Blood Money just continues that same uncompromising professionalism, while mixing in 47’s cranky mood over his recent near-death experience.

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Sorry, my typo, that’s exactly what I meant. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Am I misremembering? I thought from the start we knew it was the brother but the contract was on his rich brother (meat king) and the attorney bc they got him out of trouble for it?

Your point stands though. It was not about right or wrong. It was just a contract. Same with the Rendezvous in Rotterdam level.

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I’m kind of mixed on this opinion. Besides BM being one of the best games in the series, he doesn’t develop much as a character. He does act a little stange though, like the way he treats his allies. Other than a few moments, he seems annoyed when Diana talks to him too long. I do agree 47 swearing is very out of character of him. But he does secretly care for her safety through dialoge. The big one, I think, is how he treats Agent Smith towards the end of the game. Smith did catch him off guard in Nevada, but I don’t think that warranted being held at gunpoint even after 47 learned his reasons for being there and then left in the desert to fend for himself! He’s often annoyed by Smith in the series consistently, but he always gives 47 important information and doesn’t deserve to be treated like that even by a strictly business clone assassin. The Franchise hunting him does gives him an excuse for his more aggressive behavior though. I’m leaning more towards 47 is acting in character, but I still can’t safely decide.

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I think it’s less about 47 acting “strange” and more about the creative direction Blood Money took with him. We’re so used to stories built around heroes, or at least antiheroes, that we instinctively look for psychological explanations whenever a character behaves differently. I don’t think 47 really fits either category.

In Blood Money, he’s never been portrayed as someone whose actions are driven by relatable emotional needs or personal conflicts. He’s closer to an artist at work: we witness the precision, the discipline, the craft, but the reasons behind it are deliberately kept out of reach. Trying to establish a strict behavioral canon for him almost misses the point. His appeal has always come from the way each game chooses to sculpt him, and I think Blood Money captured that better than any other chapter. Players immediately picked up on it because it felt fresh and distinctive.

I also don’t believe his impatience with Diana or his hostility toward Agent Smith were meant to signal that he was emotionally cracking under the pressure of the Franchise hunting him. I think the developers simply wanted to present him as an exceptionally cynical, pragmatic, detached assassin, perfectly intregated in the world he operates in. Someone who has zero tolerance for improvised, off-the-book behavior, especially when everything around him is unstable.

To me, Blood Money portrays 47 as a purist of protocol. If even someone he knows catches him off guard, his instinct is to put them back in line immediately, like when he mercilessly beats the living shit out of Smith, pushing his head into the dirt, with no intentions to back down even after recognizing him. Zero fucks given: no hesitation, no room for levity, because in his world spontaneity is a liability. Professionalism, discipline, and discretion always come first. These are facts, and the game represented them in a concrete and realistic way. That’s what makes his behavior feel so memorable to me, not because it’s out of character, but because it’s probably the purest expression of who he is.

The first of all things that made him so compelling to me is the contrast between what he is and how he carries himself. His almost ceremonial elegance, his restraint, and the way he seems to drift through bougie trash settings full of degenerates like a crafty motherfucker figuring out a way to fast-track them to the afterlife before hitting the road for good. That restraint is exactly what makes him so fascinating, that’s how I picture him when he’s mentioned. Sometimes a character is stronger precisely because the game trusts the audience to fill in the blanks. The unspoken creates the tension. The unanswered questions leave room for fascination and imagination.

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An excellent analysis, one I agree with completely, although I’d add in the caveat, as mentioned previously, that his recent gunshot was further influencing his behavior of keeping even well-known colleagues at a distance.

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^^ this :100: %. Lots of stories suffer when they eventually have to explain things deeper. We live in a world where sequels make money so we keep getting them (movies and tv shows and games) and sometimes the things that weren’t explained in season one or game one etc have to be explained later on and the answers are not good.

IO have largely left 47s character development alone with just a little bit of character in H2SA and a little more in WOA; I think the franchise has benefited from that.

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I agree. I think that detail does provide a coherent thread connecting his change in demeanor. At the same time, it reinforces my point: the game doesen’t spoon-feeds you explaining that “this is why 47 is acting differently”, but leaves that as a subtle nuance, in the dry exchange between him and Diana before Flatline. Now that’s good writing.

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