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.