It was more about the fact that 47 would have killed them even if they were good people, and the fact that they’re bad was just incidental. Really, the only person he ever killed who wasn’t either a criminal or an asshole was Penelope Graves. The games of the last decade have pushed 47 into being a legit anti-hero, rather than a villain protagonist. Some miss the cold and unfailingly professional 47 who would kill anyone that appeared on his target list and it wouldn’t matter, it wouldn’t even occur to him, about whether the target deserved to die or not. There was a purity in that that’s missing in the latest games.
1 Like
I would actually argue that the portrayal of Hitman in Contracts and Blood Money is more of a reinterpretation of the character and not his purist most original form. I would argue that in Codename 47 and especially Silent Assassin 47 is a more traditional hero mode, taking down terrorists and mobsters to track down a mad scientist and help a tribe in the first game and then stopping an attempt to steal a nuke as well as killing some well off mobsters, saving prostitutes and secret agents and dismantling a cult. Theres even cutscenes in Hitman 2SA which show secret footage meant to make you hate the target, even in the most petty of ways. Big example: Hayamoto Jr’s intense womanizing and Hannelore stealing chocolates and flowers from her patients
Without the emotional core of 47 discovering who he is and deeper connections to characters like Father Vittorio and Lei Ling, the character was left without ways to flesh him out and sort of devolved. It was Contracts and Blood Money that decided that now the humanizing elements were gone they cant take 47 in a new grittier direction, which while good also lead to out of character actions dont get us wrong. 47 killing the mail guy is the weirdest thing he’s ever done in a good Hitman game. I get it’s to cover his tracks but it’s a weird amount of brutality he’s never shown before or since. The killing of the journalist made sense and was appropriately cold because it’s what he was sent to do. 47 killing a non-target because someone might use the guy to track him seemed like a leap in logic, tho I feel it’s a flaw in splitting the story up into two parts. Maybe putting the gunshot wound into Blood Money’s story would have been a great set up to an arc of him getting more paranoid over time
1 Like
What about the reporter and priest from Requiem?
1 Like
You could argue that, but as 47 was no more concerned with his targets in the first two games as he was in Contracts and BM, it’d be meaningless.
Sorry, I forgot to specify; of the people he’s killed on the job. The reporter and priest were for his own survival, and I typically use them as human shields and let Cayne’s bodyguards shoot them, so technically, 47 doesn’t even have to kill them.
- There are no canon ways to do anything in Hitman games. The whole purpose of every one of them is to give players a great variety of choices.
- Non-target kills were allowed in one way or the other in the pre-WoA games to give players more freedom, as the existing knock-out mechanics were sort of limited. In WoA there are plenty of quick and efficient ways to knock-out an unlimited number of characters, so to make the rules more consistent and understandable non-target kills were forbidden.
- It is generally believed that 47 doesn’t go on non-target killing sprees as (presumably) part of his moral code, as to not attract any unneeded attention to the assassinations and as per request of the ICA.
These are the fagdz, anything else is just a proofless speculation. According to my subjective understanding of the franchise’s story and gameplay, that is.
4 Likes
What is canon is that, prior to letting Diana live in Absolution, 47 had a perfect record, meaning he never failed, and never killed anyone who wasn’t a target, when on a job; off-duty killings were generally for self-defense or necessary to maintain his secrecy, and anything he didn’t fulfill before ICA was when he was still in training under Ort-Meyer and had not yet reached his peak performance yet, so that doesn’t really count, as he had no record yet. And even in Diana’s case, it all gets settled out that she was not the target, she was the client, and Travis was the target, so his perfect record was maintained. Then, in allowing Lucas Grey to live, he forsakes that perfect record for the sake of his pact with Grey, but in inadvertently making Grey kill himself, he technically fulfills that contract, too. So 47’s reputation remains intact, and that means that, while there may be no canon way on how he did things, there is absolutely a canon way he did not do things.
Bit late , I know. You realize deep down he does have a heart, y’know? Why do you think he was living in that monastery in the second game? The fact that he helps some people like that Chinese prostitute escape and didn’t really kill Smith right away even though he’s surprised him in his van, proves it while he does bury it really deep, he does have a heart
2 Likes
Sadly that means their children are orphaned and their teenaged daughter will have to grow up very quickly in order to care for her younger sibling(s) and keep their family together.
1 Like
I have my own canon. It’s a game and I decide what is canon or not. In my canon 47 killed Mrs Sinistra with the grill
That’s not how canon works.
2 Likes
Obviously. But that’s how my canon works
Then you’re talking preferences; not canon.
3 Likes
The word you’re looking for is headcanon 
3 Likes