Oh boy, did you instigate your own mugging or what? I’ve decided to respond in this thread so as not to clutter up the Freelancer thread and force Urben to cut it, especially with the time that’s passed, and given some of what is discussed below concerning who is killed and how and such, I think this is the best thread to respond to it in as an alternative.
Here we go:
Right off the bat, pure misunderstanding of the subject at hand. There is a difference between 47 having a perfect record, and being perfect himself. He’s perfect as a professional killer; he’s perfect as a physical human specimen; nobody ever said he was perfect as a character, and you seem to be confusing the concepts with each other. IOI may have written him with imperfections, but it is their own words in every description of the character found whenever a new game is released that he has a perfect record. You’ll understand by the end of this the difference between his record being perfect and him being perfect. Or perhaps you won’t; I already explained in the post you’re responding to why his record remains perfect, even in the face of a few questionable circumstances. You seem to have not understood that, so I’m going to end up having to repeat my same arguments, but with more words.
One other thing you’re going to need to understand is that IOI throws in easter eggs, especially in WoA that are there as a goof; they are jokes, they are having fun with us by throwing out nostalgic bits that don’t align with other information found in the series. A few things that will be talked about below require understanding of that, and the difference between an easter egg to one of the possibilities they throw in for players, and what actually happened as far as the lore. I’ll elaborate later.
No. Firstly, throw out any concept of how the first game is played as being the canonical way events unfolded. C:47 was a case of early installment weirdness due to IOI not being sure yet what the series identity was and gameplay limitations. For example, despite the fact that the player must massacre their way across the Colombian jungle, 47 does not actually kill every soldier he comes across in the actual story of what happened when he went after Pablo Ochoa. Only Pablo and whoever was inside the drug lab when it exploded died, and even that is questionable, since a later game like WoA would have had gameplay mechanics that would have allowed 47 to evacuate the drug lab, or knock the workers out and hide them outside the lab in a safe space to avoid casualties. And that’s assuming Ort-Meyer’s contract to blow up the lab along with Ochoa’s death didn’t include and allow for whoever was in it in the first place, making those workers targets and not casualties.
Either way, how we played it and how it happened for the lore of the series that followed are two different things. Having provided that as an example of how C:47’s kills and events are supposed to be looked at, let’s now turn our attention back to Lee Hong with what you have below.
There is absolutely nothing that states or indicates that this is the canonical way events unfolded. Lee Hong can be shot from the skylight overhead while sitting at the table; one does not have to proceed with the poisoned soup route, that is simply the one with a cutscene involved. Contracts actually amends this to fit more with the theme of the rest of the series, but I’ll elaborate on that more when I get to your comments on that game. For now, like I said before, this example is a case of the trope Early Installment Weirdness due to the game not yet having a real identity, and like every game that follows, allows multiple ways for it to be accomplished, with no one method ever being set in stone as the way it actually happened. All we have to go on is IOI’s own description of 47, plus 47’s and Diana’s own words at the beginning of Absolution and near the end of WoA in regards to his “perfection,” to indicate that methods that involved non-targets dying were not how it happen. We may not know the how, but we know the how not.
What does this have to do with anything? This has no bearing on your overall point of 47 not having a perfect record. Regardless of whether it was loud or not, 47 kills Ochoa, gets out of the room before being caught by his guards, then proceeds to blow the lab. He completes the contract, nobody knows who did it, and other than those in the lab, as discussed above, no one dies who isn’t permitted to by the contract. Silent Assassin rank, which is inconsistent from game to game as it is, is not what makes 47 a perfect hitman or give him a perfect record; it is his completion of hits considered too difficult for other assassins, performed to the letter of the contract, with no witnesses and no collateral damage. Even if it is clear Pablo got shot to hell in his office, so long as those conditions are met, 47’s record is still intact.
Wrong. First of all, Meet Your Brother was not a contract; 47 had already killed Kovacs, and so the job was done. What followed was a personal issue, not a sanctioned job that would be part of 47’s official record. As it is, ICA was upset at learning Ort-Meyer was using them, and since it was his contract anyway, with the entire purpose really being to lure 47 there to confront him with the 48s, it really doesn’t even matter that it kind of went off the rails after Kovacs was killed. At that point, it became another matter entirely.
Also, yes, I can use the Contracts version of events because, what does the beginning of H2SA really show us? It shows arms and a leg from behind a corner grabbing a SWAT officer, pulling him to the ground, and back behind the corner, and we hear the Mystery Man say that it’s 47. And, well, that particular moment captured on the footage could be. We don’t know that he’s actually killing the officer, since we can’t really see anything; he could be rendering him unconscious to take his outfit. What else do we see? We see some people getting shot, plus some bodies lying around. Do we see 47 in these moments? No. The two men keep talking about him, yes, but that’s all. We don’t see who is shooting any of these people in the security footage.
Now, there’s a lot of inconsistencies in the layout of the asylum and the number of dead bodies in it at the end between the first three games, which is an issue of inconsistent writing and game limitations between the entries. Let’s consider the corpse-littered versions of the 2nd and 3rd games as the canonical outcome, for the sake of argument. There was a SWAT team storming through an asylum on the lookout for a dangerous individual, whom they don’t know the identity of, and all the mental patients were freed from captivity during the raid. Stands to reason, the SWAT gunned down a few patients and orderlies, and a few patients and perhaps orderlies probably picked up a few weapons from fallen officers and started shooting back. This is one explanation for all the dead bodies, and Contracts seems to lean in that direction.
Another explanation is a pretty significant one that comes into play later in H2SA: Sergei and Mystery Man find Subject 17 in the asylum when they go there. Although they’re talking about 47, and we’re led to believe that’s who we’re seeing shooting people in the footage, the fact that we later get 17 indicates that it could very well have been him, who doesn’t have 47’s sensibilities.
And finally, even if we were to say conclusively that it was 47, much like in Blood Money, when he needs to escape or keep his identity secret, and it’s not an official contract, he’s free to kill whomever he deems necessary to preserve his own survival and freedom. Even though what happened in that asylum after Kovacs was killed was still tied into the contract, the fact that he still completed it to the letter, that it was a trap set by the client (Ort-Meyer), that the ICA wanted to disengage from this client and probably were not going to be thrilled that he set up their best asset to be ambushed, and the fact that it was a personal situation for 47 to discover who he was and where he came from, and every one of these things was achieved, with 47 still escaping and nobody except Sergei and MM knowing it was him (and they were looking for him anyway), it was still a success. 47’s record remains intact.
Incorrect. The naming schemes being different is an issue of writing, firstly. In addition to that, because H2SA had set the tone and direction IOI wanted to take the series, of 47 canonically being a discreet, ghost-like killer who always succeeded, never got caught, and didn’t kill innocent bystanders unless it was necessary to save himself (and never during a contract, with one specific exception in Blood Money), it made the first game seem unaligned with the direction they wanted to go in. That’s why, when Contracts was commissioned and they needed material for it, they decided to redo the missions from the first game. Not all, of course, but now we see the ones redone as more refined, more in line with what H2SA and the new material elsewhere in Contracts were like, with the Silent Assassin rank representing the concept of 47’s perfection. While the conditions for that changed from game to game, and does not exclusively represent his perfection, it’s the best way for the players to mimic it. As such, the new way things play out in Contracts is meant to replace the now-inconsistent way things went down in the original game’s release, with the new game mechanics that let SA happen now allowing players to recreate the original missions the way IOI retroactively meant for them to be played.
The inconsistency of names is a minor issue, only applies with any relevance to two characters (Jegorov and Lei Ling), and is likely not even a problem with 47’s memory, because how would a mere fever dream of memory get Jegorov’s name so utterly different? Likely that was, like I said, a writing issue where whoever put that in liked those names better or felt they were trying to simplify Jegorov’s nationality by changing his name to Boris or something. Either way, he retroactively had his Contracts name seen as an alias or alternative identity he went by.
Here you’re showing some understanding of how it works in regards to his official record as an assassin being without error. Things that seem like errors when they happen are later revealed to be a problem that is not his issue, and the mission is course-corrected or clarified by the story at later points, while still showing 47 as getting his target in accordance with the clients’ requests, leaving no evidence or witnesses, and not having to kill bystanders while completing the contract.
Falling into a trap does not blemish 47’s record of perfection; not getting out of it would. He might have fallen for it, and in some other cases in the series he does as well, but that’s not the issue; he’s got “instinct,” not spider-sense, and instinct can fail at times, as well as discipline. As far as rescuing Vittorio, 47 is a killer, not a rescuer. Yeah, he’s rescued some hostages and kidnap victims before, but always in service of a contract that has killing the target as the priority, and the rescue as the follow-up or the logical outcome of the targets’ deaths. Also, he went to ICA for help because they have the intelligence network to search the globe for Vittorio; 47 could only go and save him once he was located, and the persons who took him killed. If ICA can’t find Vittorio for him, it’s certainly not his fault for not being able to rescue him; he’s the hitter, not the intelligence gatherer or analyst. We see this again with how difficult things get for him anytime he operates without the ICA, such as in Absolution, the latter half of WoA, and now in Freelancer. And since that was a personal matter and a favor ICA was doing for him, and not an official contract as part of his work, it has no bearing on his record.
False. He didn’t screw up at all; he completed his contract perfectly and then left the area, exactly as he’s supposed to. His getting shot afterward was entirely separate from his work, aside from the fact that the contract may have been used as a means to lure him there. 47 let his guard down more than usual because he knew he had just done that job perfectly, with no one even knowing yet that an assassination was what had taken place, so nobody from the opera house was looking for him. The fact that someone already knew he was going to be there regardless of whatever happened in the opera house was not something he expected, and that’s why he was vulnerable enough to get shot once, but still able to escape and recover. Then, he took care of the one person who knew who he was, and while I don’t know if Fournier became a sanctioned target or not after that, since ICA would have wanted to deal with him anyway after spotting one of their agents, 47 dealt with him and kept his identity secret. This event has no impact on 47’s perfect hit record.
Regardless of the implication in this case, the fact is that this mission is able to be completed as SA. 47 is able to get out of the hotel without getting spotted, kill Fournier without being seen, and escape without his cover blown and no other persons killed. And because it is able to happen that way, that is how it happens. Now, I don’t know how-how it happens; what means 47 uses to kill Fournier and escape, or what he does the rest of the time. Does he knock someone out and take a disguise, or is he only in his suit? Does he shoot Fournier and run before anyone sees him, or does he use some other means? That we don’t know (we don’t truly know the official cause of death of any target in the series except Ort-Meyer and Skurky), but we know that since 47’s bio is that he is discreet, ghost-like, and has a perfect kill record, and that this mission does not force us to go guns blazing like Requiem, that taking the SA route is what he does, just like every other time.
First of all, the guy is already sounding groggy, like he’s been hit in the head, and 47 is already holding the hook he’s gonna hit the guy with. It is completely reasonable to assume that 47 whopped him in the back of the head before grabbing him, so the guy isn’t really focused. It’s dark, his head hurts, he knows someone’s holding him and has a weapon raised, but how focused is he? He answers the question, then 47 hits him again. Now, 47 likely knows how to hit someone in such a way that their recollection of the few minutes or so prior to passing out are questionable at best, and likely irretrievable.
This doesn’t really change anything because 47 is still exposing himself to be seen by people he knocks out even now; in WoA, when hiding behind an object or a corner and then grabbing and subduing an NPC, 47 will step around the corner directly in front of the victim and grab them, letting them see his face as he does so. He’s not concerned, because he then chokes them out, and they are rendered unconscious just such that they won’t be remembering the last things that happened to them when they wake up. And yes, I’m aware that if someone finds said NPC and revives them that they then start looking for 47, so it seems like they do remember, but that same thing happens even if he grabs them from behind and they never see him, so that’s a gameplay thing, not a story thing.
Inaccurate. The mission can be completed as Silent Assassin. The fact that it presents so many obvious means to kill other NPCs and seems to encourage it is a gameplay decision, not a story one. Much like wandering previous targets seen in Elusive Targets and Freelancer, we are meant to ignore the killings in the Death of a Showman mission except for the target’s. Since it can, with difficulty, be played SA, that’s how it happens. More on that later.
See the part about this mission being possible to complete as SA for the woman in the room with Scoop, and see the part about knocking NPCs out while showing his face for the guard at the gate.
Not true. The Bingham job isn’t implied to have gone poorly in any manner. Henderson doesn’t point anything out in the cutscene that deals with that mission; he simply looks surprised. This is likely because it was more out of the scandal surrounding a senator’s problematic son dying at the same time and in the same place as a notorious porn king during an election cycle. Lots of political scandals happening in the US missions in that game. The newspaper clippings in Absolution about it don’t mean anything, and I’ll explain why further down where it’s more relevant to talk about.
And, as mentioned before, there is no confirmation of how any target in the series dies other than Ort-Meyer and Skurky, whom we see onscreen in situations where the player never has a choice on how to trigger the death seen. Yeah, we see Wade and Dexter die onscreen, but how the scenes are triggered is up to the player, so what kills them isn’t known, and Travis seems to be shot to death, but we don’t see it, so it’s possible he survives the shot and 47 finishes him off some other way. Unless I’m forgetting someone, other than Grey (get to that later), no other targets have their manner of death confirmed officially anywhere in the series. Yeah, certain easter eggs are thrown in here and there to imply that a specific death is what happened (I’m looking at you, Novikov!), but as I said earlier and will say again later, that’s the devs messing with us, intentionally keeping things murky for the fun of having us analyze and debate it. And yeah, that can mean that what they say about 47 having a perfect record might be a misdirect by them as well, but I’ll get to that at the end of this.
The point is, the hot tub drop is not official as the manner of Bingham’s death, as with any other target’s death. Bingham might have been shot in the head while sitting on the bed right after the stripper leaves the room (done it), he might have been stabbed to death on that little balcony he goes to after he’s done with the stripper (done it), or pushed off that balcony to the rocks below (done it). Even if the hot tub were the means, in a later game (and maybe someone figured out how to do it in this one), we would have been able to lure the strippers from the hot tub before shooting it, making it so only Bingham is in it, so there being NPCs in it at the time that we can’t lure away properly is a game mechanic that we can ignore in how it relates to the story, and Chad was canonically the only one in there. But it doesn’t even have to be that method in the first place.
The only questionable part of this mission is the Question Mark Lady, who was an other assassin sent to intercept him. That was a case of self-defense, seemingly separate from the contract itself, and since ICA was aware by this point that someone was at war with them, they likely retroactively added her to the contract and compensated 47 for taking care of an enemy asset for them. If not, it’s still possible to kill the two sanctioned targets first, completing the official contract, then deal with her, making her an unrelated matter after having finished the intended work. Either way, 47’s record is still intact.
You also forgot not realizing that Parchezzi had a bomb planted behind him and was trying to stall him. But, as I already said later, 47’s instincts are not fool-proof, and he’s not perfect as a character; he’s only perfect as an assassin, and has a perfect hit record. When he’s not on a job, which he wasn’t in your two examples (he was done when Smith spoke up), but was in mine, he pays more attention because his mind has shifted over to another plane of thought and awareness, and while he can still be caught off-guard, he can still adjust and finish the mission with full success. Even though a bomb went off in the fucking Oval Office, 47 was still able to chase Parchezzi to the roof, kill him, and escape without anyone knowing he was there or who the killer was (Cayne was already aware what he was doing to his operatives, so he doesn’t count).
Correct; you don’t. Not for the reasons you think, however.
On the hardest difficulty level, it is possible to lure these four guards away and complete the mission SA. Their deaths are not inevitable, plus 47 is no longer on an official contract at this point. He has already “killed” Diana as far as ICA is concerned, so he’s done following Travis’s orders, and is now following along on an unofficial contract from Diana, which is more of a request from a friend but she paid for it by manipulating ICA to hire 47 to find her so she could inform him of all this. So even if you count those guards’ deaths, which is not a requirement, he’s not following a specific contract’s parameters, and so it does not affect his record of completed contracts.
In these instances, 47 is not acting as a hunter after prey. He’s on a rescue mission and is mainly attempting to glean information from what he overhears, and is not on an official contract. He’s not thinking in his usual manner of seek and destroy, because he can’t risk simply killing these people; he needs to capture and interrogate them to find Victoria, while they are actively attempting to kill him and don’t need to keep him alive (Dexter’s desire to interrogate him about Lenny being one exception), and so these events have nothing to do with his record as a perfect assassin.
Absolution is canon completely, barring any events that don’t take place in cutscenes, as those are open to interpretation of the player like every other game in the series. It shows the character not being perfect, but we’ve already established several times the difference between the character and his record.
That’s because you’re not thinking about it in the proper context. 47 isn’t meaning to complete the contract of killing the Shadow Client; he rejected the contract as soon as he learned who Grey was. But, he still ended up fulfilling it regardless. The fact that he did not back away as Grey implored him to, which might have given Grey a chance to live since they wanted to capture him and not kill him, but continued to prepare himself to begin attacking the soldiers is what prompted Grey to take the path of killing himself in order to keep 47 from being discovered, this makes 47’s actions directly responsible for Grey’s death. Grey was the Shadow Client. So even though 47 officially rejected Providence’s contract on Grey’s life, he still unintentionally ended up fulfilling it anyway; his final contract with ICA, which from their perspective was still open at the time, was finally completed, and it was indeed completed by 47, since his direct actions were what caused it, just like with any outsourced kill in the series. Technically speaking, since the contract on Diana in Absolution was really her contract to get 47 to fulfill her request, and 47 did end up directly causing Grey’s death while the contract on him was still open, it can be said that 47 has truly fulfilled every contract he’s accepted and has not failed or quit any of them.
I believe at this point, I’ve pretty much covered everything in this quote, including how, why, and with examples. So, just a small recap: 47 has flaws as a character, but has a perfect kill record as an assassin.
No, this does not confirm, fully or otherwise, how 47 completed that mission. As I mentioned earlier, this is an easter egg, existing solely as a little joking nod and elbow poke to the ribs from the devs to the players, basically going: “See this here? Remember when this happened?” It’s a furniture feature for Freelancer, the canonicity of which is almost entirely up to the individual player. This newspaper clip is only thrown in as a nod to Blood Money, and its appearance in Freelancer makes any info it states that contradicts not only the game but IOI’s own character bio of 47 questionable. The news paper in the Blood Money cutscene stating one thing, getting overridden by a decorative item in a customizable space that has no firm effect on the overall series storyline? This is likely just in there for players who don’t care about the lore or the SA playstyle, like Schatenjager for instance, and not a hint at how the actual mission went down. The newspaper clippings from Blood Money were changeable anyway based on a playstyle, and in the instances of ones that would have been listed as accidents, why would they mention a “Silent Assassin” for an accident? The newspapers are a humorous and interesting touch to Blood Money, but in regards to how they relate to the mission the player just partook, they are not indicators of series lore, and the one appearing in Freelancer is no different.