And the reason that we know about that - because they hire incompetent hitmen who are essentially the polar opposite of 47.
This gets raised every time this thread comes up and it generally doesn’t make any sense because the concept of “just imagine a story” misses the general issues with creating a story.
Getting the player invested
Creating a narrative that makes sense to the player (ie enables suspension of disbelief)
Creating interesting twists and quirks that make it memorable and worth exploring again
Killing a random CEO isn’t that interesting because of the reason illustrated midway in Hitman (2016) - the person gets replaced and business continues as usual. “People die Mr Fannin, happens all the time, even to us.”
So whoever you are killing as a one off needs to be someone that is irreplaceable and someone who can’t be made to be more profitable to the corporation. Silvio doesn’t need to die because his projects are unique - he needs to die because he’s determined to make a super weapon that will let him play god and his top research assistant wants it to help her masters play god.
Novikov doesn’t need to die because a fashion rival wants his market share, he needs to die because he runs an information brokering business that creates global instability and carnage.
Fannin doesn’t need to die - he’s just a cog in the machine, his death would serve no purpose.
Seriously… he says that? I actually haven’t been playing past Marcus Stuyvesant since my PS4 copy cannot connect and I don’t want Challenges/Achievements to unlock (as I also worry they will become locked forever when online is fixed).
I think the difficulty of an assassination is what would make a client want 47, and difficult doesn’t automatically imply a villain. A relatively good world leader for example could be assassinated by evil forces wishing for power.
It is really unclear at what point she got over the revenge angle for the death of her family.
And it’s eerie how her personality became more and more similar to Arthur Edwards.
I would prefer more criminal targets, targets that lives in the darker world, like Codename 47’s Mafia targets, then it’s not so much about good vs. bad, but more about money and stir things up between clans.
Don’t know about the cold blooded hits but I think a good direction for the next story would be smaller-scale, just a regular threat or minor conspiracy you’re chasing from A to B to C. We just took down the illuminati and resolved both 47 & Diana’s childhood trauma at the same time - trying to escalate any further is going to get very silly, very fast.
Yeah, I loved the WoA story and enjoyed it more than any other previous Hitman game, but like you say, they’ve written themselves into a place where the stakes can’t be raised any higher without it being daft, so the next Hitman game would be well advised to tell a lower-stakes story really well rather than try and ‘outdo’ the WoA in terms of being spectacular.
I’m not saying that one should ‘imagine a story’ - I’m saying hitman doesnt even need a story. Perhaps some people prefer one, but I would prefer more focus on the gameplay aspect, making this more of a morally neutral contract killer simulator. To me hitman is more Mario than Metal gear, I’m in it for the gameplay. I skipped most cutscenes in the triology because the kill m immersion in what I’m trying to role play as. It doesn’t allow for role play anymore - you’re a james bond light that is killing bad people. We have enough games where youre killing bad people, like almost all of them.
So no, you dont have to be killing irreplaceable people. Killing a CEO to make markets move temporarily, or a wife who wants a divorce from a cheating billionaire may be a valid enough reason for someone to hire an expert like me. It doesnt need any greater purpose than that. Just a reason to hire me.
Yeah, I was using that as an example. 1 million may not matter much to someone, but a billion might. There are a lot of super wealthy that work for the sake of being wealthier. Instead of killing for life insurance they might hire 47 to kill their spouse thats about to divorce them, taking half of their fortune. My point is, as long as there is conceivably a reason to kill and the money to afford a hit, you can set up a mission around it.
Let’s get to the meat of the matter: killing innocent people is much less satisfying and much less fun than killing criminals or other morally corrupt individuals. A core theme of Hitman is criminals getting comeuppance for their crimes.
I think that’s very subjective. I can see it may be more satisfying for some people, but clearly not for others like myself. We play and enjoy many other games where we’re killing bad games. I like those games too. However, this is Hitman - it’d be nice to have one game, where it actually makes sense given that youre a contract killer, where you can just forget about the morals and kill for profit.
I’m not sure. I can accept one or two missions assassinating some regular business schmuck, but not a whole game, that shtick would get really old and really uncomfortable. Or if it’s too heinous, like we’re being hired by terrorists to assassinate a journalist, activist or politician or some predator to silence one of their accusers.
If you’re looking for morally grey, I think these game’s targets will suit you. They’re no innocents, of course, I personally find the targets in Hitman 3 to be much more sympathetic and layered. Stuyvesant would risk blowing his cover to reunite and reconcile with his daughter, Carlisle will commit suicide out of guilt if she learns she killed her brother for no reason and even Yates was genuinely friends with Morgan and adopted his dog Pickles. It’s a far cry from Novikov whispering threats and yelling abuse at Sebastian Sato.
