I like my version better, there is also a dash of Norman Bates in Philo as well.
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@Accidental_Kills98: Comes unglued over a topic and posts a massive dissertation filled to the brim with data and references drawn from real life and from all across Hitman lore in order to get his point across.
Heisenberg: āSo thatās what it feels like reading one of those.ā
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Me looking up information to win an argument on the internet I didnāt think I would even start. (It isnāt enough to win the argument, you have to kill the idea.)
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youāre on one, i see. 
āif we discount the things that are there to deliberately disassociate him from being a serial killer, i fail to see how 47 isnāt a serial killer because a few outliers had similar traits.ā
remember, the context of the argument here is the op is suggesting that 47 is āserial killer-likeā in contracts and not woa, yeah?
iām saying that i think heās an unreliable narrator at that moment in the story.
iām pretty sure that makes him an outlier, especially coupled with all his other non-serial killer/outlier traits.
the off-the-cuff use of āactualā was a mistake on my part, so apologies.
sturrock is a movie serial killer in the sense that he (quite deliberately) has many of the signifiers we associate with serial killersā¦ from movies: the air fresheners from seven, the recontextualised old music so itās creepy from [insert any horror film], the trophy/altar from [insert any serial killer film], etc. contracts-era 47 doesnāt.
yes, sturrock also has āvisible psychosisā which we do associate with serial killers because of movies, but thatās a complaint you should probably level at the writers of contractsā feet rather than assuming thatās what i think about serial killers. I just read these things from the text.
the societal notion of an archetypal serial killer has changed dramatically between contracts and woaās release. the woa team seem to be a lot more cognisant of representation (even of serial killers!), so comparing individual portrayals of their relatively more complex takes versus the bundle of serial killer tropes and shorthands from one minor character in a twenty year old game (and a different team) released post-seven doesnāt seem all that useful to me. this is especially so when the argument is about 47 himself and how he was āserial killer-likeā before woa.
great write up though.
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I mean being paid to do something doesnāt truly alter a distinction. If I were a property developer that paid a pyromaniac to burn down houses so I could get the land that person doesnāt magically become something other than a pyro.
I mean he is still engaging in those behaviours and if anything 47 is more brutal in those games so it kind of drives him close to being a slasher villain which means that yes he is a serial killer.
True but at the same time we shouldnāt dismiss what āheā thinks in that instance even if it comes from a crisis of conscious it is still revealing insights into his inner psyche.
It wound up occurring to me that 47ās issue isnāt that he rejects or justifies his killings, rather he has internalised them. The same way you internalise a belief in your talents or internalise a sense of misfortune in that regard he is in a minority of behaviours. I would say that could be one way professional killing alters
I do in the same way I feel IO abuse the word sociopath in WoA. But at least I decided to spare you the lecture I had on the dangers of stigmatising psychosis suffers because of the media.
Thanks! I hope you learned a lot and by āa lotā I mean āYou should hate Absolution moreā.
yes and no.
yes it does alter the distinction in the sense that motive is an integral part of being a serial killer, especially the movie type. your archetypal movie pyromaniac there would likely burn stuff for free because of his compulsions whereas I donāt get the impression 47 murders people in his spare time nor for the sake of it.
no, it doesnāt alter the distinction if 47 was a serial killer first, which i obviously donāt agree with.
ehhh i donāt agree with the leaps here. brutality isnāt unique to serial killers or slasher villains.
thatās what iām doing though. iām just saying hinging an argument about whether 47 is a serial killer on an unreliable internal assessment doesnāt seem like it leads anywhere useful for this particular debate.
you didnāt finish the sentence!
iām pretty au fait with that stuff from multiple units during uni but iām happy to learn more.
as if i havenāt made my position on absolution clear before.
at wearisome length.
to you directly.
multiple times. 
I most of the time enjoy every interpretation IOI brings to the table because I feel like all of them hits something right or awesome about 47 in each of them. WoA just went with a spy thriller genre which fits really well but obviously itās not the same as Contracts. I just canāt wait to see where IOI brings 47 and what new but interesting perspective we get to play as 47 in again.
47, I feel, is a very individual or subjective kind of character and for that I appreciate we as fans and āexceptsā can choose from each chapter/interpretation we have been blessed with
But of course as IOI have said themselves: 47 definitely has a DNA (The first 3 hitman games obviously solidified this DNA/foundation) just like a character like batman or spiderman. They have great premises but can always be seen from a different but interesting ankle
Now now of course that doesnāt mean we can allow IOI to ever change 47s voice actor David Bateson out with someone else
Sorry, I had no clue why I left that hanging. I would fix it but fuck it. Long day, today.
It is a bit of a spiel, if I remember to do so I will gladly explain it but for now it is getting kind of late for me.
You only think you really hate Absolution, you should hate it even more than you do now.
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that would require me to hate on the positive mechanical evolutions it brought to the series and iām not prepared to do that.
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You guys need to see deeper than that.
47 is a super trained clone assassin, made to be one of the greatests of his genre.
He can blend and travel anywhere, taking any target down no matter the importance or the risks, itās a job like another for him.
On that perspective we can agree that making him a fancy globe-trotting assassin sort of makes sense. That doesnāt mean he has to be only that!
Iām all up for 47 going back into his roots, laying low and getting down other kind of targets and less public figures in the future, why not on a darker tone 
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There is no deeper than that. That is, or at least was, the beauty of 47ās character; that he was a shallow blank slate for the player to fill in if they wanted to see something more in him, but without there actually being more for those who enjoyed having an emotionless, inhuman blank slate just killing with merciless professionalism.
Right, it doesnāt, but it lessens his purity as a character if he is anything more than that. 47, when he was all about killing his target, completing his contract, collecting his fee, repeat, that was all we needed. We didnāt need yet another anti-hero going through self-discovery, questioning who he is and what he does and if itās right. We get that every time. Every bad guy has to look sympathetic and deep nowadays, from Leatherface and Hannibal Lecter having traumatic childhoods where you can blame the people who made them how they are for all the horrible things they later ended up doing, to those who are essentially bad guys but are then seen as heroes or anti-heroes due to the new direction their lives have taken, from Jason Bourne to John Wick to Black Mamba.
47 was basically a bad guy who only was bad because his job was the universal crime, and he personally didnāt care, making us players in control of a criminal who just happened to be killing other criminals. But unlike the rare examples of that that you get, like Tommy Vercetti in GTA: VC, who has backstory and character growth, you could fill in your own psyche to 47 if you felt the need to, without it affecting anything you see happening on screen when controlling him, and if you later felt like back-tracking, no harm done. Now that 47 had gone through (ugh) character development, yeah, heās more than that now, but he was fine how he was. We donāt need another tragic anti-hero with hidden depths. 47 never needed depths, other than wondering where and when and how the hell he learned to do things like play drums professionally and things like that. Only depths he needed.
F. it. I miss the point shooting, the hostage takingā¦ Hell, I can even appreciate the blending-in instinct gimmick. I canāt help but to think of how useful thatād be when youāre disguised as a guard in Paris and need to walk past one of the guards by the stairway. No need to have (almost?) every single person in the same outfit to be suspicious of you. Maybe make it be limited for each individual enforcer. Pass them once and theyāll remember you without blowing your cover. Just donāt go by them again, or have a 50/50 chance they wonāt become suspicious. 
I know itās not perfect and could use some tweaking to make it practical.
But yeah. I donāt think 47 ever really wasā¦ or had a lust for killing. Heād most likely have to have a level of detachment, or maybe lacking in empathy to be cold-blooded enough to kill people - even if it is for whatever amount of money.
Or is there more to him that that?
Itād be impossible to have 47 lay down on a chair/couch and have him let it all out about what drives him, what makes him tickā¦ We can only assume from all the games and cutscenes, and perhaps any other medium that portrays the lore of 47.
Iād wonder if he does have some level of faith (or as much as Iām hesitant to say it 
) or religion? Like, does he confess that heās killed so&so and asks for forgiveness? Or (and I highly doubt this) does he see himself as ādoing the Lordās work?ā
Oh well. Iām not proclaiming anything here. Itās just a ponderance that, surely, has no definite answer. And thatās okay with me.
Edit:
Does Agent 47 believe in God?
Despite his cold and loveless upbringing, 47 has shown that he believes in a god on multiple occasions and even enjoyed a brief stint as a church gardener in Sicily.
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TLDR Warning:
Looking over this, I know Iām late, 47 is portrayed as a cold and merciless killer. This even spans to the first comic, with him clearly stating that he lacks empathy for those he kills. With him developing some form of empathy or with to escape his killer life in the second (I believe?) game, he turns to a life of farming/agriculture in a church garden. Having to return to his life of killing at the ICA after his Priest friend is kidnapped.
He is also seen caring for animals in the games and comics, with him taking care of a runaway rabbit as a child and a parrot in his later life.
You could say he hasnāt changed personality-wise but the brutal-ness of his kills and takedowns has definitely toned down A LOT.
47 does also express care and empathy towards his peers, with Lucas Grey (6) being one of a few clear signs of this. They work as a dynamic duo; Both of them with a similar game plan and they arenāt taking no for an answer.
The Handler/Assassin dynamic of 47 and Diana is also a good sign of him showing empathy. With Olivia Hall even expressing how 47 wants to protect her and how he cares for her in a way (You can find this line when hacking the core in Chongqing, China).
So overall, I doubt that 47 has changed too much; With him always having someone to protect/care for over the years (Absolution, anyone?)
But in conclusion, he shows deep empathy for those he knows on a personal level and will go out of his way to make sure needless death occurs, 47 only really canonically kills bad people and I assume he either puts zero thought into this or he ends up just seeing the evil in each person he kills, with his kills only being the targets according to lore (Carpathian Mountains would be an exception I think). So yeah, I donāt think he exactly has always been a merciless killer but he seems to find a balance in who deserves to die and who doesnāt, probably seeing himself as an Anti-Hero of sorts.
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I would actually argue the opposite; as seen in Absolution and WoA, where 47 seems to be at his most moral, he actually seemed to pull off his most brutal and painful kills, most of which were somewhat poetic, particularly when making it appear as an accident. In the earlier games, when he was solely killing for cash or to go after those involved in wronging him, he rarely dragged it out or made it exceptionally painful. He usually just got the kill done by the quickest, most efficient means and then left, whether that was with a bullet, a strangulation, a stab, or whatnot.
I would also argue against 47 ever really attaining empathy, except where Grey, Diana and Victoria were concerned. Grey and Victoria because heād been through what they had, and Diana because he knows what her parentsā deaths turned her into, and so he got to see the long-term effects of one of his kills in someone important to him. I donāt think he can feel what other ordinary people can feel, not in the usual sense.
Blood Money at least shows that he also kills people that he has to in order to defend himself or protect the anonymity of his identity.
Fair enough, I see what youāre getting at. To be fair, either way he definitely has seen some sorta moral changes over the years but itās more or less the same basis for his morality. He seems to have some sort of moral code but it seems to be extremely loose based on what he does.
But all-in-all. 47 has had some changes over the years but heās always gonna be our favourite bald, chrome-domed janitor of the criminal underworld to say the least.