My favourite depiction of his character is in Silent Assassin but I do still love Blood Money’s depiction.
I never saw it as a betrayal. More so he shut himself off and feigned not getting close, last time he got close to someone they were kidnapped.
I like him in all Hitman games with the exception of WoA. He was just so damn docile, acting like a lost child in the presence of other main characters.
I understand why most don’t like him in BM but knowing that you’re nothing but a clone, design to do nothing in life but kill, always on the run, I think it’s understandable why he’s so cold / jaded.
I find that people lobbying for blank psychopath 47 is often looking for wish fulfilment and it often stinks of edge lord. I find noting appealing about a character who is so removed from the world and lack an understanding for humanity.
47 isn’t a traditional character, compared to most videogame/movie characters he’s an extreme. He’s cold, he’s calculated. However he isn’t dead inside, he’s very much a character who’s looking for his place in the world, limited by his creation and early life. I think there is something poetic about a tool, that tries to break free from it’s shackles.
I think this angle could have worked, if they played upon this. But sadly they don’t explore this angle in BM or resolve it. Absolution actually plays into this, however the shift from cold to caring comes very early and it loses most of it’s effect.
Yeah, I would have liked if 47 found out a bit later that Victoria was a clone herself and went through the same pain as him as a child and it would trigger his ptsd. Maybe during Dexter’s Lab.
Sorry but I disagree. I think knowing that you were just made to kill makes you depressed and questioning your entire meaning of life even more, that’s why I think his character in every Hitman game except BM fits him better. Like when he’s questioning his whole life in SA or his progress from being a puppet for others to become a self acting killer in the WOA trilogy. IMO this is still better than the robot he is in BM.
Well none of us are actual clones with the sole intention to be a hired hitman all our life to know how we would react when we would come to the realization of what we are 
Unless… someone on the forum comes forward and say they are 
I would say even, push Diana’s betrayal of the ICA off, it happening 2-3 missions in. Portray 47 as we saw him in BM, until the point of him pulling the trigger. Cut to his meltdown, finding his way back to his more humane side that is reflected in Victoria’s similar fate. Also cut Dexter’s arch short and focus on 47 run from the I.C.A and Travis.
Maybe Uber and all his clones
i think there’s a very strong case for describing hitman as a puzzle game with a power fantasy strap-on. the power fantasy is undoubtedly half of its appeal for many, so i’m not sure i can dismiss any and all wish fulfilment therein as simply edge lord (though cases could be made for contracts’ and absolution’s settings and atmosphere which leaned into it too much).
that’s a whole different topic though. 
i couldn’t disagree more with the last part either (sorry!). an alien/removed perspective, especially when it’s confronted by things players take for granted in real life, is potentially fascinating.
there’s a philip k dick short story called ‘Roog’, which is told from the perspective of a dog. it is absolutely brilliant. i’ve totally spoiled it, but you don’t realise (at least, i didn’t) it’s a dog’s perspective of binmen taking out trash till a ways in. it reframes a banal, everyday occurrence into an unsettling nightmare, all from just using a perspective shift.
not to rely too much on alan moore, but dr manhattan from watchmen is an interesting character because of his removed perspective. it’s a really great device, if handled well.
47 having an almost alien perspective would gel so well with hitman gameplay too. the game already has the player view the world as a dispassionate psychopath (seeing everything in it as a potential heath robinson murder machine), but to also reframe everyday stuff that happens in a level from a removed perspective would elevate its absurdist and satirical aspects.
one of my favourite aspects of blood money was how it realised how daft hitman really was.
as far as i see it, 47 is a fairly traditional anti-hero. there’s little more generic than a protagonist fighting for their individual freedom. hong kong cinema alone is bursting at the seams with similar archetypes and i think your description there could apply directly to some very popular characters in gaming; solid snake, for example.
i don’t think 47 is original; the game he’s in - and the way it can tell stories - very much is though (imo). i’d like them to play to the games mechanical strengths than try to make anything of 47, but i appreciate that’s a - title drop - unpopular opinion.
@Screaming_Meat repeatedly posting my exact opinions to save me having to type them out myself: now that’s what a good pal does! 
Let yourself be embraced by The Meat, dear child.
Potentially being the key word here, sadly IO don’t really play this angle and especially not in BM. Since he got no agency in that story or isn’t motivated by anything else then money. There is a great disconnect between 47 and his surroundings in that game. The closest we come to actually seeing 47 being an alien in a world he truly doesn’t understand was in C47, SA plays on this aspect within religious aspect to once place in the world.
I personally think 47 more removed approach would have worked for BM, by playing into the themes of past games with him removing himself from his humanity as a way to shield himself from the hardships of C47, SA and his close call with death in Contracts. Yet like many cynical characters they need to evolve from this arch and find their footing again. Something 47 doesn’t, he starts out as an arse and ends as an arse. Which is truly find disappointing.
Indeed he is, yet there is a character development. He isn’t as far removed from humanity that he he totally abandons it. If we followed BM arch, Dr. Manhattan would have stayed on Mars and wouldn’t have been moved Laurie.
I realised this aspect when we found out he was a superhuman created by a Saturday morning evil scientist with an accent an world view that would make a nazi pans wet. I would say the series always been upfront with it’s campy undertone 
Yes and no, most heroes and anti-heroes does have more character development. The series have never really lingered on the emotional pain of being a test tube baby created for killing, the first time we actually get an real taste of this is in Absolution with painful flashbacks to the asylum. I would say that compared to many other similar characters we seen very few glimpse into 47 view of the world, he’s always been very removed and almost “blank” character. In many of the games 47 have little to no agency.
Oh…
they certainly don’t in terms of narrative, though i’d say that 47’s physical disconnect from many of bm’s levels is approaching that ‘alien’ ballpark. i think the reason ‘a new life’ is such a popular level is because of that incongruity.
good shout on c47, though i think h2:sa is where they try to humanise him, albeit clumsily. he might be genetically engineered, but not knowing one’s place in the world is very relatable and i personally think that was a bit of mistep.
that’s an interesting way to tie it all together.
though i do love good character development, not every character needs it for them to be engaging. i think a lot of it has to do with the format/medium the story is in, but a character like 47, where the actual stories and character development happen around him, is a good case.
another good example is philip marlowe, an indisputably great character. we learn very little about him and he never actually changes or develops across the stories he’s in. part of what we are drawn to is his fascinating perspective on everything. he’s our guide through his world and the stories that make it, those of the criminals he is up against and the clients he must protect.
that’s a very good point!
very true! i meant less in terms of narrative and more the gameplay. h2:sa and contracts start to take themselves quite seriously, whereas bm…
…it’s hard to describe, but the quintessential images of bm - for me - are things like the piano hanging over angelina mason in her cartoon crow costume or seeing 47, a 6ft bald genetically engineered assassin, disguised as a clown at a kid’s birthday party with murderous intent.
that’s what bm brought to the table.
i can’t say i agree on that. look at any characters in long form stories: comic book heroes, pre-craig james bond, tv detectives - they rarely change and don’t need to do so to remain intriguing.
h2:sa has some 47 voiceover, contracts is entirely narrated by him, absolution (as you mentioned) delves into his emotional pain, and 2/3’s of the woa trilogy dig deep into his pathology.
we learn a lot about 47 over the course of the games. i just kind wish we didn’t, you know? he simply works better - for me - when he is a mystery and not the focus of the story.
Exactly, i feel like they’ve ruined the Mystery of 47 and especially Diana. I dont need to know who are Dianas Parents and how they died and that it was 47 who did it - this is by the way one of the worst and lamest things they’ve come up with.
I just wish they haven’t crossed the line of showing Dianas Face in Absolution and added all this backstory of hers - It has taken away the (for me) most interesting Part of her Character.
no writer can compete with a blank slate that audiences can fill in on their own. sometimes less is more.
That might work for a character that exist inside a void of a limited run, but for a character that existed for the past 21 years. Might not benefit from being just a t-800 with start to finish.
To be fair, every new Bond is more or less a clean slate. Where each actor brings some different charms and ideas into the character, also the movies changes a lot with it’s time period to stay relevant. Something I would find hard to believe if the set point was Sean Connery for the past 50+ years.
Sadly this is inevitably with a any kind of medium that existed for more then two decades, at some point we will dive into aspects that might have intrigued us and went the cats out of the box it’s hard to put it back. That said I’m not crazy about the parent angle, even though it was a nice motivation for Diana in WOA trilogy, even if they could have played it without being a cliché.
All the signs where always point towards her coming into the light at some point, you can only “tease” your audience so much before the effect wears off. At some point if they kept Diana mystery, she would lose her appeal. It would have worked if the series ended long ago or they moved past her at some point.
In a game like C47 she didn’t need to be an actual character, back then she was just a set of text messages on a laptop. However with the closing of Contracts and the agency being eradicated they could only keep her “hidden” for so long.
I think her character reveal would have been more powerful if the first time we meet her wasn’t naked in the shower and IO kept Absolution story more focus on his relationship with the ICA, like H3 did.
judge dredd is 43 years old and still going strong. we have yet to see his face. just sayin.
so help me, if anyone posts stallone i will weep like a cheerleader on prom night.
