Hitman is an
action-adventure stealth video game series
developed by the
Danish company
IO Interactive. The series is available on
Microsoft Windows as well as several video game consoles, including the
Nintendo GameCube,
PlayStation 2,
PlayStation 3,
Xbox, and
Xbox 360. The game series has since expanded into a novel,
Hitman: Enemy Within written by
William C. Dietz, followed by
Hitman: Damnation which is an official prequel to the installment,
Absolution, and a
Hitman film adaptation
in 2007, which is loosely based on the storyline of the games. Though
the film was negatively received, it became a financial success.
The series revolves around
Agent 47 (usually simply referred to as "47" or "Mr. 47"), a cloned
assassin-for-hire,
whose flawless record places him in high demand among the wealthy and
elite. The first original scriptwriter was Morten Iversen, who wrote the
scripts for Hitman: Codename 47 and Hitman 2: Silent Assassin. He also
contributed to Hitman: Contracts and Hitman: Bloodmoney. The games
feature a mix of orchestral and
electronica musical scores, composed by
Jesper Kyd (later noted for his work on the
Assassin's Creed series). A fifth installment of the series,
Hitman: Absolution, was released on November 20, 2012. Another
Hitman
game is to be the debut project at Square Enix's brand new Montreal
studio. IO Interactive will contribute to the project, with three
developers moving to Montreal from Denmark.
Story overview
The
first game
starts when 47 escapes from a sanitarium where he has seemingly been
imprisoned, being guided by a mysterious overseer. After a year, he is
shown to be working for the covert International Contract Agency, or
ICA, under his handler Diana Burnwood. He is sent on a mission to
eliminate four crime bosses across the world, before being hired to kill
a fifth target, Doctor Kovacs, at the sanitarium where 47 was
imprisoned. As events transpire, 47 finds out that all his targets were
part of an advanced cloning experiment, with him as the result; the
perfect, cold-blooded assassin. Professor Ort-Meyer, himself the
scientific head of the experiments, is revealed to be the client who
ordered the hits and, to protect himself, sends a squad of docile,
highly-trained '48' clones against 47. With help from a fellow agent, 47
defeats the clones and kills Ort-Meyer. In the aftermath of this
revelation, 47 tries to leave his assassin past behind (in
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin),
seeking peace in a Sicilian monastery, but is forced to become an
assassin once more when his mentor and friend, Father Vittorio, is
kidnapped. Getting back in contact with the ICA, he arranges with Diana
that he will work for them if they help trace Father Vittorio.
Eventually, it is revealed that Father Vittorio's kidnapping was
orchestrated by Sergei Zavorotko, the brother of one of the men whose
DNA helped create 47, to bring 47 out of retirement and kill everyone
who was in on a deal by Zavorotko to purchase a nuclear warhead. 47
successfully infiltrates Father Vittorio's monastery, killing Zavorotko
and all his men. Though Father Vittorio begs 47 to lead a good life, the
assassin decides to return to the ICA full time.
A few years later, by the time of
Hitman: Blood Money,
47's reputation has spread far and wide, with a large list of clients
requesting his services. During the course of the game, it becomes clear
that the ICA is under attack from a rival agency called the
'Franchise', who are also planting incriminating evidence against 47
through one of their agents, Alexander Leland Cayne. Eventually, the
agency is depleted to the point that Diana and 47 are the only ones
left. 47 himself is nearly killed in Paris, prompting
flashbacks over previous missions.
Eventually, 47 kills one of the two top 'Franchise' assassins and is
given a final contract by Diana, who has dissolved the ICA, to take down
the 'Franchise'. Soon, an old acquaintance of 47, former CIA agent
'Smith', reveals that the 'Franchise', currently planning to assassinate
the US president, is merely a puppet organization for Alpha Xerox, a
shadowy political organization who wish to monopolize the cloning
techniques that gave birth to 47: they wish to kill the President before
he can put a halt to their plans. 47 prevents the assassination, but
must go into hiding from the 'Franchise' and the police. At his hideout,
he is seemingly betrayed and poisoned by Diana, with the 'Franchise'
preparing to cremate the assassin so his DNA cannot be used for further
cloning experiments. 47's 'death' is later revealed to be a tactic which
would bring 47 within killing range of everyone at the funeral,
including 'Franchise' agent Cayne. 47, his identity now a secret, then
goes into hiding and Diana uses the remains of the 'Franchise' to revive
the ICA.
Years later, in
Hitman: Absolution,
Diana seemingly betrays the ICA, exposing it to the public. When the
Agency learns of her betrayal, they send operatives to eliminate her.
During a mission, Diana is forced to suddenly abandon 47 when she sees
that the Agency operatives are coming for her. Due to her sudden
disconnection from him, 47 is nearly killed during the mission and
decides to cut contact with the ICA. The Agency is eventually able to
locate 47 once again. Benjamin Travis, who is Diana's superior within
the Agency, contracts him to kill Diana and bring a girl she has in her
care, Victoria, to the Agency. 47 infiltrates Diana's base and wounds
her, but promises to keep Victoria safe from the ICA. It is revealed
that Victoria is a clone, like 47, created in secret by Travis, whom the
ICA would train to be an assassin. Diana did what she did to protect
the girl from becoming like 47. The assassin soon comes into conflict
with Blake Dexter, the head of Dexter Industries and a top figure in the
criminal underworld, who wishes to sell Victoria to the highest bidder.
47 finds himself fighting to keep Victoria safe as she is hunted by
Dexter's forces and the ICA. 47 eventually kills Dexter and his
conspirators along with Travis and his lieutenants, saving Victoria. At
the end, it is revealed that 47 spared Diana and it is implied that she
and 47 are once more working for the ICA.
Games
To date, five games have been released by
IO Interactive for the
Xbox 360,
PlayStation 3 and
Windows.
The fifth title "Hitman: Absolution" was announced by
Square Enix and released on November 20th, 2012 in the United States. All games are
action-adventure stealth-based, although it is possible to switch between
third-person and
first-person
perspective in all versions except in the first, which offers an
optional camera angle comparable to one used in fixed-camera adventure
games. The fifth installation in the series offers a few different
angles from which to observe your surroundings.
Hitman Triple Pack
A
Hitman compilation was released for the
PC and
PlayStation 2 containing the three games of the series;
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin,
Hitman: Contracts, and
Hitman: Blood Money. The compilation is called
Hitman The Triple Hit Pack in
Europe and
Hitman Trilogy in
North America.
It was released in
Europe on June 22, 2007,
and in
North America on June 30, 2007.
Silent Assassin,
Contracts and
Blood Money was released in HD remakes in the
Hitman HD Collection, which was released on January 29th, 2013.
The purpose for this new release of the three latest
Hitman games is to introduce new players to the series as well as giving old players one
Hitman package. The compilation also includes a
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men bonus disc with some special features.
Gameplay
The core objective in each level is to kill assigned targets (usually
multiple and sometimes additional targets as an optional bonus). In
most cases,
Hitman allows the player different options to
accomplish this task. Players can perform precise assassinations or
slaughter indiscriminately in order to achieve the mission goals;
however, the games reward a subtle approach by awarding special weapons
or cash bonuses if players earn a favourable rank (usually achievable by
eliminating only the assigned target, and without raising the alarm
doing so). 47 can also wear a variety of disguises (such as repairmen,
police officers and waiters) to fool enemies and gain access to
restricted areas. The focus of
Hitman is not hiding in the
shadows from the enemy, but rather blending in amongst them. It is up to
the player to initiate violence, since guards do not usually open fire
unless provoked.
In every game, the player character, 'Agent 47', has limited
maneuverability; he cannot jump, scale walls, or mantle up ledges (there
are a few pre-scripted places where he can jump from one balcony to
another, but these are very rare). This generally limits the player to a
single plane of movement, although he is often presented the
opportunity to move to higher or lower areas through the use of ladders,
stairs, elevators, or hills.
47 is given the ability to hop over minor obstructions in
Blood Money,
and can also climb certain edifices (such as fencing, vines, loose
bricks, crates etc.). There is also the option of climbing onto the top
of elevators through the hatch, allowing the player to strangle a victim
from above.
A major feature in the game is the 'tension' meter, detailing how
much attention the player is receiving from the public or guards and is
dependent on many things. For example, walking around in a guard's
uniform with the correct corresponding gun won't gather much notice,
whereas running around in a waiter's uniform in a restricted area while
carrying a visible weapon instead of an appetizer tray will result in an
unwanted confrontation with the guards.
In most cases, 47 is required to hide any dead bodies, to prevent
alarms. As introduced in Hitman Blood Money, 47 can hide a body in a
place such as a garbage dump/rubbish bin. Many targets can be
assassinated without firing a single shot; this style of gameplay became
more prevalent in
Blood Money, where the focus was to make some
of 47's hits look like accidents. Accidents can be caused remotely with
RU-AP mines acting on some (usually heavy and suspended) object,
directly by pushing someone over a railing, and by other, more elaborate
methods such as:
- Replacing a World War I replica gun to be used in the opera 'Tosca' with a real World War I era pistol.
- Crushing a man's neck using weights during his morning workout.
- Rigging a grill to set a victim on fire.
The second game of the series,
Silent Assassin, enforced the
concept of kills without firing more than a single shot. As per the
number of shots fired and stealth used, ratings were given after every
mission. The best of these was Silent Assassin indicating no more than
one shot per target (and a guard) with no alerts raised.
Methods of assassination
The
Hitman series permits the player to kill targets (or
non-targets) in a variety of ways, using firearms, melee weapons, or
even conventional objects that 47 picks up (such as shovels, fireplace
pokers, pool cues, etc.). In Hitman: 'Contracts', melee weapons such as
knives can be used to kill in more than one method, including forward
stabs, horizontal throat slitting, frontal slashes, repeated stabs under
the ribcage, or thrusting the blade into the carotid artery.
47 also has a
garrote,
or 'fiber wire'. The fiber wire is specially made for strangulation,
with reinforced handles. He carries it with him on every mission, even
those in which he is stripped of all other weaponry. It is also one of
the few weapons which can bypass metal detectors.
To achieve the ideal 'Silent Assassin' rank, it is required that 47
only kill his assigned targets, and no one else. The sedative syringes,
or chloroform in 'Hitman 2: Silent Assassin' (which only has a
temporary, dose-dependent effect, unlike syringes), exist for this
purpose, so that 47 may incapacitate an innocent person to take items or
clothing from their body without harming them, so it does not count
against the player in the final ranking. In
Blood Money, the ability to add sedatives to food and drink was added, to avoid direct confrontation.
Blood Money
also introduced the option to hold any NPC hostage using smaller arms
and use them as a human shield, and allows the player to knock the
hostage unconscious with the gun, saving the player sedatives for food
items or any impeding characters that are seated in chairs. In some
missions, if a murder can be made to look like accidental death (using
the accident system introduced in
Blood Money), some kills will
not be counted as hits, but as accidents. Any civilians or armed
personnel who witness a kill will count as witnesses, and will harm the
player's rank if they remain alive or alert nearby guards. If however,
someone (target or civilian) dies because of an accident, it will not
matter if there are witnesses. 47 has the option of killing witnesses
before they reach a guard, but the unnecessary murder will still count
against his rank, unless he kills them with an accident. Witnesses also
include anybody who sees 47 changing disguises or holding a weapon. In
the games prior to
Blood Money, the only consequence of having witnesses to a crime is that they will seek out police/guards and trigger an alert.
There are mission-specific options for killing a target in certain
levels. Notable examples include locking a target in a sauna to
stimulate a heart condition and cause cardiac arrest, poisoning a
target's meal (this becomes more widespread in
Blood Money), disguising 47 as a doctor and sabotaging a surgical operation, replacing a prop
Mauser C96
handgun with a real one at an opera rehearsal, causing an actor to
unwittingly kill the target, and causing stage pyrotechnics to explode
and set the target on fire.
In most cases, it is required that 47 also hide the body of killed or
unconscious victims, in order to avoid any unwanted alarm or if this is
the desired effect 47 can leave the victims body in a wide open space
for all to see.
