For me this debate is relatively clear: In Hitman you might be murdering your targets in cruel ways, but as it‘s just a game you have none of the bad aspects of murder. No funerals, no families crying, no realistic graphic violence - none of the real life sorrows that real murder comes with. Most important: nobody gets hurt. Instead you get to enjoy everything that‘s „fun“ about murder: Making a plan, choosing weapons, solving puzzles, tension, etc.. It‘s exactly the same reason why people play games like paintball or airsoft. War is gruesome and full of death and sorrow, but if you‘re just shooting plastic balls that don‘t hurt, you‘re left with all the fun aspects of it.
Bangkok, H1. After killing the target, Jordan Cross, his father attends his funeral and is kidnapped and tortured for money by the client who hired 47 for the job. @@julian4277
I think it is also worth talking about how 47 is reflected outside of gameplay. 47 is described as having few comforts in life, good food and nice suits are two of the big ones. But the third major one is ensuring a job is done the way he was created to do it. Cleanly, silent, and efficiently. He will kill to keep things quiet and efficient and won't feel bad about it, but he prefers to do things the "right" way. Combined with the reputation of his skill, and many people thinking him a myth, Silent Assassin is likely the 47 way. Beyond that, 47 outright admits he doesn't have a moral center or empathy, but he is frequently shown to trust Diana, who is depicted as having a very strong moral compass. I don't remember where, but one place even mentions that 47 doesn't choose his contracts he lets Diana do it (for the reason stated at the very top of this bit). Lastly, if you wanna do a bit of introducing reality to help a narrative, the Voice Actor for 47 (David Bateson) has mentioned that in the games, his favorite kills are dropping pianos on people. If you want to (like I do) take an implication from that, accident kills do offer some measure of comfort for the targets loved ones. No messy murder investigations, no fearing that more strikes on the family are coming, just a sudden freak accident that could have happened to anyone snuffing them out.
I didn’t put it in the video, but I did have a section about how 47 would canonically behave. How he is the best for a reason and staging accidents is how most of his killings go. It’s the reason why Silent Assassin is being pushed because 47 is THE silent assassin, and players can work their way to be just as good as him. And yea, I should’ve at least mentioned Diana.
It is kind of odd how Freelancer kind of paints 47 as a 'crime fighter', while offering payouts for shooting guards in the head, or rewarding collateral damage...
I have this personal theory that in freelancer you actually work for the syndicates instead of against them. Doing echo crime against the echo crime syndicate? Some bones for the lobbyists! Doing silent assassin runs with silenced weapons against the assassination syndicate? Sounds too familiar.. Sick games? Randomly selected tasks for YOU to complete! Espionage? You're testing the security systems! Arms trafficking? It's not like you're the one bringing in weapons.. Big pharma? Testing some poisons on people is sure a nice thing for them. The people you eliminate are not the ones FROM the syndicates, they are the ones against the syndicate! 47 knows what they are doing, Diana knows what they are doing.. they are in the money making business, and they are robbing the bank both figuratively and literally. Funny enough the game is lying to the player if this is true, because otherwise people would be against the game itself IRL if you didn't actually play the good person, so my theory is at one point late in development they changed the narrative as if you were not playing as the criminal in the game. What did we learn? People will not just happily go against anyone as long as they are convinced they are the ones doing the good thing, but they will make fun of the red flags they decided to ignore all along.
I think it makes sense that 47's targets are complete monsters. If he was a bad, low rent hitman he'd spend most of his time taking out little old grannies for insurance money or taking out spouses who cheated. it's believable that the rich and powerful would be almost as amoral as 47 himself
I remember in the older games not all your targets were monsters. One level you had to take out a Private Detective because the client thought he betrayed him. Turns out he was being tortured in the basement.
I've always wanted a sort of Hitman/Manhunt crossover. A game that makes you question your own morals by making you do things that are not black and white, and just a very indistinguishable shade of gray. A game where you don't go after evil bond villains who rape babies and kick puppies (always), but instead take out that sweet cookie baking grandmother whose greedy evil son wants his inheritance money *now.* It's an easy gig physically, but mentally it's not. Or you have to kill the whistleblower of a company that has been trading illegal drugs.
47 as a character is really interesting to me. He's a coldblooded killer who doesn't flinch at even the cruelest and grisliest of deaths. He's willing to give Silvio Caruso a nervous breakdown by making him think his mother is back from the dead. But at the same time, he is able to care about and help people. He clearly cares about Diana, Lucas Grey, and Olivia in WoA. In Chongqing, if you start on the balcony and stay there, he'll give a woman advice about her friend. He goes out of his way to help Agent Smith even if he doesn't have to. (Even if he gets a little angry at him.) At the very least, he understands right and wrong and does what will stop more wrongs from being comitted, even if he does it violently and cruelly.
One thing you don't mention is the cinematic after the Bangkok mission where Diana and 47 work out that there is a shadow client. After Thomas Cross's billions are liquidated, 47 says, "Someone got rich, the contract was just. How is this our problem?" which suggests that there are criteria for a hit and there are contracts that ICA, or at least 47 and Diana, do not accept.
Good find, perhaps there are criteria for the ICA, or Diana and 47 have their own within the ICA. I definitely should have at least mentioned Diana in the video.
Yes ICA contracts have guidelines. I don't remember them all off the top of my head, but one is that board members are not to be targeted. Which is what made the ending of Hitman 1 (2016) so significant.
In ''Birth of a Hitman'' Diana outright states that Handlers choose contracts their assigned assasins undertake. She mentions some handlers, such as her mentor, Gore, have a ''philantrophic streak'' and choose contracts to take out evil, or at least immoral, people.
There are regulations against taking a contract for personal gain; Diana mentions this after you complete Nightfall in HITMAN 2. Of course, she mentions this despite her breaking that rule to find out more about 47's past, but...
The one mechanic I wish they'd bring back is the notariaty system from blood money where your score was accompanied by a newspaper article describing the aftermath of the level which tied back into the story by making you more noticeable in following levels if you left too many witnesses or simply slaughtered everyone in the level.
It isn't a huge focus of the recent games, but I love how they don't do an Absolution and walk back on 47 being a sociopath. He isn't waiting for just the right person or kid to come by and make him feel empathy, and it would be wrong to suggest he has anyone in his life as close as a friend even by the end of the third game. But he has some measure of appreciation for Diana, and he seems able to put his full trust in her even if he can't relate to her in any meaningful way. He's not a realistic character, but as portrayals of sociopathy go the devs put in the effort to not make it 'his brain is wrong so he is naturally freakish and evil'.
Id say it's good that hitman targets are so comicly evil and we are seen as a good guy, since it makes it possible to play the games as a sandbox, but it would be really cool to have a game where you play as hitman (not 47) and you would actually have to worry aour moeny, morals, police and well.. basically less romantic version of hitman
"While the fictional ICA is immoral, the developers IO interacive are not, IO encorage you to only kill the targets and minimise collateral damage" I think this line hides the crux of the issue at hand. I don't for a second believe that the developers are setting any moral quandries or standards by encouraging you to only kill targets. A developer may put a bit of themselves into the games they create but taking morals directly from encouraged gameplay is in my opinion a very naive way to view this. To me the xp bonus is solely an incentive to push players into deeper interaction with the games mechanics, which are designed around the idea of being a hitman not a serial killer, rather than any moral stance. Similarly I would take issue with seeing a case where a game system encourages killing and treating it as the developers morality (for example I'm of the opinion that Undertale encourages its genocide route, rpgs like Baldrs gate 3 have systems that encourage evil acts). These systems exist to enrich the gameplay and can exist independently of any moral stance on the developer's part, I would argue the only place the developers moral stance comes up is in the narrative framing of these elements which hitman does a bit via the framing of the targets. But there is very little narrative examination of all the possible collateral damage, to my knowledge, rendering attempts to read into the morality of the gameplay systems surrounding that to be unjustified.
Maybe I should have framed that differently but yes, morals aren’t a key part in making Hitman. It’s more so IOI discouraging overtly bad behavior, especially in regard to civilians, rather than encouraging good behavior for the sake of morals. Their goal is yes, to enrich gameplay and broaden the interactions the player have. As a byproduct, you just so happen to behave more morally (other than hurting people). They don’t want people to play this game like Call of Duty, where you charge in, kill the target, and run away. You can, but they want you to stage accidents and find more creative ways of killing, because that’s what they designed the whole game for. And I don’t think Undertale encourages you to ever commit genocide. You can kill, but you don’t have to kill absolutely everyone. It’s just an option, a very tedious and difficult option. This video wasn’t made to argue that Hitman is an ethical game, more so an exercise showing how you can behave morally (or not) in this game.
Good video but the 47’s internal story os about being able to become more social and to become his own character(if you get my drift), as seen in the 3rd to last level where you are subtly pushed to allow 47 to have a normal conversation with someone and offer relationship advice, other than that great video
i highly recommend learning the full story. its amazing and will change the way you look at 47 for sure. theres many good breakdown videos i recommend watching.
Great Video! A lot of solid points too! I will say that most of the targets, as you mentioned, are bad people. An example would be one of the targets in Chongqing, Hush. He, on the daily, commits war crimes by mind torture/experimentation. Bad dude. Even with all these bad targets, you didn't mention the non-targets are are also evil, like Helen West. She bakes people into muffins. No joke. In the end, good analysis and video essay. Also I couldn't tell if your remark on the pacifist side about if someone had done it was sarcastic or not, so here. A guy named Trzebiet does some amazing Hitman stuff and recently did an entire series about doing each mission without killing anyone, or that it couldn't ever even be placed on his fault. Great series to watch, highly recommend.
Wow I never knew about the evil muffin lady, that’s both funny and scary. And yea, I was just too lazy to watch a video on RUclips of someone not killing everyone, but I’m sure I’ve seen the thumbnail by now.
@@maxwellmagee4816 there’s a RUclips video about her. I don’t remember who did it but it goes through all her convos with Janus, and just around the day. It’s really interesting. The bloodstain in the neighbors house is, if I remember correctly, a sign that she killed the owner?
Just wanted to say I'm a first time viewer and I'm subbing. I love these breakdown type of videos that look deeper. Kind of reminds me of Sunnyv2 and his video essays. Anyways, this was awesome and I hope you keep going and gaining popularity. Thank you for making good content!
@@MojaveMoronSunny v2 made decent content until he went off the rails and became just another commentary youtube content farm who thinks "wokeness" is a real issue.
edit:written at the time of hitman 3 release. 🇮🇳🙏 *LONG COMMENT IN APPRECIATION FOR HITMAN TRILOGY* Hitman games from 2016 to 2021 are my all time fav games ever personally even as a hardcore hitman fan from old days I didn't find much to nitpick in them. It's a miracle how after all the developement issues these games still hold quality (some inconsistencies yes like the rushed cutscenes in hitman 2018 but even then the narrative was so good and still picture cutscenes did good job)and ended on a high note with the third and most recent hitman 3 even having a great story. And plus... All of it you can play in vr now. Graphics.. look great and with ray tracing it looks immaculate now esp. the china level. Also.. mild spoiler but the very first e3 trailer from 2015 for first Hitman season is basically the end of hitman 3 showing all upcoming locations and targets and the trailer ends with Diana saying.. it's good to have u back. Also theres a cool hidden ending which will blow your mind if you've played hitman c47 like me the very first game of series. Hitman isn't even supposed to compete with other games on basis of guns/ cars/ effects explosions etc yet cyberpunk looks trash even compared to hitman. Graphically speaking, cybertrash ain't got shit on Hitman's Berlin and china level for eg. The real meat of hitman is NPC / target characters and world stories especially the dialogue and replayability. the amount of hidden dialogues is impeccable in these hitman games. I don't think it's even possible to hear everything from every scenario you can create and that's not even counting the scripted story stuff you hear in mission opportunities. The dialogue here is the stuff of legend in the whole gaming I'd say. We praise writing for tlou or uncharted and things like that but story telling here is so different. And so immediate. For eg comments on how NPCs after waking up from a knockout say and even change dialogue based upon whether or not they witnessed you before being knocked out, whether they remember you, what disguise you wearing, who are they detailing your info to? Is it a guard or a fellow NPC , the NPCs will describe your illegal actions to guards surprisingly in a very detailed and varied way, guards will taunt you and command you to drop various items by their names while trying to arrest you and even alert others if you try to shoot with empty gun, NPCs even will even have a funny comment if they realize you're wearing their clothes after knocking them out and they're naked. then there's gunpoint/ getting shot dialogue, subdue dialogue, nps commenting on your disguise and even noticing things like if you're wearing a too hot of an outfit on a sunny day or a different/ whacky suit that has no context to the location you're playing in, all elusive targets have their own backstories and that content most people never dive into that extensively. Infact content of elusive targets may now be forever lost and all of it never felt like a side / low effort chore. It all had its own briefing videos, own voice acting, own stories, own character moments with targets and had the same attention and care as the main missions from the main game. Then there's so many "hidden" dialogues for eg in the 2016 the landslide mission, after killing Marco abiatti his bodyguard will go to the tower to his colleagues and be sad about how he couldn't save his boss and he'll be fired again which will make things difficult for him and his pregnant wife. Just the sheer amount of backstory details in these new hitman games is quite simply ridiculous. The dialogue frankly to me seems endless. Like is said, It's literally impossible to have heard everything for every scenario in these games
Just wanna add, in the train mission, most of them aren't ICA agents (it was effectively destroyed already) but Providence agents. Also, I sort of feel that wiping Edwards' memory effectively kills him. His personality, his memories, even the voice he uses are gone.
Thanks for the correction, many others pointed the ICA bit as well. As for Edwards being wiped, I feel like his old self was killed yes, but I see it more as a new man being born instead. I just don't know how long that new person will survive, out in an abandoned train in the mountains, but hey there's a chance at least.
Hey, thank you everyone for watching this video! I appreciate the subs but I really recommend watching my other videos to see if you actually want to subscribe to me. I probably won't make another video about Hitman so I don't want to disappoint those looking for another video like this.
At present i literally have 3600 hours into Hitman 3. 1600 of those hours exclusively on Freelancer of which i already have Freelancer level 100, did prestige 3 times and tend to gamble a few hundred million at a time. I can promise u the way i tend to play tends to lean on how fast i wanna complete an objective the non glitchy way. Morals tend to never really matter.
I used to kill alot of people in a level, yet as I run around a level without killing anybody, you can hear stories that make you realize that they aren't some npc made for our amusement.
I feel this too, the world seems very alive and I love it. I just wished the ai is smarter so that the world can really be believable (at least for me).
how i see it is that the positive reinforcement and just the anount of gameplay reward in being a silent assassin, both in raising the skill ceiling and having cleaner, more precise map interactions, is like a cartesian re-creation of morality from scratch in an environment where any sort of morality is cast into doubt. like, descartes' cogito asks the question "how can i trust that anything exists if i can't trust the senses?," and hitman asks "what point is there in morality and moral actions if i was born to kill, good at it, and it's what i do?" it's a steady build up from an amoral environment where you find incentives not to hurt civilians, to kill with accidents so that you won't be found but also so that you can remain a myth and not strike fear into those who don't deserve it
This video is amazingly well done. I watched it, and figured it was something from a channel with over a million subs, and probably got close to a million views. I was so surprised to see you only have just over 500 subs and 200 views on this vieo. Amazing. I subbed right away👍
Dude forget about Requiem level in Blood Money where 47 came back from the grave and kills everyone in Franchise including a Priest and a honest Journalist (likely choose for his reputation by the bad guy to give his bais side of events) just doing their job who ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time.
He was genetically engineered by his creators to be the perfect assassin and with very minimal to no emotions after all which makes him more of a psychopath so...
2 things.. first is the ethics of a hitman discussed the way it was in this video.. all I want to add is that they do work like this as long as we arrive the start button with the preconceived notion that life is preferable to death. We do eliminate people who cause a lot of harm to people, but with every innocent person taken out we also prevent those people from being exploited by others in the future and we prevent them from all future harm and suffering alongside any future generations they'd help to create. With that being said is the silent assassin the most ethical playthrough, or the least? Is it better to make everyone believe bad people died in accidents or to take them out the most brutal way in front of people whose whole lives will be affected by the trauma.. which will contribute to humanity's collective knowledge about the agony of life until they all collectively arrive to the conclusion that the most morally just thing to do is to break the circle of life in order to end the never ending suffering of all living beings? Anyways, the other things is.. that version of the Ode to Joy was magnificent! I guess how time consuming it must've been to cut it together, but it was amazingly done and I'll definitely remember that every time I play the final mission in the future!
@@videofreak8188 But do they actually know what is good for themselves or were they just brainwashed into wanting to continue their miserable existence to make others richer?
Glad you asked if it's truly more ethical? I don't know definitively myself. I think if people were openly brutally killed, it would create an oppressive environment that would not only affect these powerful people, but also normal people as that oppression trickles down. Also, I generally think its better for innocent people to decide if they want to live and not force an end to their "suffering." I appreciate you taking your time for this comment though.
Alot more darker in tone and atmosphere especially contracts. Blood Money is my personal favorite out of all of them. In one level you have to take out a guy in witness protection, on his youngest sons Birthday, so he doesnt speak out against the client.
*the kid was raised to be a controlled Eliminator for the Illuminati 👁 casualties are welcomed and appreciated 🙏💀 Mafia 3 is also a really good sociopath/murder simulator 👌 Also, can we talk about how Hitman Absolution is the most technically sound Hitman game ever made??? the A.I., the Vibe, the Features....that game does NOT get the respect it deserves.*
Hitman is a video game that only people with zero mental illness should play, if you are mentally unstable with bizarre unsafe behavior and need help with trying to overcome your negative mindset from a psychologist. Then, stay away from this game! This will NOT make your life any better. I think we can all agree on that. There's a reason as well this game is rated M for Mature.
@@dankym The GTA series is the same, they even talked about it on the news on how dangerous it can be to the youth to be exposed to it at a young age, the Hitman series is no different.
to be really fair if you are mentally unstable and have dangerous behavior (either to yourself or your surroundings) : you should seek therapeutic help, not play videogames. no matter if it's Hitman or Minecraft. Also, let's be real : many games, most notably sandboxes offer the player the ability to do messed up things, even when the devs didn't intended it. I mean : take some of the most apparently harmless and friendly game like the Sims, and ask their playerbase... countless examples of players murdering NPCs by drowning them in pools, burning them alives or imprisoning them in a basement without food or sanitation... Grand strategy game (like the Civilization franchise or Paradoxes games) are usually all about being a genocidal maniac that will nuke cities to win... Or the minecraft devs that didn't expected that the villagers farming and iron golems summoning mechanic would end up being used by the players to make slave camps for free ressource (iron or wheat farms) and of course all games that include pvp or pve with the ability to kill either other players or NPC players will always find a way to do a massacre. Currently there is no sufficient evidence that videogams, even violent ones (such as Hitman or GTA) increase violennt behavior Of course, people that are violent may end up being attracted to those games, but this is is a different causal link : in this case: violent people like games about violence and not : game about violence cause violent behavior irl. So ultimately : if you have any kind of behavioral issue : go seek a therapist following scientifically proven practices (such as clinical psychology or psychiatry) but there is no evidence that games with edgy/dark themes such as Hitman or GTA make people more violent (and agan, even in games where extreme violence is absolutely not the actual theme of the game, players find a way to do mass murder, because playing as as sociopath in a game without actual consequences and moral implication is *fun*, this is the sole reason, the same reason why people will spend hours gathering all loot, items and achievements in a game, explore all the map or try to make huge projects that are remarkable. it's ultimatley the unlimited freedom that the sandbox offer us : the freedom to be nice to the NPC or to brutally exterminate them in the funniest way possible (usually including explosions if possible). regarding young childrens it's not that it will make them more violent : it's simply that graphic violence (which is portrayed in games like gta and hitman) and mature themes such as crime, drug, political and institutional violence, torture, assasinations, etc will scare them it's the same reason you don't expose childrens to horror movie, it's not that they might start being more violent, but that the experience will be too scary for them, and therefore at best not a good experience for them, at worst a thaumatic experience this is why movies and videogames have rating regarding the more adult content (violence, sex, gore, scary stuff, strong language, and other adult themes) basically : exposing young kids to Hitman or GTA or gore horror movies will not make them psycho killers, but could give them ptsd, or at least recurring nightmares and irrational fears which is a very bad thing this is why media should be adapted to their audience and the vulnerabilities of said audience, in the case of childrens, being easely impresionable and therefore easely scared or even traumatized
I was just watching a real-life crime documentary where a woman in Texas in 1980 was brutally unalived by being hit 41 TIMES with an axe by another jealous woman in a love triangle involving the husband. The perpetrator then went to court and incredibly used a "self-defense" verdict to get off and avoid prison! In another case, from the same tv show, a teenage girl unalived her classmate by stabbing her and got a measly 7 years. Both of these women should have been given life in prison or execution, and back in the 1800s it would have definitely been execution by hanging! But American society today has become decadent and soft on criminals, especially in liberal states. In both cases the families were justified in hiring someone like agent 47. If the legal system becomes unjust, I believe the victims should go outside the law. I also consider agent 47 to be a type of antihero because he takes down rich, powerful and evil people that are normally beyond the reach of law enforcement. The same can be said of the Punisher, my favorite comic book character. Technically, both the Punisher and Agent 47 are "breaking the law" but I still consider both to be antiheroes because the Punisher doesn't harm innocents and both men take down evil people that are normally too powerful for police to handle. In short, I believe that hiring someone like agent 47 is justifiable only if your family has been victimized and the legal system refuses to provide fair justice.
For me this debate is relatively clear: In Hitman you might be murdering your targets in cruel ways, but as it‘s just a game you have none of the bad aspects of murder. No funerals, no families crying, no realistic graphic violence - none of the real life sorrows that real murder comes with. Most important: nobody gets hurt. Instead you get to enjoy everything that‘s „fun“ about murder: Making a plan, choosing weapons, solving puzzles, tension, etc..
It‘s exactly the same reason why people play games like paintball or airsoft. War is gruesome and full of death and sorrow, but if you‘re just shooting plastic balls that don‘t hurt, you‘re left with all the fun aspects of it.
Facts.
Thomas Cross canonically dies because of attending his son's funeral, which we caused. Normally I'm all "eat the rich", but he didn't deserve that.
@@rclipse1985 in which level this happens?
Bangkok, H1. After killing the target, Jordan Cross, his father attends his funeral and is kidnapped and tortured for money by the client who hired 47 for the job. @@julian4277
@@rclipse1985 he's not just rich, he's also a bad guy, at least in the story
I think it is also worth talking about how 47 is reflected outside of gameplay.
47 is described as having few comforts in life, good food and nice suits are two of the big ones. But the third major one is ensuring a job is done the way he was created to do it. Cleanly, silent, and efficiently. He will kill to keep things quiet and efficient and won't feel bad about it, but he prefers to do things the "right" way. Combined with the reputation of his skill, and many people thinking him a myth, Silent Assassin is likely the 47 way.
Beyond that, 47 outright admits he doesn't have a moral center or empathy, but he is frequently shown to trust Diana, who is depicted as having a very strong moral compass. I don't remember where, but one place even mentions that 47 doesn't choose his contracts he lets Diana do it (for the reason stated at the very top of this bit).
Lastly, if you wanna do a bit of introducing reality to help a narrative, the Voice Actor for 47 (David Bateson) has mentioned that in the games, his favorite kills are dropping pianos on people.
If you want to (like I do) take an implication from that, accident kills do offer some measure of comfort for the targets loved ones. No messy murder investigations, no fearing that more strikes on the family are coming, just a sudden freak accident that could have happened to anyone snuffing them out.
I didn’t put it in the video, but I did have a section about how 47 would canonically behave. How he is the best for a reason and staging accidents is how most of his killings go. It’s the reason why Silent Assassin is being pushed because 47 is THE silent assassin, and players can work their way to be just as good as him.
And yea, I should’ve at least mentioned Diana.
I mean, 47 clearly has empathy and a moral center. He was created to not have emotions but he does
@@simoneidson21 Yeah, Ord-Meyer certainly wasn't perfect.
canonically(from npc dialogue) Silent assassin/SASO is the way 47 completes every mission
yet he kills a courier, a priest and a journalist in blood money
It is kind of odd how Freelancer kind of paints 47 as a 'crime fighter', while offering payouts for shooting guards in the head, or rewarding collateral damage...
Whatever helps him sleep better at night
because Freelancer is a mediocre gamemode, go figure
I have this personal theory that in freelancer you actually work for the syndicates instead of against them.
Doing echo crime against the echo crime syndicate? Some bones for the lobbyists!
Doing silent assassin runs with silenced weapons against the assassination syndicate? Sounds too familiar..
Sick games? Randomly selected tasks for YOU to complete!
Espionage? You're testing the security systems!
Arms trafficking? It's not like you're the one bringing in weapons..
Big pharma? Testing some poisons on people is sure a nice thing for them.
The people you eliminate are not the ones FROM the syndicates, they are the ones against the syndicate!
47 knows what they are doing, Diana knows what they are doing.. they are in the money making business, and they are robbing the bank both figuratively and literally.
Funny enough the game is lying to the player if this is true, because otherwise people would be against the game itself IRL if you didn't actually play the good person, so my theory is at one point late in development they changed the narrative as if you were not playing as the criminal in the game.
What did we learn? People will not just happily go against anyone as long as they are convinced they are the ones doing the good thing, but they will make fun of the red flags they decided to ignore all along.
@@ZubtigoPlazaBait used to be believable 💀
@@junpeixix but it is a meh gamemode, the only way to reset your gear is through limited prestige lol, you might as well play contracts at this point
I think it makes sense that 47's targets are complete monsters. If he was a bad, low rent hitman he'd spend most of his time taking out little old grannies for insurance money or taking out spouses who cheated. it's believable that the rich and powerful would be almost as amoral as 47 himself
I remember in the older games not all your targets were monsters. One level you had to take out a Private Detective because the client thought he betrayed him. Turns out he was being tortured in the basement.
@mystic_scythe in real life sure, but in a fictional story they can be written as more sympathetic or heroic. Just look at pirates.
I've always wanted a sort of Hitman/Manhunt crossover.
A game that makes you question your own morals by making you do things that are not black and white, and just a very indistinguishable shade of gray.
A game where you don't go after evil bond villains who rape babies and kick puppies (always), but instead take out that sweet cookie baking grandmother whose greedy evil son wants his inheritance money *now.* It's an easy gig physically, but mentally it's not.
Or you have to kill the whistleblower of a company that has been trading illegal drugs.
@@minihalkoja590Or a company that builds planes
@@minihalkoja590 Cruelty Squad is probably the closest thing to it then if you can endure the uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, unconventionalness of it
47 as a character is really interesting to me. He's a coldblooded killer who doesn't flinch at even the cruelest and grisliest of deaths. He's willing to give Silvio Caruso a nervous breakdown by making him think his mother is back from the dead.
But at the same time, he is able to care about and help people. He clearly cares about Diana, Lucas Grey, and Olivia in WoA. In Chongqing, if you start on the balcony and stay there, he'll give a woman advice about her friend. He goes out of his way to help Agent Smith even if he doesn't have to. (Even if he gets a little angry at him.)
At the very least, he understands right and wrong and does what will stop more wrongs from being comitted, even if he does it violently and cruelly.
Well we all would get fustrated at smith he’s been getting kidnapped and put in his underwear for around 30 years at this point
One thing you don't mention is the cinematic after the Bangkok mission where Diana and 47 work out that there is a shadow client. After Thomas Cross's billions are liquidated, 47 says, "Someone got rich, the contract was just. How is this our problem?" which suggests that there are criteria for a hit and there are contracts that ICA, or at least 47 and Diana, do not accept.
Good find, perhaps there are criteria for the ICA, or Diana and 47 have their own within the ICA. I definitely should have at least mentioned Diana in the video.
Yes ICA contracts have guidelines. I don't remember them all off the top of my head, but one is that board members are not to be targeted. Which is what made the ending of Hitman 1 (2016) so significant.
In ''Birth of a Hitman'' Diana outright states that Handlers choose contracts their assigned assasins undertake. She mentions some handlers, such as her mentor, Gore, have a ''philantrophic streak'' and choose contracts to take out evil, or at least immoral, people.
There are regulations against taking a contract for personal gain; Diana mentions this after you complete Nightfall in HITMAN 2. Of course, she mentions this despite her breaking that rule to find out more about 47's past, but...
The one mechanic I wish they'd bring back is the notariaty system from blood money where your score was accompanied by a newspaper article describing the aftermath of the level which tied back into the story by making you more noticeable in following levels if you left too many witnesses or simply slaughtered everyone in the level.
That sounds cool, maybe they could update it with social media posts or something similar.
I really do miss that, too!
The "Ode to Joy" synched to whatever 47 has been doing on the Murder Express train has got me laughing
It isn't a huge focus of the recent games, but I love how they don't do an Absolution and walk back on 47 being a sociopath. He isn't waiting for just the right person or kid to come by and make him feel empathy, and it would be wrong to suggest he has anyone in his life as close as a friend even by the end of the third game. But he has some measure of appreciation for Diana, and he seems able to put his full trust in her even if he can't relate to her in any meaningful way. He's not a realistic character, but as portrayals of sociopathy go the devs put in the effort to not make it 'his brain is wrong so he is naturally freakish and evil'.
Id say it's good that hitman targets are so comicly evil and we are seen as a good guy, since it makes it possible to play the games as a sandbox, but it would be really cool to have a game where you play as hitman (not 47) and you would actually have to worry aour moeny, morals, police and well.. basically less romantic version of hitman
Maybe for the next reboot, but it sounds like a cool idea.
"While the fictional ICA is immoral, the developers IO interacive are not, IO encorage you to only kill the targets and minimise collateral damage"
I think this line hides the crux of the issue at hand.
I don't for a second believe that the developers are setting any moral quandries or standards by encouraging you to only kill targets.
A developer may put a bit of themselves into the games they create but taking morals directly from encouraged gameplay is in my opinion a very naive way to view this.
To me the xp bonus is solely an incentive to push players into deeper interaction with the games mechanics, which are designed around the idea of being a hitman not a serial killer, rather than any moral stance.
Similarly I would take issue with seeing a case where a game system encourages killing and treating it as the developers morality (for example I'm of the opinion that Undertale encourages its genocide route, rpgs like Baldrs gate 3 have systems that encourage evil acts).
These systems exist to enrich the gameplay and can exist independently of any moral stance on the developer's part, I would argue the only place the developers moral stance comes up is in the narrative framing of these elements which hitman does a bit via the framing of the targets.
But there is very little narrative examination of all the possible collateral damage, to my knowledge, rendering attempts to read into the morality of the gameplay systems surrounding that to be unjustified.
Maybe I should have framed that differently but yes, morals aren’t a key part in making Hitman. It’s more so IOI discouraging overtly bad behavior, especially in regard to civilians, rather than encouraging good behavior for the sake of morals. Their goal is yes, to enrich gameplay and broaden the interactions the player have. As a byproduct, you just so happen to behave more morally (other than hurting people). They don’t want people to play this game like Call of Duty, where you charge in, kill the target, and run away. You can, but they want you to stage accidents and find more creative ways of killing, because that’s what they designed the whole game for. And I don’t think Undertale encourages you to ever commit genocide. You can kill, but you don’t have to kill absolutely everyone. It’s just an option, a very tedious and difficult option.
This video wasn’t made to argue that Hitman is an ethical game, more so an exercise showing how you can behave morally (or not) in this game.
6:45 is the most glorious montage i’ve ever seen
Good video but the 47’s internal story os about being able to become more social and to become his own character(if you get my drift), as seen in the 3rd to last level where you are subtly pushed to allow 47 to have a normal conversation with someone and offer relationship advice, other than that great video
I am a hitman speedrunner and would like to just appreciate the story which I never learned and your editing which super good. Well done.
i highly recommend learning the full story. its amazing and will change the way you look at 47 for sure. theres many good breakdown videos i recommend watching.
do you care about killing innocents in Hitman, or do you just go "it is what it is"
In the story missions, I always did it SA. In escalations and anything else it isn't worth the hustle
I did at first
Then I realized being sneaky is not usually my style, and I don’t like leaving witnesses either
I love doing KE challenges so no I never really cared
@@SirCavas yea same
It a computer game for fox sake! 🤦🏻♂️. You'll be complaining about the ethics selling Persian rugs on gta next.
12:15 last dude got a smoke in before he kicked the bucket lol
Great Video! A lot of solid points too! I will say that most of the targets, as you mentioned, are bad people. An example would be one of the targets in Chongqing, Hush. He, on the daily, commits war crimes by mind torture/experimentation. Bad dude. Even with all these bad targets, you didn't mention the non-targets are are also evil, like Helen West. She bakes people into muffins. No joke.
In the end, good analysis and video essay.
Also I couldn't tell if your remark on the pacifist side about if someone had done it was sarcastic or not, so here. A guy named Trzebiet does some amazing Hitman stuff and recently did an entire series about doing each mission without killing anyone, or that it couldn't ever even be placed on his fault. Great series to watch, highly recommend.
Wow I never knew about the evil muffin lady, that’s both funny and scary.
And yea, I was just too lazy to watch a video on RUclips of someone not killing everyone, but I’m sure I’ve seen the thumbnail by now.
Wait WHAT???? Is that what the furnace in her basement was for!!? I never realized that.
@@maxwellmagee4816 there’s a RUclips video about her. I don’t remember who did it but it goes through all her convos with Janus, and just around the day. It’s really interesting. The bloodstain in the neighbors house is, if I remember correctly, a sign that she killed the owner?
Sleep video 0/10 too interesting, couldn't sleep to it
lol, now that’s a way to praise videos.
Just wanted to say I'm a first time viewer and I'm subbing. I love these breakdown type of videos that look deeper. Kind of reminds me of Sunnyv2 and his video essays. Anyways, this was awesome and I hope you keep going and gaining popularity. Thank you for making good content!
Thank you. Nice comments like yours definitely keep me going, would help my popularity to share as well.
@@dankym I'll definitely be passing your name around.
Not dissing you but this is way better made then Sunny's rushed content farm bs
@@MojaveMoronSunny v2 made decent content until he went off the rails and became just another commentary youtube content farm who thinks "wokeness" is a real issue.
Your cutting style is awesome and the video is very entertaining
Thanks, glad you thought so as well.
I find it strange how Dankym is a smaller and new channel but has such a high quality of editing and humor
edit:written at the time of hitman 3 release. 🇮🇳🙏
*LONG COMMENT IN APPRECIATION FOR HITMAN TRILOGY*
Hitman games from 2016 to 2021 are my all time fav games ever personally even as a hardcore hitman fan from old days I didn't find much to nitpick in them. It's a miracle how after all the developement issues these games still hold quality (some inconsistencies yes like the rushed cutscenes in hitman 2018 but even then the narrative was so good and still picture cutscenes did good job)and ended on a high note with the third and most recent hitman 3 even having a great story. And plus... All of it you can play in vr now. Graphics.. look great and with ray tracing it looks immaculate now esp. the china level. Also.. mild spoiler but the very first e3 trailer from 2015 for first Hitman season is basically the end of hitman 3 showing all upcoming locations and targets and the trailer ends with Diana saying.. it's good to have u back. Also theres a cool hidden ending which will blow your mind if you've played hitman c47 like me the very first game of series. Hitman isn't even supposed to compete with other games on basis of guns/ cars/ effects explosions etc yet cyberpunk looks trash even compared to hitman. Graphically speaking, cybertrash ain't got shit on Hitman's Berlin and china level for eg. The real meat of hitman is NPC / target characters and world stories especially the dialogue and replayability. the amount of hidden dialogues is impeccable in these hitman games. I don't think it's even possible to hear everything from every scenario you can create and that's not even counting the scripted story stuff you hear in mission opportunities. The dialogue here is the stuff of legend in the whole gaming I'd say. We praise writing for tlou or uncharted and things like that but story telling here is so different. And so immediate. For eg comments on how NPCs after waking up from a knockout say and even change dialogue based upon whether or not they witnessed you before being knocked out, whether they remember you, what disguise you wearing, who are they detailing your info to? Is it a guard or a fellow NPC , the NPCs will describe your illegal actions to guards surprisingly in a very detailed and varied way, guards will taunt you and command you to drop various items by their names while trying to arrest you and even alert others if you try to shoot with empty gun, NPCs even will even have a funny comment if they realize you're wearing their clothes after knocking them out and they're naked. then there's gunpoint/ getting shot dialogue, subdue dialogue, nps commenting on your disguise and even noticing things like if you're wearing a too hot of an outfit on a sunny day or a different/ whacky suit that has no context to the location you're playing in, all elusive targets have their own backstories and that content most people never dive into that extensively. Infact content of elusive targets may now be forever lost and all of it never felt like a side / low effort chore. It all had its own briefing videos, own voice acting, own stories, own character moments with targets and had the same attention and care as the main missions from the main game. Then there's so many "hidden" dialogues for eg in the 2016 the landslide mission, after killing Marco abiatti his bodyguard will go to the tower to his colleagues and be sad about how he couldn't save his boss and he'll be fired again which will make things difficult for him and his pregnant wife. Just the sheer amount of backstory details in these new hitman games is quite simply ridiculous. The dialogue frankly to me seems endless. Like is said, It's literally impossible to have heard everything for every scenario in these games
Just wanna add, in the train mission, most of them aren't ICA agents (it was effectively destroyed already) but Providence agents.
Also, I sort of feel that wiping Edwards' memory effectively kills him. His personality, his memories, even the voice he uses are gone.
Thanks for the correction, many others pointed the ICA bit as well.
As for Edwards being wiped, I feel like his old self was killed yes, but I see it more as a new man being born instead. I just don't know how long that new person will survive, out in an abandoned train in the mountains, but hey there's a chance at least.
I expected this to be from a mid to large youtube channel. This is impressive for someone with 10,000 subs, but less than 700? Goddamn
Thanks for the high praise, maybe those expectations can become reality with a little help from sharing.
This is a really well made video, I was shocked it had so many views. Definitely subscribing
Hey, thank you everyone for watching this video! I appreciate the subs but I really recommend watching my other videos to see if you actually want to subscribe to me. I probably won't make another video about Hitman so I don't want to disappoint those looking for another video like this.
At present i literally have 3600 hours into Hitman 3. 1600 of those hours exclusively on Freelancer of which i already have Freelancer level 100, did prestige 3 times and tend to gamble a few hundred million at a time. I can promise u the way i tend to play tends to lean on how fast i wanna complete an objective the non glitchy way. Morals tend to never really matter.
I used to kill alot of people in a level, yet as I run around a level without killing anybody, you can hear stories that make you realize that they aren't some npc made for our amusement.
I feel this too, the world seems very alive and I love it. I just wished the ai is smarter so that the world can really be believable (at least for me).
How do you only have 600 subs? Great video bro, def deserve more views
Thanks, would help to share to those that might be interested.
I don't like the hole in a bagel or donut feels like a scam they just take away 5% of it and we just sit here and take it
There are a fair few targets in the Hitman series that don't reslly deserve their fates like 47 killing the twin brother of his intended target TWICE.
This is a very high quality video essay for such a small channel
Thank you, hopefully it won't be small for long.
If I got a dollar for everytime I saw a comment like this on a small channel, I would have 24 dollars.
how i see it is that the positive reinforcement and just the anount of gameplay reward in being a silent assassin, both in raising the skill ceiling and having cleaner, more precise map interactions, is like a cartesian re-creation of morality from scratch in an environment where any sort of morality is cast into doubt. like, descartes' cogito asks the question "how can i trust that anything exists if i can't trust the senses?," and hitman asks "what point is there in morality and moral actions if i was born to kill, good at it, and it's what i do?" it's a steady build up from an amoral environment where you find incentives not to hurt civilians, to kill with accidents so that you won't be found but also so that you can remain a myth and not strike fear into those who don't deserve it
This video is amazingly well done. I watched it, and figured it was something from a channel with over a million subs, and probably got close to a million views. I was so surprised to see you only have just over 500 subs and 200 views on this vieo. Amazing. I subbed right away👍
Thanks, happy to be mistaken as being more popular. Would help to share this video as well to other places that might be interested.
Great video, love the train edit!
Dude forget about Requiem level in Blood Money where 47 came back from the grave and kills everyone in Franchise including a Priest and a honest Journalist (likely choose for his reputation by the bad guy to give his bais side of events) just doing their job who ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time.
If you think hitman 3 s last level intensifies killing then you haven't played blood money.
Mf really had to finish his cigarette before being electrocuted
only 107 views?????? what the hell this is amazing
9:44 hell yeah with the og Hunter Hearst Helmsley entrance music lol
the people at the final mission are working directly for providence, 47 only worked for providence by proxy as an ICA agent
Thanks for the correction. I’ve had others also correct me, but I’ll just pin yours.
@@dankym np ! tho sorry for not checking other comments first loll
"The perfect execution"
*Misses*
Call me Michael Fassbender.
How i see it is that agent 47 himself is not a sociopath but the game just lets you play as one if you feel like it
He's not a Sociopath, just a bit antisocial and very centered on ways to kill, in an autistic way
@@rescyy2235 He’s just quirky like that
Calm down son, it's just a drawing.
New favorite video essay, those jokes were great.
this 02:37 is gold
Great video. Thanks a lot!
I liked the video mainly because of the little politics references
Glad at least someone liked them.
You should play the older Hitman games if you can. But if you can only play one i would suggest Blood Money
He was genetically engineered by his creators to be the perfect assassin and with very minimal to no emotions after all which makes him more of a psychopath so...
2 things.. first is the ethics of a hitman discussed the way it was in this video.. all I want to add is that they do work like this as long as we arrive the start button with the preconceived notion that life is preferable to death. We do eliminate people who cause a lot of harm to people, but with every innocent person taken out we also prevent those people from being exploited by others in the future and we prevent them from all future harm and suffering alongside any future generations they'd help to create. With that being said is the silent assassin the most ethical playthrough, or the least? Is it better to make everyone believe bad people died in accidents or to take them out the most brutal way in front of people whose whole lives will be affected by the trauma.. which will contribute to humanity's collective knowledge about the agony of life until they all collectively arrive to the conclusion that the most morally just thing to do is to break the circle of life in order to end the never ending suffering of all living beings?
Anyways, the other things is.. that version of the Ode to Joy was magnificent! I guess how time consuming it must've been to cut it together, but it was amazingly done and I'll definitely remember that every time I play the final mission in the future!
people do tend to want to not be killed, yes
@@videofreak8188 But do they actually know what is good for themselves or were they just brainwashed into wanting to continue their miserable existence to make others richer?
Glad you asked if it's truly more ethical? I don't know definitively myself. I think if people were openly brutally killed, it would create an oppressive environment that would not only affect these powerful people, but also normal people as that oppression trickles down. Also, I generally think its better for innocent people to decide if they want to live and not force an end to their "suffering." I appreciate you taking your time for this comment though.
Agent 47 isn’t but I am
"You unlock items by gaining XP"
That's not how this game works at all, have you even played it?
It is though?? XD
@@therichman3685 No it isn't. You unlock items by doing challenges. Nothing is tied to XP or your level.
Magnifique ❤✨
11:45 damn bruh im fucking wheezing
2:35 I like the dig.
Top tier video, keep on keepin on.
Thanks for the high praise, I will keep on
i have no idea how to kill people in that game i just keep getting into a shootout instead...
I honestly can’t tell whether this video is serious or not.
Great video man
Subbed
you tried to make a point with the train then said they were ICA, shoulda cooked your script a little more
I mean… hitman blood money had some fucked up people.
I’ve only played the new trilogy, but I am curious about how the older games are.
Alot more darker in tone and atmosphere especially contracts. Blood Money is my personal favorite out of all of them. In one level you have to take out a guy in witness protection, on his youngest sons Birthday, so he doesnt speak out against the client.
Great video 🫡👊🏿
you my dear friend, earned a subscriber
lolll the sifu reference
*the kid was raised to be a controlled Eliminator for the Illuminati 👁 casualties are welcomed and appreciated 🙏💀 Mafia 3 is also a really good sociopath/murder simulator 👌 Also, can we talk about how Hitman Absolution is the most technically sound Hitman game ever made??? the A.I., the Vibe, the Features....that game does NOT get the respect it deserves.*
2:38 shows the America flag🤣🤣
poor bagel D:
I'd rather get ethics from Agent 47 than from Lara Croft or Nathan Drake...
postal is a sociopathic game not hitman
Hitman is a video game that only people with zero mental illness should play, if you are mentally unstable with bizarre unsafe behavior and need help with trying to overcome your negative mindset from a psychologist. Then, stay away from this game! This will NOT make your life any better. I think we can all agree on that. There's a reason as well this game is rated M for Mature.
If that’s your case, I’d worry more about GTA V, which is infinitely more popular than Hitman.
@@dankym The GTA series is the same, they even talked about it on the news on how dangerous it can be to the youth to be exposed to it at a young age, the Hitman series is no different.
Are you a psychologist?
@@totallyrealcia Nope I am not, but let me ask you the same question. Are you psychologist yourself?
to be really fair
if you are mentally unstable and have dangerous behavior (either to yourself or your surroundings) : you should seek therapeutic help, not play videogames.
no matter if it's Hitman or Minecraft.
Also, let's be real : many games, most notably sandboxes offer the player the ability to do messed up things, even when the devs didn't intended it.
I mean : take some of the most apparently harmless and friendly game like the Sims, and ask their playerbase...
countless examples of players murdering NPCs by drowning them in pools, burning them alives or imprisoning them in a basement without food or sanitation...
Grand strategy game (like the Civilization franchise or Paradoxes games) are usually all about being a genocidal maniac that will nuke cities to win...
Or the minecraft devs that didn't expected that the villagers farming and iron golems summoning mechanic would end up being used by the players to make slave camps for free ressource (iron or wheat farms)
and of course all games that include pvp or pve with the ability to kill either other players or NPC
players will always find a way to do a massacre.
Currently there is no sufficient evidence that videogams, even violent ones (such as Hitman or GTA) increase violennt behavior
Of course, people that are violent may end up being attracted to those games, but this is is a different causal link : in this case: violent people like games about violence
and not : game about violence cause violent behavior irl.
So ultimately : if you have any kind of behavioral issue : go seek a therapist following scientifically proven practices (such as clinical psychology or psychiatry)
but there is no evidence that games with edgy/dark themes such as Hitman or GTA make people more violent
(and agan, even in games where extreme violence is absolutely not the actual theme of the game, players find a way to do mass murder, because playing as as sociopath in a game without actual consequences and moral implication is *fun*, this is the sole reason, the same reason why people will spend hours gathering all loot, items and achievements in a game, explore all the map or try to make huge projects that are remarkable. it's ultimatley the unlimited freedom that the sandbox offer us : the freedom to be nice to the NPC or to brutally exterminate them in the funniest way possible (usually including explosions if possible).
regarding young childrens
it's not that it will make them more violent : it's simply that graphic violence (which is portrayed in games like gta and hitman) and mature themes such as crime, drug, political and institutional violence, torture, assasinations, etc will scare them
it's the same reason you don't expose childrens to horror movie, it's not that they might start being more violent, but that the experience will be too scary for them, and therefore at best not a good experience for them, at worst a thaumatic experience
this is why movies and videogames have rating regarding the more adult content (violence, sex, gore, scary stuff, strong language, and other adult themes)
basically : exposing young kids to Hitman or GTA or gore horror movies will not make them psycho killers, but could give them ptsd, or at least recurring nightmares and irrational fears which is a very bad thing
this is why media should be adapted to their audience and the vulnerabilities of said audience, in the case of childrens, being easely impresionable and therefore easely scared or even traumatized
subscribing
I was just watching a real-life crime documentary where a woman in Texas in 1980 was brutally unalived by being hit 41 TIMES with an axe by another jealous woman in a love triangle involving the husband. The perpetrator then went to court and incredibly used a "self-defense" verdict to get off and avoid prison! In another case, from the same tv show, a teenage girl unalived her classmate by stabbing her and got a measly 7 years. Both of these women should have been given life in prison or execution, and back in the 1800s it would have definitely been execution by hanging!
But American society today has become decadent and soft on criminals, especially in liberal states. In both cases the families were justified in hiring someone like agent 47. If the legal system becomes unjust, I believe the victims should go outside the law. I also consider agent 47 to be a type of antihero because he takes down rich, powerful and evil people that are normally beyond the reach of law enforcement. The same can be said of the Punisher, my favorite comic book character. Technically, both the Punisher and Agent 47 are "breaking the law" but I still consider both to be antiheroes because the Punisher doesn't harm innocents and both men take down evil people that are normally too powerful for police to handle. In short, I believe that hiring someone like agent 47 is justifiable only if your family has been victimized and the legal system refuses to provide fair justice.
It’s a game bruh
4:46
People are so weird about hitman but nobody talks about gta
क्लेश (हिन्दू धर्म)
Debating morality and 47 is a oxymoron if you know his lore...