HITMAN Through History

Absolution at its best was a great game. It did a phenomenal job, in particular with rendering large crowds,
and the levels which were open and had an emphasis on sandbox gameplay were really a lot of fun to
play. However, its creators chose to prioritise the wrong type of narrative, with linear missions, poor
writing and eccentric, uninteresting characters.

Contracts arguably offered players the most number of ways to play a Hitman
game. You could literally play it as a shooter, gunning everyone down in brutal fashion, or employ stealth
instead of disguises, or even orchestrate elaborate accidental deaths. The downside wasthat, in this quest
for carnage, the game seemed to have lost its soul. It continued to reward stealthy gameplay but didn’t
penalize the opposite approach, which in hind sight, it probably should have done.
It all began here. Players were introduced to a bald man in a dimly lit room in what appeared to be a
mental institution. There was a barcode on this guy’s neck, too! Agent 47 appeared to be the very
antithesis of what a video game protagonist should be, and yet, here we are, playing as him fifteen years
later. Codename 47 set out the framework fora series which would progress and flounder at the same
time. Despite its missteps, its system of stealth, disguises and sandbox gameplay remain hallmarks of the
series.

An improvement over its predecessor in every conceivable way, the 2002 release of Silent Assassin saw
47 make his full fledged console debut. Its most important contribution was rewarding players for
eliminating only main targets, with several added methods to dispatch other enemies in non-lethal ways.

Attaining the much coveted “Silent Assassin” score would unlock new weapons for use in subsequent
missions. Hitman 2 would also see great use of an epic symphonic music score composed by Jesper Kyd.

Blood Money showcased all that was great about the Hitman series. The solid stealth gameplay was
present and each of its 13 missions was an exciting sandbox to explore and complete in a variety of ways.

This emphasis on non-linear missions puts in on top of the pack. Blood Money was also more difficult than
the other games in the series (and not in an unreasonable way), but this difficulty also depended upon
Story telling was greatly improved as well, with a tone that reflected the grim
world Agent 47 inhabited—more so than its predecessors.