Hitman (video game series)/Headscratchers


 * If 47 is such a master of disguise, shouldn't he consider investing in a couple of nice expensive wigs? Seriously, isn't there possibly going to come a day when some guard or other will stop and realise, "You know, I probably would have noticed by now if one of the guys was completely bald with a big ol' barcode on the back of his head"?
 * Rule of cool.
 * I read that as "explosive wigs", which would be an awesome addition to his arsenal.
 * That would probably be most useful in missions like Curtains Down.
 * Well, think about this for a moment: say you met a guy with a rather ordinary face and build, but was completely bald and had his ears covered in piercings. Then, long after that brief meeting, you learned that someone was killed in the area. Would you be able to tell the police an exact description of the bald, pierced man you saw for like 5 seconds? First, the tattoo is on the back of the head, which is one place that most people don't tend to stare at (unless they're in line); second, unless you're looking square at it from up close, it's fairly hard to recognize a bar code on the back of someone's head. Third, being bald isn't that great of a standout point for someone, since several men have that same look. So really, the only real indicator that he's a killer is the barcode, and most people would look at it and go "Oh, that's weird" before moving on.
 * That's also my rationale. It doesn't really matter what 47 looks like, because he never leaves any serious witnesses around to give a description anyway (assuming the player's any good, of course :)). The only "witnesses" are people who might have caught a glimpse of him for an instant, in a different place from the crime scene, doing some random menial task or in the middle of a crowd. And the guards on his way, why they have no idea what he looks like either - what are they gonna do, shoot anyone they don't know just because they look peculiar ? They already plug anyone who runs, and even that doesn't help :)
 * How is it that you can kill someone by pushing them into a pool or sauna? Or down a short flight of stairs that they don't even tumble down? It's like they got Super Drowning Skills or something, even though those same pools of water you kill them in with a simple push they were swimming graciously through a few minutes ago.
 * The stairs one I can't explain, but maybe when you push them into water they knock their head and knock themselves out? Other the the obvious "Programmers couldn't help it" solution.
 * Well, it's entirely possible to die by falling down a single step - or even just stumbling over something - if you're unlucky enough to land in just exactly the wrong way. So either 47 uses a special pushing-technique to ensure that they land just so, or he's a Reality Warper on the low ends of the scale, giving his victims a lethal case of bad luck simply by touching them.
 * There's a much cooler way to kill the guy in the hot tub in Blood Money. If you get to a quiet place with a silenced weapon, you can shoot out the glass bottom of the sauna and cackle as your target and his floozies tumble, nigh-naked, to the jagged, freezing rocks below.
 * What this troper didn't get about Blood Money is that, at the end of Contracts, which happens after the mission after Curtains Down (basically, the bits where he is in his room tripping out in the entire Contracts, and then kills the chief), Diane and 47 discuss going to USA like something new, like he hasn't ever been there. Still, in BM, he goes to Maryland, then to South America, then to Italy or wherever, which is when Curtains Down and Contracts happens. So basically, he just went to USA, South America, Europe, and then pretends he's never been to USA.
 * I'm pretty sure those missions aren't in order. If you look at the date, the carnival mission takes place after Curtains Down. It goes Italy, France, Contracts, USA.
 * Hmm, I was sure I checked the dates. Besides, the Notoriety system wouldn't have much sense if the missions weren't in order. 47 has notoriety from the Tutorial mission in the South American mission. It doesn't matter much, it just bugged me, but they generally screwed up with the BM/Contracts cross.
 * She's talking about doing a long series of missions.
 * Inevitable continuity snarl. Really, there's a lot of contradictions between Contracts and Blood Money. I'd chalk this up to the fact that they were in development at the same time by two diffrent teams (notehow Contracts looks similar to the previous two, but Blood Money is completely diffrent.)
 * Why, at the beginning of the "Rendezvous in Rotterdam" mission (Hitman: Contracts), 47 says that his weapons haven't arrived yet? After all, he DOES have his trademark Silverballers and fiber wire with himself, so what other weapons might he be referring to?
 * I think he might have been planning to snipe the boss of the biker gang, or plant a bomb in the place... in essence, anything that meant he didn't have to actually enter the headquarters of a ruthless biker gang who were at that very moment enthusiastically torturing the last guy who entered those very same headquarters.
 * Wasn't 47 was getting a bit too chummy with Mike Whittier? Especially considering how often he casually offs any law-types (like Inspector Fournier) that are getting too close to the truth.
 * Who's that?
 * Mike Whittier is an ICPO-Interpol angent and Albert Fournier works for the French police.
 * Fournier wasn't working for Interpol, Agent 47 doesn't want additional attention from the ICPO.
 * It is possible Agent 47 genuinely respects Mike Whittier, a man who has spent most of his career fruitlessly chasing a ghost.
 * What bugs me is, in the first game, on the hotel mission, if you have ANYTHING that sets the metal detector off, everybody starts shooting you. "Jesus christ, this guy has KEYS! TAKE HIM DOWN!"
 * :D it's fixed in the third game, where you replay the mission.
 * Pops up again in "Amendment XVI". Granted, it is the White House, but if you put an object which sets off the metal detector in another tourist's suitcase, they merely take her to the security room. You try the same thing, and they open fire.
 * On the Pay Evil Unto Evil, it is said 47 prefers to kill targets that are bad people and folks who will compromise his identity, why can't we have a mission where we eliminate some prominent tinfoils paid by a secret society to set an example to "the lunatic conspirators"
 * Agent 47 does not feed trolls.
 * "Hm. These guys had a theory about the superclone assassin, and suddenly, they're all dead! I wonder if there is a connection?"
 * The conspiracists are wanted dead by the new world order. And the local ancient conspiracy probably has every law enforcer padded with money.
 * Also, anyone who is giving them bad PR. So a country wants a zero witness mission done by him.
 * A good example is say a certain website owner leaking information (military wise) about the Chinese military and they want him dead.
 * What does 47 spend all his money on? Hell, why is he so willing to do anything for money? He even specifically says in Blood Money "I can do whatever I'm paid to do" - except it says in the damn manual that an assassin has to live frugally in order to avoid drawing attention, and even in Video Game Land there's only so many times a guy can upgrade his weapons. So what use does a guy like 47 have for all that extra cash? Considering how little he's able to spend, he could probably retire in a year or two.
 * He doesn't do it for the money, he does it because he's good at it, and the money is a scoring system. Just like...a video game.
 * An assassin needs to live frugally. Once he's retired, without ever leaving a description, and not doing anything to get any further attention, he can live however he wants (and can definitely afford to).
 * We also don't know how many hits he does a year and he said in Silent Assassin that he doesn't do normal hits so how often do these special ones come up? Plus traveling around the world all the time isn't cheap either.
 * Why does 47 wear a fancy italian suit and use weaponry and items with his insignia emblazoned on it? Heck, it's not even his insignia, it's Ort-Meyers. I'd imagine he'd be a little bit more low-key than that, being an assassin and all.
 * Everyone else probably thinks so too, which is why he gets away with it.
 * Ambassador Delahunt in Blood Money has the worst bodyguards ever. A man has just been shot onstage by a sniper. The sniper has not been caught. They have no idea where the sniper is. For that matter, they don't even know if there's only one sniper. And what do these highly-paid, highly-trained bodyguards do? They let the protectee run onstage and stand completely motionless over the body of the guy who just got shot. Surely, only good things can come of this.
 * What could possibly bug you about that? It's the limits of the AI. I'm sure they'll let you know when they've invented the kind that emulates exactly how humans would react, but 'til then...
 * Actually, that's not the limits of the AI. They're actually programmed to do that. It's intended that the only way to get the Silent Assassin is to kill D'Avalde and get Delahunt to run out into an area where you can shoot him or drop something heavy on him. The game is programmed so that your success for the mission depends on his bodyguards being stupid, not you being good at your job.
 * If anything it's a sign of poor level design that you have so few ways to get to the target that they instead programmed him and his bodyguards to be stupid rather than add other ways for you to get to him.
 * Actually you can kill him before he runs out onto the floor, you can snipe him as soon as he reacts to the death on the stage since Delahunt jumps out of his chair with shock. This give you an easy shot if you are on the scaffolding, so its not just due to poor level design.
 * Not to mention the fact that D'Avalde is meant to be killed with the authentic WWI pistol that you can slip to the actor who plays his executioner...
 * I'm surprised no one's mentioned Malcom Sturrock the Meat King's Brother. How cold-hearted and apathetic do you have to be to find a girl mutilated beyond all recognition with her arm cut off by a power saw and hung upside by a meat hook and not want to do anything to the sick bastard who did this to her? It bugs me that he doesn't become an objective or AT LEAST a freebie kill. Doesn't help that that scene has given me nightmares to this day.
 * You're playing a game called Hitman, where you play as a genetically modified killer for hire with no soul who kills anyone for the right price and prides himself on professionalism and only killing his intended target, and are complaining about him not killing someone he wasn't hired to kill because apparently you forgot about the "no soul" part? Genre blindness at it's finest ladies and gentlemen!
 * If 47 had been offered a bonus for killing the murderer of the girl (whose death, up until that point, was completely unknown), he would have immediately killed him. He's not paid to feel, he's paid to kill. And he wouldn't have been paid for the death of Malcolm so he wouldn't really care. He KILLS people for a living; another corpse, however mutilated, isn't going to bother him that much.
 * I can understand the logic as to why he didn't, just saying it makes him a bit TOO cold and indifferent. He does have a heart, as seen when he saves the Asian girl (I know that was for a code, but still I'm sure there's a way he could have gotten it from her without too much hassle), might just be a missed "human" moment for 47, but still left a bad taste in this tropers mouth. Oh and also psychological scars too.
 * 47 might go out of his way to avoid killing where it isn't necessary, but that doesn't mean he's going to go killing for revenge on behalf of people he doesn't even know. Killing the Meat King's brother wouldn't bring the dead girl back to life, and leaving another body lying around would have been unprofessional. Besides, who's to say 47 told anyone? The girl's father would've thought her killer got what he deserved regardless.
 * Look at it from his creator's POV: 47 was originally designed to be the perfect assassin - anonymous (albeit, bald), lethally skilled, and most importantly, controllable by his handlers. His creators had no need for a compassionate human being, they wanted a stone-cold killer. That 47 has pangs of conscious was a big show of how his creators couldn't completely stamp humanity out of him, despite his origins.
 * Too bad that side of him disappeared in Blood Money. In any case, Hitman isn't exactly the kind of game you should play if you want to be a hero.
 * In the first game's Training, how does 47 slip past the orderly with a Paper-Thin Disguise and only a few seconds after using a noisy weapon? I'm quite sure the shotgun blast/SMG shots would cause massive suspicion...
 * My guess would be that Ort-Meyer TOLD him to play along to allow 47's escape go without a hitch.
 * So, the orderly goes up to 47 and politely asks him if he's a murderer. That'd go down well. What probably happened is the orderly knows he'd be unable to do anything, and Ortmeyer had him removed.
 * Has anyone ever notices that 47, assembling and reassembling his Sniper Rifle (a Walther WA2000, at least in Blood Money), makes absolutely no sense, since the rifle itself would NOT be smaller if he takes out the barrel or the magazine. Since the WA2000 is a bullpup layout with a magazine that almost completely inserts into the gun, taking out the barrel shortens the gun by about an inch but gives you a 25.6 inch long tube to put somewhere. The Magazine too gives you a big, rectangle chunk to stuff somewhere. I could argue about the scope and silencers being necessary to take off since they raise the height and length of the gun, but taking the barrel and magazine out simply makes no sense in making the gun more compact. It´s plain Rule of Cool, but yeah, not my point..
 * Look at this picture and tell me the barrel only sticks out 1 inch from the body, and it's even more important to take off if it's got the long silencer attached. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WA2000 . Taking the mag out is proper safety precaution, and the mag will easily fit in the free space in the case. The body and barrel don't take up every square inch of space.