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...

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.

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 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

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.

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'.

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.

The "Ode to Joy" synched to whatever 47 has been doing on the Murder Express train has got me laughing

do you care about killing innocents in Hitman, or do you just go "it is what it is"

"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.

6:45 is the most glorious montage i’ve ever seen

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

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

12:15 last dude got a smoke in before he kicked the bucket lol

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.

Sleep video 0/10 too interesting, couldn't sleep to it

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.

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.

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

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!

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 find it strange how Dankym is a smaller and new channel but has such a high quality of editing and humor

Mf really had to finish his cigarette before being electrocuted

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

This is a really well made video, I was shocked it had so many views. Definitely subscribing

Your cutting style is awesome and the video is very entertaining

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

I honestly can’t tell whether this video is serious or not.

How do you only have 600 subs? Great video bro, def deserve more views

Great video, love the train edit!

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👍

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.

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 is a very high quality video essay for such a small channel

the people at the final mission are working directly for providence, 47 only worked for providence by proxy as an ICA agent

Calm down son, it's just a drawing.

Great video. Thanks a lot!

Magnifique ❤✨

Great video man Subbed

Top tier video, keep on keepin on.

only 107 views?????? what the hell this is amazing

9:44 hell yeah with the og Hunter Hearst Helmsley entrance music lol

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.

you tried to make a point with the train then said they were ICA, shoulda cooked your script a little more

New favorite video essay, those jokes were great.

this 02:37 is gold

2:35 I like the dig.

11:45 damn bruh im fucking wheezing

you my dear friend, earned a subscriber

I liked the video mainly because of the little politics references

If you think hitman 3 s last level intensifies killing then you haven't played blood money.

"The perfect execution" *Misses*

i have no idea how to kill people in that game i just keep getting into a shootout instead...

You should play the older Hitman games if you can. But if you can only play one i would suggest Blood Money

I mean… hitman blood money had some fucked up people.

poor bagel D:

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!

lolll the sifu reference

subscribing

People are so weird about hitman but nobody talks about gta

"You unlock items by gaining XP" That's not how this game works at all, have you even played it?

4:46

*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.*

I'd rather get ethics from Agent 47 than from Lara Croft or Nathan Drake...

2:38 shows the America flag🤣🤣

It’s a game bruh

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.

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.

क्लेश (हिन्दू धर्म)

Debating morality and 47 is a oxymoron if you know his lore...