Are you originally supposed to kill bad guys in Hitman?

[Kenny]

This is something I have been thinking about. In the new trilogy it seems like 47 is mostly killing bad people all around. There is nothing wrong with this, but I thought the ICA was sending agents to kill all kinds of people, even good ones as long as there is a contract.

The only one I can think of that kinda resembles a "good guy" is dino bosco from sapienza. He isn't doing any terroristic action or killing anybody, he is just causing a bankrupt of the company he is at, with the company themselves asking the ICA to kill him cause they can't break the contract. He is a jerk but not really an evil person by himself (that should be the company themselves at this point). But apart from this, I can't think of anyone else like that. All seem like bad people all around.

Hell, even the new themes that came with the trilogy resemble a superhero theme. The old blood money tracks used to be very dark in tone and sounded very evil like.

[Eddie Latium]

Yeah the ICA is about "professional" killing indeed, the new trilogy became much more personal making 47 and Diana sort of anti-heroes we could say. Before they were just agents, now they are on a mission.

It seems is really just a shift in the Art Direction at the end of the day, I personally liked that. This is regarding the story however, I guess we could "roleplay" Contracts Mode any way we want it.

[Mr_Faorry]

You've always killed bad people, good people tend not to get prices put on their heads as noone is hiring a professional world class assassin to kill some random civi. If you have a price on your head you most likely did something to deserve it.

CN47 has you killing off various organised criminals and terrorists before killing your creator.
H2:SA starts you off trying to save your priest friend from the mafia, you then kill more criminals and terrorists some even under contract of the UN, and the final target is a black market nuclear arms dealer who just got nukes.
Blood Money again has you killing off various criminals and the final mission has you quite literally save the US president.

The New trilogy however really went out of its way to make sure you knew just how stupidly evil your targets were and it only got more over the top the further in you got, it also goes out of its way to make 47 seem more like a superhero than previous games where he was just doing a job which incidentally happened to take out bad people. So it's not what it's doing in regards to the targets that's different it's how it's doing it.

[Klauth]

Well, OP, it's probably more appealing to have a mission on a bad person, rather than on a 30 YO mom of 3 kids, right ?
I think this is why the targets are bad persons.

[Kenny]

Originally posted by Klauth:

Well, OP, it's probably more appealing to have a mission on a bad person, rather than on a 30 YO mom of 3 kids, right ?
I think this is why the targets are bad persons.

Troll spotted. Ignore procedure started.

[Bouncer]

47's targets have always been evil or unscrupulous, with very few exceptions. Nothing changed too much there. Good or innocent people don't generally get world's best assassin send after them.

It was less obvious in older games because targets had little to no personality and the briefing telling you about their crimes was optional or subdued. You could play through all of BM and not know/forget why all those people were assassinated. Nowadays all targets have a lot of background, personality, dialogue and activities making them more memorable, and their briefings are forced and absurdly over the top. You will know Robert Knox committed WAR CRIMES

I would say things still went in the opposite way though. While the evilness of many targets is on glorious display, there's also quite a few targets that are sympathetic or considerably less evil than 47 is.

[Kenny]

Originally posted by Bouncer:

47's targets have always been evil or unscrupulous, with very few exceptions. Nothing changed too much there. Good or innocent people don't generally get world's best assassin send after them.

It was less obvious in older games because targets had little to no personality and the briefing telling you about their crimes was optional or subdued. You could play through all of BM and not know/forget why all those people were assassinated. Nowadays all targets have a lot of background, personality, dialogue and activities making them more memorable, and their briefings are forced and absurdly over the top. You will know Robert Knox committed WAR CRIMES

I would say things still went in the opposite way though. While the evilness of many targets is on glorious display, there's also quite a few targets that are sympathetic or considerably less evil than 47 is.

Can 47 even be considered evil?

[kamikazi21358]

Originally posted by Kenny:

Can 47 even be considered evil?

Isn’t evil relative anyways? Is all evil bad? The ICA badge you see after completing every mission after all, is written in Latin ‘Malus Necessarium’ which I believe literally means “necessary evil.” Perhaps he is, and he knows it, he just also knows that in this corrupt elite-theory world this takes place in, who else is going to kill these corrupt, ultra powerful people? Sometimes doing terrible things isn’t the wrong thing to do.

[Flickmann]

I don't think 47 is evil at all; some games go out of their way to show he has a heart and feels some sort of shame or remorse over what he does. See how he tries to live a quiet, godly life in Silent Assassin, or his attachment to animals. I believe he donates lots of his money to churches and charities and there's also the whole Absolution story which I never really got into. Canonically he kills very few civilians, and only when absolutely necessary. He's not a good guy by any stretch of the imagination since he murders who he's told to, often without question, but I do think he would draw the line at a certain point.

[knighttime]

i think so yes. i never understood that because a hitman will kill anybody including a innocent person like a womans husband. like they say, "he sleeps with the fishies"

[Klauth]

Originally posted by Kenny:

Originally posted by Klauth:

Well, OP, it's probably more appealing to have a mission on a bad person, rather than on a 30 YO mom of 3 kids, right ?
I think this is why the targets are bad persons.

Troll spotted. Ignore procedure started.

Wut ? Forgot to take the pills ?
You should engage into the "take the pills" procedure, instead.

[Bouncer]

Originally posted by Kenny:

Originally posted by Bouncer:

47's targets have always been evil or unscrupulous, with very few exceptions. Nothing changed too much there. Good or innocent people don't generally get world's best assassin send after them.

It was less obvious in older games because targets had little to no personality and the briefing telling you about their crimes was optional or subdued. You could play through all of BM and not know/forget why all those people were assassinated. Nowadays all targets have a lot of background, personality, dialogue and activities making them more memorable, and their briefings are forced and absurdly over the top. You will know Robert Knox committed WAR CRIMES

I would say things still went in the opposite way though. While the evilness of many targets is on glorious display, there's also quite a few targets that are sympathetic or considerably less evil than 47 is.

Can 47 even be considered evil?

That brings up the big philosophical question isn't it? What is evil? I think in 47's case it just depends on how you look at him.

But to me 47 is evil because he kills for money or Diana without ever asking any questions, without ever considering a non-lethal option, and while being fully capable of retiring whenever he wants as shown in SA. He chooses to keep on killing and he doesn't care who he kills. All that makes him evil in my book.

[Duckilous]

Originally posted by Kenny:

Originally posted by Klauth:

Well, OP, it's probably more appealing to have a mission on a bad person, rather than on a 30 YO mom of 3 kids, right ?
I think this is why the targets are bad persons.

Troll spotted. Ignore procedure started.

I don't think you really know what a troll is.
There's nothing malicious about that post either and I don't care think that you think he "made fun of you" in other threads because for all I know, he could've only made a silly joke back then. Jokes are not evil, jokes are not harmful and jokes are not harassment!

You need to learn to stop taking jokes so seriously, assume the worst of people and even announce your procedure to ignore them just because they made a dumb joke or being sarcastic when there's genuinely much worse people out there who are obnoxiously toxic.
If anything, assuming the worst of people and just saying you're going to ignore them when they're not even being malicious makes you come across as a rude person.

What really boggles me is that you assumed the worst and announced your procedure to ignore to someone who didn't even make an offensive joke but actually made a fair point to the discussion of your thread.
Seriously, Klauth made a valid point that you ignored due to your own paranoia.
So please, don't ignore me too because I assure you I'm not even trying to be mean and answer the question:
What's so appealing about murdering an innocent civilian like a mother minding her own harmless business raising children compared to organised criminals and terrorists?

I don't think you even need to answer that question actually because we already know what it would be. Not only would that premise won't fly well with most people despite the protagonist being a neutral hitman, it wouldn't make for an interesting and exotic story mission anyway.
You are free to use Contracts Mode and create a contract like that however.

Originally posted by Kenny:

Can 47 even be considered evil?

He's literally a hitman which automatically makes him not good.
He's an antihero at best since most of the people he assassinated happens to be evil.

[baer]

What's so appealing about murdering an innocent civilian like a mother minding her own harmless business raising children compared to organised criminals and terrorists?

the person you are talking to never said that, so i dont understand your question.

[kamikazi21358]

Originally posted by beer:

What's so appealing about murdering an innocent civilian like a mother minding her own harmless business raising children compared to organised criminals and terrorists?

the person you are talking to never said that, so i dont understand your question.

I think the idea is “47 would probably kill people like that if he was paid to”, but 47 doesn’t kill innocent people because innocent people don’t have world-class assassin bounties on their head. To have someone want you dead enough to pay probably a lot of money for an international professional Hitman, the idea is you probably did something to deserve it, and that is why 47 kills people who frankly deserve it — not because of who they are, but because they did something bad enough for someone else to pay to want them dead.

While you can kill innocent people in game too of course, but you don’t get as high of ratings, because you’re not being paid to go and massacre. Killing 14 people instead of 2-3 silent hits will probably get you marked as an outright terrorist or something, which probably is bad for business. So it isn’t about who deserves it and who doesn’t, as much as “it’s just good business.”

[TopBadger]

Originally posted by EA Latium:

Yeah the ICA is about "professional" killing indeed, the new trilogy became much more personal making 47 and Diana sort of anti-heroes we could say. Before they were just agents, now they are on a mission.

It seems is really just a shift in the Art Direction at the end of the day, I personally liked that. This is regarding the story however, I guess we could "roleplay" Contracts Mode any way we want it.

It's not even a shift, it's literally been like this since Codename 47.