@ghosts4ever said:
@uninspiredcup said:
@Quicksilver128 said:
@ghosts4ever: No its really not... and it was sold in parts. Thats a bad standard to set.
Oh? Long before Metal Gear Solid became a sandbox Hitman was presenting large varied and fairly intricate multi-optional levels.
It also had the distinction of being a game where the player hides in plain site. Instead of playing the heroic figure saving society, you played a sociopath on the fringe reminiscent of Taxi Driver or Leon, or to an even more extreme degree, Richard Kuklinski.
Metal Gear Solid attempts to present Snake as the reluctant hero, placed in an unwanted situation, but for all intents and purposes, he is the generic action hero. 47 on the other hand, is far more unique to the medium. The gameplay directly make the player feel like they are on the outside looking in, which many gamers, are, allowing them to inflict pain on society, which many gamers would like to do, but for moral reasons - don't.
This being a video game, much like Postal, or Grand Theft Auto, being a naughty little shit on a power fantasy, is acceptable.
Hitman is severely underrated as a series and far more clever than it gets credit for. Metal Gear Solid on the other hand has it's ass kissed so hard people can't see two feet in front of them.
I dont see Agent 47 as evil. He is anti Hero whose targets are worst criminals around. what i like about 47 is that unlike snake who is generic hero saving world and has love interest. 47 is badass anti hero who dont care about anything.
Well, here in lies the problem with the series. Dramatic tonal shifts, Absolution, the misstep, essenailly tries to turn it into a contemporary Western. But for the sake of argument, let's take two examples of the good games, rather than the bad ones.
Hitman 2 starts off very much like Rambo 3, with the character renouncing violence, living a secluded, and largely isolated life in peace, denouncing what he is. The game through his motivation to save the most noblest of humans, a priest coupled with Jesper Kyd's heroic orchestral themes make him seem noble. The ending however, contradicts this, the character rejects all this as a facade, with a cross in the foreground, signifying the sin of man. He returns to killing - basically.
Hitman Contract (i.e. the best game) drops any pretense. The music is anything but heroic, even the loading screen has changed from a white heaven like glow to instead a man alone, in a dark room with murmuring thunder, symbolic in story-telling of oncoming evil, most notably Frankenstein.
From that screen, we immediately get it imprinted that this game will be darker. And it is. Unlike Hitman 2 there is no James Bond villain, no priest to save, the plot ultimately boils down to surviving - with no redeemable ending.
Very few games come to mind, barring Obisidian, who genuinely let the player be bad, without resorting to parody like Grand Theft Auto or Postal. And they usually fall flat. Even Bioware, master RPG makers let you do as you like, reject letting the player be anything but the chosen one.
As mentioned previously, Hitmans "in plain sight", while society goes about it's business unperturbed gives an ostracized detachment that would be typical of a sociopath. Not all sociopaths are inherently negative to society, it can even be a positive quality, in 47's though, he is sort of a mass murderer, carrying piano wire probably unaware how to fix a piano.
Also happy year my friend.
Log in to comment