Every Hitman game exists in its own genre bubble: Codename 47 is a light sci-fi thriller, Silent Assassin is a spy novel, Blood Money is an American satire, Absolution is a grindhouse film, and The World of Assassination trilogy is a prestige TV show. Hitman: Contracts, though, is a psychological thriller. It is the black sheep of the Hitman series, in that all of the other games are centered around plot - around other people and events in the world that are external to 47 - except for this game, which is entirely centered around 47's internal experience. Contracts is a game about alienation, in which the player embodies a spy who ultimately belongs nowhere, and who can only exist in the world as a kind of virus which infects it.
The opening cutscene and introductory level in this game are legendary, to me. The game opens out of context, as a TV in a hotel room flickers on to a documentary explaining the science of gunfire. The documentary's narrator has a detached, clinical tone, as she describes the physics and mechanics of firing a handgun. An onscreen depiction of a pistol firing plays onscreen, and just as the bullet exits the barrel of the gun, the documentary audio is interrupted by blown out audio of a public shooting. There is an explosion, the sounds of people fleeing, and a woman screaming. 47 stumbles into view, clutching at the rapidly-pooling wound in his abdomen, and collapses. In this sequence, Hitman's relationship to violence is transformed from a dispassionate act performed by a professional and into a transgressive, dangerous, and traumatic event.
And then the game begins properly, and 47 relives the moment in which he killed his 'father,' the man who cloned him in a lab, at the end of the first game. The corpses of 47's 'brothers,' his fellow clones, litter the laboratory in which he was born. As police raid the building, 47 is forced to steal a car to survive. The first level in this game depicts 47's first act as an independent human being, and it doesn't even feature a target - in fact, 47 is the target. He's the one being hunted.
Contracts builds on this idea as it progresses. There is very little to this game on the level of plot, which could be easily summarized in one sentence, but in terms of theme, Contracts is a weightier game than the rest of the series. All of Contract's levels are memories replaying in 47's mind as he goes in and out of consciousness, and all of them are colored by his emotional state. Some of the levels in this game were originally in the first game, Codename 47, and you can read a lot into the discrepancies between them: levels that were previously straightforward and literal are re-experienced in Contracts as darker, meaner, and colder. The new levels are similarly grim: one sees 47 as an interloper in the short story The Most Dangerous Game, and another, The Meat King's Party, straight up puts the series into horror game territory.
Contracts is also the game in which the qualities that make this series special come into being. 47's targets are better characterized, with more specific personalities than 'gang warlord' or 'terrorist.' The possibility space of individual levels is dramatically broader than in the previous game, filling each area with a variety of more narratively meaningful puzzles to solve. The restrictions on movement have been lightened, improving the general pace of the game as well. The many NPCs who litter each level no longer simply walk through the motions of their jobs, but now have their own little stories and bits of gossip which helps bring the levels to life a bit more.
Contracts is the first Hitman game that's actually about something, and I think it gets a bad wrap for stepping too far outside the box. People still love Blood Money, this game's sequel, and I love it too, but I think you can tell, playing that game, that its a response to the audience's experience with the series, like they were building the game the fans wanted to play more so than the game they wanted to make. Blood Money features a much-improved feature set, and the quality of the level design in that game is incredibly high, but you can feel the horizons of the series restrict a little bit, too. Contracts is kind of the Far Cry 2 of the Hitman series, if you will, a game that was too weird for its own audience.
The opening cutscene and introductory level in this game are legendary, to me. The game opens out of context, as a TV in a hotel room flickers on to a documentary explaining the science of gunfire. The documentary's narrator has a detached, clinical tone, as she describes the physics and mechanics of firing a handgun. An onscreen depiction of a pistol firing plays onscreen, and just as the bullet exits the barrel of the gun, the documentary audio is interrupted by blown out audio of a public shooting. There is an explosion, the sounds of people fleeing, and a woman screaming. 47 stumbles into view, clutching at the rapidly-pooling wound in his abdomen, and collapses. In this sequence, Hitman's relationship to violence is transformed from a dispassionate act performed by a professional and into a transgressive, dangerous, and traumatic event.
And then the game begins properly, and 47 relives the moment in which he killed his 'father,' the man who cloned him in a lab, at the end of the first game. The corpses of 47's 'brothers,' his fellow clones, litter the laboratory in which he was born. As police raid the building, 47 is forced to steal a car to survive. The first level in this game depicts 47's first act as an independent human being, and it doesn't even feature a target - in fact, 47 is the target. He's the one being hunted.
Contracts builds on this idea as it progresses. There is very little to this game on the level of plot, which could be easily summarized in one sentence, but in terms of theme, Contracts is a weightier game than the rest of the series. All of Contract's levels are memories replaying in 47's mind as he goes in and out of consciousness, and all of them are colored by his emotional state. Some of the levels in this game were originally in the first game, Codename 47, and you can read a lot into the discrepancies between them: levels that were previously straightforward and literal are re-experienced in Contracts as darker, meaner, and colder. The new levels are similarly grim: one sees 47 as an interloper in the short story The Most Dangerous Game, and another, The Meat King's Party, straight up puts the series into horror game territory.
Contracts is also the game in which the qualities that make this series special come into being. 47's targets are better characterized, with more specific personalities than 'gang warlord' or 'terrorist.' The possibility space of individual levels is dramatically broader than in the previous game, filling each area with a variety of more narratively meaningful puzzles to solve. The restrictions on movement have been lightened, improving the general pace of the game as well. The many NPCs who litter each level no longer simply walk through the motions of their jobs, but now have their own little stories and bits of gossip which helps bring the levels to life a bit more.
Contracts is the first Hitman game that's actually about something, and I think it gets a bad wrap for stepping too far outside the box. People still love Blood Money, this game's sequel, and I love it too, but I think you can tell, playing that game, that its a response to the audience's experience with the series, like they were building the game the fans wanted to play more so than the game they wanted to make. Blood Money features a much-improved feature set, and the quality of the level design in that game is incredibly high, but you can feel the horizons of the series restrict a little bit, too. Contracts is kind of the Far Cry 2 of the Hitman series, if you will, a game that was too weird for its own audience.