The backstory of Hitman: Absolution

With the upcoming release of Hitman: Absolution you might need to brush up on the many twists and turns in the Hitman universe. We’ll be delving into the 4 previous games in chronological order and hopefully filling in the blanks as we go along. This is the story so far…

 

Hitman: Codename 47

Hitman: Codename 47 was released in November 2000 for Microsoft Windows.

The game starts out in the room at a mental hospital in Romania, where 47 is awoken by a mysterious voice eminating from a loudspeaker. With help he escapes and is ordered to work as an assassin for the International Contract Agency (ICA). Agent 47 is sent to various locations to kill members of the mafia and terrorist leaders across the globe. His four targets are Lee Hong, leader of Red Dragon Triad in Hong Kong. Pablo Belisario Ochoa, a Colombian drug trafficker (based loosely on Tony Montana from the movie Scarface). Franz Fuchs, an Austrian terrorist and Arkady Yegorov, also known as Boris Ivanovich Duruska, an arms smuggler. These four targets were once part of the French Foreign Legion and are in contact with one another regarding a human cloning experiment.

Throughout his missions 47 collects letters written by his targets mentioning a mutual friend, Professor Ort-Meyer. 47s last mission takes place in a mental hospital in Satu Mare, Romania and the target is Dr. Odon Kovacks. The mission appears to be a trap and when he meets the doctor the police storms the building. Agent 47 manages to escape and it’s revealed that Ort-Meyer is the original person which instructed 47 in the escape from the mental hospital. He now learns that he is the result of a cloning experiment using the genetic material of his four targets and also of Ort-Meyer. The experiment was trying to create the perfect human being. Ort-Meyer ordered his associates’s murders because they wanted to use the clones for their own gain. When 47 uncovers a lab beneath the mental hospital Ort-Meyer sets off an army of clones against 47. He manages to kill every single one and subsequently breaks Ort-Meyer’s neck.

Fun fact: One of the first major titles to use ragdoll physics.

 

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin was released for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Microsoft Windows in 2002 and for GameCube in 2003.

In Hitman 2: Silent Assassin Agent 47 tries to leave his past behind him and settles in a church in Sicily. His mentor and friend at the church, Father Vittorio is kidnapped and 47 decides to broker a deal with his old agency. He offers to work for them in exchange for the help to locate Father Vittorio. Diana, the contact at the International Contract Agency, tells 47 that Father Vittorio was kidnapped by the Sicilian Mafia and is held in a mansion called Villa Borghese. 47 doesn’t find Vittorio at the mansion but later he receives information that Vittorio was taken by the Russians. 47 continues working for the Agency assassinating targets in Japan, Afghanistan, Russia, Malaysia and India. Around this time 47 stops believing Vittorio is still alive.

47 gradually finds out that the whole kidnapping was a ploy by a member of the Russian maffia named Sergei Zavorotko. The goal was to trick 47 out of his reclusion. It turns out that Zavorotko needed to murder a number of individuals involved in helping him acquiring a nuclear warhead. It also turns out that 47 was originally cloned from Zavorotko’s brother among a number of other men.

At this point 47 attempts to take out Zavorotko but is attacked by another clone called 17, a prototype made before 47. 47 manages to kill 17 and follows Zavorotko back to Sicily only to find Father Vittorio held hostage in the church. 47 eventually kills Zavorotko and Vittorio tries his best to convince him to leave the world of assassinations. Unable to find his inner peace 47 leaves the church and continues his work as a hitman.

 

Hitman: Contracts

Hitman: Contracts was released for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Microsoft Windows in 2004.

Hitman: Contracts starts out with 47 seemingly bleeding to death, having been shot by one of his targets. He manages to take shelter in a hotel room somewhere in Paris but is drifting in and out of consciousness due to the massive loss of blood. Meanwhile outside the hotel a heavily armed police force is gathering around the hotel. 47 is having flashbacks of previous missions and assassinations starting with the murder of Dr. Ort-Meyer from the first Hitman game. 47 replays missions taking place in Romania, Siberia, United Kingdom, Rotterdam, Budapest, Hong Kong, and finally Paris.

Suddenly while 47 is unconscious an older doctor from the Agency starts treating him and removes the bullet in his stomach. When the doctor hear sirens, he panicks and escapes. 47 wakes up at the end of the game in the hotel room with a mission report listing the death of a U.S. ambassador and a famous opera tenor. Both were involved in a child slavery ring. 47 was hired to kill them and also kills their mutual friend, Inspector Albert Fournier, who sent the team of french police  to arrest him in the very beginning of the game.

47 finally escapes the country and on the plane his contact, Diana, is sitting behind him. You never see her face but she suggests to 47 that his target may have been tipped off, and that an unknown group is targeting him.

 

Hitman: Blood Money

Hitman: Blood Money was released on PlayStation 2, Microsoft Windows, Xbox and Xbox 360 in 2006.

Blood Money starts out with a flashback at an abandoned amusement park in Baltimore, Maryland. Many innocent people were killed here in an accident when a Ferris wheel collapsed due to poor management and neglect. 47 is hired to kill the park owner, Joseph Clarence, in order to give the grieving families justice. After this hit 47 receives more of these types of assignments taking place in America.

During a set of flashbacks taking place in present day (2006) a journalist named Rick Henderson is trying to find out information about Agent 47 by interviewing the former FBI Director “Jack” Alexander Leland Cyne. During these events the Agency is being decimated by a competing western organization called “The Franchise”. Two of the Franchise’s hitmen are the albino clones, Mark Puriyah II and Mark Parchezzi III. 47 later kills Mark II at Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Diana gives one final contract to 47, to kill the remaining assassins from the Franchise. When this is accomplished he is approached by a CIA agent named Smith who offers him several millions in diamonds to stop the assassination on the President of the United States, Tim Stewart. His target is the remaining albino clone, Mark III, and also the Vice President who are trying to get a monopoly on the cloning technology, which the President is trying to stop. In a mission taking place in the White House 47 kills them both.

Back at his hideout 47 is visited by his contact Diana who tries to help him escape the “Franchise” but suddenly injects him with a deadly poison. While the SWAT surrounds him we find out Diana passed the test and is now sworn into the “Franchise”  by Alexander Leland Cayne, the founder of the organization. 47 is ordered to be cremated so that his genetic material cannot be used by cloning. At the funeral Diana suspiciously puts on lipstick before placing his Silverballers (the signature pistols belonging to Agent 47) on his chest and then kisses him. In a surprising twist the poison Diana used on 47 was a fake-death serum and the lipstick contains the antidote for it. This whole plan was constructed to gather the Franchise in one place. 47’s heart slowly begins to beat again because of the antidote and when he wakes up he is able to take out Cayne (the founder of the Franchise) and Rick Henderson (the journalist who was also in on it) leaving no witnesses.

Diana uses the Franchise’s assets to rebuild the Agency in Copenhagen, Denmark, when she receives a call from somebody referred to as “Your Majesty”. 47 on the other hand is last seen in a meeting with a Chinese man and when a curtain closes the game ends.