Video Game / Hitman: Contracts

When we last left our hero...

Hitman: Contracts (2004) is the third game in the Hitman series by IO Interactive, though it's really more of a mini-episode set between levels from the (then) upcoming Blood Money.

It also serves as a remake (for all intents and purposes) of most of the missions from Codename 47, now using the improved game engine from Silent Assassin. There are more ways to win, along with a brand-new sniper's nest in most levels.

The story finds 47 in a compromising position (shot in the gut) as he starts experiencing bizarre fever dreams. Of course when you get right down to it, his brush with the Reaper is just an excuse to don the pitch-black suit, prepare the fibre wire and reload the Ballers.

The first half of the game consists of flashbacks to past assignments: a Romanian bondage club, an illicit weapons factory in Siberia, and a countryside manor in The Agency's home turf of England. The middle chapter revisits some old locations from the first game, namely Rotterdam, Budapest, and Hong Kong. The last mission brings 47 back to the land of the living—also known as Paris, where the police are moments away from capturing him.

For tropes shared with the original, see Hitman: Codename 47. Do not confuse it with the much later, eighth entry into the same franchise; Hitman 3, which is the followup of the story started in Hitman (2016) and Hitman 2.

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Tropes

A-F

• Adaptation Expansion: Contracts adds a third Fuchs brother, Fabian, to the family and a disconnected mission, "The Bjarkhov Bomb", to take him out.
• Adaptation Name Change: Arkadij Jegorov becomes Boris Ivanovitch Deruzhka, although Boris was a nickname in the original game.
• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • "Asylum Aftermath", "The Bjarkhov Bomb", "Rendezvous in Rotterdam", and "Hunter and Hunted".
  • "Traditions of the Trade", which is carried over from the original game.
• Adventures in Comaland: We open on Mr. 47 in a hotel room with a bullet lodged in his liver. As he collapses, visions of his past work begin to cloud his head; this is where the majority of the game takes place.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Northcott will practically wet himself in fear when 47 shows up. Lucky for him, his father is paying you a small fortune to bring him home.
• All Bikers are Hells Angels: There's loads of amusing, biker-y stuff to do in Rotterdam. The gang itself is Dutch, as many American biker gangs have spread their membership into Europe. In "Rendezvous", you can spot a few Confederate flags on walls, and the room with the pole dancers is playing Clutch.
• Already Done for You:
  • The opening level, "Asylum Aftermath", picks up right where the original game left off: There's nothing to do in the basement but stroll past the corpses of Ort-Meyer and the Mr. 48s. Also, SWAT officers have taken over the complex and will gun down any orderlies on sight, so you don't have to worry about them. The orderlies are armed with puny stun guns, so it's not like they're a threat to begin with.
  • The final mission deposits you back at the hotel, with the police moments away from storming the place. The only point of interest is your mission briefing: it's expired and lists two of your targets as already dead. 47 is working without a net on this one; the third hit went wrong, and his only hope is to catch a lift out of Paris. The proper mission (assassinating a pedophile opera singer and his accomplice) is playable in Blood Money.
• Always Night: All of the missions in Contracts take place in the dead of night. The dark atmosphere (and the rain in particular) is meant to reflect the fact that 47's memory is distorted from being shot and drugged, so even 'daytime' missions are overcast/stormy.
• Anachronic Order: Since 47 gets his flashbacks from various triggers throughout the game, it flashes to different contracts at different times. Notably, the deaths of the four of the Five Fathers who do appear are depicted in reverse order.
• Angry Guard Dog:
  • Release the hounds! Beldingford Manor is protected by a pack of hunting dogs. These dogs have been specifically bred and trained to hunt people, so don't clown around. If guards catch wind of an intruder on the premises, the dogs will be set loose.
  • Watch out for the K-9 unit in Rotterdam. Good thing it can't escape the kennel, only bark for help. A cop uniform will throw it off the scent.
• An Arm and a Leg: In "The Meat King's Party", 47 fulfills his promise to track down his client's missing daughter. Or, what's left of her.
• Armor Is Useless: Averted. Disguising yourself as a SWAT officer is not only for disguise purposes, but also allows 47 to tank more bullets.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Bjarkhov's submarine has a thick hide and requires at least three bombs to sink it. The informant in the airport will point out the structural weaknesses.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The minigun can be obtained in the first mission after you have collected a keycard on a later mission. However, the minigun can only be picked up early on in the mission and it is so heavy, it slows 47 down.
• Back-Alley Doctor: Agent 47 gets treated by one of these in cutscenes after a job goes bad, with whiskey for a disinfectant. (It's unclear if The Agency sent him.) It doesn't look pleasant, but 47 is good for one more mission an hour or so later.
• Bad Guys Play Pool: The pool cue makes its debut as a melee weapon. You'll find one inside Beldingford Manor and the biker bar.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • The Sturrock Bros. are processing and shipping "Polio" brand meat. Yum yum.
  • Averted with Commander Bjarkov: The brand of vodka he offers you is Kalashnikov, which exists in real life.
• Bloodier and Gorier: To be honest, the gore is concentrated in the first two levels only — but it's plenty enough.
  Cheru: Now, I don't exactly know what going on here or who it was going on to, but whatever this surgery was, it was highly important. And whoever tried to crawl away had very big hands.
• Bondage Is Bad: Worth it just for the fun of looking like a luchador going to a wedding. The first floor of the slaughterhouse has been converted into a BDSM club, with mask-wearing VIPs, cage dancers and rave lighting.
• Book Ends: Apart from killing the Inspector, "Asylum Aftermath" and "Hunted and Hunted" play out much the same way: Avoid the police, jack a car, and split.
• Boring Yet Practical: The Silverballer finally becomes this after two games of being a situational weapon; Codename 47 had it as an unsilenced backup weapon that wasn't much use for stealth and Silent Assassin had them as Guns Akimbo that were stupidly overpowered, even in their silenced form (which required obtaining a Silent Assassin rating once to unlock). Here, 47's default load out still has a pair of them, but, more importantly, also has a single silenced Silverballer from the getgo on Normal, allowing for silenced headshots when using the fibre wire is impractical. Effectively, it replaces the silenced Beretta from the previous two games, on Hard and Professional though 47 only starts levels with the unsilenced dual Silverballers (though, "The Meat King's Party" has one on the body of one of your targets if you're looking to unlock it that way).
• Bragging Rights Reward: Completing each mission with a Silent Assassin rating unlocks a unique variant of most of the game's weapons. However, many of these are dual pistols or silenced rifles, most of which are impractical to use on a Silent Assassin run. Basically, if you're capable of unlocking these weapons, you've demonstrated that you don't actually need them.
• Bring My Brown Pants: In the original, the barkeep is very chatty; he'd even let you know of another foreigner locked in the basement for trying to crack one of Hong's many safes. In the remake, he's having a diarrhea attack from stress, refuses to answer questions (Lee Hong? Never heard of him), and hands you a VIP card just to shut you up long enough for him to run back into the restroom. He also leaves behind a bottle of laxative, which could be useful.
• The Butler Did It: Ahh, the temptation to steal the butler's clothes in "Beldingford Manor"... It will give you access to the whole house, but it's not really necessary seeing as the butler can unknowingly kill Alistair.
• Caption Humor: In the remake, the brothel madam curses at Mei Ling and 47 under her breath, thinking he doesn't understand Mandarin.
• Chekhov's Skill: 47's reticule disappears when he's standing close enough to an NPC. This is your cue to take out your pistol and clobber them. There's only one mission where it becomes useful, however: "Hunter and Hunted". 47 is stripped of his gear (including the sedatives), SWAT have cordoned off the block, and firing an unsilenced gun is a no-go...
• Clumsy Copyright Censorship: The band Clutch got very defensive over the use of their song "Immortal", and thus delayed its release on Steam. This is also why there are no licensed tracks in Hitman: Absolution.
• Compressed Adaptation: The pair of missions in Rotterdam in Codename 47 have been combined into "Deadly Cargo" and shortened down. The first part of sticking a tracker onto the car carrying the nuke is actually optional this time around (though recommended, as you'll want to disarm the nuke so you can take Boris out without turning the harbour into a smoking crater) and actually dealing with Boris isn't the Marathon Level it was in the original game. The other Rotterdam mission in this game is only loosely connected due to Boris buying the nuke from the same gang 47 killed the leader of earlier.
• Curse Cut Short: In the game trailer (later used as an opening cinematic), one of 47's targets dives into his limo, then gets a close glance at the chauffeur's tattoo. "OH SHI—"
• Darker and Edgier:
  • In a series built primarily around offing colourful villains in exotic locales, Contracts sticks out like a sore thumb. Every mission takes place at night and/or in foul weather, is filled with unusually-nasty characters, with vague hints of supernatural elements and a tone which borders on Surreal Horror.
  • This one may be a hair too dark for the more Indiana Jones-level of violence in Hitman (2016), but Contracts is by far the stand out in terms of depicting just how far down the rabbit hole of mankind's depravity that 47 has had to go for his job. The first target kidnapped and murdered your client's daughter. The third target kidnapped your client's son...to literally hunt him down in the forest, as a hobby. Your fourth target isn't really evil, he might even be a good guy — just a gumshoe who got in over his head.
  • The Latin chorus and trombones are out; no longer do we hear sweeping music in the background as Hitman mows down a diplomat. It's actually more in line with Kyd's earlier work on Freedom Fighters (2003), mixing ambient and industrial techno. We open with "Slaughterhouse", which slowly builds as Hitman falls deeper into his delirium, and end on "SWAT Team", which is a little action-packed for a Hitman game.
• Dashingly Dapper Derby: The reporter in Rotterdam definitely sticks out: A pinstriped suit, bowler hat, and bright red corsage. It looks comically out-of-place in the biker bar.
• Dead Man's Switch: Boris goes nuts (as usual) once he's surrounded and arms his nuclear device. Once the SWAT teams mop up the freighter, the voice on the radio will "initiate phase two", at which point Boris will shoot the skipper and make his threat: he's going to blow up the harbor unless he's allowed safe passage off the ship and a helicopter! The SWATs won't dare shoot him because they know what a detonator does. There are several ways to spoil his plan.
• Death's Hourglass: If you look carefully, the grandfather clock in Alistair's study is actually counting down.
• Delayed Explosion: "Beldingford Manor". For the pyromaniacs out there, there's a jug of petrol sitting by the jeep as well as another in the servant's quarters. It can be made to explode when placed near a flame—a chimney, perhaps? Alistair and his guest won't know what hit them.
• Desecrating the Dead:
  • "Asylum Aftermath." As has already been mentioned, it's got this weird horror atmosphere going on: you've got patients wandering the lab, clones lying against walls that are smeared in blood, a patient monotonously chopping away at the body of a clone with a kitchen knife, etc.
  • Malcolm doesn't join in the fun at the BDSM party; instead he spends all his time lurking on the mezzanine, dancing eerily in front of the dismembered body of his victim.
  • 47 can also kill the slaughterhouse NPCs and hang their bodies on an overheard conveyor belt. Bon appetit.
• Despite the Plan: 47 successfully eliminated both the tenor and the ambassador in the opera house. As he was leaving the scene, Albert Fournier, a friend of both D'Alvade and Delahunt, shot him, thus triggering the events of Contracts and Blood Money.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • In "The Bjarkov Bomb", it's possible to kill both targets and sink the submarine at the same time. All you have to do is wait...and wait...and wait...and wait for Fabian to finish his meal, mosey over to the maintenance shaft, ride the slow-moving platform, walk upstairs to the commander's room, meet with Bjarkov, share a pint, walk back downstairs, get in a jeep, and drive all the way to the sub. Still, the fact he even does this shows a greater attention to detail than in previous games. Alternatively, 47 can snipe his targets after they're done joyriding around the base.
  • Think you can prevent Boris from making his threat by preventing him from getting his nuke? If you take out the bikers delivering the bomb, the entire sequence speeds up: The SWAT team almost immediately assaults the ship, Boris bluffs the police into standing down anyway, and gets his escape chopper long before you have enough time to get anywhere near him.
• Developer's Room: In the lab adjacent to Ort-Meyer's organ farm (i.e. 47's "fathers"), there's another set of pods with the IOI producers' names engraved on them.
• Disposable Sex Worker:
  • Implied. Among the corpses in the basement in "Rendezvous In Rotterdam" is a dead woman wearing very little.
  • There's also nothing stopping 47 from killing the hooker in "Deadly Cargo" if the player doesn't care about their rating.
  • Potentially can happen to Mei Ling as well in "Lee Hong Assassination". Since she isn't as nimble as 47 at jumping across balconies, she can fall to her death if 47 doesn't catch her. She can also die if the player decides to turn the mission into a shootout or just kills her just because.
• Distressed Dude: Giles, a nobleman who's being held captive by the Beldingfords. When all's said and done, the kid will run back home without incident, so there isn't any need to protect him from gunfire.
• Dragon Lady: The brothel madam won't take kindly to 47 skipping out on his bill.
• Drone of Dread: The theme music to "Asylum Aftermath." The screams are the asylum inmates' dialog slowed-down.
• Early-Bird Cameo: "Hunter and Hunted" lists two of your targets (the tenor and the ambassador) as already hit. These guys will be revisited in Blood Money, though the tenor is listed under a different name here.
  • The "Horror" Music used in the Asylum/Meat King's party has a brief snippet of Blood Money's alert music.
• Early Game Hell: The Hong Kong and Budapest missions were the only ones you could really perform cleanly, which unfortunately means very little has changed since then. They're way too easy for a game with such labyrinthine levels at the start. Things heat up again in "Hunter and Hunted."
• Escort Mission: Subverted on two occasions. In "The Meat King's Party", 47 is tasked with rescuing or recovering his client's daughter. She's dead by the time he gets to her, so he has to bring back enough of her for a positive identification. In "Beldingford Manor", the man he's sent to rescue is a champion track runner, so all 47 needs to do is free him from his makeshift prison.
• Everyone Hates Mimes: Behind one of the barricades in Paris, there is a mime artist. If you kill him, he will appear alive on the map, regardless of many times you shoot him.
• Extremely Short Timespan: 47's vision quest happened in the span of an hour or two. It's still dark when he flees the hotel, and — assuming he boards a flight that same night — the epilogue with Diana occurs in the early morning. ("I barely got out of Paris myself.") Don't forget to factor in the botched hit at the Opera House.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: As the story begins we see a television screen with a ballistics expert named Donna Davis explaining the operation of a standard handgun in a demonstration. As the bullet in the cutscene leaves the gun there is a sharp BANG and a woman screaming as the television screen goes static.
• Framing Device: The game's missions are interlaced into the plot by means of flashbacks. Different events in the hotel room trigger memories of each contract (or series of contracts in the cases of Rotterdam and Hong Kong).

G-R

• Gambit Pileup: Just like in C47, Boris has set up a purchase with a biker syndicate you've already encountered. The bikers are making a pit stop at a bar (The Dirty Rabbit, which appears in both games) before they deliver the warhead to Boris in a car. The problem is that the Rotterdam police are fully aware of Boris' plans and are about to seize his freighter. The client (Ort-Meyer) can't allow this to happen, so you'll have to kill Boris before the police slap cuffs on him. Making your job harder are the police blockades: the workers have all gone home early and the harbor is under lockdown. As a result, most outfits are useless in the SWAT-occupied areas. Also, Boris is in possession of a nuclear explosive. Shortly after they storm the freighter, he arms the bomb to force them to comply with his demands. What's interesting about this mission is that 47 can influence how it all plays out.
• Game-Breaking Bug: If you swipe the photos from the safe before the journalist meets with the Rutgert, and Rutgert has not been killed, the photos will spawn back into the journalist's possession when their meeting takes place; retrieving them at that point will be impossible and the mission will fail by default.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Don't worry if your car mows down a SWAT officer in the "Asylum Aftermath" cutscene; it won't affect your score.
  • In "Deadly Cargo", Boris will eventually activate a dead-man's switch for the nuke, at which point if he dies, the city dies with him. You can't shoot him at this point without him dropping it and setting off the nuke... but you can use the fiber-wire on him and pick it up afterwards, because for some reason that doesn't count.
  • In-story, a single bullet to the gut disables 47 and necessitates an emergency operation. In gameplay, he can be shot through the leg, the heart and the skull and be fine as long as his health bar isn't empty.
• Gang Initiation Fight: There's a bunch of bikers and a whore lying dead in the Flamin' Rotterdam cellar, which suggests a gang initiation gone wrong. Anyway, this is 47's nightmare, and everything is a bit skewed.
• Gas Leak Cover-Up: The police have cordoned off Room 108 in the Thermal Bath Hotel due to "an accident... just a bad accident." The occupant is a hotel guard who is busy washing blood off himself. He points accusingly at the bathroom mirror... Does he sees the apparition, too?
• Gatling Good: A minigun can be obtained in the first level if 47 obtains Lee Hong's keycard later in the game and replays "Asylum Aftermath". It's Awesome, but Impractical due to slowing 47 to a crawl and this being a Stealth-Based Game.
• Going for the Big Scoop: In a conversation with Rutgert, he refuses to examine the bribe envelope, stating he'll hunt down 47 and collect any missing cash. If the Journalist shows up without the money (which you can steal), and Rutgert Van Leuven is still alive, Rutgert will execute him.
• Government Agency of Fiction: The UN is called UF in the hotel mission and on one of the placards in front of the conference room. No idea why. Even Diana reads it like "UN" even though it says "UF" in the briefing.
• Gray Rain of Depression: Since this world exists in 47's drug-addled skull, and it never rained in Codename 47, the rain must reflect his mood at the moment. Only two missions don't feature rain: "The Bjarkhov Bomb", where it's snowing instead, and "Hunter And Hunted", which is the only mission set outside of 47's bullet wound induced flashback sequence.
• Guide Dang It!: Unlocking the dual Desert Eagles and the minigun requires finding the Lee Hong's keycard in Hong Kong, quitting the mission from the menu and then restarting "Asylum Aftermath" and using the keycard to open the previously locked door.
• Guns Akimbo: Par for the course with the Silverballers, but every pistol, a few submachineguns and even the Sawed-Off Shotgun can be dual wielded if the player is able to unlock them, which in every case barring the Desert Eagle, requires obtaining a Silent Assassin rating on each mission. Or just cheating.
• Gun Porn: This game has a large selection of guns available to be unlocked. There are six models of handgun alone, three of which are 9mm, and all of which can be unlocked in pairs.
• Hall of Mirrors: In this continuity, a Mr. 48 is lying dead in a mirror-lined hallway.
• Hand Cannon: Two available this time around: The Golden Desert Eagle and the Magnum 500. Both of them are big, loud, and powerful. There are also pairs of them available as unlockables.
• Hazmat Suit: In "The Bjarkov Bomb", 47 spends the latter part of the mission waddling around looking like a giant peanut M&M. He'll need to borrow the radiation suit from the Red Army to get close to the submarine, which is where Bjarkhov produces his dirty bombs. It's also the only outfit which won't cause an Alert in there. This step can be skipped if you find C4s elsewhere.
• Hedge Maze: One route into Beldingford Manor is a trapdoor hidden on the outer fringe of the hedge maze.
• Hell Hotel: Remember that in the previous game, 47 was convinced he would go to Hell, both due to his bloody past and because believes he lacks a human soul due to being a clone.
  • When signing in at the hotel reception, one of the rooms on the signature pad is listed as 666, even though the hotel only has around 310 rooms.
  • Agent 47, Ghostbuster. In the northeast corner of the Hotel Gallard, a ghost can be found floating in the hallways of the restricted wing. It is assumed that this is the spirit of the deceased guest, whose corpse can be found in one of the nearby rooms. You may also see it while looking at a mirror in POV mode (it even waves at you). With a little luck and patience, 47 can 'kill' the ghost (er, again) and blood will spatter on the walls. You can also fiber wire the spook and drag it around like an actual body, and cops will even treat it as a dead civilian. Weird.
  • The neon sign outside of the French hotel is burnt out, leaving only the letters "H", "E", and "L" in red.
• Hollywood Satanism: "Meat King's Party". Bear in mind the same mission features a stylish yet highly-illegal underground opium party, full of seedy guests in horned masks and gimp suits. It's astonishing how Contracts didn't get slapped with the dreaded 18+ tag in the UK.
• Homage: If 47 is disguised as a SWAT member, you can join the raid on Boris' ship and even mow down the Russian sailors, and the SWAT will not fire upon him. Or, if you're out for Silent Assassin, 47 can just hang to the rear of his squad and let them do his dirty work for him. This is a reference to the ending of The Professional.
• Hooks and Crooks: 47 automatically enters the slaughterhouse with a meat hook in his inventory. If you're dressed as a butcher, the bouncers won't confiscate it, but the upstairs guards will be more diligent.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: One of your objectives in Beldingford Manor is to free a person being held captive for this purpose.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: 47 can carry over twenty guns in his jacket without spoiling the line of his suit. This can be handwaved with most of the game being a series of gunshot wound induced flashbacks, though not so in the last level, which takes place in the present day.
• Inopportune Impersonation Failure: In "The Bjarkhov Bomb," One way of getting close to final target Sergei Bjarkhov is by disguising 47 as Fabian Fuchs, a prospective client that the Arms Dealer's been expecting (and a target you've just bumped off, incidentally). Once introductions are made, Bjarkhov offers a glass of vodka - which 47 doesn't accept, since he's wearing Fabian's ski mask and can't remove it to drink without revealing that he's an imposter. Bjarkhov is immediately suspicious of this behaviour, and if you don't kill him before he makes the offer a second time, he'll realize that 47 is an assassin and yell for the guards.
• Ironic Nickname: Check out the name tags on the bouncers in Rotterdam.
• Just a Stupid Accent: The people in Rotterdam speak really bad Dutch, probably because Eidos could not get Dutch voice actors.
• Laxative Prank: In two levels (Lee Hong's place and the Siberian airbase), 47 can spike some soup with laxative to lure his targets to the bathroom.
• Lethal Joke Item: In Contracts, you can get a cardboard tube (in homage to the Penny Arcade strip) which, when used properly, results in an instant kill on nearly any enemy. The weapon's description mentions that it was "crafted from the finest natural cardboard and honed to its maximum lethality", or "constructed from five-star ultra-dense musashi cardboard". Hitting an opponent with it sends them sailing in a nearly-flat trajectory, usually only stopping once they strike an obstacle. Ouch. And yes, it can be carried over in other missions. You win it by getting a Silent Assassin rating on the Training level, but since training mode can't be 'beaten' the only way to do that is to use the level skip cheat.
• Level Ate: "The Meat King's Party." All of the melee weapons are themed around food, including the kitchen knife, meathook, meat cleaver, and cattle gun.
• Little Useless Gun: The "SG220" silenced pistol is a quieter and less effective version of the silenced Silverballer. It has the exact same ammo capacity, but it works with regular pistol clips, which are far more common. Point blank headshots are not even guaranteed kills with this gun.
• Mayor Pain: The private investigator, Klaus Teller, was sent to steal back the incriminating photos from the bikers. He screwed the pooch royally, and now the client (a Mayoral candidate) wants him rubbed out, too.
• Minecart Madness: The Airport Service Tunnel has a rail cart to move Bjarkhov's men from A to B. The Tunnel connects the Siberian Airport to the Marine base on the other side of the mountain.
• Mission-Pack Sequel: As a supplement for fans of Silent Assassin, there's very little that's different.
• Mistaken for Destitute: Before entering Chinatown, Agent 47 passes by a seemingly homeless man and tosses a coin in his coffee cup without even looking at him. The man starts yelling at him, calling him an asshole but 47 doesn't pay him any attention.
• New Game Plus: Carrying weapons on your person as you exit a level adds them to your personal armoury, allowing you to replay levels with these guns available for selection. Completing a mission with a Silent Assassin rating unlocks unique versions of the game's guns, in silenced, dual, or dual silenced form.
• No Name Given: In "Meat King's Party", the VIP is listed simply as "the girl". She is the only VIP whose death is scripted and unpreventable.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Giles has a Yankee accent for some reason. Maybe he is supposed to be an Anglophile.
• Opium Den: The lawyer, Andrei, can be found vaping on a bed in the first floor of the slaughterhouse. (Wearing red was a bad choice, Counselor.) 47 can knock him and Campbell's whorea with the pipe.
• Pillow Pistol: Available in three of the bedrooms in "Beldingford Manner". If 47 lack a silencer, using one of the throw pillows should do the trick. Or he can just smother the victim.
• Press Start to Game Over: The absolute instant the final mission starts. The SWAT raid every single room and then barricade each exit after they're done so you can't hide, nor can you exit somewhere peacefully.
• "Rashomon"-Style: Notably, by the same guy. Some of the missions play very differently than on the original game. There are some points that really stand out, such as the hotel pool and the fish restaurant missions.
• Reality Bleed: The cutscenes in Contracts play with 47's fever dream hallucinations. In one, the hotel bathroom reverts to a meat locker, and in another, the hotel room door opens vertically like a cargo hold entrance, with a Russian foreman shouting instructions.
  1. When 47 first collapses on the floor, he flashes back to his fatal shooting of Dr. Ort-Meyer.
  2. Later, as 47 stumbles between his hotel room and the bathroom, he will start to hallucinate being in a meat locker.
  3. In the next scene, he sees a Russian soldier (actually a doctor) standing at the foot of his room, and this takes 47 back to a mission in Siberia.
  4. As the doctor prepares 47 for surgery, he takes out a hip flask and douses the wound with alcohol. The noise brings back memories of 47 riding a raft to the Beldingford estate.
  5. As the still-groggy 47 pulls the aesthetic out of his leg, he is pulled back to the Hotel Galar with a sedated VIP at his feet.
  6. Finally, 47 comes to and hears the Gendarme (French police) rapidly moving in; the sound of a chopper brings 47 back to Hong Kong.
• Retcon: A huge part of the game is a remake of Codename 47's missions, with some key differences:
  • "Asylum Aftermath":
    1. Dr. Ort-Meyer's lab is much bigger and high tech than it was in Codename 47, and it is somehow filled with inmates of the asylum.
    2. The Mr. 48s are depicted as being more austere, with buttoned-up jackets to contrast with 47's unbuttoned one. There's around 15 of them in the original corridor, but Contracts included more dead clones littering the rooms (25 in this version), including three inside of the chamber where you shot Ort-Meyer.
    3. Also, the basement is accessible by elevator, rather than a secret staircase.
    4. SWAT are preparing to storm the complex after 47 had killed Ort-Meyer, whereas previously, they had already taken it over by the time 47 entered Ort-Meyer's lab.
  • Both Codename 47 Rotterdam missions (the nudie bar and the docks) have been condensed into one.
    1. The biker gang is larger than before and has a more visible hierarchy than in "Gunrunner's Paradise". If you look, they each wear vests and hoodies with the gang insignia (a flaming windmill) on the back. The prospects (the guys at the bottom of the food chain) are lacking the windmill logo, so they aren't allowed into the VIP rooms.
    2. Speaking of Rotterdam, the Flamin' Windmills have been retconned from street punks (some of them were black people) who used Uzis to all-white bikers who use big revolvers, and a brand-new mission takes place at their bar/HQ. One thing which was kept in is that they still enjoy watching strippers.
    3. Ivan (the clown gangster) doesn't appear at any point.
    4. There are no heavily armed Gas Mask Mooks and no dogs guarding the docks. Workers, cops, SWAT teams and the like populate the harbor instead.
    5. Boris doesn't use an escape limo and doesn't immediately activate the bomb with a 3-minute countdown. Instead, he threatens to detonate the bomb if he doesn't get a helicopter to escape in.
    6. You don't get to hijack the ship afterward, meaning 47 doesn't have to hurt the crew. There is still a ticking clock, but if you keep a low profile, you can finish your objectives with a minimum of bloodshed.
    7. Interestingly, the shootout with the Russian sailors can still occur if you allow the police to raid the boat as planned; the layout of the ship is almost exactly the same. Also, the Captain still dies (Boris shoots him, not you.)
    8. Boris undergoes and Adaptation Name Change from Arkadij "Boris" Jegorov to Boris Ivanovitch Deruzka. This could either be accounted for one of these names being an alias or 47 misremembering his name.
  • "Traditions of the Trade":
    1. The mission takes place at night instead of during the day.
    2. The hotel is slightly-bigger despite having more closed-off rooms, and the dentist cabinet is bigger as well.
    3. Cut content includes the roulette table and the kitchen; Fritz doesn't gamble, and you can't escape out the back of the hotel this time. The Nazi sympathizer is gone, and he doesn't give you a SPAS-12 to kill the diplomats with. Instead, Diana leaves you the shotgun along with some "drop dead gorgeous roses" (classic Diana humor) to kill the bombers.
    4. The hotel is full of Hungarian cops and there aren't civilians walking everywhere this time around; the ground floor is closed since a murder has been committed in one of its wings.
  • The Hong Kong missions play much the same, albeit at nighttime. There are cosmetic changes:
    1. The Cheung Chau fish restaurant is much bigger and decorated differently, and there are more ways to deal with the targets: sniping, poisoning food, and so on.
    2. Lee Hong's restaurant/HQ is more akin to a fortress and there's a ladder to get inside without having to use the gates. His private apartments are built on land and easily accessible at all times whereas in the original game they were built on pilotis and only accessible via the basement and Tunnel Network once 47 triggered the alarm.
    3. The brothel is a separate building with a bridge linking it to the restaurant instead of being situated on its upper floor. 47 doesn't need to bother with it unless the safe containing the jade figure is there: Lee Hong has the combination on his person, so there's no need to help the prostitute to get it.
    4. 47 must take the jade statue with him instead of delivering it to the old shopkeeper (speaking of which, the herbal shop and shopkeeper don't appear).
    5. The bartender is a nervous wreck in this version of events. He will deny everything when 47 questions him, causing a Potty Emergency in the process. However, 47 can pocket some interesting trinkets after the bartender flees into the men's room.
• Rule of Seven: Sedation is quicker than the chloroform rag from Silent Assassin. You have seven minutes before the victim awakens and runs after the nearest guard.

S-Z

• Scenery Porn:
  • To a lesser extent than the other games, but the regal Hotel Galar and the view of the river looks very authentic.
  • "Bjarkhov Bomb" is nothing to write home about, and trekking across vast stretches of empty terrain is as annoying as ever. But the blizzard effects are improved and the airstrip is a definite money shot.
  • IOI were working overtime to add more entertainment and atmosphere to Hong Kong, which were the most archaic levels in the series (due to technical limitations of the time). The park, neon fish restaurant, and Lee Hong's fortress look cool at night, and it's fun to experiment with the new ways to kill all of the Red/Blue Triad targets.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: Because many of the missions are taken from Codename 47, some of which are essentially unchanged, the difficulty of this game tends to spike or drop, depending. "Traditions Of The Trade" and "Slaying A Dragon" are far easier than "Deadly Cargo", which originally appeared as two missions later into the original game. "Slaying A Dragon", which is more or less unchanged from the first mission in Codename 47, can be completed with little difficulty. "Hunter and Hunted" ramps up the difficulty, though it is the final mission.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • Your first thought might be to reach for the rat poison while susguised as a Triad waiter. In Contracts, 47 has the added option of spiking the soup with laxative, which will pacify instead of kill...
  • The fake-out when Bjarkhov goes to get a drink, then quickly turns around to give you a suspicious look after 47 declines a toast. If you try to wire him beforehand, he will see 47 approaching. A nice little way of IOI telling you not to be too hasty.
• Sequel Hook: We see Diana in the flesh for the first time (or rather, her hand) as she and 47 go on the lam.
• Sniping Mission: If you haven't unlocked any of the game's Sniper Rifles during the game, "Traditions Of The Trade", "Slaying A Dragon", and "The Seafood Massacre" provide a W2000 in a briefcase for 47 to use. While optional, sniping is the easiest way to complete "Slaying A Dragon" with a Silent Assassin rating and can be useful for the other missions as well.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: In a room on the second floor of the meat packing plant is the Kidnapped Girl, wrapped in plastic. Campbell's brother, Malcolm, is dancing to Paul Anka's "Put Your Head on My Shoulder" on a phonograph.
• Spooky Painting:
  • A recurring element in the Asylum is the portrait of a toddler wearing a three-piece suit.
  • In the room where Alistair is chillaxing, there's a portrait over the fireplace. It will bleed if you shoot it.
• Suicide Is Painless: A few of Ort-Meyer's "patients" have decided to punch their ticket rather than endure any more experiments. One inmate leaps to his death as 47 is exiting the laboratory. Upstairs, a few more inmates have committed Suicide by Cop.
• Suspiciously Apropos Music: "Walking Dead" by Puressence is playing inside The Dirty Rabbit. The lyrics are sung with 47 in mind.
• Tested on Humans: In H:C47, the patients are confined to the 1st floor of the Asylum, whereas in Contracts they're wandering all over the place, including the blood-soaked laboratory. At least two have committed suicide.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: When 47 reemerges in the asylum, he'll find that one of the SWAT was overwhelmed by the inmates and stabbed to death. It is for this reason that 47 can't linger too long in the lobby, despite the police using it as safe zone. One of the inmates will suddenly pull out an SMG and shoot up the place. This will summon the nearby SWAT who will return fire. Unfortunately, they will shoot at you, too.
• Thriving Ghost Town: In the Hotel Galar, the slots play themselves.
• Timed Mission:
  • Before long, the cops will proceed to kill the asylum inmates, so don't stick around.
  • In the remake, Boris is still in the process of purchasing a nuke. This time, however, the police are onto him and are preparing a raid on his cargo ship. This throws a wrench into 47's mission, as The Agency doesn't want Boris brought in alive.
  • The "Rendezvous in Rotterdam" refers to a muckraking journalist who is bidding on Rutgert's incriminating photos. If he makes it to Rutgert's office before you do, it's game over.
• Tron Lines: Ort-Meyer's lair is a standard Evil Windowless Lab #1, of the sort you would find in a Valve game. Just follow the fluorescent stripes to reach the exit.
• Unlockable Content:
  • The cool thing about SA ranks in Hitman: Contracts is that you're rewarded with silenced versions of the NPC weapons. So if you're craving a PGM sniper rifle, you needn't torture yourself trying to find an unsuppressed version. (If you're some kind of masochist, feel free to steal one from the Gendarme.)
  • Not only do you keep the weapons collected from future missions, but once 47 has Lee Hong's keycard in hand, you can explore the locked areas of the sanitarium, including the room where Ort-Meyer keeps the bald, frozen clones of his compatriots for organ-harvesting.
  • In the opening mission of the game, you can see an inmate on the other side of a locked door waltzing around with a minigun. Once you finish the game, it's possible to get into that room and take the minigun from him.
• Unreliable Narrator: Due to being out for the count as a result of a gunshot wound and an anaesthetic, 47's memories of the past contracts he recalls are different from how they previously occurred.
• Video Game Remake: The Hong Kong, Budapest, and Aslyum levels are a very faithful recreation of the Codename 47 maps, right down to little details like the discarded syringe in Dr. Kovacs' office. In terms of overhaul, the Rotterdam missions have seen the most changes: The biker HQ and the police station are new additions, the Ivan segments are discarded completely, and there is much less linearity.
• Vorpal Pillow:
  • Winston is lustful of the maids in his mansion; in fact, you'll find him sleeping next to one. He's packing a double-barreled shotgun next to his bed, so play it safe and smother him to death. Amazingly, the rather long and loud struggle does not wake his paramour (that maid is a really heavy sleeper).
  • 47 can drown one of the Fuchs brothers. As long as 47 stays out of sight, the guard lingering nearby doesn't bat an eye during the struggle (which is even louder).
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In Contracts, there are still clones living inside incubation tanks in the asylum. It is unknown what happened to them. Then again, Hitman isn't known for its tight plotting.
• You Have Failed Me: In this version of Rotterdam, 47 picks up a case from where the previous agent, Klaus Teller, couldn't continue. Teller is to be eliminated as per the mission parameters. There's also the journalist, who gets shot by Rutgert if he fails to deliver on the promised payment.
• You Just Told Me: The Wang Fou bar initiates a funny conversation in which 47 extracts the truth from the bartender by giving him nervous bowel syndrome.

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