"Stay focused, Seeker."
Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts is a stealth-based, sniping focused First-Person Shooter with large, open-ended levels, and the fourth game in the Sniper: Ghost Warrior series by Polish developer CI Games. After being too ambitious with the third title, as stated by the company's CEO, Contracts opts for a more "AA" approach with its smaller, but more dense and focused levels. This time, much of its design and gameplay is inspired by the Hitman series. As always, Contracts uses semi-realistic sniper mechanics such as having to compensate for bullet drop and wind deflection.
The game focuses on an unnamed and faceless mercenary known only as the Seeker, who has been hired by an unknown client to take down key figures crucial to the now independent Siberia. Led by an equally unnamed and faceless individual known as Handler, the Seeker must complete a series of objectives (or contracts) in five different regions (adding up to 25 contracts) in order to stop Siberia from further destabilizing itself and the world.
A sequel (unrelated to the events of this game), was released in 2021.
Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts provides examples of the following tropes:
- A.K.A.-47: Like the third game, all of the weapons in Contracts' arsenal have fictional names in order to avoid copyright issues. The AKM is also once again dubbed the AKA-47.
- Arrow Cam: Like all the previous titles, except with significantly more flair than ever before, as the camera pans and spins around the bullet as it whizzes through the air. It may even cut to a third person shot of the Seeker, where you can see him pull the trigger, with his rifle visibly ejecting a casing if you're using a semi-automatic rifle. However, they still lack the gory detail of the Sniper Elite series.
- Asshole Victim: Just about every main target and bounty (optional assassination targets) is portrayed as a remorseless villain, whether they're a war criminal, a syndicate boss, or even a scientist playing with eugenics.
- Authority Equals Asskicking: Averted. Every target behaves exactly like any other mook and can be easily put down with a single headshot or just a few pistol or assault rifle rounds to the torso.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Both of the .50 BMG sniper rifles are insanely powerful, killing everything (even heavy soldiers) in a single shot anywhere on the body. As a downside, neither can be suppressed, so staying undetected is nearly impossible.
- Berserk Button: More of a Tranquil Fury button, but there. Handler gets aggravated whenever one of the main targets Seeker interrogates alludes to knowing who they are and who they work for, usually leading to an order to Dispense with the Pleasantries and kill them.
- Big Bad: The Siberian Prime Minister, Nergui Kurchatov.
- Non-Action Big Bad: While most assassination targets do at least attempt to fight back if they see you coming, Kurchatov just cowers in his office with his hands in the air when you finally come for him.
- Bloodier and Gorier: For the first time in the series, you can rip off enemy arms, legs, and heads with a well placed shot or explosion (technically, Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 did it first, but it was limited to .50 BMG and AP rounds, and only if a bullet cam played.
- Even the interrogation animation is more brutal - while Jon North in the third game would put an enemy in a chokehold then knock them out when he's done with them, the Seeker holds the poor mook at knife point before brutally slitting their throat.
- Body Double: One of your targets employs a body double who carries a dead man's switch: if you shoot the double first, then the target will be alerted. If you search the body of your other main target for the level, you will find out that the target doesn't smoke (he has a pen drive with medical records).
- Boom, Headshot!: Obviously.
- Bullet Time: Like the rest of the series, time slows down when holding your breath.
- Clothes Make the Superman: During the first mission, Handler mentions that your special suit is an advanced combat suit that augments your body's natural healing and greatly protects against impacts, allowing you to survive a 30-foot drop without a scratch. The mask provided to you also gives a number of advanced technological benefits.
- Cold Sniper: The Seeker himself, in every sense of the word.
- Cool Mask: Seeker has a futuristic one that looks like a human face made out of triangles that provides him with all kinds of tactical information.
- Dark Action Girl: At least one of the Rival snipers is a woman (the one based on the Siberian Sniper multiplayer model).
- Deadly Gas: You have access to gas grenades and gas mines, which are effective at taking out a group of enemies without causing to much of a ruckus.
- Defiant to the End: Say what one will about the many, many, many, lovely pathologies in the Siberian Oligarchy, but cowardice is generally not one of them. Most of your targets will go down fighting with guns blazing if they detect you. Even if you somehow get the drop on them, most will remain icily resistant even at knife point. Kurchatov himself is the exception among those that will fight to the end among the Primary Targets, and even he will refuse to talk further after a certain point and try to make a deal for his life rather than beg or plead.
- Designer Babies: One of your targets is making them. She claims to be eliminating inherited diseases, your handler says she is trying to make Super Soldiers. Her colleague and fellow primary target Zaytsev seems to agree with Handler and has outright remorse over his role.
- Elite Mooks
- While they don't seem to be any more durable than a common enemy, officers (marked by a rhombus) will likely give you mission-critical information when interrogated (while a normal mook will only give up supplies and enemy locations).
- Gas-masked shotgunners return from the previous game, and are immune to gas grenades and mines. Despite this, they share the same triangle icon as the other mooks. Unlike Ghost Warrior 3, they don't seem to be noticeably more durable than regular enemies.
- Rival snipers (who only appear in bounty areas) can occasionally spawn well outside of the map limits hundreds of meters away, and can be quite hard to tag before they spot you.
- Everyone Has Standards: The Seeker is a shady mercenary working for a very shady shadowy organization, but even he expresses disgust at some of the more depraved methods used by Kurchatov and his associates, such as their use of germ warfare.
- Gas Mask Mooks: The aforementioned shotgunners.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: In the Beketov Valley, during the Bounty on Dr. Streltsov, Handler will warn you that Streltsov has a considerable price on his head and others may attempt to collect. You'll probably just dismiss this as a reference to the Rival snipers that show up in every Bounty mission, however, after you kill Streltsov and the Rival sniper and collect his bounty, a squad of several spec ops soldiers wearing Rival-type gear referred to as "Team Alpha" will storm the area, engaging you in combat. This is the only time in the entire game they show up, and no explanation is ever given as to who they are.
- Greater-Scope Villain: If you interrogate them, several of your assassination targets seem to recognize your mask or seem to have some idea who you're working for, but Handler always interrupts and tells you to finish them off quickly and not chit chat. If you interrogate Kurchatov, he'll state that your employer was The Man Behind the Man and helped him and his cronies build up their Siberian State, only to turn on them and have them killed due to their mismanagement. Handler confirms this in the outro, as he reveals that Kurchatov tried to refuse their orders after taking power, and his acting out caused most of the crises in game.
- If you interrogate General Ivanovsky, he states that Kurchatov is doomed and that "Kuurkil will return" to take over Siberia. Kuurkil is the name of an ancient Siberian god, and is likely a codename for something, just like Armazi was in Sniper Ghost Warrior 3.
- Heavily Armored Mook: Contracts features the typical lumbering, LMG-wielding juggernaut that requires a well-placed neck shot, explosives, AP rounds, or .50 BMG to be put down in a timely fashion. Unlike the previous game, however, you can kill them with a melee takedown if you have a certain skill unlocked. They're also not as tanky as they were in the previous game, going down after less than 20 assault rifle shots to the torso, rather than several dozen.
- Hit Stop: Most of the melee takedown animations feature this.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Many of the Bounty targets will say things to this effect if you interrogate them before killing them; an officer accused of ordering his men to fire into a crowd of protesters will say that the protest had gotten out of control, and a warden accused of allowing several of his prisoners to starve to death will point out that his prison was in the middle of nowhere and cut off from supplies, and that everyone, guards included, was starving there.
- The Illuminati: At the end of the game, the Handler reveals that he represents an organization interested in retaining the balance of world power.
- Jack of All Stats: The Reese rifle is a bolt-action rifle in .338 calibre. It isn't as powerful as the .50 cal rifles, but it is usually powerful enough, and can take a silencer, which the bigger guns cannot. It doesn't fire as fast as the semi-automatic rifles, but it can take more powerful scopes. It also has the lowest sway of any rifle in the game.
- Justified Tutorial: The tutorial is all about the Seeker getting acquainted with his mask and how it affects his sniper scopes.
- La Résistance: The Siberian Wolves are a miltia that was formed in response to Siberia's corrupt government. However, beyond posters and graffiti, they are never seen in-game.
- Made of Explodium: Even with a rifle chambered in 7.62, a headshot may destroy a mook's head like a .50 cal.
- Mission Control/Voice with an Internet Connection: The Handler.
- Mission-Pack Sequel: Contracts takes the engine and assets from Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 (including enemy types and weapons) and makes a new, smaller scale, more focused game out of them.
- Nerf: In Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, fully developed drones were very powerful: you could scan an entire area, hack the surveillance cameras and zap the sentry guns without anyone noticing. In this game, instead of weakening drones, the developers introduced Drone Towers, which used electronic countermeasures to disable drones altogether in some areas.
- Non-Linear Sequel: Other than the gameplay, game engine, and overall premise of being a sniper, the game and its sequel have no obvious plot ties to the earlier Sniper Ghost Warrior games.
- No Scope: Averted. Just like in 3, you cannot hip-fire your sniper due to your character constantly leaving it in a resting position when not scoped in.
- One-Hit Polykill: As one would expect in a game like this - you can even shoot grenades off the belts of enemies for a satisfying multi-kill.
- Pacifist Run: Downplayed example: one of the challenges for the first mission is to only kill the main target.
- The Puppet Cuts His Strings: Villainous and negative example. Kurchatov used to be a willing tool of your Employers, who essentially guided him and his assorted goons to create an independent Siberia under their control, shattering Russia in the process. Then he started getting ideas and figured he did not need to listen to their instructions any more. The problem is that while off his leash, many of the plans by Kurchatov and his minions are not merely evil or depraved, but outright risk plunging the world into a world war. Seeker and Handler have to clean up the regime as much to reassert their employers' control over the region as to stop the Kurchatov regime from bungling their way into the apocalypse.
- Red Herring: The Siberian Wolves resistance group is often mentioned throughout the game, but plays absolutely no role in the plot at all, not appearing in any capacity. You might suspect them of being your employers given your missions are all against the Siberian government, but this turns out to not be the case. Given Handler's revelations at the end of the game and what the player can piece together of the lore, it's likely they are another pawn of your employers' to take Kurchatov's place, whether directly under their control or being indirectly influenced.
- Regenerating Health: All thanks to the Seeker's special suit. Unlike the third game, your health is not segmented, so you can regenerate the whole bar over time (albeit very slowly).
- Replay Value: One of its key selling points, due to its open-ended levels, as well as various challenges that encourage the player to play in a certain way (kill nobody but the main target, or only use a knife), or complete certain objectives within a set amount of time.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: The .44 magnum revolver is available to purchase from the beginning of the game. It deals heavy damage and kills regular enemies with just 1 torso shot, but cannot be silenced.
- Sentry Gun: They are called "turrets," and are all over the place. There are several ways to shut them down.
- Sequel Hook: When the Seeker finishes his 25 contracts, the Handler says that they can "move on to more pressing matters, as [the goals of the organization that hired him] go far beyond the local conflicts".
- Shout-Out:
- In the gangster's mansion in Beketov Valley, you can find copies of Lords of the Fallen and Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3.
- In the harbour level, the laptop controlling the Sentry Guns has an Alienware logo.
- Sliding Scale of Collectible Tracking: "It's Here." Maps show exactly where collectibles are, but don't say what they are.
- Sniping Mission: Duh.
- Stealth-Based Game: Direct combat is highly discouraged; you can barely carry any secondary ammo, the exact positions of alerted enemies are not shown on the radar, and you can die fairly quickly.
- Unique Enemy: There's only ten bounty targets in the game (and consequently, ten rival snipers). These unique character models never appear outside of their designated areas. There's also "Team Alpha", which only appears once in the entire game.
- Wide-Open Sandbox: Levels are rather large, and you're free to traverse the level in anyway you wish.
