Hitman Absolution EP16: Judge Judy and Executioner

By Shamus Posted Thursday Apr 30, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 101 comments


Link (YouTube)

I have to admit I kind of lost it this week. This part of the game is so egregiously incompetent that I stopped analyzing the game and just got angry at it. The part where you’re captured in a cutscene (again!) is probably not quite as bad as the end of the Terminus mission in terms of “authorial blunders per minute”, but this one tries my patience a lot more.

Skurkey has his dominatrix here at work not because it makes any kind of sense in how people would behave, but because the writers wanted more of whatever this is. I can’t can’t tell is this is supposed to be fanservice or mocking BDSM culture, but it’s really confusing either way. Skurkey has been established as a pretty dim bulb, but even if you ghost this entire area he still gets you with this electrocution trap, meaning he’s both clairvoyant and way more clever than the writers have shown him to be. And then two seconds later it reveals he didn’t even know you’re the Hitman! So why did he leave that trap? Okay, I accept that this world has videogame electricity where exposing current to a puddle of water makes a knockout trap instead of, you know, blowing a fuse. But does the Sheriff just randomly make this shock trap outside his office for no reason?

And then we have yet another section where Dexter cackles over you and refuses to kill you for no good reason and instead leaves you in an easily escape-able situation. None of this makes sense or fits together. It’s just an endless chain of the very worst videogame cliches, repeated over and over again. This blend of “dark, serious, and edgy” with “willfully stupid, childish, and absurd” is contemptible. This is a game that’s trying to do some sort of introspection while at the same time lacking any sense of self-awareness.

For better or worse, this is our last week with Hitman: Absolution.

 


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101 thoughts on “Hitman Absolution EP16: Judge Judy and Executioner

  1. Daemian Lucifer says:

    And then we have yet another section where Dexter cackles over you and refuses to kill you for no good reason and instead leaves you in an easily inescapable situation.

    And then everything is on fire for some reason once again.I like to think dexter set that truck on fire in order to frame you for murder once more.

    1. Shamus says:

      I’m really glad you quoted that, because reading it I noticed it said, “easily inescapable”. The spellcheck bot flagged “escapable” as wrong. I assumed it was supposed to be “escapible” or that I typed a double letter or some other trivial problem, so I hit auto-correct and moved on. But now I see it corrected “escapable” with “inescapable”.

      I can’t wait until we develop artificial intelligence. I want these machines to have feelings so they know when I’m beating the crap out of them.

      1. Tektotherriggen says:

        I once used a spellchecker that didn’t know words like “fields”. I have no idea how people manage to mess these things up.

      2. Benjamin Hilton says:

        Not to mention Shamus is one of those names that spellcheck really hates.

    2. Jabrwock says:

      Maybe it was the fuel truck the agency brought for no reason whatsoever?

      Or are they trying to pretend this truck was screaming along a small street just waiting for the sheriff to stumble out and block traffic so that it could jackknife? And then instantly burst into flames.

      In this tiny town.

      1. Majromax says:

        … that's not a fuel truck.

        Look at the label at 15:29 in the video, it reads “Ultra Ozone.”

        When that truck “explodes,” fire is the least of the town's worries. Everyone within a few city blocks has just been gassed with a substance incredibly damaging to the lungs.

        1. guy says:

          It’s on fire, so it is most definitely not full of ozone. Ozone is not friends with fire.

          1. Dev Chand says:

            Ah, another thing developers don’t understand. How ozone reacts with fire or explosions.

            1. guy says:

              Well, actually, I checked and have discovered I was mistaken and it is actually an even better oxidizing agent than O2. Though that’s not exactly the same thing as being flammable; it’d need fuel to react with.

              1. Syal says:

                As far as I’m aware, ozone can’t be stored, so that truck would only be carrying equipment to generate it.

                Although technically metal is also extremely damaging to the lungs.

                1. Xeorm says:

                  You can store it if you really want. Just in very small amounts when it’s in another substance. Don’t see why you’d want to though.

                  Don’t think it’d be enough to do much harm anyway, unless the storage substance is itself harmful.

                  But very silly of the developers regardless.

                2. Dev Chand says:

                  Ah. So make it “non storage of ozone” that the developers don’t understand.

                  1. Chris says:

                    That truck could have been filled with water, and it would still have exploded like it did. Videogame physics.

                    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                      Actually water is a more believable thing to cause fire with since it provides both fuel(hydrogen)and oxidizer(oxygen)as opposed to ozone.Granted,you need to heat water to somewhere like 1000 degrees for that to happen,but it can be done(if you add sodium to it,for example,you can get secondary hydrogen explosions).

        2. I love the smell of free radicals in the morning!

      2. Syal says:

        It actually would have been cool if part of the Agency’s procedure for major operations was deliberately creating traffic accidents to block roads and stop outsiders from showing up.

  2. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Man,imagine if agency was just a few shadowy man we sometimes get glimpses off,and they send just an assassin or two after you,who hide in plain sight like you,wearing a disguise and waiting for you to pass them by so they can jump you from behind.That wouldve been great.

    1. sheer_falacy says:

      I think it’d be even better if they actually hid in plain sight like you do, with the same incredibly effective techniques. So you give one an incredibly distinctive face – maybe an eyepatch – and you give the other, say, hip-length hair. And then you take them and put them in various costumes that don’t cover these features up at all.

      And if you stare at the eye patch guy, he’ll hold his hand up and cover the eyepatch and expect you to turn around and ignore him. And the hair one will just spin in a circle, thus breaking eye contact and ensuring that you could never possibly notice that they don’t quite fit in.

      Oh, and to be entirely consistent with the game’s mechanics, if you’re disguised as the same thing that they are, they show up on your minimap and emit a red glow, because you can always tell when people dressed the same as you are faking it.

    2. MrGuy says:

      Sort of to Ruts’ point, I’d even forgive them for sending a PMC to occupy an entire town. If they thought it was warranted, maybe sending in an overwhelming force could be a strategy (He’s in there somewhere. Kill them all, and leave no witnesses. $3 million to each of you.) Sure, the news will pick up the burned out, completely slaughtered town, but with no witnesses who’s to say who did it or why? You could even lampshade it – have some scenes where PMC mook one asks PMC mook two “Hey, is this even legal?” and PMC mook two replies “For what they’re paying us, everything’s legal in my book.”

      I can forgive the Great Big Army. What I can NOT forgive is the LEADER of the shadowy agency, the agency that passes like a ghost among the shadows, screaming “We are here to occupy your town” off of a HELICOPTER from a BULLHORN. There’s no antithesis to everything the agency stands for than publicly and loudly and PERSONALLY shouting your secret evil plans to whoever wants to listen.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Yeah,when your plan looks like a serious version of south park,you are doing it wrong.

    3. lucky7 says:

      Coming back in 2021, and it turns out this concept for a level IS great.

  3. Tizzy says:

    The game is almost done???? I guess I’d better give up on the story making any sort of sense in the long run, then.

    What a joke!

  4. The Rocketeer says:

    I will give this game “credit” for one thing.

    Every week, when the first episode rolls out, regardless of how dumb the content of that episode itself was, I watch the credits and the clips from the rest of the week, without fail, have been so incredibly stupid and contradictory that I can’t possibly understand how they could be real. Every week I become convinced that it has to be a joke, or a dream sequence, or something that Josh fabricated outright to toy with viewer expectations.

    And every week, this game defies my incomprehension and manages to stitch together an entire buffet of audaciously incongruous bullshit into a single, sputtering Frankenstein’s monster of a setpiece-and-gimmick-driven narrative. If you could have given this game Marlow Brigg’s sense of self-awareness and fun, it would be among the greatest games of this generation.

    1. Thomas says:

      Just think of all that happened in this 28 minutes of gameplay. You’re a judge walking around in the cells of a county house court in south dakota, and then you’re in this giant grimy prison complex complete with pit-fighting and then you get electrocuted by someone in the bad guys hideout (dressed as a judge) and then you’re in your suit being whipped by the main bad guy with the other bad guys dominatrix gear whose interrogating you and then he leaves without interrogating you because the other bad guy says he’ll do it and then the other bad guy leaves without interrogating you and then your tied to a chair by yourself in a room and then the agency sends a swat team to take out the courthouse and then an oil tanker belonging to (?) randomly pulls up and falls over and then you’re in a warehouse whilst the town blows up and swat teams are hunting you amongst the fog, and then you’re outside and the town is fine and a random civilian is leaning against the wall and then you go through a door and your outside the town and the bad guy goes into the church and then you go into the church and he takes a vicar hostage and then you shoot him in the head and then you interrogate him and then ave maria is playing and you walk outside and the whole town suddenly blows up behind you again and you walk off and then you’re in a hearse and then you’re in chicago and you go into a tailors and buy a suit and then you leave the tailors.

      ?!

      1. Eric says:

        I’m really disappointed that after 47 suits up nobody said that he was dressed to kill.

        1. MrGuy says:

          Man, you’re killing it with that pun.

          1. newdarkcloud says:

            Indeed. It was murder on my ears.

      2. Trix2000 says:

        I think the whole thing with the suit might actually exemplify the stitched together nature of the narrative. Like, it feels like they came up with an idea to have a level for ‘getting a new suit from the suitmaker’ as some sort of setting building or whatever, but then later when they had to actually make things fit together they couldn’t find a better place to put the scene until waaaaaay late in the game. The scene itself is already rather bare, and placing it here just makes it seem all the more pointless and out-of-place than it already is.

        So yeah, now I a fully believe they constructed most all of the scenes/levels before actually having a finished narrative. That they just built a bunch of setpieces and threw them all together with abandon could not be more clear to me here.

        1. Thomas says:

          Yeah, the tailor sequence is the final bit of proof needed for that theory.

          What’s weird about this level even in comparison to the other levels though is that the level itself feels stitched together. The prison doesn’t feel like a prison inside a courthouse, the warehouse doesn’t feel like a warehouse in the town, the area outside of the warehouse doesn’t fit in with the events happening during the warehouse, the town outside doesn’t look like the town inside and the sequence inside the church doesn’t belong either.

          I think it’s possible they actually had completely different teams working on different pieces of the _level_ and then tried to stitch the results together. Or they had separate pieces of levels that were incomplete so they tried to tie it into one super level.

          I could easily believe that church sequence was designed for an entirely different segment of gameplay and they just tried to splice the two level geometries together.

    2. Tizzy says:

      You got that right! They sure packed a lot of varied and entertaining set pieces given how short the game is.

  5. Henson says:

    As much as the trend is infuriating in other games, I don’t think I’ll criticize this section for its ‘captured in a cutscene’ addition. Usually, being captured in cutscene is terrible because it gives the player no chance to avoid what seems like either an easily-avoidable or very predictable no-win situation; the bad guy rounds the corner and hits the hero over the head with a brick, for example. Skurky’s electrocution plan, however, is neither of those things, and actually displays some degree of forethought or cleverness on Skurky’s part. It seems like the developers were at least trying to avoid this common pitfall.

    1. Tizzy says:

      I’m not sure… I would be a lot happier with the capture if it had been a 47 ploy all along, a way to get information. Especially since it would show 47 as really badass and supremely confident, and demonstrate his contempt for these clowns.

      1. Joe Informatico says:

        Would that make the “captured in a cutscene” trope forgivable? If it’s an “all part of my plan” ploy? Since The Dark Knight almost every action movie seems to lean on it for the main villain and I’ve grown to hate it, but maybe it would work if it’s your player character who’s the proactive schemer for once.

        47 does appear to do something like this in the trailer for the new Hitman movie, but it also looks like 47 is the antagonist for at least part of the film. (I’m guessing it’ll play out like The Replacement Killers, and he’ll eventually team up with the cop who’s chasing him to stop the real villain.)

  6. Bropocalypse says:

    My question was “what is outside of the windows that is burning? Was this warehouse surrounded by red barrels?”
    I wish this game was clever enough to have a setpiece in a fireworks production facility, because at least then the gratuitous explosions would make sense.

    If there was a video game that deserved Rifftrax, it’d be this. Though your guys’ insightful snark is a very suitable replacement for pure humor.
    I’m looking forward to whenever Josh finds that samurai armor.

    1. guy says:

      Well, there was a crashed and burning tanker truck, which I think the Agency commandos smashed into the front door in an effort to destroy the building. Then they went into the building instead of setting up around it and gunning down people when they tried to escape.

      1. Bropocalypse says:

        And they… Put barrels of gas around the outside for good measure?

  7. Grudgeal says:

    I guess you could call this episode… A succession by gavelkind.

      1. Grudgeal says:

        The defence rests… IN PEACE.

        1. MrGuy says:

          You have the right to remain….aroused.

          Wait, which game is this again?

          1. Syal says:

            Oh man, “You have the right to remain violent” would be an awesome tagline for something involving a murder judge.

    1. Cybron says:

      If this is what gavelkind looks like, I regret always forcing it into primogeniture.

  8. Thomas says:

    I genuinely think this is the worst 28 minutes of AAA game ever. I’m trying to wrack my mind and I can’t think of another game that manages to fit so much variety of bad into 28 minutes.

    It’s like trying to read a book where the author didn’t know what all the words meant but used them anyway and you have this weird kind of disassociation where your brain is trying to figure out if there’s meant to be some clever meaning behind it or if its possible that its really that dumb.

    It’s just a random collection of events and levels and gameplay ideas all jammed into 28 minutes without ever understanding what any one of those things was meant to do.

    1. Trix2000 says:

      Conversely, the first section of this episode had me laughing the most out of the season so far. Just something about Josh going around whacking people with a gavel…

  9. newdarkcloud says:

    During the time when Josh was fighting all of those guys with the Judge costume, this is what came into my mind.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hIcKkKID8k

  10. newdarkcloud says:

    I’d also like to say that Rutzkarn’s reaction to the assassination in the church really nicely echos what I said when playing this segment.

    That is: “HOW FUCKING DARE YOU USE AVE MARIA HERE!?”

    1. spleentioteuthis says:

      That moment really was like the developers finally stopped pretending this was about anything else and just publicly began teabagging the corpse of the Hitman franchise.
      Without even hiding it in a box first.

  11. Tizzy says:

    – Oh, 47, here is your new suit.
    – Hey! I’m Mister 47 to my tailor.

    1. newdarkcloud says:

      I like that the tailor in this scene is blind. It’s a nice touch because it explains why 47 would go to this particular tailor.

  12. Tizzy says:

    Yet another trope that video games could do without: wandering around burning buildings looking for an escape. Especially those that, somehow, have enemies who stand around waiting for you rather than saving their own skin.

    Sure, the trope is not really that common, but it is pretty lame and lacks any purpose I can think of, so I don’t think I’ll mind if I never see it ever again.

    [Added in edit: the relevant tvtropes link. Usual warnings apply.]

    http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BigDamnFireExit

    1. AileTheAlien says:

      I could live with it if the mooks had visible gasmasks and air tanks.

      1. I have a mental image now of a video-game character slaughtering their way through a bunch of guys in respirators and heavy suits in a burning building, but when they get to the exit they find out that they just murdered a squad of firemen who were only there to rescue some kids upstairs…

        1. Tizzy says:

          “Haha! These goons with their oxygen tanks armed with only fire axes thought they could stop me… hmm… wait a minute!… oops!”

    2. Ivan says:

      The only solace I can take is that all the idiots that ran into the burning building to search for you are probably dead now because of it. It at least makes ghosting the section more satisfying anyway.

  13. Majromax says:

    Let’s pretend for a second that this game was good. What would these cutscenes mean for the game’s arc?

    In this episode:

    * We find Victoria but have her taken away from us
    * We Recover the silverballers, the talisman of Hitman
    * The Agency closes in on us
    * We Kill a corrupt sheriff in a church, at a funeral
    * We replace our suit

    This point of the game is meant to be the low point of the Hitman emotional arc. At the moment we are captured in a cutscene, everything is lost. Our goal is gone, possibly forever, and we are stripped of the things that made the player character the Hitman.

    At that point, we literally pass through fire into a cathartic moment: we find a villain at a funeral, which we can easily interpret as a funeral for our character’s life so far.

    In a world where Hitman: Absolution is actually about the Absolution of Hitman, this funeral scene is our primary emotional catharsis. Shooting the sheriff closes a sordid chapter of Hitman’s existence and puts Hitman on a path of rebirth. In terms of the game’s symbolism, this path begins when we recover the Silverballers and ends when we replace the suit, metaphorically becoming a new man. From that point onwards, we can proceed with a clear, singular, and noble purpose.

    Of course, Hitman is not a good game. None of the above emotional payoff is earned, nor is it reflected in the rest of the character arc. What would have to change for it to play out like this?

    *) We would have to be in some way complicit — even unwittingly — in our own downfall. A high person brought low by happenstance is not a good journey; a high person brought low by their own flaws is much better tragedy.
    *) Killing the sheriff would have to be a real emotional catharsis. This can’t happen if he is one of a dozen or so minibosses. Perhaps this should couple with the previous point: maybe we would have been working with him?
    *) The game would have to pay a lot more respect to the symbolism. We’ve lost-and-recovered the silverballers twice now, which is one more time than can be justified. Getting a new suit is also wildly out-of-place.

    If we want an emotional arc where this is still a Hitman game, maybe the sheriff should have been Control. In the interests of getting Victoria back, the first third of the game would have involved us finding out that the sheriff had some sort of involvement, and the second third would have involved us performing jobs ostensibly to help him get Victoria for us. His betrayal would have been our comeuppance, as in serving our own interests we would have been (intentionally) blind to the Sheriff’s vice and corruption. Bad seed, etc.

    1. Dev Chand says:

      You put too much thought into writing this. Way more than the writers of this game for sure.

      I see how that would work, but these symbolism would need something like good storytelling or good, cohesive visual direction to work. Both of which this game lacks.

    2. Octapode says:

      I think for replacing the suit to have any value at all you’d have to spend a lot more time in the suit instead of disguised, and you’d have to have lost the suit at some point in the past, so that getting a new suit is an actual change instead of having no bearing on the status quo. If 47 has been falling for the last chapter of the game, on the run, hiding, lacking his signature suit and guns, and if we aren’t going to steal someone else’s clothes about 30 seconds after the next mission starts, then the scene with the tailor could actually have some worth. It could be the point when 47 stops running and goes after the people behind everything, but instead it’s a random scene with no connection whatsoever to the rest of the game and just yet another dumb scene in a long, long series of dumb scenes, because why would we expect anything else at this point.

      1. MrGuy says:

        Hey, man. Those suits are so valuable that we willing pay $5,000 on a semi-regular basis just to have it returned. Show some respect.

  14. Spammy says:

    So, not having played any other Hitman games and only seen Rutskarn playing them, how out of place would it have been if it turned out that Hitman basically got his suits from like a Kingsmen style tailor, where the suit is all tricked out for assassinating in comfort and style. So the suit getting worn out is a big deal because it’s like body armor and him going to this one specific tailor is a big deal and then you wonder at the connections that Hitman must have to know the secret of this tailor. If they made the Hitsuit a super spy Kingsmen suit it would explain why Hitman wants his suit back so bad.

    Also, required: You can’t be Judge Judy and executioner!

  15. Destrustor says:

    I like how in the full minute between the point where the town’s sheriff walked into the church, limping and bleeding and obviously both armed and wounded, and the moment 47 walks in as well; not a single person in the church moved an inch, and Skurkey had the time to limp all the way up to the coffin before anyone thinks to worry about his condition.
    “Oh, here’s dear old Skurkey, our perpetually ruffled, limping and wounded sheriff, come to pay his respects to this man with his gun in hand, as usual. He’s such a sweet dear!”
    Yep, perfectly normal thing to see at a funeral.

    1. Syal says:

      It is if you know Skurky.

    2. Grudgeal says:

      Also, you know, the town is on fire. I’d have understood it if the church was full of people taking refuge, but holding an uninterrupted funeral under those conditions is ludicrous. It just underlines how much Hope is a collection of set-pieces that have no relation to each-other.

      1. Tizzy says:

        “- Anyone heard a loud boom, like a tanker exploding?”
        “- Can’t say I have. But I was listening to this beautiful rendition of the Ave Maria.”

  16. Ivan says:

    I intended to play this game along with the season, but I got distracted by XCOM instead. After this last episode I really regret buying it at all, even for $5. I mean I’m surprised that the nuns actually worked and were funny but this has really just turned into the worst thing ever. Not only is this game not hitman any more, it’s not anything resembling anything good.

  17. John says:

    I’m trying to process the architecture of the jail and failing utterly. None of the spaces in this game have made any kind of sense whatsoever. And why are there so many people? Where do the hundreds of people employed by Dexter and the Sheriff’s Department live, eat, and shop? Argh!

  18. Dreadjaws says:

    I’m starting to think this game was written on the go, and possibly every other chapter was written by different people, without giving them the previous ones to read.

    And I think the instructions for writing it were something along the lines of:

    Publisher: “Write a parody of Hitman, because people love parodies. Oh, but leave away all the humor, because people love dark and gritty stuff. Also, sex, lots of sex, because people love sex. But make it weird, because people love weird things.”

    Writer: “But, all of those things conflict with each other.”

    Publisher: “Ah, excellent! People love conflict. Man, this stuff writes itself. Pass the cocaine!”

    Writer: “S… Sir, that’s actually chalk powder.”

    Publisher: “SNIFFFFFFFF… AAAAAAAAHHHH!”

  19. Decius says:

    This has to be attempted parody. How else do you set a WATER tower on FIRE?!

    1. Trix2000 says:

      Clearly, it was filled with booze instead of water.

      At least, that might be what the developers thought would be in water towers.

  20. Artur CalDazar says:

    So possible defence for the sheriff capturing you. Dexter told him somebody was coming but not who and he set up that trap to wait for this mystery invader. This doesn’t work with the ongoing assumption that you are doing a perfect run for each mission however, since how would Dexter know to warn him if etc, etc.

    Why does the game set up Stucky to be such a screw-up if they are later going to use some pretty iconic Hitman things on him? Wouldn’t you want to maximise their impact?

    Huh, Rutskarn makes a good point. Why is the agency using all these teams? Was the robot arm guy given command of a legion of troops, and just the one hitman for this contract agency? Like the Saints weren’t assassin’s like you are, they still came in with the exact same MO as any other troops. They were functionally the same.

    Casual discussions of “why am I here” while the Hitman calming walks through a building burning around him, nice.

    I find Rutskarns anger over the misuse of music to be entirely justified. Getting the suit the music, this is all some really iconic Hitman flavour and its being used to elevate something really unimportant.

    Chris was kinda quiet this episode, or is that just me?

    1. MichaelGC says:

      Aye, I’d assumed he’d disconnected again, was quietly playing Animal Crossing, or was biding his time waiting for Shamus to do the “So, Chris…” thing!

    2. Dev Chand says:

      Personally, I would have been more angry if they used the Hitman 2 theme. It meant so much to me, that game being my introduction to Hitman and stealth games in general. I didn’t really care that much for Ave Maria as some players did, infact I thought it was a bit too melodramatic.

      It’s still a waste of classic Hitman throwbacks for sure.

    3. Nidokoenig says:

      To be fairer than the game has earned, if you’re doing a perfect run, this guy’s co-conspirators have been disappearing or dying in suspicious accidents over a frighteningly short period of time. Getting paranoid and setting traps would be reasonable, though the game doesn’t sell the getting paranoid bit, and reacting as if the threat is specific and known only makes sense because you keep getting captured in cut scenes. Having some different cut scenes or even some notes or audio logs or overheard conversations that only activate on specific run conditions.

    4. Tizzy says:

      There is something fundamentally broken in the story: the writers decided that all the antagonists would be played for laughs. They are contemptible, have weird, off-putting quirks, and look goofy at best.

      There is nothing wrong with this choice per se. Except that it’s very difficult to pull this off with a Cool Guy protagonist. Sergio Leone westerns come to mind, but I can’t think of anything else that did it successfully. YMMV, of course: not everyone likes those movies.

      Also, an unorthodox choice like this would be much, much harder to sell in an interactive medium.

      1. Ivan says:

        Honestly the worst part is that they keep contriving ways to have the antagonist talk at us during cut-scenes. If this were a hitman game there wouldn’t even be a cut-scene due to the fact that the player likely won’t even be in the same room when their target dies. Killing skurky in the church should have been a level rather than some point shooting nonsense with an idiotic extra death scene if you screwed it up (which I really don’t know how josh managed, did he run out of instinct?)

        *Edit* Just re-watched it, and Josh did not run out of instinct, in fact I have no idea how he failed. The best I can guess is that the devs changed the rules just so they would get to taunt the player with their awfully written character whom you can’t even shot in the face, and gets the last word because of cut-scenes.

        1. Artur CalDazar says:

          Point hitting doesn’t stop time it just makes it super slow, in this scene it seems to make it only a bit slow.

          Also that “idiotic extra death scene if you screwed it up”? There is one for every single major boss, but because Josh hasn’t been dying we haven been seeing them.

          They are all just as bad as that one.

      2. Syal says:

        The couple of Sergio Leone films I’ve seen revolve around the interactions between the good guys; The Good and the Ugly interact far more with each other than the Bad, and the conflict between the bounty hunters drives “For a Few Dollars More” more than the villain. Hitman Absolution didn’t think to have that second character (Ms. Macguffin doesn’t count), which means the uninspiring villains have to carry the show.

        Of course if they’d had that second character it probably would have really been Kane and Lynch 3.

  21. cassander says:

    I can’t help comparing the Agency to UNATCO in Deus Ex. UNATCO is a worldwide anti-terrorist agency that we are supposed to believe has a headquarters with a dozen employees and one bathroom in the basement of the ruins of the Statue of Liberty. It’s complete absurd, but Deus Ex manages to sell it, and it always feels vastly more plausible than than everything about the Agency …

    1. McNutcase says:

      Hey now. UNATCO had TWO bathrooms. Your boss would chew you out for going into the wrong one…

    2. Merlin says:

      Maybe it’s just a tax thing? The company I work for has literally hundreds of thousands of employees across the world, but our “official headquarters” is pretty much two old ladies and a fax machine somewhere in Dublin. Tax evasion: it’s a hell of a business plan.

  22. MichaelGC says:

    So I probably shouldn’t have spent 20 minutes rewinding & replaying the section around the six-minute mark, scanning the backgrounds and listening out for something I’d missed, before heading over to Wikipedia to do some research: all in a vain attempt to work out why we were suddenly talking about 2099

    Still, I’ve learnt an important lesson, methinks: impatience is an enemy to comprehension.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      I AM

      THE LAW!

  23. Neko says:

    So, making a trap like that to knock someone out without killing them or being completely neutralised by rubber-sole shoes requires a very specific amount of electricity… Not this scene’s worst offence by any means, but the one that sticks with me.

  24. Raunomies says:

    Since nobody else has not mentioned Rutskarn’s reference after 8 minutes: go and watch Danger 5, it should be on Netflix and it is fantastic experience.

    Unlike this game. My goodness I had heard stories about this but seeing it in action…

  25. Halceon says:

    So… how exactly did he get a graveyard made of dirt and stone on fire?

    1. MichaelGC says:

      Sodium?!

  26. Daemian Lucifer says:

    The ever growing ridicugargantuan list of stuff the developers of this game dont understand:

    Disguises ; Vision and perception ; Sneaking ; Police ; Fire department
    Fugu ; Reading ; Strip clubs ; Air vents ; Fuse boxes ; Map of the USA
    Bars ; Bar fights ; Game design ; Storytelling and writing
    The difference between their arses and elbows ; Face covering masks
    Peeking ; Rednecks ; South of USA in general ; Porn ; Barber shops
    Hot sauce ; Drugging food ; Bullets and their interaction with explosive things
    Sudbuing ; BDSM ; Deserts ; South dakota geography ; Rattle snakes
    Dogs ; PMCs ; Mesas ; Generators ; Elevators ; Proximity mines
    Mines ; Buildings ; Peoples reaction to car alarms ; Silence ; Fingers
    Nuns ; Assassin groups ; Interrogation ; Security ; Velvet ropes
    Laboratories ; Proper business practices ; Throwing stuff ; Threat evaluation
    Tattoos ; Faces ; Sexuality ; Aesthetics ; Caverns ; Chemicals ; Searching
    Line of sight ; Cake strippers ; Scientists ; Experimentation ; Human speech
    Mopping floors ; Hiding in plain sight ; Hiding in general ; Science ; Instinct
    Security systems ; Evidence ; Male Pattern Baldness (causes and cures)
    Lab Safety ; Bridges ; Extending bridges ; Handrails ; Building Codes
    Engineering ; Physics ; Gravity ; Zippo Lighters
    HVAC Systems (design and installation) ; Isotopes ; Necklaces
    Genetic Engineering ; Serums ; Sample collection safety ; OSHA Requirements
    Flags ; Decorations ; Computers ; Multiple screen setups ; Teenage girls
    Building layouts ; Radios ; Luchadores ; Illegal fighting ; Security checkpoints
    Holds ; Human strength ; Human anatomy ; Broken limbs ; Neck breaking
    Bobbleheads dolls ; RPGs ; Explosions ; Holsters ; Motel walls ; Debris ; Concrete
    C4 ; Electronic locks ; Lockpicks ; Credible threats ; Birthday parties ; Cornfields
    Scarecrows ; Electricity ; Water pipes ; Dialogue ; Detectives ; Helicopters
    Trial ; Corruption ; Motives ; Cause and effect ; Courthouses ; Prison doors
    Wooden packing crates ; Unconscious ; Judicial process ; Foreshadowing ; Pacing Gavels ; Suspicion ; Wigs ; Underground construction ; Prisson cells
    Prisons in general ; Chains ; Electricity ; Cell phone reception ; Villains
    Interrogation ; Surveillance ; Ropes in general ; Alarms ; The Agency ; Sivlerballers
    Previous hitman games in general ; Fan service ; Bullet wounds ; Car accidents
    Cisterns ; Ozone ; Fire ; Explosions ; Bottles ; Blood loss ; Lampshading
    Town layouts ; Connecting scenes ; Civilians ; Thigh wounds
    “Walk away from” scenes ; Blindness

    To be continued

    1. newdarkcloud says:

      That is an impressive list…

      …but I can’t help but notice that humor and/or wit isn’t on it. Did you hear that guy say “Skurky, not jerky!”

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        You are right,I left out humor.That will be there in the next installment.

      2. Henson says:

        I actually think this is a spot-on thing for an asshole like Skurky to say. He’s probably been holding on to that lame comeback for years, waiting for the opportunity release it upon his victims like the plague.

  27. Daemian Lucifer says:

    How did the sheriff die?He god shot in a thigh,which will either kill you in seconds if the artery gets severed,or in hours/days if not.Then he walked away,for miles apparently,only to die when you step on his leg?Because of…..what?Shock?Pain?It sure wasnt blood loss because he was still able to stand and use a gun and have a hostage.What the fuck happened there?

    1. Gruhunchously says:

      Also, 47 is pretty darn lucky that Skurky gave up Victoria’s actual location in his last moments. I mean, what would he have done if he hadn’t? Find someone else to shoot in the head before interrogating?

      1. newdarkcloud says:

        It’s the Assassin’s Creed interrogating technique. Once somebody receives a fatal wound, that are bound by law to confess every detail of their crimes and answer any/all question their killer might have.

        After all, injuries that instantly kill only exist for mooks. Villain characters are immune to instant death, but vulnerable to slow, gradual death after receiving otherwise fatal injuries.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Except in asscreed you can always say “but thats not how it really happened,its just an inconsistency between real memories and the animus translation of them”.Its a powerful tool for filling plot holes.

    2. Syal says:

      He’s just pretending.

      He waited until 47 did that dramatic walk away and then he got back up and left.

  28. MrGuy says:

    Can I just say that my favorite Spoiler Warning credit of all time is and now will ever be:

    Josh
    God damn it, Josh

  29. Cybron says:

    Did anyone else find it REALLY jarring when this random civilian calls you 47?

    Yeah, it’s obvious 47 has had interactions with the suitmaker before, but why the hell would he ever give out his name as 47? It certainly doesn’t look like he’s employed by the agency.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      A random blind civilian.

      1. Ivan says:

        Kinda defeats the purpose of going through all the trouble to find a blind suit maker in the first place doesn’t it? I thought he wanted anonymity but apparently it’s ok to give out your “name” that only makes sense in the context of your super secrete organization.

  30. Mailbox says:

    When hitting someone with the gavel. I would have gone with:
    “You’re Out Of ORDER!”

    And then Josh was clearing the whole jail:
    “You’re out of order and YOU’RE out of order! This whole place is out of order!”

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