The History of Hitman

The perfect assassin is never seen, nor heard. The target dies in their sleep or in some freak accident while their killer leaves the scene of the crime undetected. His methods range from brutal to sublime, but his greatest weapon of all is anonymity.

Names are for friends, so he doesn’t need one. But his reputation elevated a small Danish company retreating from financial disaster into a world-class developer with a recipe for the perfect murder.

Invitation to a Party

The European demoscene of the early ‘90s became prime recruiting ground for ambitious game publishers. Scavenger, Inc. specialized in finding those pre-made groups of digital artists and programmers -- often through the cutting-edge video art they released -- and turning them into full-fledged development crews. As a business model, throwing eager young talent into an exploding games market worked remarkably well. Zyrinx, a Copenhagen-based demo group formed in 1992, soon emerged as their star team.

Scavenger relocated Zyrinx -- programmers David Guldbrandsen, Karsten Hvidberg, and Jens Bo Albretsen, graphic designers Michael Balle and Jesper Jørgensen, and musician Jesper Kyd -- to their Boston offices even before they completed their first game, a punishing physics-based shooter called Sub-Terrania for the Sega Mega Drive. Two more followed (Red Zone in 1994 and racing game Scorcher in 1996) before the money vanished. A dispute with publishing partner GT Interactive forced Scavenger to declare bankruptcy in 1998 and close up shop.

Without a publisher or resources of their own, most of the Zyrinx guys headed home to Denmark. Fortunately, they didn't go empty-handed...or alone.

Jacob Andersen worked as a design lead at Lemon, another development team orphaned by Scavenger’s sudden demise, and he'd collaborated with Zyrinx on Scorcher. Now they decided to partner again to shop an ambitious project two years in the making: Rex Dominus, an open-world, high-fantasy, online-multiplayer game. They formed Reto-Moto and almost immediately created a second company, Io Interactive, as part of a joint-venture deal with Nordisk Film. Game publishers were fairly scarce in Denmark, but Nordisk, a film studio, took an interest in Rex’s demo. Reto-Moto fell by the wayside. Soon after, Rex Dominus did, too.

Nordisk’s parent company felt Rex was a little too ambitious. Better to start with a simple shooter. “We decided to do a quick game inspired by Hong Kong action movies like The Killer and Hard Boiled,” recalls Andersen, who stepped into the Game Director role. “Basically a guy in a suit blasting away in a Chinese restaurant.” Design centered around a gritty, burned-out mercenary with thinning hair, a surly disposition, and a pin-striped suit.

Soon, the team latched onto the idea of making him an augmented clone designed specifically to be the ultimate assassin...and able to defy his creator's intentions. A newly invented 47th human chromosome would give him advanced strength, intelligence, endurance, and a name. For fun, Jesper Jorgensen added a barcode (ending in the number 47) to the back of the character’s neck to denote the clone's status as a lab rat. Everyone loved that, but everything else felt off, and Jorgensen experimented wildly to find the perfect look.

As it turned out, the perfect look walked in the door looking for a job. South African actor David Bateson heard about the project through some friends at a Copenhagen sound studio, and that it needed voice talent. His crisp, mid-Atlantic tone instantly locked into the character. Before long, Jorgenson scraped his previous designs and modeled Agent 47's features on Bateson as well. Even the wardrobe fell into place.

Sort of. During the design phase, the Io team decided it would be cool to open the game with 47's escape from the laboratory that created him. Even cooler, he'd do it by stealing a guard's clothes and simply walking out the front door.

That idea took hold, and the entire game changed.

Game publisher Eidos, still riding high from the success of its Tomb Raider franchise, picked up the project and assigned producer Jonas Eneroth, fresh off the highly popular stealth-shooter Thief: The Dark Project. With his encouragement, Io deviated from their original idea of a John Woo-style bullet ballet to craft an intelligent shooter where infiltration, patience, and planning were key. Jesper Kyd, who'd stayed behind to open a studio in Manhattan, gladly came in to compose a sharp techno soundtrack matching the game's new, sophisticated vibe.

On November 19, 2000, less than two years after the Scavenger crash, Hitman: Codename 47 hit store shelves.

A Dance with the Devil

Years after Subject 47's escape from a remote scientific facility, Agent 47 surfaced as the top assassin for the International Contracts Agency, taking assignments from his rarely-seen handler, Diana Burnwood. A lifetime of training had forged him into a methodical killer, though questions about his own identity -- and a sense that he didn't belong in this world -- still lingered in his mind. 47’s work took him all over the globe, liquidating crime lords, weapons dealers, and terrorists with the same cold efficiency.

He discovered a very personal connection to each target too late. Everyone on his hit list had donated genetic material to 47’s creation, and the client bankrolling their executions was his creator, Professor Ort-Meyer. The professor’s former colleagues had become competitors with plans to create their own armies of flawless killers. Ort-Meyer beat them to it.

Not a fan of being manipulated, Agent 47 located Ort-Meyer, destroyed a squad of Mr. 48s -- Ort-Meyer’s loyal next-gen clones -- and broke his “father’s” neck. For free.

Hitman won fans and detractors in nearly equal numbers. Without question, it presented a stylish, compelling experience that broke ground in the stealth-game genre. Each level offered multiple paths to the target, though a direct, guns-blazing solution generally proved suicidal. From nearly every angle, the design pushed players to use something few other games ever asked for: subtlety. Better a quiet piano-wire garrote than an AMT Hardballer pistol. Better to wait than to charge in. Best of all, Agent 47 could disguise himself in any victim's outfit and enter restricted areas unnoticed -- a nightmare to code for -- so long as nobody found the body.

But the game's difficulty curve proved even more murderous, and a lack of save points only upped the frustration level. Players often had to take a trial-and-error approach to each level. Even basic controls could be a chore.

"We'd been making console games," says Andersen; Codename 47 was the old Zyrinx team's first PC game...indeed, their first game not specifically made for a Sega platform. "We missed out on quite a few PC rules."

Despite the flaws, Hitman won fans with its deliberate pacing, gritty world, and deliciously sophisticated killings. The whole project started as a way to fund Rex Dominus, but Io went to work on a sequel not long after the first game went out the door. They had something special with Agent 47, they saw what needed fixing, and now they knew how to build a Hitman worthy of their ambitions. For starters, development clicked back over to more familiar ground -- a console platform, the PlayStation 2. Eidos eagerly doubled down on Io and their hot new franchise. As far as they were concerned, Codename 47 was only the beginning.

It was also the last time a Hitman game released without controversy.

Terminal Hospitality

Almost two years later, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin saw 47 looking for answers and redemption in an Italian monastery under the tutelage of Father Vittorio. Naturally, that made Vittorio easy bait when Russian mobster Sergei Zavorotko (brother to one of 47's victims in the first game) needed to lure the now-legendary hitman out of retirement. Not a wise move, as it turned out. Zavorotko himself became the last victim in 47’s violent journey of self-discovery. The man who did not belong anywhere found himself in his work and vowed to choose his own truth above man’s or God’s.

If Codename 47 made gamers a promise, Silent Assassin kept it.

Everything from controls to concept showed marked improvement. Now any slip could make guards suspicious of 47's disguises, adding a thick layer of tension. Codename 47 docked players for sloppy work or the odd killing spree, but Hitman 2 rewarded you for only killing the assigned target and walking away with no witnesses, no covers blown, and no alarms raised.

Using anesthetic to knock an enemy out instead of simply gunning them down with 47's silenced Silverballers -- the renamed Hardballers -- or quietly strangling them with his now-signature fiber wire -- an upgrade to the old piano wire -- might've been riskier, but it also proved far more lucrative. A "silent assassin" rating became the goal, not simply an option.

The series' religious undercurrent -- fairly unheard of in gaming at that time -- took on greater significance as well, with Agent 47 praying and seeking guidance from the church. It also came close to fueling a rather provocative scene.

According to Jacob Andersen, "There was a great intro story that got scrapped. The mafia accidentally blows up a whole bus filled with guitar-playing, psalm-singing nuns," setting 47 on a quest for vengeance. Concept artist Martin Schoiler even storyboarded the sequence before it was dropped. Another level, however, depicted 47 taking out turban-wearing "terrorists" in a recreation of the Golden Temple in Amristar, India...a Sikh holy site. Backlash from the Sikh community prompted Eidos to issue an apology and alter the game.

Eidos typically kept their franchises on strict schedules -- Tomb Raider every 12 months, Hitman every two years -- to keep their investors happy. By the time the Sikh controversy hit, Io was already crunching hard on Hitman 3, the intended conclusion to their trilogy. "We seriously thought that the world would grow tired of Hitman after the third game," says Andersen, and they wanted to go out with an ambitious adventure that topped everything they'd done before.

Eight months in, the Io team realized they didn't have a hope of delivering it on time. They quickly called a crisis meeting with Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey.

Their first decision: Put Hitman 3 on ice. Their second: research told them less than 10% of Hitman 2's audience had played the PC-only Codename 47. "We decided to make Hitman 2.5 with some of the best content from Hitman 1," says Andersen, remastering everything via the Hitman 2 engine. With most of the Io team knee-deep in a separate project titled Mercenaries, a skeleton crew went to work and delivered Hitman: Contracts in just seven-and-a-half months.

The half-recycled nature of Contracts gave it an episodic feel, glued together by cutscenes of 47 dying in a dark. Each level represented his fevered hallucinations. Considering its swift production schedule, Contracts performed better than any other game in Io's history.

Critically, it sank. Many felt the third game in the series was far too soon for a “best-of” compilation. Nevertheless, it gave Io two extra years to work on the game they really wanted to make.

The Murder of Crows

Eidos acquired Io Interactive for £20 million the month before Contracts shipped. After all, the fourth Hitman game already had a good head start, and Contracts' final scene teased its plot to eager fans. In a rare in-person meeting, Diana warned 47 that his attacker was part of a wider move on the Agency... all centered on isolating and eliminating 47 himself.

"Originally, Hitman 3's story was meant to be a parody around George Bush’s re-election campaign," says Jacob Andersen, and as originally scheduled, "it would have hit right in the middle of the campaign." When Contracts took the 2004 slot instead, that changed.

The plot shifted to a Vice President planning a coup d'etat against his Commander in Chief, aided by the Franchise, a rival firm busily liquidating Agency personnel. Former FBI Director -- and Franchise founder -- Alexander Leland Cayne orchestrated everything to eliminate both a pro-cloning President and 47, whose very DNA held the secrets to creating an army of super-clones. Similar to Contracts, Cayne told the tale in flashbacks leading up to Agent 47's death... while on his way to the funeral.

Io and Eidos poured more resources into Hitman 3 -- now Hitman: Blood Money -- than any other entry before it. A level set during Marti Gras featured staggering crowds moving through the New Orleans streets while the final mission featured gunfights at the White House. Now the game tracked 47's notoriety from level to level, further encouraging players to keep a low profile. Failing that, they'd have to spread some hush money around or risk guards seeing through disguises with ease. Avoiding suspicion wasn't enough; players had to be suspicious. Several levels included Franchise plants out to assassinate 47.

But even for a series known for multiple solutions, Blood Money outdid itself. Opportunities abounded. In addition to the usual methods, Agent 47 could also orchestrate darkly humorous "accidents" to eliminate marks by rigging gas stoves, poisoning wedding cakes, replacing prop guns with the real thing, or even dropping pianos on his victims.

It all crescendoed back in the here-and-now when Diana revived 47 for a beyond-the-grave shootout to eliminate Cayne and all the witnesses, buoyed by yet another amazing Jesper Kyd soundtrack. A soaring arrangement of Franz Shubert's Ava Maria became Blood Money's centerpiece. Even the menu screen got special attention, with assassinated targets showing up in the pews at Agent 47's funeral as you progressed through the game.

An ad campaign featuring a "beautifully executed" woman in lingerie drew sharp protest, but everything around the game itself clicked into place. A brand-new console on the market -- the Xbox 360 -- even gave it an extra platform to land on. Blood Money drew strong reviews and became the best-selling Hitman to date.

And then everyone walked away.

A New Life

After four Hitman games, the team at Io needed a break. Moreover, they wanted to turn attention to their other project, Mercenaries, featuring a grumpy gun-for-hire who bore a strong conceptual resemblance to the original Agent 47 designs. After a few reboots, Io redubbed it Kane & Lynch.

Jesper Kyd likewise moved on, becoming an in-demand composer and adding the Borderlands and Assassin's Creed franchises to his growing resume. Then, in 2008, roughly five months after a film version of Hitman crashed and burned at the box office, Jacob Andersen, his fellow founding members, and several Hitman veterans parted ways with Io Interactive to re-form Reto-Moto. As always, Kyd signed up to score their first project, Heroes & Generals...an online multiplayer game blending the shooter and strategy genres, set in a persistent world.

Rumors of a new Hitman game came and went, stirred in part by comments made by 47 himself, David Bateson. Io Interactive denied all in October 2010. The following April, news leaked that Japanese publisher Square Enix, who bought Eidos in 2009, had just trademarked the title Hitman: Absolution. Confirmation came two months later via a teaser trailer.

Agent 47 was back...but Bateson wasn't. The man who embodied the Hitman announced on his website that he'd been "unceremoniously dropped from the franchise."

As fans made their outrage felt, Eidos released another trailer, this time depicting a group of nuns throwing off their habits to reveal a scantily clad hit-squad mere seconds before Agent 47 eliminated them one by one. Accusations of sexism came down from all quarters, compounding Absolution's PR woes. Game Director Tore Blystad publicly apologized.

A few months later, Io confirmed on its Hitman Facebook page that Bateson will indeed return to voice 47. William Mapother, best known as the vicious "Other" Ethan on the TV series Lost, will perform mo-cap duties.

Both have their work cut out.

Set years after Blood Money, Hitman: Absolution kicks off with the Agency issuing a kill order on Agent 47's only real human contact in the world: Diana Burnwood. But before anyone can foreclose on her, Diana hires 47 for one final contract: save an orphan in Chicago named Victoria. Naturally, other interested parties have already closed in and, in keeping with the series' provocative instincts, they're not shy about executing an orphanage full of innocent nuns to get her. Nor does 47 hesitate to erase a few cops during in his escape from the city.

An entirely new team has taken Hitman's reigns and placed a high priority on flexibility. Absolution supports a run-and-gun approach and sneaky gameplay equally, and the new Instinct system goes both ways as well. Stealth players can use it to see where patrols will go -- finally solving the genre's trial-and-error issues -- while gunmen will dial into "point shooting," a tag-'em-and-bag-'em feature similar to Splinter Cell: Conviction's "mark and execute" system.

While Io promises a more personal story for 47 this time around, don't expect the bar-coded gentleman to soften his approach. The beauty of Hitman lies in how it invites players to apply their own ingenuity to a singular purpose. Get in, end a life, escape. Celebrating the adventures of a remorseless killer naturally generates controversy, but more than the violence, Agent 47 has always represented one very important thing.