So, in playing through Hitman's latest level (Sapienza), I was messing around and threw a fire axe at a guy out in the open with a ton of witnesses. (I blame Dan.) They all scattered off to alert guards of the horrific crime they'd seen. I then decided upon a new objective, which was to try and murder my way out of suspicion. Well, shit got real, and I found myself in the upper levels of the meat market blasting anyone who came up the stairs. This resulted in a nice pile of guards.

This created a new problem. Amidst this chaos, I ran out of bullets for my silenced pistol and just started picking up their weapons. Enough NPCs pass by the building on their routines to have heard these shots, and many of them witnessed parts of my guard kill spree, so there were now even more NPCs out there who were well-aware of what was going on. Now that I had wiped out all the guards in the general area, the hunt was on.

The "Hitman vision" mechanic highlights witnesses in orange, which was handy. I noticed that one of them had fled down to the main square near the beach/docks. Well, I had a sniper rifle, so I took him out. This alerted another ten or so NPCs, who I tried to all take out before they could make their getaway. A few escaped. Damn. Now I had to venture out of my cowardly hidey-hole. I made my way down the streets to the beach, shooting any guards and NPCs I encountered.

At this point, I had so many witnesses scattered across the map that I didn't even know where to try to find them, so I ventured down into the lab. This was the toughest section by far, as the guards there are heavily armed with shotguns and SMGs, but I had another nice little corridor where I started mowing them down. I cleared out the entire grotto of guards and then went on a scientist spree. Thanks to this little detour, now I was armed to the teeth, as shotguns are incredibly effective.

Having come this far, I decided to see if I could kill the entire level. I know the map pretty well (having spent a bunch of time in it), so I felt I might be able to pull it off. I started runnin' and gunnin' with the shotgun and made short work of several large sections of the map in a hurry. To my surprise, the game was actually managing to run fairly well (I'm on Xbox One) and was properly dropping weapons, outfits, etc. However, eventually the game started to break in interesting ways.

AI routines didn't exactly hold up to the stress I was putting on the game. Francesca ended up in a part of the map I've never otherwise seen her, and Silvio was completely unfazed by all the death, stepping over bodies in a resolute effort to adhere to his routine. Clusters of NPCs tried to hide in the sewers, and they were all doing the same "duck down and wave arms" animation, which actually made for some hilarious Thriller-esque choreography. (I pulled up youtube, put that song on, and watched them for a bit to amuse myself. It did not disappoint.)

Finally, after killing off a few more by the entrance, the "Compromised" notification disappeared. Success. I'd murdered my way out of suspicion. Pleased with myself, I ended the mission. It listed 292 non-target kills. Damn. I missed some, as the way these Hitman maps work is that there are 300 targets on each map, so minus Silvio, Francesca, and the virus (which strangely counts as an NPC), there are 297 non-targets. I was short five. I loaded up the save to find the rest. Turns out I had forgotten about the guys in the towers, who all apparently watched this whole massacre play out from their crow's nest and gave zero fucks.

For their apathy, the sentence was death.

Rule number one: leave no witnesses. Rule number two, leave no witnesses to the previous' witnesses' deaths. Rule number three...

*six hours later*

Rule number 147: Always eat levitating ice cream cones when offered, it's the polite thing to do

Not really. I defy Tipper Gore with my uncanny ability to separate fiction from reality. It was more of a completionist challenge than anything anyway.

This guy gets it.

You out-Commando'ed Commando. In Commando, Arnold kills one person rougly every minute. You killed more than two persons every minute. Bravo sir, bravo.

Damn, you really did paint the town red.

A beautiful work of art

Hmmmm.... I have never played a Hitman game before, but the more i see about it, the more i want to check it out.

@notnert427: I mean, I learned from the best! (Interesting sidenote, this is one of the oldest videos on YouTube and the series continues to this day)

@gundogan said:

You out-Commando'ed Commando. In Commando, Arnold kills one person rougly every minute. You killed more than two persons every minute. Bravo sir, bravo.

Is it bad that virtual Arnold's seal of approval made my day?

Paris has the 300 total as well. Oddly enough, when I made a similar attempt on Paris, the game ran far worse and was damn near unplayable. Performance-wise, what seems to make it tank is dead bodies clustered in the same area, so Sapienza being spread out actually seems to help. The game has some bugs, but 300 NPCs that mill around, react to you, and can all be taken out is a fairly impressive technical feat, and outside of levitating ice cream cones and some weirdly broken AI routines when you unleash pure chaos, I came away pleased overall with how well it handled the anarchy, especially on a console.

Do it! The series is awesome, and the latest game is the best of them.

Haha, my default playstyle is actually the polar opposite of this. I'm usually SA or bust (even after I've already accomplished that feat), but a Dan thought crept into my head for just a second and this whole massacre organically happened from there. I regret nothing.

So, I had completed all the Sapienza challenges and escalations, with the exception of two remaining feats. One was "The Bells Are Ringing", which entails killing a target by dropping a church bell on them, and the other was "Getting What You Wish For", which required throwing a target into a well. Now, it appears that most people accomplished these two feats by creating a custom contract that marked a nearby civilian to be easily taken out. Fuck that. I don't do easy. Just as with the "For My Next Trick" feat from Paris, I decided that I was going to kill one of the main mission targets instead of cheesing it via contracts mode.

Slivio was my choice of target. I mean, the guy is a headcase with mommy issues who wears a sweater tied around him. Enough said. First I took out the virus, then capped Francesca, and then saved the game. Now, my plan with Silvio was to get him about as far East on the map as he paths (the video room) and knock him out during the awesome "47 spices in the pasta" song. That was easy enough. Much more difficult was clearing a path from there to the well/church. Keep in mind I had to keep him alive to be able to kill him with these feats, so tossing him down several floors wasn't an option. I had to drag him all the way there without a guard killing me in the process. This is where things got messy.

The beach area is filled with civilians, so every kill had an exponential witness effect where it was impossible to keep things under wraps. Having already wiped the entire map out in the previous effort above, I wasn't overly keen on spending the time it takes to do that again, so I focused on clearing out the beach area. I was making great progress. However, as I was gallivanting about on the beach, I flipped on my Hitman vision just out of habit, and it's a good thing I did, because Silvio woke the fuck up and started walking away. Oh HELL no. I hustled back up the stairs as he headed back towards the main mansion. The timing was impeccable, as just as he got near visibility of the mansion staff, I channeled Dan to blast him in the back of the head with a can of spaghetti and dragged him back indoors. Success.

I returned to the beach and resumed methodically taking out the remaining civvies one by one. I was even being stealthy about it to not cause more anarchy than I already had. That is, until a lone guard showed up out of nowhere to unload a magazine into my back. At this point, I should mention that once too much chaos happens, the game kinda breaks and remains in a constant status of "searching", and you cannot save the game in this status. As such, I died a little inside along with 47, because I had to revert to the last save, which was from before I even KO'd Silvio the first time. It was an hour and twenty-four minutes earlier. Fuck.

Undeterred, I resumed my quest, with one exception. This time, screw the civilians; they can't hurt me. Yeah, flip your shit. I don't care. The guard hunt was on. I first went and murdered the one who killed me last time. Hitman: Revengeance. Then I spread out and killed any guard who I thought could come running at the behest of some civilian. With that done, I was free to start trying to bring Silvio over towards the church/well. I popped into Silvio's room and started dragging him around in plain view of a bunch of civilians. With no guards in the area to go notify, their futile reactions were pretty great. One guy ran off maniacally yelling. Another lady remarked, "you're just going to drag him around like that?" Yes. Yes, I am.

Crushing Silvio with the church bell was terrific. It made this perfect "crash, clatter, GONGGGGGG" sound as this giant bell came hurtling down to splatter Silvio, and the broken wood, dust, etc. really sold it. Kudos to whoever animated that one. Witnessing that carnage made it all worth it. Unfortunately, tossing him in the well was fairly anticlimactic by comparison, but I'm quite proud that I pulled off both of these feats with Silvio, which is something I imagine very few people actually did.

That being said, I'm still amateur hour. This man is my hero.