Take “Death in the Family,” Hitman 3’s Knives Out-influenced Dartmoor mission. Characters typically have two states, relaxed and total panic, and unless you’re roaming around a level with fire axe in hand, the latter state typically resets to the former. Often, the whole affair seems mechanical, even when you’re pursuing someone who, by rights, should be extremely wary. There’s something sorely lacking from Hitman, the sense that your actions and your presence have any kind of nuanced impact. However, when it counts, The Elder Scrolls outdoes Hitman’s dolls house. Yes, this is the same franchise that features conversation upon conversation about mudcrabs and didn’t bother to rewrite dialogue for different voice actors. Sufferthorn, your newly acquired dagger, will prove a useful instrument of death, but it’s nothing compared to having Speaker of the Brotherhood Lucien Lachance commend you for arranging your target’s “accidental” demise.īut it’s not just that the Dark Brotherhood embraces your career choice - on many occasions, it presents you with a more convincing murder sandbox. But it’s the praise the Dark Brotherhood piles upon you that really gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling. Like in Hitman, if you complete a contract in a specified manner, you walk away with a bonus unlock.
Every interaction with your handler and fellow assassins is so magnificently over the top all the world’s an abattoir, and all the NPCs merely victims. The Dark Brotherhood has no such reservations you’re here for murder, murder, and more murder, and neither Skyrim nor Oblivion pretends otherwise. While 47 and Diana are targeting those who “deserve” it, players are dragging hapless innocents into a grape presser and making red, red wine. There’s an odd, sometimes jarring disconnect between the emotionless way Agent 47 is presented and the homicidal shenanigans the game allows you to get up to. It helps that the Dark Brotherhood guild (prominent in both The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) is so relentlessly, unashamedly evil. But for sheer job satisfaction, you can’t beat The Elder Scrolls’ breathlessly evil assassins.
That’s coming from someone who’s followed the Hitman series from its janky, unforgiving roots all the way to the current “World of Assassination” trilogy.
Sorry, Hitman, you’re a great stealth franchise, but you’re no Dark Brotherhood. This article contains spoilers for Hitman 3 and for the Dark Brotherhood in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
0 kommentar(er)
