A Blood Money Moral Dilemma
Date: 12th October
Location: Las Vegas Casino
With the sun slowly setting and the huge fountains of water shooting themselves gracefully into the sky I was standing on top of an elevator waiting for a balding man in a suit holding a briefcase to walk under me. When he eventually did I took out my fibre wire from my suit and strangled him with little effort. I then pulled his body up on top of the elevator and took off his clothes.
This is the first 5 minutes of me playing Hitman: Blood Money.
Blood Money is the 4th of the fantastic Hitman games, and my personal favourite, the main elements of the game is murder, stealth and deception. Even though most levels you are given only one target, it is always either in a heavily guarded private location, or a very public place. Unlike it’s predecessors it’s next to impossible to just go in with a heavy machine gun and keep shooting until you hit. There are certain factors that make this impossible.
- It’s very hard to smuggle weapons across the world, especially as your main mode of transport is airplane.
- It’s a bit obvious you walking into a place with either a large bulk in your coat or a large machine gun. Especially as there will be CCTV, so even if you do get away with it, you’ll be on every news station in the world.
- You’ll run out of ammunition very quickly: Ammo and guns don’t come cheap you know!
- You’ll be lucky if the boys in blue don’t shoot you down at first sight of a large machine gun.
- There’s a chance people may escape, causing the same effects as number 2.
- You can’t get heavy machine guns in this game.
You may begin to notice how realistic this game is now, with the threat of witnesses, CCTV or the law becoming very apparent, as if you are in the real world.
Columbine springs to mind.
I have owned this game now for about 6 months and pretty much completed it on every difficulty setting. (I lie but run with it) I have gotten to the point now to see whether I can in fact do what I said you couldn’t do, just run in and massacre everyone and come out breathing.
I tried this on a level of a hillbilly wedding, where I have to kill the groom and the father of the bride. Picture the scene. The location is a set of large shacks built on a swamp as a sort of dock for airboats. Here there are people shooting crocodiles with shotguns. There is a small alley in between 2 shacks that lead to a large grassy area where people are dancing. There’s a large house at the end of this large area and to the right is a tent. In the back garden there’s a small bandstand where the ill-fated groom and bride will stand to wed -if I don’t kill him first. I decided to do this a bit at a time, and before I knew it I had killed 10 guests and 12 guards all outside the large house without anyone in the house any the wiser.
I then found a present wrapped up, and inside I placed a remote bomb, I went out to the small bandstand thing and placed the present on the floor near it, where the guests stood. I also poisoned the cake that the groom then tasted a few minutes later killing him silently. The priest, not knowing the groom was dead, then asked for the bell to be rung so people could head to see this event. No one knew the groom was lying dead in the kitchen yet. I then waited until a large crowd was there and BANG! The whole crowd was no more. I then just like Gary Oldman in Leon, ran about the house with the shotgun, shooting anyone that moved. (And they say videogames are violent.)
Then I ran up to shoot a woman and she fell to her knees and shouted, ‘Please, Don’t Shoot, I have children.’
I froze; I couldn’t believe what I just heard. She has kids, if I shoot her now, those kids will never see their mum again. What if I’m becoming a murderer? Just like those dickhead kids who thought Manhunt was fun so they tried it themselves. They say kids who start off killing small things like tiny animals then lead on to become killers. I didn’t feel like killing anyone in the real world, just the people on here.
Then it occurred to me. The reason the wannabe Charles Mansons out there kill things…is to kill things.
Kill: To take the life of something.
In Hitman I’m not killing things, I’m merely making the animated person, develop rag doll physics (basically so it acts like a real dead body by being all floppy)… And they come back when I restart the level. Also…the main thing:
ITS JUST A GAME!!
If I see these as real people, or even see the world that I’m playing in as real, then I’m a warped individual that DOES have murderous tendencies. But I merely am seeing it as how skilful I am at this GAME. I’m not pulling a gun trigger; I’m pressing the R1 button. The lady doesn’t have kids, nor does she have a soul or a voice, someone else records the voice and everything she says is a script. Like films, games can be taken way too seriously when at the end of the day its just entertainment, morbid entertainment, but still that’s what it is.
So if you excuse me I’m going to go play Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and beat an old lady to death with a double ended bright purple dildo.