In our return trip to Marrakesh, we meet and murder new and fascinating people in the second of two Summer Bonus Episodes.

I’ve said Hitman is a lot of trial-and-error in the past, where players are supposed to poke around and learn what they are and are no able to do without getting caught. That means for every success, there are many, many failures. This episode and the next are really good examples of that.

As you can clearly see, I did not get the pass to the Shisha Bar on my first try. It took several attempts to get a working strategy going. Once I did though, it was pretty smooth.

I’m sure you’ve seen a number of Hitman players making a ton of top-tier plays that look absolutely effortless on their part. Getting to the point where one can make those impression plays is part of the joy of playing Hitman. In fact, practicing and redoing missions is most of the experience.

Even with the Elusive Targets, even if players can’t redo them in order practice, they can still go in with all the knowledge accrued from playing the level previously in Story, Contracts, or Escalations.

There’s a lot here, if players wish to dig deep into it.


(Spoiler Alert: Major spoilers for the plot to Watch_Dogs 2)
Marcus Holloway is a good kid. Through circumstances out of his control, he was pegged by ctOS’s predictive crime algorithm as the likely suspect in crimes he was in no way responsible for. Though scarred by this incident, and left with a certain rage against the machine, he has never once lost his glib charisma and sense of morality. Armed with naught but a Stun Gun and a billiard ball attached to a rope, Marcus is on a mission not to punish, not to kill, but to expose. Rather than blindly take his anger out on others, like a certain someone before him, he seeks to show people the faults and risks with relying on surveillance technologies to keep the streets safe.
I am Marcus Holloway, and this is the lens from which I view the world.



These were my thoughts as I played through the majority of Watch_Dogs 2. Unlike Aiden Pearce, I quickly took to Marcus Holloway. He’s a genuinely endearing protagonist with charisma to spare and a strong supporting cast behind him all the way. And beneath all that charm, I sensed a soul to him that I just never could when playing the original Watch_Dogs. For this reason, I endeavored to be as non-lethal as I possibly could during my time in Watch_Dogs 2. Instead of detonating gas pipes and exploding transformers to murder those that stood between me and my objectives, I opted for more elegant solutions. I look for electric panels to shock my adversaries unconscious for a few minutes. I chose to utilize my Stun Gun rather than purchase other, more effective weaponry. And, whenever possible, I would sneak around guards without fighting them at all by using distractions, drones, and good old fashioned positioning.
This was my interpretation of Marcus. Watching him hang out with his friends, encourage them in the face of doubt or adversity, expose the crimes of the elite, I got the impression that Marcus was someone out to do the right thing. Despite his backstory, Marcus never talked of taking revenge on Blume, who produces and controls ctOS. He’s not out to murder the people responsible and take revenge. Not even close. The reason he joined DedSec was to ensure ctOS can’t do what it did to him to anyone else. Not by killing, but by exposing the dangers to the public at large.
The objectives enforced my feelings towards the leading man. Throughout my entire time with Watch_Dogs 2, there was never a point where the game forced me, as the player, to kill another human being. It was always the option to kill, but the design was such that the game never encouraged me to make use of it. Even when taking down an enemy was the main objective, the game simply wanted Marcus to “neutralize” them. A simple shot with the Stun Gun would suffice. And then, something happened…


About halfway through the game’s story, one of Marcus’s, and by extension my, DedSec friends named Horatio was kidnapped by the Tezcans gang. Several missions ago, Horatio helped me out by sneaking me into Nudle (the Watch_Dogs 2 equivalent of Google), risking his job in order to help me and the rest of my team find information linking them to ctOS. When his bosses suspected him of being a spy, we hacked into the systems in order to bail him out. As our friend and associate, I, Marcus, and the rest of DedSec came together to find him and bring him back.
By the time we found him, it was too late.
Together, we grieved. Our focus shifted. What was previously a mission to rescue our friend became a quest to send the Tezcans a message that this will not be tolerated. As a unit, my DedSec allies, Marcus, and I worked to located the gang members who performed the deed. Luckily for us, we succeeded. The three of them just so happened to be gathering in the same place.


Earlier, I had acquired two unique hacks. Using my backdoor into the ctOS platform, I could implant a false APB on an individual of my choosing, forcing the police to respond. Likewise, I could instead opt to create evidence that they betrayed one of San Francisco’s gangs, summon that gang and starting a shootout on the spot. I had never intended to use these powers. At the time, they were little more than checkboxes on a completionist’s list. Marcus had fallen victim to something very similar. It would be disrespectful to him if I forced him to use those same tools against others. So even though my friend had been killed, I had still endeavored to remain non-lethal and avoid resorting to such shameful tactics. I wanted to stay true to the Marcus Holloway in my head. My mission was not to kill these 3 gang members, it was merely to ‘neutralize’ them. It would have been enough to knock them out and send a message to their superiors.
After numerous attempts and failures, an insidious thought crossed my mind. Why should I spare these three? When Horatio wanted nothing more than to be left alone, these three kidnapped him, forced him to work for them, then murdered him in cold-blood when he refused. Why should these three and their friends live when my friend can’t? With that in mind, I did the unthinkable. I took out my Quadcopter drone, found one of them, and implanted an APB into ctOS to summon the police for a shootout. As officers arrived on scene, I tricked another gang into joining the fray by making ctOS think another one of my three targets was a traitor. In one fell swoop, I had created a three-way war between 2 rival gangs and the cops.
I felt nothing for any of these people.
At first, I justified it by saying that these monsters had already made enemies of the police by becoming the ruthless criminals they are. I told myself that the police knew what they signed up for, and that for these reasons any deaths were justified. And although I had never once fired a shot, I sat and watched as all 3 groups fought and slaughtered each other. In the end, a single police officer was left standing. My enemies were indeed ‘neutralized’.
Later, we were ready to move onto the leader of the Tezcans, in order to send him a message for ordering the kidnapping. In the same manner as I took care of his goons, I sent a gang after him as well. The difference was the instead of merely watching, I waited for my opportunity to take advantage of the chaos. I found it when he walked towards one of the cages housing a bulldog bred to fight others of his kin in the ring, to the death. I remotely opened the beast’s cage, and let him loose on his master. Like his cronies before him, I had ‘neutralized’ the gang leader.


If only it stopped there. Once I had seen how easy it was to send police and gangs after my enemies with the push of a button, it quickly became a go-to tactic for dispensing with large groups of enemies without putting Marcus’s neck on the line. Gang members defending a stash of money, police officers patrolling around a ctOS box I needed to hack, or even rent-a-cops in an office building: None of them were safe.
I was no longer Marcus Holloway. Marcus still believed it was possible to complete his goals without violence. Through my objective notifications, Marcus told me that I only needed to sneak in, perform a few hacks, and get out. It was his voice telling me that I only needed to “neutralize” the people I came across, if I even needed to confront them at all. He still hung out with his friends, trying to expose Blume and their associates without stooping to that same level, but why bother? It was just so much easier to have a couple of no name mobsters blow everyone away and complete my mission once the dust settles. Marcus knew what it’s like to have a computer algorithm call him a criminal and send a bunch of police after him. He knew what it could do to people, but I didn’t care.
And that’s when I had discovered something that I consider profoundly disturbing. After losing a close friend, instead of dealing with my grief like a well-adjusted, psychologically-healthy member of society, I had opted to enact vengeance. Once my lust for revenge was sated, I grew cynical and opted for violence, albeit indirect violence, instead of looking for more reasonable solutions. I even went so far as to justify these actions under some false assertion that I was still morally superior to the people I was killing. I had become this guy:



What a monster I had become.

In the middle of the Hitman season, Episode 4 took IO Interactive longer to release than they thought it would. As an apology, they release two bonus missions, reusing the maps of Sapienza and Marrakesh. Today, we’ll go through the Bonus Episode in Sapienza.

Worth noting is that these missions would probably have never been created if it weren’t for the fact that Hitman (2016) is episodic. The only reason IO felt compelled to make them was because Episode 4 was going to be a month late.


And even though they were reusing the maps from Sapienza and Marrakesh, there was some obvious love put into these assassinations. Neither map is a straight copy of their original, and there are many areas that have been changed (and assets added/removed) to fit the context of the new mission. More work went into these missions that the typical Elusive Targets. Even then, Elusive Targets do often add new content into the map, albeit not to the extreme that these Bonus Episodes do.

The other big thing is that I’m trying to break one of my really bad gaming habits as I perform these missions. Something that a lot of stealth game players are guilty of, myself included, is reloading a save the moment something goes wrong. If you’ve been following this series, you know that’s a big issue of mine.

What I’m trying to do now is to let failure “stick”, for lack of a better term. A lot of the fun in these kinds of games comes from screwing something up, and then working around it to find another way. Hitman and others of its ilk are built to enforce and encourage on the spot improvisation, and I want to show that off a bit more.

We’ll be heading to Marrakesh next week for A House Build on Sand. Until then, take care.

Our time in Japan, and with the story in Season 1, comes to an end.

Aside from the gimmick that this is a highly secured facility where 47 cannot bring in any equipment, this mission also has the gimmick that every outfit has an RFID chip. The AI running this facility scans the chip when the player approached a door to determine whether or not they have permission to go through.


This means that what disguise the player wears explicitly determines which doors they are allowed to open. While this seems at first like it would be a challenge, it isn’t that much different from a typical Hitman level. After all, as I mentioned way back in my Blood Money LP, disguises have always had this same function implicitly.

When players take a disguise in Hitman, it has it’s own set of permissions attached to it. Guards who would chase away 47 in his suit or in a civilian outfit might allow a staffer or a fellow guard in without a second glance. It’s not a physical door, but it serves the same purpose in allowing 47 into areas he was previously kept out of.

That’s why I was intrigued with this gimmick, because it makes literal what has always been a metaphorical concept in this series.

We are not done with Hitman, even though the last story mission has been released. There is still more to discuss in the form of the bonus episodes and the Elusive Targets that have been and will be release after Japan. And given that season 2 is confirmed, odds are “newdarkcloud plays Hitman” will last a lot longer than I thought it would when I started doing this.

And I couldn’t be happier to keep doing it.

Our journey with Chain of Memories ends here!

Talking after Sam finished editing this episode, he mentioned how surprised he was that the story wrapped up so quickly. In the very same game that Riku faces the angst over what he’s done and the darkness in his heart, he kills Ansem and resolved to use both light and darkness for the forces of good.

There’s not a lot here to reflect on in the finale of Chain of Memories. Though we supposedly have two stories worth of content, both of them faff about for most of the the first half. Not much actually gets done.

Next up in our Primer series is Kingdom Hearts 2. This is going to be the big one, and we return to Gamer’s Little Playground to assist us with the footage. Take care, guys. We will see you next time.

Now that Sora’s out of the way, Riku can finally take center stage.

The strangest part of Riku’s role in the grand story of Kingdom Hearts is that he and Sora almost trade places in terms of their narrative arcs.

In the first game, the most significant plot twist is that Sora was never meant to wield the keyblade. The weapon was supposed to go to Riku, but latched onto Sora instead when Riku fell into the darkness. Sora assumed he was the chosen wielder, and became the hero of light with his actions. Eventually, through deeds, not destiny, Sora proved himself to be the better keyblade master.


That leaves Riku as the best friend and former rival. He knows that Sora is a better hero than he is, and he knows that he has a lot to make up for. Nonetheless, he wants to try to at least get to Sora’s level. As kids, Riku was always the stronger and smarter of the two, but now he’s in the opposite seat. He now knows what it’s like to be brought low.

This gives his character room to grow and develop that Sora just doesn’t have after the first Kingdom Hearts. Once he takes the mantle as hero, he basically stays in that position for the rest of the series. Meanwhile, Riku has to develop, make better choices, and become a better person just to compete.

Before, Riku was the chosen hero, and Sora the unwitting loser. Now, Sora is the hero, and Riku knows just how much he’s screwed things up…

…which makes him better than Sasuke.

Here it is, the final story mission. Not the end to our time with Hitman, but it does feel like a finale of sorts.

(BTW, I looked up Situs Inversus, and it is an actual medical condition.)

I thought it was a bold move to restrict the items that 47 can bring in with him to just his suit and whatever smuggling locations the player has unlocked. This means that players can’t rely on what items they prefer to bring in with them. They must instead focus on the mechanics and the systems that they (in theory) have spent 5 other story missions learning and mastering.


It also helps sell the idea that the facility is highly secure. After all, in every other area in this game, and in previous Hitman games, 47 is always able to find some way to bring his basic equipment in with him. Since players can’t do that for this mission (until the achieve mastery level 20), they are reminded that this is a high security location despite being a hospital/hotel/spa.

While I could understand complaints that it seems unfair for players to build up this vast arsenal by mastering the prior missions, I wouldn’t agree with it. Every single level has the all of the items one would ever need to complete most (but not necessarily all) of the challenges without having to bring in any additional items. The items aren’t necessary, but they make some tasks easier. If you take this mission as another form of final exam for people who don’t want to try the Elusive Targets, it makes sense to remove the crutch and ask players to take advantage of all the level has to offer.

We’ll talk about the disguise gimmick and how cool it is next week, when we finish Japan and wrap up the story missions for Hitman: The Complete First Season.

This Phantom Promise just keeps hurting…

In this episode, Sam makes a comment that if Sora went off and took a beach vacation somewhere, it’s possible that the Organization would end up killing itself without his help. There’s more truth to that than we’d be able to get into with Chain of Memories. It’s something I’ll be waiting to talk about later.


Now that Sora’s side of the story is done, we can finally move on to topics that are both more interesting and easier to understand. It’s weird to that despite how many themes, concepts, and ideas are introduced in this game, not much actually happens. A plot to control Sora is enacted, then stopped. Aside from Axel and Namine, everyone involved in the plot lies dead at the end, and Sora forgets about the whole damn thing.

The context it provides for Axel and Namine are interesting, but since Chain of Memories only introduces stuff like the Organization, without going into much detail, I can’t really talk about it here. Not until we start digging into Kingdom Hearts 2.

So yeah, stuff happened.

Today, we wrap up “The Ex-Dictator”

In the previous episode, we spent most of the time answering the question of “How are we going to approach the target without being detected?”. Now that the question’s been answered, two new ones open up:

“How do I kill these two?” and “How will I get out once the deed is done?”

Since killing one of them means that I cannot restart the mission any longer, the wisest course of action is to eliminate them both either at the same time or with every little time between both kills, as it minimizes the risks involved.

If you remember, I was nervous about using the Remote Explosive Duck again after bungling “The Fixer” with it. And while I did have a repeat of the same fiasco, I still had the option to retry because neither target was eliminated yet. This gave me the opportunity to roll the saving throw that I just didn’t have in “The Fixer”.

In hindsight, I wish I had taken the chance to see where they start from and what their routine is en route to the restaurant. I haven’t see it, but I get the impression that better opportunities await in that window.

Next time, Japan…

Do you constantly find yourself staring at your friends back, wondering exactly what knife would be best suited for plunging into it? If so, call your doctor right away, as you might have Chronic Backstabbing Syndrome.

It’s amusing to watch Sam ask all these questions as we go through the series. It’s not the exact same as a newcomer going through the series with fresh eyes, since he has played Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 before. But he played them so long ago, and never touched any of the other games in the franchise, so it’s close enough to serve as a good facsimile.


I’ve followed this series close enough and for so long that none of this even phases me. So not only would I have never done this series without Sam (because it was his idea), but I honestly couldn’t. He’s become my reference for what the “average player” knows about Kingdom Hearts.

While there a lot of questions that I did anticipate having to answer, like which side is Axel actually on and what the hell is a Nobody. But there are others than I didn’t totally anticipate, like who Zexion is. As a fan, I know the most common sources of confusion, but I forget all those less common, but still important, minor details that still need to be explained. This is something I just could not do without Sam.

We’re done with the filler part of this game. From here on out it should be all story all the time.
Page 99 of 137...96979899100101102...