Hitman 2: Silent Assassin Role-Play Walkthrough | The Definitive Play-Through

Classic Hitman Games Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
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This is a new series I am starting where I cover my favorite Hitman, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin.

The goal is to create the most definitive, ultimate, go-to series of videos to watch when you want to see a particular mission in this game.

This is because I will always explore every point of interest, make use of every gimmick, every unique feature or location, where possible, in every mission. I will also use the most canonical approach to each mission and target, based on a combination of the common consensus, the natural flow of the level, etc.

I also play in a way that is as realistic and cinematic as possible. You will often be able to see what 47 is thinking about by the actions I take, the things I look at, etc. and I never use any glitches or gamey techniques or even gamey movements. I only run when it makes since for 47 to run, and I make sure to act in-character as 47 with the gameplay, hence the name Role-Play Walkthrough.

And of course I will be going for Silent Assassin in every mission, while making use of the method(s) that make the most sense. I make every attempt to only “know” what 47 can know. So I will study the maps, and go through the briefing, and plan my approach, and watch the NPCs, etc. how you would imagine 47 doing so in real life.

I hope you enjoy. Let me know what you think. I plan to also do this for Hitman: Contracts and Hitman: Blood Money, and as you can see on the channel, I’ve done a few for GTA IV and GTA V as well.

Episode 1 - The Gontranno Sanctuary:

Episode 2 - Anathema:

Bonus Episode 2.5 - 47’s First Meditation:

Episode 3 - St. Petersburg Stakeout:

Bonus Episode 3.5 - 47’s Second Meditation:

Episode 4 - Kirov Park Meeting:

Episode 5 - Tubeway Torpedo:

Episode 6 - Invitation to a Party:

Episode 6.5 - 47’s Third Meditation:

Episode 7 - Tracking Hayamoto:

Episode 8 - Hidden Valley:

Episode 9 - At the Gates:

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We’ll let @Heisenberg be the judge of that!

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Great idea! Like it.

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Thank you. I spent all day yesterday on episode 3, St. Petersburg Stakeout. I got pretty obsessive about making it as perfect as possible. It should be uploaded later tonight. Right now I’m just cutting down the church portion that comes before the briefing, and then I leave the mission gameplay unedited.

This one really showcases a lot of the beauty and aesthetics in this game. The lighting especially is super under-appreciated especially for the time. In most indoor spaces, all the lighting comes from real lights in the world that can be destroyed to make it pitch black. That’s another pretty cool thing about the engine along with the permanent corpses and the bullets being real physics objects. I love this game.

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Also the animations are great. Picking the tomato at the beginning was so awesome back then and it still is.

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Episode 3 - St. Petersburg Stakeout:

This one is a slow burn just because of how vast this mission is. A lot of people complain about it, but personally it’s one of my favorites in the series. The level of atmosphere, ambiance, aesthetic, and beauty in this mission, especially in the opening scene in the metro station, are unrivaled even by today’s standards.

Jesper Kid’s “Fast Ambiance” works so well to create a foreboding atmosphere, while we are in this dark formerly Soviet train station with flickering lights, cold metal, propaganda posters, and beautiful chandeliers and pillars. The fact that all of the lighting in the metro is coming from actual light sources, which can all be destroyed to make it pitch black is a pretty cool detail.

I wanted to make sure all of the beautiful little things IO put into the art of this level were on full display for this video. With the linear nature of this mission, I feel pretty confident to say that I think this video shows the most canonical series of events.

I make sure to use all of the special things provided throughout the level. I use the night vision goggles in the sewers as well as in the apartment loft. I have 47 use the pistol in the sewers, just to clear corners. I use the guard uniform next to the truck, I take the truck outside the second manhole to the apartment building, and I use the third manhole to escape back into the sewers since it’s closest to the scene. Of course I use the SVD sniper for the assassination, and I sedate the guard in the loft to achieve 0 alerts. I could have sedated him somewhere else, but I also just think the loft is a cool detail to the building, and going up there with the night vision has a whole unique zero dark thirty kind of vibe.

I also decided I wanted to include the interlude portions of the game, where 47 returns to the shed in Sicily between locations. However that was making the video too long, so I decided to make it into a sub-series called 47’s Meditation, where I explore the church and try out new weapons unlocked. These are edited down for time and to make them more entertaining, but the actual missions gameplay I will leave unedited in order to present the missions in the most authentic way as they are shown to the player.

I hope to tell a whole sub-story through the gameplay with these portions, which will ultimately culminate in 47 wiping everyone out at the Redemption at Gontranno.

Here is Bonus Episode 2.5 - 47’s First Meditation:

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Love this project, but the difficulty and frustration will increase incredibly once you reach certain missions. Hope you’ll manage to see this through til the end!

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Oh yeah definitely. I’ve managed to get through them before. For Hidden Valley I’m expecting to have to replay a few thousand times until the ninjas learn to look both ways before crossing the street.

I actually already do that for most of these missions. Like for St. Petersburg I felt the need to restart until I had the two civilians randomly placed to give the most cinematic value. I had to have one of them crossing 47’s line of sight to the left at the start, so when I turn my head to the Fast Ambiance track, it follows the civilian walking.

And now currently for Kirov Park meeting, I’ve gone through it like a hundred times experimenting with different conditions to try to figure out what causes the general’s car bomb explosion to be visible from the radio tower. For some reason, most of the time you simply hear the explosion with no visual, but some of the time, if you look over in the direction of the generals car, which is behind a tall building obscuring the view, you will see the sky turn orange and a fiery cloud comes up from behind the building. It’s very rare for that to happen and I just can’t figure out what causes it to happen vs not happen! I wish I could look at the source code for these missions.

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Episode 4 is here. Kirov Park Meeting:

I’ve never seen anyone else use my method for anesthetizing the guard outside the radio tower, of hiding between the wall and the dumpster. Has anyone else done this before? This is my favorite approach to the mission because it’s kind of like the best of both worlds. It lets us use the bomb and the sniper. It also lets us see all of the map, and feels like the most all-encompassing way of going about it.

Also, has anyone ever noticed how perfectly the general moves to the music? I wonder if that was intentional. As soon as the note goes high with dun dun DUNNN that’s the exact second he steps out of the car. I also love the subtle music stuff they do in the sewers. The game detects when you are approaching the ladder to the bottom of the car, and it starts a new track where the tension starts building up and it waits until you plant the bomb to transition to the fast ambiance track. Very cool.

Here is also bonus episode 3.5 - 47’s Second Meditation:

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You haven’t chosen the easiest Hitman game to do such playthroughs :sweat_smile:

Anyway it looks interesting, looking forward to the next episodes :+1:

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I finished all the footage for Tubeway Torpedo yesterday, and this one will be by far the best. My magnum opus so far for sure. It’s a long mission, so I’ll be sure to include the time stamps for the highlights that are must watch. Every little movement of 47 and the camera is intentional. It will be uploaded by the end of the weekend!

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Here it is finally. Episode 5 - Tubeway Torpedo:

This is the best yet like I said and it really feels like Tubeway Torpedo the movie. I was getting really into it just while watching it to review before uploading. I really made an effort to capture all of the tension in the level, which IO did an incredible job conveying with the layout, aesthetics, and music and everything.

Since I’m trying to capture everything about the art of this game in the purest way, and trying to fully showcase the whole experience that IO intended to create with these levels, I am trying to make use of everything they provide where possible. If you pay attention for example in the Gontranno one, I never used any actions until the game told me I could, such as holding L2 to run, or the fact I had a map, etc.

So for this one I used the truck for the infiltration, and I used the pager and the phone, while also using the observation room and the one-way mirror since it’s a point of interest and seems clearly intended. But also with this I decided to use saves in this one since the game provides two bonus saves, so I decided that would be an opportunity to showcase another feature of the game which is the saves. I will only do this in the missions that give the bonus saves. I could do without them but I am trying to show the fullness of the game, and for this mission especially it ended up working out well, since each save point sort of works like a chapter to this long mission. The infiltration, the deep inside behind enemy lines, and the escape.

The mission is already super cinematic and linear which I actually love about it. It has really cool Mission Impossible, spy movie vibes, and I tried to capture that to the fullest with this.

As I keep doing these I am getting better and better, and also more meticulous and obsessive. I really made every little movement count here with this one. I even restarted a few hundred times in order to get the RAT AI to comply with my cinematic vision for the opening scene in the sewers. I needed them to be positioned correctly in order to do the little thing at the start where I look at the first one, and then move out of the way of the second one.

I hope some people will enjoy this as much as I do. I know most people struggle with this game and so I hope this will allow people to be able to appreciate the artistic masterpiece that Hitman 2 really is.

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Tonight I just finished filming for Tracking Hayamoto, and in the process I discovered a never before seen, or at least never discussed online from what I can find, way of watching Hayamoto Jr. eat the sushi at the meeting, without getting shot and without using cheats. It also works out pretty cool because it lines up with the Legacy trailer as much as possible. You can’t deliver the sushi to him personally, but you can watch the meeting by entering that room behind him, and just not walking more than an inch into the room, hugging the wall/sliding door, and then turn around and leave out the sliding door. So at least I am able to have 47 watch the meeting where he eats the sushi, and then turn around and exit the same way that 47 does so in the Legacy trailer, right as Hayamoto Jr. starts choking.

I finally made it to Hidden Valley so now this is where things will start to get really interesting haha.

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Episode 6: Invitation to a Party

I’m really proud of this one especially the opening sequence just after the briefing. The “equipment” and “infiltration” chapters, pretty much every single camera movement or character movement matches up perfectly with the music. I love the way it turned out. I was able to do everything pretty much as perfect as possible for this one, and I think my approach here is probably most canonical. I sneak in through the basement and get the waiter uniform, steal the SMG from the guard locker, deliver the poisoned champagne to the general, WITNESS him dying in the bathroom and the toilet lid falling on his head comedically, witness the Spetsnaz Agent holding up the ambassador, making use of the staircase in the hallway, watch the ambassador and agent through the keyhole in the adjacent room, sneak up on the Spetsnaz Agent and kill him (I think that canonically this is a perfect time to use the combat knife. 47 picks it up in the mission right before, and it’s basically the same thing as the fiber wire. I don’t know of any better opportunity to make use of the knife so that’s how I do it here), AND I get the sniper rifle from the balcony by dropping it down and sneaking it out in the tuxedo. Perfect silent assassin score, very cinematic and Bond-esque.

It took me forever to get all the random things lined up to the way I needed them to pull everything off cinematically. The first of those is, the waiter AI. The smoking waiter at the beginning, I needed him to cough once and then drag from the cigarette. He has a few animations he does but I liked that one the best, then I also needed him to run in through the gate as soon as I am heading back to the starting point after picking up the equipment and checking out the front entrance. I wanted to witness the guest arriving and showing his invitation, as a way of 47 observing the way things work, which is also why I wanted to waiter to run back from his smoke break just in time for him to cross my line of site right as I approach the alley he comes out of. This way, I was able to watch him enter, so 47 could make a note to himself that waiters enter through the garage and are allowed there. I like to try to have an explanation in-game for whatever meta knowledge I have about the map like this.

Other than the waiter AI, I also needed the safe to be in the east wing on the second floor, so that I could showcase the special staircase in the hallway, while also having time to witness the initial holdup in the ballroom, and run to the adjacent room, beating them to the safe.

Finally, I also needed the general to fall onto the toilet. For some reason, kind of like the explosion in Kirov Park, sometimes the seemingly scripted thing doesnt happen, and instead the general simply rag dolls onto the floor. So it took a ton of patience to keep restarting until all of those factors aligned perfectly AND I didn’t mess up with any of the aspects that I control, like the camera and character movements and all that.

Since 47 has returned from Russia and the St. Petersburg chapter has concluded, here is what 47 got up to back home between missions:

Episode 6.5 - 47’s Third Meditaiton:

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Episode 7 - Tracking Hayamoto

The song that plays when you first enter the house is definitely my favorite in the whole soundtrack. This is a great mission but it’s just annoying that you have to have the 1 alert, without using glitches or skipping cutscenes. I am playing in a natural way so I just think of it like the alert was a necessary part of the mission since the body being discovered is a part of the mission since it needs to be sent to Hayamoto Sr.

As you can see starting around 17:20, I line it up with the Legacy trailer from WOA as much as I possibly can without using cheats or glitches. 47 watches the sushi being delivered and then exists out the same door at the same time.

I’ve been learning everything I can about Hidden Valley and I know the approach I’m going to take, I just need to be able to prevent the ninja at the first checkpoint from getting hit. In my game, it’s pretty consistent every time. It’s the same ninja, and always at the point where the second truck goes to the first checkpoint. So it doesn’t seem to be random. I know it’s possible to avoid it though because I was 2 minutes away from completing the mission when I got spotted by a ninja. I got too comfortable once I realized the truck didn’t hit the ninja, but I just haven’t been able to replicate that attempt. It might take a while but I’m determined to get it perfect

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I actually got it already I just now finished the most perfect playthrough of hidden valley which I will upload soon. If it weren’t for the trucks running over ninjas, this would be an incredible mission.

The aesthetics and general feeling are extremely unique. The snow ninjas, the vastness, the moonlight, the night vision, it’s all really novel and creates a great overall vibe. Everyone always complains about YAME and the guards checking ID, but tbh the mission really doesn’t need disguises. The way the mission is designed to work, you shouldn’t need one.

Based on the structure, layout, and flow of things, I get the feeling that the most “intended” path, involves going to the agency pickup, going down to the tunnel from the manhole closest to it (sneaking past the guard), getting into the truck as it makes the first stop right outside the door after climbing down, getting out of the truck as it makes its second stop, right before the checkpoint, avoiding checkpoint altogether by climbing back up to the surface from the garage right next to where the truck stopped, then sneaking past the lone guard patrolling the big canyon area with the manhole on the other side of the checkpoint, and going down it, then right outside this garage the truck happens to make its third stop, perfectly place to take you to its next stop which is right before the second checkpoint which also happens to be right at the next garage, which takes you up to the surface again and to a straight shot to the exit.

To me this seems like the most intuitive path to take, and everything about the mission points to this being the intention, along with the fact that there are no disguises in the level that can be found laying around without talking someone’s clothes, it makes it seem like this path, suit only, is the canonical one.

It would be such a cool, simple, east intermission with tons of style if it weren’t for the truck glitch. To me that really is the only thing that holds it back. People also complain about the sniper but once you realize how they work it’s really not an issue at all. Any part of the map that would require you to be on the surface, where you are in sight of a sniper, there are always very obvious trees making a path to where you need to go, providing concealment. And you can look at the sniper through the binoculars and make any big open movements when the sniper is looking down, examining his rifle.

Anyways I just wanted to share those thoughts real quick. I’m very excited that I was able to conquer hidden valley so quickly. Now that I was able to do this, I’m confident I can definitely finish the entire game with this series and this play style!

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Episode 8 - Hidden Valley

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A little update for whoever sees it.

At the Gates is taking a while. It kind of works out though because I think spacing them out more will help them get more views.It’s a huge, long mission, but I’m making it absolutely perfect.

I made this little teaser/sneak peek that I posted to the Hitman subreddit. I don’t think I can embed a video here directly and since it’s not on YouTube I will just leave the Reddit link here just to give a taste of what to expect:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HiTMAN/s/fggxHW6KpS

Please let me know what you think. I would love any feedback. I really like how it has this predator in nature kind of vibe.

For the mission as a whole, my route/path/overall strategy is one that I don’t think has been done before in any walkthroughs or any other YouTube play-throughs.

Did you know that if you turn off the first laser grid without sedating/killing the guard, he will turn it back on after a certain amount of time has passed?

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Here it is. Episode 9 - At the Gates.

This one I would say is a true must watch. If you could only watch one of these I would want it to be the first 5 minutes of this one. I really took my time to master and conquer this mission in order to pull it off in a way that makes it look like I am going in blind with only 47’s briefing and his skill set. The gameplay is so smooth and cinematic it looks like a cutscene.

My binocular movement was really on point with this one. It looks scripted imo, and the stuff I do with trees I am super happy with how it turned out.

Thank you to everyone who has been enjoying these! Let me know what you think

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Hey guys I need some help for Shogun Showdown. Until now, the most canonical approach that has always been pretty obvious and straightforward, and I’ve been able to show the whole map and all the POIs and unique situations and events while incorporating those approaches. For Shogun Showdown, here are some factors I am considering

-Mei Ling

-The bomb

-The helicopter

-The windows and walkways on the roof

-The red panic button

These are all big things in this mission, but I’m not sure the best way to incorporate them all together into the definitive play-through of the mission. What do you think the most canon approach is?

Some issues are that as soon as you get the bomb, and the uniform, you go outside right next to the helicopter, which has a special prompt to attach it, and pressing the panic button and then blowing up the helicopter really feels like it makes the most sense, and it gives a unique cutscene.

However, blowing up the helicopter means you can’t save Mei Ling I’m pretty sure, and using the roof walkway to escape would be so perfect for it, but then also I don’t think Mei Ling follows you out there. So what do you guys think? What approach could I take that would showcase every unique aspect of the mission in a cinematic way, with the most likely canonical approach to the assassination? This is a big mission, one of the main set pieces, so I want to make sure I get it right!