During my investigation I was able to get into contact with one of the two scriptwriters of HC47. He told me that they were under pressure to release the game on time so the questions of game designing were their number one priority.
Unfortunately the another scriptwriter or someone with the same danish name died in 2009. This information was given to me by the danish library.
The letters prove you’re correct. Obviously the letters could have been mailed at different times in real life, but if the game designers intended us to be able to get a linear story then the levels would be arranged differently.
I do like it the way it happened though. It makes it more of a puzzle, or at least it was to 16 year old me.
Oh yeah I remember that thery.
How the Rotterdam and Colombia levels were apparently meant to come earlier in the game, until they made the Lee Hong levels come first cause they were easier.
And how if you check the dates on the letters Ort-Meyer sent to the Five Fathers you’d realize the level order might have been a lot different during earlier development cuz the latter ones are dated first, or something.
Funnily enough Hitman Contracts would later toy with that idea, by how they present the C47 levels in a reverse order, with Lee Hong himself being the last Father you kill before 47 wakes up… a shame Ochoa was excluded…
The main idea behind the letters is to understand that 47 was used by someone to kill 4 persons who connected to each other.
If you arrange them in right order you will see that only the last one does mention 47. If i remember correctly the phrase was - 47 is mine and it was sent by ort meyer from Romania. The next events are more interesting. According to game files dr.Kovacs tells 47 that ort-meyer wasn’t able to contact him for a long time after the columbia missions. He decided to lure him back by offering 100.000 and the target is located in Saru mare Romania. The same address as in the last letter. 47 decided to take a risk and find out the truth about himself.
The right order of all missions can be found by opening the game folder.