Who Did It Better? - 7 Deadly Sins

[Heisenberg]

So two of my favorite games released in the last 8 years have made the concept of the 7 Deadly Sins a theme: Hitman 3 and Dead Rising 3. This is where I will post a breakdown and comparison of each sin as presented in each game and determine who did it better. Those who have played both and have an opinion can of course post their own comparisons and rankings if they don’t agree with mine, and if you have a different game to compare Hitman 3’s 7 Deadly Sins against, please, share it.

I’m going to make individual posts for each sin, otherwise it would be ridiculously long. They will be ranked from my least favorite to my most favorite.

1. SLOTH -
   
   VS

My least favorite sin of both games, Sloth sees Agent 47 having to take the fastest, sloppiest, laziest path to eliminating his targets in order to conserve his energy; while in Dead Rising 3, it sees player character Nick Ramos go up against Theodore “Teddy” Lagerfield, Jr., the spoiled sedimentary son of the city mayor.

Very few positives exist for either game’s depiction of the sin of Sloth. In Hitman 3, the gimmick of having to conserve 47’s energy as his health depletes can get frustrating for those who are not used to attempting speed run strategies, and the reason behind the sin remains unknown. Is 47 feeling like he wasted time trying to do things perfectly instead of just getting it done as straightforward as possible? Or does he feel that he’s been too lazy in the past, taking the quick and easy path way too often instead of being more serious? It’s never made clear. To emphasize the sin, 47’s clothing is drippy and nasty-looking.

For Dead Rising 3, Teddy never actually fights Nick. He’s so lazy and out of touch, he’s not even aware that the city has been under a zombie outbreak for about a week, holed up in his basement bedroom, playing video games and snacking. He refuses to get out of his chair to bring Nick a key to the police station armory, and when Nick insists, he unleashes a small army of remote drones as a security system to kill Nick. The players must deactivate the security system and access the basement to win, at which point, Teddy’s fear that Nick will hurt him, combined with his unhealthy lifestyle, will cause him to have a heart attack right then and there. No actual boss fight occurs. To emphasize the sin, Teddy spends his time in a robe, socks, slippers, and in some reports, adult diapers, since he can’t be bothered to actually walk to the bathroom.

Who did it better? Dead Rising 3.

While the “fight” is not enjoyable after destroying the first 2 or 3 drones, the objectives and reasons are clear, and Teddy himself is sort of funny, as is his death. For Hitman 3, the lack of clear reason for why the sin of Sloth haunts 47’s mind hinders the theme of the sin, on top of the lack of enjoyable gameplay.

For the least likable sin in either game, Dead Rising 3 takes the victory when it comes to its portrayal of Sloth.

[Heisenberg]

2. PRIDE -
   
   VS

Next up is the sin of Pride, the low placement of which is unfortunate since it is essentially the primary sin, from which all the other sins are derived, one way or another, so it is somewhat tragic that both games don’t really give it a chance to shine. Pride is sometimes used interchangeably with Vanity. The sinner of Dead Rising 3 is Miss Gigantic California hopeful, Jherii Gallo.

For Hitman 3, 47 is dressed in a shiny suit and given a choice of taking out his targets in flashy, fancy ways that are easy, or in more secretive, subtle ways that are more difficult. 47 is applauded for making the more difficult choice and mocked for taking the easy choice… and that’s about the extent of the whole gimmick. The most impressive thing about this sin is the shiny silver to the suit and the tools that can be used. While the player can indeed feel proud for succeeding, no matter which way they choose to act, there’s not a whole lot going on here that’s different from standard Hitman gameplay.

For Dead Rising 3, Jherii is looking to prove that she’s the strongest woman in California, but because she has taken so many steroids to increase her strength, she looks and sounds like a man, and calling her “sir” even by accident enrages her as an assault on her pride and her image of herself as beautiful. She’s so caught up in proving herself, she’s rejected the reality that the outbreak has caused the competition to be cancelled. Upon Nick beating her in a fight, she says an ego-boosting mantra to herself while clutching her large trophy case, and accidentally topples it on herself, resulting in her death. Jherii’s constantly standing in front of a mirror shows that the Vanity aspect is in play more than actual Pride.

Who did it better? Hitman 3.

Although the gimmick is lackluster, the gameplay is still enjoyable and the player can actually feel a sense of pride and accomplishment over completion. For the fight with Jherii in Dead Rising 3, there are many other more enjoyable fights, and Jherii’s easily fractured ego shows that her pride is hollow, and she doesn’t truly believe herself to be worthy.

Whether you use the easy or difficult methods, 47 proves that his pride in his abilities is completely warranted and valid. The sin of Pride is displayed better in Hitman 3.

[Axwage]

I have not played Dead Rising 3.

But these posts/analyses are great and keep up the good work Walter.

[Heisenberg]

@Axwage

I have not played Dead Rising 3.

But these posts/analyses are great and keep up the good work Walter.

You got it. And you really should play it, and the whole series if you haven’t. Surpasses even Resident Evil for title of best zombie game series.

3. GLUTTONY -
   
   
   VS
   

Rounding out the bottom 3, the “best of the worst” if you will, is the sin of Gluttony. This sin is essentially an offshoot of the sin of Greed, but more specific to consumption and excess, taking more than you need simply for the sake of having more. It is one of the more disgusting sins due to how it can be applied and expressed. For Dead Rising 3, the sinner is Darlene Fleischermacher, a morbidly obese woman confined to a scooter for mobility.

For Hitman 3, we see 47 decked out in an excessive, almost Old World affluent attire, tasked with killing certain people and feeding the food they drop to a hungry pig. What the gameplay lacks due to simplicity, it makes up for in style, as the theme of food is everywhere throughout the escalation. The motivation for this sin was unclear prior to its release, but upon playing it, it becomes quite clear that 47 is not servicing his own gluttony, but that of his clients. The only thing in question is if he is doing so willingly, or if he is reflecting on his disgust in enabling the hungers of the wealthy who hire him to do their dirty work and feed their appetites. At times, even the player can actually feel a sense of gluttony, as a player may feel compelled to kill more than necessary in order to take more than necessary, just to have extra to feed the pig, and the game tempts you to do just that. You can walk away, or you can indulge.

For Dead Rising 3, Darlene is a disgusting woman in almost every sense of the word. Her appearance is horrid, and not solely because of her excessive weight; her personality is horrifying due to her bitterness, sense of entitlement, and the projection of those traits onto those she feels have wronged her; she is willing to commit murder over food, shown by killing a fellow survivor who was just trying to gather some food for survival; she is constantly belching, farting, vomiting, and cramming truly unbelievable amounts of food down her gullet. And yet, one cannot help but feeling a slight bit of sympathy for her. It may be psychological, it may be Prader-Willi Syndrome, but there is a strong implication that Darlene simply cannot help herself; that her inability to stop eating is not just out of love of food, but a compulsion that she can’t control. Either way, she becomes violent when anyone tries to take the food from her buffet, and becomes fully enraged when it is even suggested that she is fat.

Who did it better? Hitman 3.

Although Darlene is a frightening character and her boss fight is challenging enough, she is frustrating to deal with, as the player will continually have Nick step into her puddles of vomit and slip, making them unable to move or fight back for several seconds, leading to great amounts of damage that is maddening. Darlene’s death scene is also supremely disgusting and tragic to the point of cruelty, as her over-stuffing herself with food and her battle with Nick rupture something inside her, just before she falls on her back and chokes on her own bloody vomit. Comparing this to Hitman 3’s cleaner, classier take on the sin, which includes nods to Gluttony being about more than just food consumption, and you have a more enjoyable experience while still learning about how a life of excess can be corrosive. Also, like Pride and a few of the other sins on the list, Gluttony can actually make the player feel the sin to a degree. While Dead Rising 3 makes players confront the sin, Hitman 3 makes players feel the sin, and while that doesn’t always make it superior, it is a strong point in Hitman 3’s favor.

The best game to play for a notable experience with excess and Gluttony is Hitman 3.

[Heisenberg]

4. LUST

VS

The fourth sin for both games (they both literally are the fourth that becomes available), Lust is kind of the middle-of-the-road sin, for several reasons. Lust is a sin that is usually associated with desire, typically towards another person. It is most often seen as a form of sexual desire, although that’s not what it is limited to. This particular sin can be problematic to express in a video game, as changes to current cultural standards can make even the suggestion of lust from one person towards another as seeming unacceptable. For Hitman, the character of Agent 47 has his lack of any romantic or sexual desires as one of his defining characteristics, making this a very challenging sin to display in a Hitman game. For Dead Rising 3, the sinner is Dylan Fuentes, a sex addict who has used the zombie outbreak to take hostages for his twisted games.

For Hitman 3, where 47 is looking sharp in a red suit covered in Valentine’s Day hearts, I have mixed feelings about Lust. On the one hand, the changes to the map and the atmosphere are pretty great, but only in the main area where the targets are located. The rest of the time you are scouring the map for keys that will unlock clues as to the identity of the main target, who you are not even supposed to kill, but rather bring to the voice of Lust, who is not embodied by an animal statue this time, but a person with a snake motif. Once finished, killing the secondary targets - the competition - is entirely optional, and since this “escalation” had only a single round, you can complete the mission with no kills if so desired. There is no clear picture at all exactly how Lust plays into 47’s mind, or his past, as it does not imply him lusting for the targets, nor does the possibility of his clients’ lusts really play into his past work. Perhaps it influences the players’s bloodlust, if they choose to kill the competition, but beyond that, this one seems to convey the sin of Lust only superficially at best.

For Dead Rising 3, Nick enters a sex toy shop where he finds a man and woman tied to chairs in the back room studio and two zombies in cages suspended overhead. He then becomes locked in the room as Dylan Fuentes reveals himself, dressed in a pink cowboy hat and boots, a gimp suit and mask, and carrying a customized weapon that is a flamethrower and ice cannon in one, designed to look like male genitalia and which he holds against his groin as he fires it to complete the image; the Lust Cannon. Dylan demands that Nick amuse him with sexual acts performed on either him or the two captives or else he will kill him. Dylan’s sexual appetites seem to have no boundaries as his appearance, actions, words, and the setting indicate that he is essentially omnisexual; even the presence of the zombies indicate that he’s probably a necrophiliac. The fight itself isn’t unique, although Nick can dance on a pole during the fight to momentarily distract Dylan. Dylan eventually dies, but the reason why is not clear. Most reports indicate he breathes in too many fumes from his Lust Cannon and suffocates, but this isn’t made clear and he could have just as easily simply died from his injuries.

Who did it better? It’s a draw.

Neither one of these games conveys the sin very well, with Hitman 3 leaving the way 47 is supposed to relate to it very vague, and Dead Rising 3 gets straight to the violence of the battle with Dylan without really focusing on or providing an explanation for why he’s become so psychopathic for his desires. The lack of overall unique gameplay for either game makes both events unremarkable, although the fun of guessing who the admirer is gives the Hitman experience enough fun to at least enjoy doing it, and Dylan’s humorous death and decent enough of a battle can make it memorable for Dead Rising, along with his over-the-top appearance.

Overall, neither game gives the sin of Lust a chance to shine very much beyond the initial impression, and I really can’t decide between either one on who gave a better presentation of it. So for this sin, it’s a tie.

[Lewisnic1]

47 does everything better

[Heisenberg]

Well, of course he does. 47 is the one guy who would actually be capable of killing Batman if he were so inclined! Although, here, we are talking more about the game’s overall portrayal of sin. If it were up to 47 specifically, each of Dead Rising 3’s psychopaths would have been dead in seconds.

5. WRATH
   
   
   VS
   

Coming in at my least favorite of the top 3 best sins, we have Wrath. The clearest and least ambiguous of the sins, Wrath represents anger and violence; specifically, allowing oneself to become consumed by anger and acting out upon it, usually with violence. With the exception of Sloth, Wrath is usually the end-of-the-road sin, the one that the other sins eventually lead to. In Hitman 3, Wrath is the last sin released, while in Dead Rising 3, it is the first sin dealt with. For Dead Rising 3, the sinner is Harry “Zhi” Wong, a man in a near-constant state of uncontrollable rage due to recent misfortunes, who finally snapped during the zombie outbreak.

For Hitman 3, 47 is swagged-out in dark leather, looking like he’s ready to shoot a place up. And what a coincidence… 47 is symbolically defending his body from the chemical inhibitors he’s been injected with, represented here by swarms of human attackers coming to kill him. So, he’s going to kill them first, kill them all. While you wouldn’t think it to look at him, it’s pretty clear 47 is at the end of his patience with the situation and is unleashing whatever counts as “anger” in him. He is having the natural resulting reaction to a lifetime of people using him because of his genetics. His clients are one thing; that’s a business arrangement that he is compensated for. But groups like Providence and the Franchise trying to utilize him specifically as a building block has now pushed him over the edge. The player is even more influenced, as the frustrating situation can really unleash players’s fury and make them want to super-murder the swarms of attackers as hard as they possibly can. It’s infuriating, but fun.

For Dead Rising 3, Zhi, the first Psychopath encountered in the game, is meditating in a zen garden littered with dismembered bodies when Nick comes across him. Although he invites Nick in, Zhi declares he will kill anyone who disrupts his peace, and Nick realizes what the body parts mean. When some roaming zombies enter the garden making noise, Zhi attacks with a Guan Dao, vowing to kill survivor and zombie alike. Fast and deadly, Zhi is beyond reason. Upon his defeat, he laments how wrong his life has gone; his kids don’t respect him, his wife has left him for another man, he’s been fired from his job, and now the zombie outbreak has taken what little peace he had left. Raging at the universe itself, Zhi uses his weapon to cut off his own head in final defiance of the shitty hand life has dealt him.

Who did it better? Hitman 3.

While the battle with Zhi is a fun and exciting one, and it’s cool seeing a Psychopath attack with martial arts, what ultimately brings it down is that Zhi is relatively easy to defeat if you enrage him by damaging his garden surroundings. Also, it is not clear if the player should really feel sorry for him; did the tragedies of his life really drive him to constantly be mad at everything, or was he always an angry asshole and that’s why everyone in his life turned against him, and he’s just projecting? The game seems to imply that his misfortunes really are the cause of his insanity, but who can say? On the other hand, we know that 47 is fully justified in his hate for those who have pursued him his whole life in an effort to get their hands on him and dismantle him to make soldiers from his blood. While he’s hardly an innocent soul, it’s not his fault that he was made to be this way, and his wrath upon his tormentors would be justified by nearly any court system in the world on self-defense alone. Also, like several others on this list, the player can actually feel the anger and hate as they try to kill off the invaders without proper weapons and little prep time, making them feel part of the action.

When you feel the urge to unleash your Wrath, Hitman 3 is the better selection.

[Heisenberg]

6. ENVY
   
   
   VS
   

My second favorite sin of either game, Envy is a sin that is mostly harmless to others if one doesn’t act on it. Often confused and used interchangeably with jealousy (Envy is desiring what another has, jealousy is wanting to keep for yourself what you have that others desire), is sort of a middle ground between the sins of Pride and Greed, and can lead to the offshoots of Lust and Wrath. This sin is an extremely fun one for both games and is the hardest to choose between the two. The Psychopath sinner for Dead Rising 3 is Kenny Dermot, a stereotypically nerdy, basement-dwelling video game player who wants to be the hero of the zombie outbreak.

For Hitman 3, Agent 47 intends to wear emerald green garbs to symbolize the green-eyed monster of Envy. Placed in a direct competition with another assassin who had been claimed to be superior to him in every way, without genetic enhancements no less, the player must beat the rival hitman to the targets, kill them in a better way than he would have, and rank higher in points as a result. This is complicated by the fact that you are essentially on a ticking clock, and the rival does not have to contend with some of the same issues that 47 does, i.e. security checks. The fact that the targets must also be killed in specific ways for the points to really count adds another layer of desperation to the whole shebang. Envy was, admittedly, the one sin that I had the most difficulty envisioning what IOI could do to make it interesting, but needless to say, they knocked it outta the park.

For Dead Rising 3, Kenny Dermot is a survivor found in a minor side quest early in the game to whom Nick shows a couple of survival techniques that lasts all of two minutes. Kenny goes off on his own to help others and appears several hours later during gameplay (several days later in-story), pissed off at Nick for trying to always be the hero and robbing him of his chance for glory. Kenny has dressed up just like Nick, renamed himself Kick, and has captured and tied up a woman on a yacht just so he can then rescue her from the zombies that are closing in. Upon his defeat, Kenny surrenders and admits Nick is superior and begs to be saved. The player can either save him to add to their posse, finish him off, or leave him for the zombies to eat.

Who did it better? Hitman 3.

This is a victory Hitman 3 takes by the skin of its teeth, and it was extremely hard to decide which was better. Kenny’s fight is fun, humorous, energetic, and unlike most fights on the list so far, takes place while he and Nick are surrounded by zombies trying to kill both of them, leading the player to deal with them and Kenny simultaneously. However, Kenny is fairly easy to deal with by the time you encounter him as a boss battle, and the player has most likely saved so many people to add to the posse by now that Kenny’s addition if you choose to spare him is essentially redundant. In Hitman 3, even more than with Pride, Envy is a testament to how good a player has become, and once again, the fact that the player can feel their own sense of envy towards the rival’s ability to move about the map unobstructed is its main saving grace when compared to the fight with Kenny. Also, it is likely that 47 has always had a fear that someone out there might be better than him and without the need to be specifically made for it, and would feel at least a slight amount of envy toward such a hypothetical person.

For the sin of Envy, Hitman 3 wins by an infernal hair.

[thomas_olsenss]

I am looking forward to see you try to defend Greedy In hitman 3 for me it was the worst of the escalations. But I would hope you could change my mind. you have done a wonderful job so far with this post

[zombiestien567]

welcome to hitman forum my dude and yes im looking forward to the greedy

[Heisenberg]

7. GREED
   
   
   VS

And now, we finally come to it. The last of the 7 Deadly Sins and my personal favorite for both games: Greed. Greed is often regarded as the greatest sin, the root cause of most evil in the world. It’s an incorrect perception; that honor belongs to Pride, the first sin and the one that leads to all the other sins, but Greed, the runner-up for the title, is often more visible and explicit, so the confusion is understandable. For Dead Rising 3, the sinner is Albert Contiello, a man whose greed is so extreme, he spends the zombie outbreak performing, as Egon from Ghostbusters would put it, “a lot of unnecessary surgery.”

For Hitman 3, I’ve made it no secret during my time here that Greed is my favorite sin escalation, and my reason is very simple: because it unambiguously focuses on the concept of greed. Most of the others touch upon their sin in a roundabout way, needing to project our own feelings about the sin onto 47’s actions, but not Greed. We know that, especially during the first 4 games, 47 was dedicated to completing his contract and collecting his money above all else (in the case of H2:SA, that was after he gave up his search for Father Vittorio), the game actually points out how much simpler it was then. The gimmick of the sin has you needing to collect coins to either complete the challenges or unlock weapons to help finish the mission. And more than any of the other sins, it can really drive you to feel it if you want to be a completionist. You try to take the harder path to completing the mission so that you don’t have to give up any of your coins for special weapons, allowing you to keep them all for yourself. To emphasize the sin, practically the entire map is covered in gold and 47 himself dressed in a suit patterned with gold chains.

For Dead Rising 3, Nick is captured during his search for escape and wakes up in a warehouse basement that’s been converted into a very makeshift operating room. There, he finds himself locked in with Albert Contiello, a businessman dressed like a surgeon, who has captured several other survivors and is injecting them all with syringes filled with hallucinogenic drugs. With the city locked down from the zombie outbreak, Albert’s businesses in the city are stalled, and so to make up for the loss of profit, he has begun removing organs from survivors to sell on the black market once he gets out of the quarantine zone. He is wearing expensive watches, bracelets, and necklaces from previous victims, as well as severed fingers around his neck that are not even trophies, but the diamond rings on those fingers will be easier to remove later when the flesh rots further. Nick has also been injected with the drugs to prepare him for harvesting, and as he begins to fight Albert, his vision blurs, he stumbles from vertigo, and he begins to see the other survivors as copies of Albert. To know which is real, the player must throw the organ coolers on the floor to enrage the real Albert at what the action is costing him, and beat him quickly before he kills the others, but without attacking them by mistake so that they can be rescued and added to the player’s posse. Once defeated, Albert is injected with his own drugs, and his greed and insanity have become so extreme that he is still only concerned about his profit margin and how it will suffer. He then hallucinates that a pair of zombies have broken in to eat his supply of organs, and in trying to keep them from what’s “his,” they turn their attention to him and begin biting him. This is only a hallucination, however, as Albert has actually grabbed his autopsy buzzsaw and cuts himself open and begins disemboweling himself, pulling out his own organs until he dies, all the while believing he’s being eaten alive.

Who did it better? Dead Rising 3.

As much as I love Hitman 3’s portrayal of Greed, there’s really no comparison here. It’s a fun challenge if you are trying to collect and keep all the coins, it makes you work for it, but the experience you have encountering greed in Dead Rising 3 blows it completely out of the water. Even how well the game makes the player experience the sin themselves, which was usually the deciding factor with the other sins, cannot help it win this time. Albert is described as the darkest Psychopath in the game, and it’s true. While the other Psychopaths of sin are annoying (Teddy, Kenny), intimidating (Jherii, Zhi), and disturbing (Darlene, Dylan), Albert is the one who is flat-out terrifying, and the battle with him is an experience no one forgets in this game. It is dark, surreal, and twisted. I rank it as the best in the game, and the second best boss battle in the series, and the only reason it isn’t at the top is because there are no zombies attacking during the battle, which would have added extra tension to the setup of hallucinated copies of Albert running around; is that the real Albert, a frightened survivor, or a hungry zombie ready to bite? Albert’s horrifying, insane pursuit of profit at the expense of human life makes him exactly the kind of person whom 47 would be hired to kill, and if Albert knew who 47 was, he’d stop at nothing to harvest his organs and sell them to corporate and government cloning labs around the world for a fortune, making the two characters natural nemeses, both seeking to make money off of the other’s death. While 47 would obviously crush Albert like an insect in seconds, as far as who will go to greater lengths to satisfy their greed, Albert beats 47 easily.

So, with 4 wins, 2 losses, and 1 tie, it’s pretty clear that Hitman 3 is the winner in the contest of who does the 7 Deadly Sins better. While my favorite and least favorite sins went to Dead Rising 3, Hitman 3 walks away with the blue ribbon for doing it better more often.

Congratulations to the final winner: Hitman 3!

[thomas_olsenss]

Now after your last post I kind a wish that they have done greet as the It’s one
, so they couldn’t have made de-escalation more interesting when it comes to the targets and how to collect the coins. Like in envy Where their targets are unique.

[thomas_olsenss]

What about the elusive targets any of them better than the counterpart in dead rising

[Heisenberg]

The Chef, The Surgeons, The Entertainer, The Serial Killer, The Heartbreaker, The Procurers, and The Rage all seem like they could be Dead Rising Paychopaths, if they were just a tad crazier. The rest of the Elusive Targets seem a bit too sane and/or calm to qualify for Dead Rising.

[thomas_olsenss]

Did any of the last new seven elusive targets do a better job being there Sin. But it might need it’s own post

[Heisenberg]

I would say that The Liability might have done better at Sloth, since his laziness ended up causing even more harm than Teddy’s did.

[Heisenberg]

Bonus Round!

There exists another state of human existence that some also consider to be a Deadly Sin. It is not considered to be one of the 7 that we already know, so it is considered in some cultures to be the unofficial “8th” Deadly Sin… and as it turns out, both Hitman 3 and Dead Rising 3 have an unofficial representative of this unofficial sin. So to cap off and conclude this comparative list, I will now examine the honorary Deadly Sin of each game. Say hello to…

8. DESPAIR
   
   VS
   

Despair (sometimes referred to as hopelessness, or more clinically as defeatism or nihilism), is considered by some to be a sin implying that the sinner has stopped trying. This is not due to laziness like with Sloth, but due to lack of belief that their actions and efforts yield any kind of tangible reward or benefit, for themselves or others, that makes their struggles worth pursuing. In essence, the sinner is giving up and giving in to what is, or what comes easy, rather than trying to achieve aims beyond themselves. For Dead Rising 3, the sinner is Ronald “Red” Jackson.

For Hitman 3, we have the Mills Reverie escalation, the Halloween event based around the nightmare of Orson Mills, an NPC who is a non-target in Hawkes Bay. Orson is having a nightmare on Halloween wherein a pumpkin-headed figure is pursuing him, and he is unable to escape or defend himself, even with the aid of bodyguards. The figure in question is Agent 47 dressed in a terrifying Halloween costume, and since it is happening in Orson’s nightmare, it is very possible that 47 does posses magical powers of darkness as he goes about the hunt for Mr. Mills. Orson is, in his nightmare, experiencing despair because of his inability to escape or stop the killer hot on his trail, evidenced by Orson simply standing around, waiting for his horrifying end.

For Dead Rising 3, Red spends most of the game as an ally of Nick. Red is the leader of the “illegals;” a group of people infected with the zombie virus and who take regular medicine to suppress the change, but have not complied with the law to have chips implanted into their bodies that dispense the medicine at regular intervals into their blood, because the chips also have GPS tracking meant to locate them quickly if they should turn into zombies, and they don’t want the government tracking them while they’re alive. Red seems helpful, if skeptical of Nick’s abilities throughout the game, but near the end, he reveals that he has lost faith in the ideals of the illegals, is tired of living like a pariah, and wants to collect the $5 million bounty on Nick’s head so that he can actually have some kind of happiness, rather than continue helping the other illegals. After turning on Nick and his ex-girlfriend, whom he’s implied to still have feelings for and was competing with Nick for the attention of, Red tries to turn him over to the military. A fight commences, and after Nick wins, the ex-girlfriend drops a shipping container onto Red from an overhead crane, crushing him from the knees up, like the Wicked Witch of the East. The irony being that, even if the military had no intention of betraying Red, he never could have collected the money anyway, because as an “illegal,” he was not eligible for the reward.

Who did it better? Hitman 3.

Despite Red’s feeling sorry for himself and believing he devoted so much time to a lost cause, it just doesn’t add up to the depressing atmosphere found in Hitman 3’s Halloween escalation. You feel sorry for Orson, at times, amid the hopelessness of his situation, and the spooky quality of the mission really hammers it home in a way that Nick and Red’s little scuffle just doesn’t do.

For a clearer taste of the unofficial 8th Deadly Sin of
Despair, stick to Hitman 3.