Kind of a ridiculous article, and I said "no" to the poll.
The situations involved in the game aren't especially "creepy" unless you choose to present them out of context and of course decide to read into them a lot. Consider that the person writing the article does not seem to "get" the character or the game at all, and makes comments about how they didn't even try and get Agent 47's Silverballers back or something like that.
Basically what we've got here is a guy who is a conditioned killing machine hunting down members of his former (corrupt) organization and taking out a human trafficking organization. He for example does things like kill his former handler in the shower, which is actually a good place to take someone out (especially someone who you know... works for a world class organization that produces people like 47). 47 is an assassin, he's not out to be nice about it, or give her a fighting chance.... sure you can stretch that into something else and claim it's creepy, but it's pretty straightforward, the same can be said of a lot of the other stuff.
The recurring problem with the "Assasin Nuns" continues to get me. I find it sort of disturbing right now that you have people cheering for an all-girl version of "The Expendables" with old action girls like Cynthia Rothrock , and have no problem with that, but they get upset by this. Basically if a campy female team of mercenary assassin's show up and kill a bunch of dudes, that's awesome, but if a dude kills a group of female mercenary assasins trying to kill him that's suddenly wrong? Dual standards much? The same can be said of a lot of other similar things, I mean how many dudes get chopped up in the course of "Heavenly Sword" for example, but that doesn't count because it's a girl doing it, a guy on the other hand say beating up girls in an action video game OMG... that's horrible. We've even had people retroactively going back and slamming games like "Double Dragon" and "Final Fight" (where it's actually debatable if they are girls, since it varies based on the version) for this kind of thing.
Here on the escapist we've even heard people say "gee, why aren't there any good female villains, that get to wear the crazy costumes and stuff", well this is kind of why. To be honest I am *NOT* a Hitman fan, but honestly in a few years when people complain about the lack of women in the rogues gallery of video games (it will happen), I'm going to point back at this as an example of why.
Another aspect of it that I find somewhat hilarious is people knocking the whole dominatrix wardrobe, with all the girls in leather and stuff. That's funny, because male versions of that, with tons of buckles and straps and things are a staple of a lot of a lot of video game characters, especially when coming from Japan, and it's been commented on some occasions that other than showing cleavage female costumes oftentimes get a lot less attention. So basically we strut out some bad girls also looking like they stepped out of some leather-fetish magazine, and now it's a problem. The funny thing is that I'd actually imagine a dominatrix would be fairly good at hurting people (without them enjoying it) and it makes a degree of sense that a criminal organization running a human trafficking organization and at least one sex clubs might have someone in one of their sex clubs who does both things (torturing people both seriously for information, and playfully for fun elsewhere), that character is pretty much floating around those areas.
I don't know, it just seems like a dual standard. One day I hope someone decides to make a serious argument that "Gungrave" is an act of misandry because the main character wears a stylized costume and has associated religious trappings, including carrying around a coffin that doubles as a weapon. Since he can be killed (and brutally) obviously it's an act of misandry... I mean he saved a girl and is fighting for her (in the video game) instead of her fighting her own battles so you know... he's obviously oppressed, his desire for revenge being exploited, him being portrayed as a dumb man who doesn't know any better. It would be roughly as detached from the reality of the game or it's mythos as that article is about "Hitman".... and I mean crud, let's not even get started on Dante, he's an exploited boy toy justified as an action hero if I ever saw one.... and "Solid Snake" obviously women belittling men through a name reducing them to their most basic sexual component... no matter what he does he's still just a "Solid Snake" it doesn't get more demeaning than that.
