Chapter 01: A Personal Contract

As the first level begins you review the Burnwood file while Diana speaks in the background, talking to the young girl clone, telling her what is going to happen. Agent 47 equips himself from the iconic ICA case and then we get a cutaway of Diana and the girl. The title screen appears as Diana leaves the balcony of her mansion on Lake Michigan, and then we get a CS of Benjamin Travis, the new head of the ICA, who is flying through Chicago in a chopper. In the reflection of the window that 47 stops to look at himself in, an ice cream truck is being stocked...

On the ground we see an ice cream truck driving along a winding lakefront road, a very familiar looking ice cream truck, and as the CS plays out the truck stops at the gates of the Burnwood Mansion, and the outside gate guard approaches to order the truck away, at which point he gets taken out by Agent 47!

The game now shifts to you in control of 47, standing on the grounds outside of the Mansion – if you played the Contracts Tutorial this should be familiar ground to you, if not then no worries mates, we will get it done.

Before we proceed here there are a number of ways that you can complete each level, based upon which of the Challenges you want to complete as you go. What that means is that while the game will suggest different approaches you can take, such as using a Disguise, if you wanted to unlock the Suit Only Challenge – which was how we decided to play our unlocking run of this first mission – you obviously are not going to be using those disguises.

To illustrate the different approaches that you can take in the game – and we are only going to do this for the first mission mind you, as the rest you can do on your own – we will be covering the first mission walkthrough several different ways. First, the Story-unlocking version, which is the way that we meant for this mission to play out:

Primary Play-through and Suit Only Play-through

As you approach the garden entrance to the left of the gate you will notice a guard inside complaining about the lack of high-tech security Kit. Sneaking past him you arrive in the Garden proper, completing that element of the level. Sneaking past the two guards ahead by making your way through the tennis courts, you reach the lower level and take out the two guards that pose the greatest impediment to reaching the bridge ahead – one leaning on a wall under the sun shade, and the one that is patrolling closest who will come to investigate his absence. With these two out of the way you need to take out the overwatch on the tennis court and hide his body, then make your way back to the sun shade structure and around the half-walls to sneak past the guards at the bridge when they change position.

Crossing the bridge you will reach the large enclosed patio on the other side that is clearly used for outdoor parties. No need to kill these two, just sneak past them and down the stairs leading to the Greenhouse. The game will tell you that you need a Disguise to get through the Greenhouse, and you do if you are making a stealth run, but we are doing the Suit Only run so rather than use that disguise we are going to go full-on-Rambo mode in a bit.

Moving through the grounds of the Burnwood Mansion

Take out the guard by the Greenhouse entrance first, since he has a gun, and then the Gardner, then make your way up to them and be sure to collect the guard's weapon. Head inside the Greenhouse and take out pretty much everybody!

Basically as you work your way through the Greenhouse things will get intense – that is OK, we are not trying for stealth here, we need to kill them so we can get past them since there is no way to sneak past with this many people in so small an area. You can either shoot with your silenced weapon or go all-out Rambo and shoot with the Jagd's you picked up!

Once you have taken out all of the Greenhouse guards and the gardeners, head towards the exit in the back and you will reach a smaller patio area with a set of ledges that lead to a window you can use to gain access to the Mansion.

Notice the guard in the window getting the good news that he does not have prostate cancer? Eh, bad news, because he does have through-the-window falling damage! Pulling him out of the window Unlocks the Geronimo Challenge, so well done you!

After you pull him out of the window and unlock the Geronimo Challenge, head inside and go to the Security Station, disable the cameras using the keyboard on the desk, and then grab the Evidence (Evidence 1 of 2) from the rack around the corner. With that done – and being sure you used the checkpoint in case something goes wrong here – head for the door with the crypto-lock on it; once you pass through this door you start accumulating score for your actions, score that will be used to judge whether or not you unlock the Technique for this level. Obviously you want to go for as high a score as you can manage, right?

Inside near you is the kitchen where the Chef is arguing with one of the guards. I ended up killing the Chef which you should not really do, it would have been better to subdue him, since as a civilian you take a major hit in points for killing him, but even if you do kill him you still should be able to get a score high enough to unlock the Technique as long as you don't do anything else really bad.

Right, so as there are a number of other Challenges we can do here, first order of business is to head upstairs to the bathroom to the left at the top of the stairs and grab the sleeping pills, which we are going to use to dose the coffee cup on the bar past the kitchen in order to subdue the Head of Security so that we can obtain his Keycard, which we need to gain access to the restricted side of the Mansion. Doing this Unlocks the Challenge Damn Good Coffee.

With that in hand sneak downstairs from the balcony area and grab the second piece of Evidence by the couch (Evidence 2 of 2), which Unlocks the Challenge Evidence Collector. Well done you!

Inside the Burnwood Mansion for the Suit Only Run

At this point you head up the stairs and through the Keycard secured door for your confrontation with Diana, which does not go quite as Travis hoped... The big question here is did you do it or not? Was the shot fatal? Who can say?

The game instructs you to find the girl – Victoria – and to do that you need to take out a group of guards using the Point-Shooting System (note that you do not get credit for this Point-Shooting set towards the Challenges or Achievement Counts).

After the CS plays out in which you have your get-to-know-you chat with Victoria and then you torch the car so that Travis and his men have to guess at what happened, the mission ends and the summary screen plays out. This is actually an important part of the level since it illustrates for you how well or how poorly you did!

You will have unlocked the Achievement “Heavy Burden” (10G) You infiltrated the mansion and assassinated Diana Burnwood.

As you can see from the summary screen for A Personal Contract, in the play-through above we obtained the Jagd P226, we found both of the Evidence Items, and we unlocked the Challenges for Evidence Collector, Suit Only, Geronimo, Damn Good Coffee, and The Price of Treason (the last one being the one for completing the level). In addition to that we “found” the items Sleeping Pills, Knife, Filet Knife, Keycard, and Book.

What remains for this Chapter are the Chef Disguise, Gardner Disguise, Mansion Interior Guard Disguise, and Mansion Exterior Guard Disguise. The Statue Bust, Radio, Hammer, Fire Poker, Brick, Coffee Mug, and Axe, and the Chameleon, Infiltrator, Modern Art, Extra Spice, Play It Again, and Well Played Challenges, as well as the Mastery Challenge, which of course you only unlock by unlocking all of the other Challenges. If you look at the summary total that is a Completion of 13 of 31 possible objectives, which is actually pretty good for a single run-through!

Clean-Up Play-through

After you successfully complete a Chapter that Chapter is then unlocked in the main menu and can be replayed at your convenience. Since there will be Challenges that are opposites you may actually end up needing to replay a Chapter three times or more to get them all, but for the purposes of this instructional walkthrough we are going to now complete the Clean-Up Play-through during which we will make a considered attempt at completing as many of the unfulfilled items from the Chapter End List as we can.

While we are not showing the outside portion in the video below, there are some notes to add to that part of the replay – specifically with respect to the environment items (that counts for inside as well). When you see an item go ahead and pick it up – if you have an item already you are given the option to swap them – do that in order to have taken the item so that you get credit for it.

This time through we are going to focus on collecting every Disguise as well, so that means incapacitating and taking disguises even if we do not actually need to. Once you work your way through the Garden and onto the Patio in the second area, go ahead and kill the pair of guards here but do not dispose of their bodies just yet. First change into one of their disguises to collect the Outside Guard disguise, and then dump the bodies over the edge.

You can then make your way down to where you can change into the Gardner Disguise to collect that – you can also use that to gain access to the Greenhouse if you like, or alternatively you can use the Outside Guard disguise and Instinct to get past the guards inside and reach the second Patio area with the Ledges. Your call.

Once you pull the guard through the window and gain access to the Mansion, slice the second guard's throat and change into his Disguise, dropping his body out of the window. That is disguise 3 of 4 so well done! The final disguise is the Chef's inside, and we are going to obtain that using the second sedating Challenge in a bit.

Remember to disable the security system, and then go through the door to start the scored portion of the Chapter. Head immediately upstairs to the bathroom and grab the sleeping pills, incapacitate the guard on the balcony and conceal them in the crate in the bathroom, and then head back to the kitchen and wait for the argument to play out then use the sleeping pills to dose the stew when the Chef is turned away.

An additional play-through to unlock the remaining challenges

The Chef will sample the stew and then pass out, after which point you can change into his outfit and gain the final Disguise for the level as well as having unlocked the Extra Spice Challenge. Good on ya!

Now head out to the bar and dose the coffee cup in there, and then once the Head of Security drinks the coffee and passes out grab the Keycard and then conceal his body in the freezer in the kitchen where you put the Chef.

If you look out the hall that the Security Chief walked through you will see two guards on this side of the room – one leaning against a half-wall, and the second by the Piano or by the outer wall. What you want to do is wait until the guard who is messing with the Piano messes with the piano and then use the Radio from the kitchen to lure the other guard into the hallway and incap them, and stash the body. Alternatively if they see you dragging the body of the Security Chief you can incap them in melee and stash the body in the closet.

Once you have eliminated that guard no matter how, wait until the Piano Guard goes to tune the Piano and pull the support out crushing them in with the lid and unlocking the Challenge Play It Again! Nice one! As long as you quickly walk away you should avoid detection in your Chef Disguise.

Now change back into the Inside Guard uniform and head up the stairs as if you were going to the bathroom, but hang a right turn instead, and you will be headed towards the secure door to reach Diana, who you will go through the CS with and, you will finish out the mission, unlocking the Infiltrator Challenge.

To unlock the Well Played Challenge you need to get through the entire inside portion (past the door where scoring starts) without touching ANYONE. You basically can use the sleeping pills to get the Keycard but beyond that no casualties and do not touch anyone else.

To pick up the last few Challenges you will need to replay the Garden segment and shoot the base of the statue in the Garden from the position of the guard on the Tennis Court overlooking the lower area, shooting the statue base while the two guards are near it to unlock the Modern Art Challenge.

Assuming that everything went as planned you should also unlock the Achievement “A Taste for the Game” (20G) You completed 10 Challenges.

Summary Conclusions

This is the basic approach you will be taking with each of the following Chapters in the game – completing the main play-through to unlock the Chapter, and then replaying whatever sections of the Chapter you need to in order to pick up (unlock) any of the items you missed from the Summary List at the end.