This is an old revision of the document!
This page is part of a series on
Systems
Analysis
Claim
Statistical Inevitability
Malus Necessarium
Conversation Difficulty
50%
The Hitman games encourage the player to achieve their goals while preventing unnecessary harm, encapsulated in the term “Malus Necessarium”. In fact, the game's challenge comes specifically from finding ways to achieve one's goals in a way that keeps innocents alive and unhurt.
Malus Necessarium (or Malum Necessarium) is a policy applied to actions, prescribing the use of as little evil (as in “suffering”, “malice” or “evil”) as possible to achieve a means. It is a necessary condition stemming from Utilitarianism and literally translates from Latin into “Necessary Evil”. The wording is derived from the Hitman games, which uses a similarly named term to describe it's way it wants the player to play the game, by assassinating the targets while causing the least amount of collateral necessary. The game discourages and punishes unnecessary kills, injuries etc and so on (except towards the targets, ie. the people the player is meant to kill, of course).