LET'S PLAY HOTLINE MIAMI 1 & 2 - America is a tune, it must be sung together.

HOTLINE MIAMI
00 - THE METRO
01 - NO TALK
02 - OVERDOSE
03 - DECADENCE
04 - TENSION
05 - FULL HOUSE
06 - CLEAN HIT
07 - NEIGHBORS
08 - PUSH IT
09 - CRACKDOWN
10 - HOT & HEAVY
11 - DEADLINE
12 - TRAUMA
13 - ASSAULT
14 - VENGEANCE
15 - SHOWDOWN
16 - SAFEHOUSE
17 - FUN & GAMES
18 - PRANK CALL
19 - RESOLUTION

HOTLINE MIAMI 2: WRONG NUMBER
00 - MIDNIGHT ANIMAL
01 - DOWN UNDER
02 - HOMICIDE
03 - HARD NEWS
04 - FINAL CUT
05 - FIRST TRIAL
06 - MOVING UP
07 - NO MERCY
08 - EXECUTION
09 - AMBUSH
10 - INTO THE PIT
11 - DEAD AHEAD
12 - DEATH WISH
13 - SUBWAY - ALT. ENDING
14 - STRONGHOLD
15 - WITHDRAWAL - ALT. ENDING
16 - CASUALTIES
17 - FIRST BLOOD
18 - DEMOLITION
19 - HOUSE CALL
20 - RELEASE
21 - SEIZURE
22 - BLOOD MONEY
23 - CAUGHT
24 - TAKE OVER
APOCALYPSE
EPILOUGE

BONUS LEVELS
COMING SOON

THERE'S A RED 50 BLESSINGS LOGO PAINTED ON THE FLOOR OUTSIDE THE APARTMENT. Hotline 2 reveals that this was likely left by other 50 Blessings "subscribers" who haven't quite gotten to the point where they're willing to slaughter a room full of armed mobsters, possibly as a sign to let their murder members know they've got the right place.

RICHARD'S Q&A SHOWDOWN. So Richard has four questions for Jacket, and Jacket, (who never really figures out what's going on) doesn't have a solid answer for any of them.

1.) DO YOU LIKE HURTING OTHER PEOPLE. He absolutely does. His breakdown in the first level is now a distant memory, and as the game wears on Jacket's methods become more and more openly sadistic. The way he killed the boss in the last level comes immeidiately to mind but it's not the worst execution we're going to see by far.

2.) WHO IS LEAVING MESSAGES ON YOUR ANSWERING MACHINE? Jacket has seriously no idea who's giving him these commands. In the end he decides (against all logic) that it's the very mob organization he's systematically slaughtering. In reality it's 50 Blessings, a patriot organization that he subscribes to the newsletter of.

3.) WHERE ARE YOU RIGHT NOW. After this "dream" the game places Jacket in his room. But as I've outright said in the videos, Jacket's not really there either. He's currently in a hospital bed, in a feverish coma, re-living the events of the last few months in his mind, and filling in any fuzzy details with whatever "sounds right".

4.) WHY ARE WE HAVING THIS CONVERSATION. This one's just fucking rhetorical. Still, as long as we're here...

I interpret these scenes in the dark dirty room as Jacket trying, (and failing) to reconcile who he thinks he is against what he's done. Don Juan, lit in blue and appearing as someone who cares about him, shows him concern and shades of kindness. A brief glimpse of humanity that he wants to believe he still has. Rasmus, lit in red and looking like the people he's killed hurls insults at him, and claims that he's a monster. Finally Richard, lit in yellow and looking like Jacket himself, offers no emotion at all, just questions.

And he has no answers.

Jacket is a silent protagonist, but it's not so the player can project a personality onto him like in other video games. In fact, most of his scripted actions serve to horrify and alienate the player. It's my personal theory that he doesn't speak because he's so completely at a loss that he couldn't think of anything to say if he tried. And it's because he's so lost that he he'll jump on anything offering guidance. Even an answering machine.

Hotline 2 reveals that someone knew he was the perfect candidate to follow morally dubious orders from an uncaring source, and that by extension, it's possible he was targeted by 50 blessings from the very beginning. But we'll get to that later.

Originally Posted by BEAT

THE PHONE CALL MENTIONS THAT THEY ALREADY SENT ONE GUY BUT HE DIDN'T SUCCEED. That would be the guy in the room that's rigged with explosives. The shock I felt when I played this level for the first time and suddenly half the map blew up in my face is something I still remember very clearly.

THE JANITORS ARE BASICALLY 50 BLESSINGS MIDDLE MANAGEMENT. I will be getting the secret ending to this game and go into more detail on it there, but for now just know that the two of them know exactly what's going on. The one in the entrance of Jacket's apartment is presumably to get a quick look at him in person to make sure he's still at least halfway functional. Likewise the one upstairs in the hotel is probably there to keep an eye on Jacket while he's "working" and possibly destroy evidence that would incriminate either of them after the fact.

BIKER VS JACKET: FIGHT OF THE CENTURY! So in this video, Jacket descends upon Phonehom to find the place just littered with dead bodies. Then he bashes Biker's skull in with a golf club. Okay cool. So Jaket won.

EXCEPT once you beat the rest of the game you're treated to a few epilogue chapters starring the biker. And sure enough, biker eventually make it to PhoneHom where he... kills the shit out of Jacket.

So only one of them could have actually happened, right? Well in hotline 2, Jacket's trial is the center of a media circus and he's very much alive, so I guess Jacket must have killed biker. So his version must be the real one.

Except no, because biker is alive and well too! You can find him in "The bar of broken heroes, where it's revealed he's still completely out of his goddamn mind, but in a more sad mopy way instead of the brutal kill murder way. Best guess is the fight happened more or less like jacket remembers it, but biker just got a nasy gash instead of having 3/4ers of his head ripped off.

OKAY FINE, IT'S A HINT AT THE EVENTUAL REVEAL THAT JACKET IS IN A COMA, AND THAT HE'S GETTING THE DETAILS WRONG. That's more like it! The most obvious of which is that biker's head is not really split into pieces, and that he could sill be alive out there, but it also throws into question everything jacket's memory is haphazardly throwing together. This isn't the only time beard hints to something before the game shows us it outright. San Francisco, and the death of Hooker are other examples.

Originally Posted by Rebelfire

my friend and i collaborated to make something amazing:

THE DUDE AT THE REGISTER IS RICHTER, AND HIS REPLACING BEARD IS IMPORTANT. I'll have a lot more to say about exactly who Richter is, and what makes him such an anomaly in a game as full of violent killers as this one, but for right now let's just focus on how he and Beard exists in Jacket's hazy, not-entirely reliable dream-slash-memory.

Beard is nice to Jacket on levels that are just blatantly unrealistic. He always has Jacket's favorite thing waiting for him the moment he comes by, never charges him for it, and sees him off with a smile and words of encouragement. That's because this version of him is a wish-fulfillment character. He exists to fulfill any desire Jacket has, while telling Jacket "Bro you are just AWESOME" all the while. A perfect fantasy best friend.

But as the dream comes closer to it's inevitable end, that perfect fantasy friend is replaced by someone who acts much like any other tired overworked cashier. Richter doesn't care about making Jacket feel good about himself. He never gives him any free stuff, and he doesn't really even seem to recognize or know him. Jacket is just another annoying customer that Richter has to deal with at the end of a long shift. He seems mean when compared to Beard, but really he's just realistic, and I think that's the whole point.

In Jacket's fantasy, Richter is reality creeping in at the edges. He takes away the kindness Jacket wants, and replaces it with the indifference of the real world. He's a sign that the time for make-believe is over, and that Jacket will soon have to deal with the hostility of the real world once again.

RICHARD CAN'T STOP TALKING SHIT. most of what he says here is pretty self-explanatory. There's no possible way a 3-month campaign of brutal murder could possibly "end well", now that Hooker is dead Jacket is very obviously "all alone", etc etc. But one line sticks out to me as deserving special attention:

"WHAT YOU DO FROM HERE ON, WON'T SERVE ANY PURPOSE."

Why is that line so important? Well for the last three months Jacket has murdered countless people just because his answering machine thought it would be cool. He has no idea who's telling him to do these things, or why they want him to do them. He doesn't stand to gain anything from this rampage, or have any personal motivation to want to kill those people. He's just mindlessly following orders with no thought as to why. As far as he (and the player) are concerned, there is no purpose behind his actions up to this point.

But that all changes when Jacket escapes from the hospital, which is the first meaningful choice he's made in the entire game. From this point onward he's done blindly following the commands of a disembodied voice. He's on his own mission, setting out on his own terms to get his own answers and accomplish his own goals. The game is now a personal quest for revenge upon those who used him, hurt him, and robbed him of the only person he truly cared about. He (and the player) have a sense of purpose for the very first time!

So what's Richard going on about with this "won't serve any purpose" shit? Is old Chickenface mistaken, or intentionally lying to us?

Turns out it's neither. Richard is a lot of things (a hallucination, a guide, a superego, maybe even a god) but he's never wrong and he never lies.

Jacket's revenge, in addition to being a pointless gesture, ends up being completely misguided as well. He never finds the force that actually killed Hooker, and never comes any closer to understanding where the phone calls were really coming from, much less what was actually going on. His newfound purpose is purposeless.