Video Game / Sniper Elite 4

All it takes is a spark.

"Covert agent and elite marksman Karl Fairburne must fight alongside the brave men and women of the Italian Resistance and defeat a terrifying new threat with the potential to halt the Allied fightback in Europe before it’s even begun."

—Official description on Rebellion's website

The fourth game in the Sniper Elite series and a direct sequel to Sniper Elite III. The game is set during the campaigns in Italy, chronologically still before the fall of the Nazis in Sniper Elite V2. SOE officer Lt. Karl Fairburne is sent in to Italy to address rumors of a new Nazi super weapon that could jeopardize the allied war effort. The game takes place across various villas, forested areas, and fishing villages in parts of Italy.

The game is a massive expansion of the base concept with maps at least 3 times bigger than the ones in Sniper Elite III, almost like an Wide-Open Sandbox type of game. The game also introduces a number of new mechanics such as suppressed bullets, adjusting your sights for target distance, new kill cam sequences, and changed enemy AI behaviors.

The detailed kill cam is back and still incorporates the muscle and circulatory system layers, dynamic bone fractures, and a detailed vehicle kill cam add new levels of spectacle to the game. The game also added a kill cam for various melee kills showing Karl knifing, beating, and generally delivering lethal or debilitating blows to his enemies. There is also now a fragmentation cam which shows the effects of various explosions perforating your enemy with shrapnel and fragments.

There have been some AI changes to soldiers and vehicles, both of which are now more aggressive in hunting the player if spotted. Enemies can call in reinforcements to flood an area with troops for nearby to find and/or flush out the player. They will more aggressively pursue the player further than in previous games, and are more willing to lob grenades into hiding spots if they suddenly lose sight of you.

The vehicle weak spot mechanics have been changed to be more detailed with players able to shoot out the engine making it explode, knock out the radiator, or even flatten the tires on vehicles with tires. Boats are now in the game in some places and have their own unique weak spots to target.

The Experience Point system mechanic returns, with some changes. You must now complete certain challenges to upgrade certain parts of your weapons. The experience points can be earned in both single player and multi-player and carry over between the modes.

List of Post-Launch DLC

• Target Führer: A mission that involves hunting either Hitler or what may possibly be another body double. It is never verified in the mission which it is for certain. Again. Amusingly, the mission provides countless possible ways to end the Führer.
• Deathstorm DLC: Karl is tasked with investigating rumors related to the Nazi atomic energy program and uncovers a new plot against the Allies involving another Nazi super weapon.

The game was followed by a comic book series in 2018, Sniper Elite Resistance, and a sequel; Sniper Elite 5, which released in 2022.

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This game provides examples of:

• Achievement System: Present and accounted for. You ping an achievement for each completed mission, for completing the campaign on Authentic Difficulty (Are you insane?), killing each infantry type (Gotta Cap 'em All) and also one for completing it on Authentic Plus difficulty ("You know you're REALLY insane, right?")
• Affably Evil: Salvatore Dinelli is The Don of The Mafia in the area that Fairburne and the OSS are operating in. Sofia describes him and his group as "mass murderers", but when encountered in person, he's shown to be very friendly and jovial towards Fairburne.
• Accidental Aiming Skills: Back again especially with the addition of the ability to adjust your scopes range setting. Players not accounting for the lack of smaller adjustments may find their rounds hitting things they may have not originally intended such as an explosive item instead of an enemies head.
• The Alcoholic: Dr. Kessler, the scientist behind the Ms 300 "Razor's" guidance systems, is mentioned to be drunk all the time when not working on the German wunderwaffe project. It foreshadows his Secretly Dying situation.
• All Germans Are Nazis: Thoroughly averted. Many are not, and even some that are are more brainwashed idealists than sadistic murderers. There are, of course, some vicious Nazi bastards who definitely have it coming mixed in, as well.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Bitanti Village level begins with the Nazis and Italian Fascists capturing most of the titular fishing village, and rounding up and killing any partisan they come across. Karl ends up helping repel the Fascists and save the surviving Partisans.
• America Won World War II: Averted. The player character works alongside Americans but this game makes clear he only succeeds with the support of the Italian resistance and the British SOE. As well, while he speaks with an American accent, Karl is British-German raised in the US but serving with the SOE, and the character select screens for survival, co-op and multiplayer list him as British (in fact, most of the playable characters are British or Italian, with only two Americans).
• Anti-Frustration Features: Normally, playing on Authentic Plus will not save any checkpoints, with one exception: the game saves a checkpoint at the end of the last campaign level, where you must shoot down Bohm's plane, since having to restart the entire level at that point would be too frustrating.
• Arrow Cam: The kill cam is back with yet more modifications. This time it includes various melee kills and fragmentation/shrapnel kills as well as vehicle and sniper rifle kills. The gory detail for the kill cams on human enemies is just as detailed as in the previous titles.
• Artificial Brilliance: The enemy AI, upon hearing suspicious noises such as gunshots or explosions, will send sentries to investigate, often forcing the player to relocate if they get too close to their position.
• Artificial Stupidity: That said, the AI is also overall dumber than past installments, frequently taking the wrong side of cover and running past the player to take cover in a bad spot.
• The Atoner: While there are plenty of unrepentant bastards among the enemy's ranks, a lot of German and Italian soldiers harbor a lot of guilt and remorse for things they have done in the war, as revealed by overheard dialog and letters found in their camps (or on their corpses). Some of them hope they can make up for it in the future, while others believe they deserve to die.
• Auto-Save: The game has three auto save slots, and saves approximately every minute. Don't wait too long to reload if things start going wrong and it's been a long time since your last hard save.
• Benevolent Architecture: Various walls, sand bags, clumps of bushes, elevated sniping positions, and other sniper friendly spots are still liberally scattered across the land scape of each level map.
• Big Bad: General Heinz Böhm, one of the Nazi leaders responsible for the weapons program producing the Nazi Anti-Ship missiles.
• Bittersweet Ending: Karl kills Bohm and destroys his missile production facility, ending the threat to the Allied fleet. So Operation Avalanche is successful and the Allies gain a foothold in continental Europe. But the Allagra partisans are all but wiped out, including Sofia, and as Karl notes, it will take a year of brutal fighting before the Allies take Italy.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Subverted. Hits on enemy weapons give off a ping with bright sparks flying everywhere. The enemy will also be staggered or even fall down but they retain their weapon. However hits to grenades result in spectacular explosion resulting in instant death for the target and possibly anyone next to them.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Completing all the challenges for a weapon upgrades it, and unlocks the "Mastery" skin, which gold plates the metal parts of the gun. Shiny!
• Bloodier and Gorier: The melee kill and fragmentation kill cams add yet another layer of blood and gore to an already gruesome display.
• Booby Trap: The player has access to the usual array of explosives, trip wire mines, and normal landmines. This time around they can set a delay to ensure the blast catches more enemies. Players may also sabotage generators to explode, killing enemies, or shoot placed explosives.
• Boom, Headshot!:
  • As in previous titles the head shot is the highest scoring hit and guaranteed to instantly drop an enemy with a spray of blood and gore. You can also get a less explosive headshot by clipping your target's head, which typically just shaves some bone protecting the brain off the skull. This is still lethal, however.
  • Subverted with various weapons that lack sufficient power to penetrate through enemies helmets. Instead the hit will stun the target momentarily and knock their helmet from their head.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • In comparison to other Nazi superweapon schemes, the guided missiles being used by Bohm and Kessler are rather simplistic. But they can potentially wipe out the Allied naval fleets, a key advantage the Allies have in the war.
  • Your starting weapons, the Springfield rifle, Thompson SMG, and Welrod, have the most balanced stats of the entire arsenal. The Welrod is the only non-DLC suppressed pistol, making it almost mandatory to carry, so the player will have an (almost) silent way to kill enemies at range.
• Bottomless Magazines:
  • The assorted friendly and hostile NPC's never have ammo issues.
  • Unlike the NPC's the player has to loot bodies and supply caches for ammunition and supplies.
• Bringing Back Proof: Upon entering an Enemy Mine type of alliance with The Mafia, Lt. Fairburne is tasked by The Don Salvatore Dinelli to kill his Arch-Enemy, Black Brigade Leader and Nazi collaborator Piero Capo. Specifically, after killing Capo, Dinelli asks Fairburne to bring back with him Capo's prized rosary, a gift from Capo's mother that he is never seen without.
• Bullet Time:
  • Triggered by various kill events such as kills with rifles, stealth melee kill, some vehicle kills, and fragmentation kills. The camera slows down to give the player a detailed view of the action as it occurs.
  • Focus mode causes time to slow down when using "empty lung".
• But Not Too Foreign: Karl Fairburne, according to German intelligence, was born in Germany, the son of a British diplomat stationed there, and was then raised in Washington, USA where he grew up. He then later enrolled in West Point where he graduated at the rank of Lieutenant and an expert in sniping.
• The Cameo: Adolf Hitler returns yet again for another Pre-Order/DLC mission in which the player is tasked with assassinating him.
• Challenge Run: On a per-level basis, players are given 5 challenges to perform. They can range from a Speed Run type of challenge, to getting as many sound-masked kills as possible.
• Co-Dragons: Bohm has Dr. Andreas Kessler and Major Klaus Rothbauer. The former is the head of the German guided missile project, and is responsible for developing the guidance system of the new missiles being used in Italy. The latter is The Confidant to Bohm as well as his second-in-command militarily. To cover-up his whole plan, he disposes of both men, the former by handing him over to the Allies, the latter by giving away the location of his HQ to the OSS.
• Cold Sniper:
  • Karl Fairburne is back with his usual cold and mostly emotion free dialogue and is all business.
  • The enemy snipers, while more likely to talk, have very little emoting beyond basic reactions such as surprise.
• Conveniently Timed Distraction: The sound masking mechanic is back with various incidental and player created environmental noises that can mask the shots of un-suppressed weapons fire.
• Cool Plane: Several from both the Allied and Axis.
  • For the Allies, there's a prototype version of the Merlin-powered P-51 Mustang. Unfortunately, during a test run/recon mission over Italy, it is shot down by German Anti-Air fire. Thus, Karl is tasked with blowing it up and recovering its pilot and combat footage.
• Coup de Grâce: Players can optionally kill wounded enemies with any of their weapons.
• Dead Man Writing: Some enemy soldiers have letters for their loved ones in their pockets, to be sent in the event of their death. It can be quite sobering to discover that the Wehrmacht trooper whose head you blew off wants his young daughter to remember how much her daddy loved her and how sorry he was that he couldn't be there to watch her grow up. Whether you blame yourself for taking the shot or Hitler for starting the war is up to you.
• The Don: Salvatore Dinelli is the head of the local Mafia that has been harassing both German and Italian forces following Operation Husky. Fairburne and Weaver eventually recruit him and his organization into fighting alongside the Allies and the Italian Partisans after cutting a deal with him.
• Elite Mooks:
  • The Jager troopers are crack shot rifleman who will make life miserable for the player if they are not eliminated quickly. Their support variant come armed with FG42 machine guns that can bring a player's health bar to zero in one magazine.
  • Faust Troopers are armed with powerful explosive weapons that can damage the player even if they are in cover.
  • Radio Operators can summon reinforcements if alerted.
  • Spotters will fire a flare at the players position, triggering an artillery barrage. However, if killed, their flare gun can be picked up and used to call in bombardments on the players volition.
  • Various armored vehicles frequently appear throughout the game, impervious to bullet damage except in certain weak points.
  • Enemy snipers are generally treated as a variety of elite enemy with powerful weapons capable of causing serious injury to the player in a single shot.
  • The Deathstorm DLC adds Valkyrie Squad, who are stronger than Jagers and include stronger variants of special enemy troops (Spotters, Snipers, etc).
• Enemy Mine: Fairburne and Weaver eventually get the partisans and The Mafia to work together in bringing down the Nazis and Italian fascists. Unfortunately, most of the partisans get killed not long after thanks to an ambush.
• The Evil Genius:
  • Dr. Andreas Kessler is the head of the German guided missile project, and a devoted Nazi who has ties with several of the Nazi higher-ups, including General Heinz Bohm. He's even smart enough to allow himself to be captured and trick the partisans' leader into getting most of her group wiped out later.
  • The Deathstorm DLC introduces an entire group of German scientists helping to work on a prototype nuclear warhead. An optional objective is for Fairburne to kidnap one of them for further interrogation and information extraction.
• Evil Plan: Bohm's is using Dr. Kessler's Ms 300 "Razor" missiles to wipe out the Allied fleet and hopefully kill General Eisenhower in the process, all from the luxury of a Horten Flying Wing bomber. All of his prior actions were to remove the thorns in his plan, namely Sofia and the Partisans, as well as to trick the SOE and OSS that they've succeeded by handing a dying Kessler to them.
• Excuse Plot:
  • The plot revolves around yet another Nazi super weapon plot that could possibly devastate the allies and it is up to Karl to stop it.
  • The DLC Death Storm revolves around the Nazi Atomic energy program and a dire threat to the allies in the same vein as the other super weapon plots.
• Exploding Barrels: Just like in other titles in the series barrels, munitions, grenades on enemies, ammo boxes, and other targetable items create spectacular explosions when shot. Most of them are conveniently marked in an obvious red colour.
• False Flag Operation: In the Deathstorm 3: Obliteration Downloadable Content mission, an optional objective has Karl Fairburne discover an armory's worth of captured Allied tanks and weapons intended for such as purpose, with German documents even calling the operation "False Flag".
• Faux Affably Evil: General Bohm. When he finally appears, he keeps up a friendly, laughing tone when speaking with Karl. All while threatening to kill Eisenhower and torture Sofia.
• Foregone Conclusion: Due to being set two years before Sniper Elite V2, Fairburne will survive the events of the Italian campaign. Also, Bohm's Evil Plan will inevitably fail due to the success of Operation Avalanche in Real Life.
• Groin Attack: One of two things happens when an enemy is shot in the groin. The first is they die instantly as at least one of their testicles is graphically obliterated. The second is they go down wounded and bleed out if not rescued by an ally.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: It happens less often than in the previous games, but sometimes the AI have some strange reactions. Like running around to search for you, even though you're kneeling in front of them with a sniper rifle.
• Gun Porn: Karl has an extensive arsenal of period weapons at his disposal, like the familiar M1C Garand, M1903A4 Springfield, 1911, and MP-40. It also includes some less famous but nonetheless appropriate firearms like the Owen Machine Carbine, Winchester Model 1895, ZH-29 and what must be the only appearance of a Swedish Mauser (distinct from the Karabiner 98k) in video game history.
• Hand Guns:
  • The player once again is packing around a variety of pistols including suppressed weapons like the HDM and the Welrod.
  • Various enemy officers pack hand guns as their personal weapons.
• The Handler: Karl has two, a British SOE woman code-named Mother Hen and an American OSS officer named Weaver, both whom provide side objectives for missions.
• Handshake Refusal: Karl does this to Weaver when they first meet, as Karl just wants to get down to business. They shake hands in the end after Weaver proves to be a loyal and reasonable guy.
• Harder Than Hard:
  • The game shipped with Authentic mode which aims to make the game as realistic as it can be made for a sniper elite title. Flavour text: "Only sniping purists and masochists are welcome."
  • A patch added "Authentic Plus," which is even harder. "The toughest challenge a sniper can face."
• Hero Killer: General Heinz Böhm. He personally killed Sofia and he is also the first main villain in the series who didn't go down without a tough fight.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Sofia gives her life to save Karl from being shot by General Bohm in the final level.
  • By extension, most of the Allagra Partisans sans Giancarlo and Lucio's group are killed in an ambush by Bohm's men, but its thanks to them that Fairburne was able to kill Rothbauer and retrieve important intel on Bohm's plans.
  • Rare villainous example. Kessler knows he is dying of liver cirrhosis, so he allows himself to be kidnapped to lure Partisans into a trap.
• Heroic Suicide: It's revealed in Deathstorm 2:Infiltration that Dr. Antonello Galvani, an Italian nuclear physicist forced to work for the Nazis, chose to shoot himself rather than help Prof. Bosch and his cronies finish the Deathstorm Project.
• Historical Domain Character:
  • General Dwight D. Eisenhower is mentioned and shown several times throughout the campaign, mentioned to be in charge of the invasions of Sicily and later mainland Italy. Bohm's plan is to use the Ms 300 "Razor" missiles to wipe out the Allied invasion fleet and hopefully kill Ike in the process.
  • During the Deathstorm Downloadable Content campaign, Karl makes mention of one Col. Boris Pash, the Real Life leader of the Alsos Mission.
• Hollywood Silencer: Played with. This is highly dependent on difficulty setting. On most modes it is played straight with the various suppressed weapons being exceptionally quiet. However on Authentic difficulty the noise is not fully suppressed and can be detected if an enemy is close enough.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Karl manages to pack along a sniper rifle, large secondary weapons, pistols, large bandage kits, explosives, and other supplies all without the use of pack or military load bearing equipment.
• Interquel: This game bridges the gap between Sniper Elite III and Sniper Elite V2, depicting Karl Fairburne's tour-of-duty in Italy.
• Immune to Bullets: Unless a vehicle is shot in a weak point your weapons fire short of explosives will not damage or destroy vehicles.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Partisan Giancarlo, as well as a number of other resistance members and civilians, suffer from this early in the story, most likely due to Typhus. Thankfully, he and the others are cured later on when Karl manages to find and secure a shipment of Typhus vaccines during a later mission.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Zig-zagged. You can get over these, but only until a certain point. That point is completely arbitrary, as you may be unable to climb over something that is just barely above waist height.
• La Résistance: The Italian Resistance first encountered in the second mission are typical partisan style fighters and serve as the Red Shirts for the game.
• Lead the Target: Moving targets are just as challenging as ever to shoot and with the new simulated bullet arc becomes even more essential to hit even a target walking slowly.
• Level Grinding: You level up your weapons by performing sufficient numbers of particular shots. The counter is independent of your progress through the game. If you find a location that is convenient for a shot, then you can use Save Scumming to do it over and over again. Auto-Save is very useful here.
• Limited Loadout: One sniper rifle, one secondary weapon, and one pistol. Plus limited slots for equipment you can start the mission with. Everything else has to be found in level.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The AI very blatantly doesn't have to deal with wind-bullet drop and enemies with unscoped rifles can easily hit you at distances where you need to account heavily for wind and bullet drop. (With the Smoke Trail effect on their gunfire even being a straight line.)
• The Mafia: Fairburne and Weaver make contact with one such group as the campaign progresses. After Fairburne helps The Don of the group with a "favor" by killing one of the local fascist leaders in the area, they begin providing intel to the Allies, and even help Fairburne locate and infiltrate Bohm's mountain stronghold in Northern Italy. Truth in Television as the Sicilian Mafia were sworn enemies of Mussolini's fascists.
• Manipulative Bastard: The Big Bad, General Böhm, spends the game implementing what has to be the most elaborate evil scheme by a villain in the series. And most of it succeeds, too, right up until you kill him before he can kill General Eisenhower.
• Mauve Shirt: Lucio and Giancarlo, a couple of Partisans under Sofia, who occasionally provide Karl vital intel and optional objectives just before missions. And following the Giovi Fiorini massacre, they're the only named survivors.
• Moe Greene Special:
  • Head shots in general have a high chances of destroying one or both eyes with or without a direct hit as long as the hit is close enough.
  • The player is awarded an achievement for shooting a specific enemy in the eye at the right moment.
• The Mole: Not only is Major Hans Dorfmann one, he is none other than General Heinz Böhm himself.
• Mooks: The average German or Italian soldier are your generic enemies that you will be killing in droves.
• More Dakka: Any automatic weapon operates on the principle to spit as much lead as possible to make a hit. Enemies will use it to pin the player in place to be killed by grenades or flanked by allies.
• Neck Snap: Some of the possible melee kill animations are of Karl breaking an enemies neck usually with the classic neck twist method.
• No "Arc" in "Archery": Played with depending on the difficulty setting. On the easiest setting you have a flat trajectory but on higher difficulties players have to take into account bullet drop due to gravity and muzzle velocity.
• No Scope: Players can still aim their rifles normally if at short range.
• Non-Action Guy: Zig-zagged with Karl. He's a very competent sniper and competent in both explosives and CQC...but he has the stamina of a civillian, not a soldier. He gets tired very quickly while running, and takes plenty of time to recover. While he may be a sniper and not a typical soldier, you'd expect someone constantly on the move behind enemy lines be able to retreat more than a dozen yards at most if necessary.
• Notice This:
  • Collectible items shimmer in white.
  • Bodies and containers that you can loot have a hand above them.
  • Pipes and poles that you can climb are yellow.
  • The default non-telescopic crosshair is a white +, which turns red over an enemy. If you aim at an ally, it turns into a blue X. Note how it changes shape as well as colour, presumably as a convenience for colour-blind players.
• One-Hit Polykill: Players can either shoot enemies standing close together to get multiple hits or they can set off explosive objects by shooting it killing multiple enemies.
• One-Man Army:
  • Karl once again takes on a significantly superior enemy force almost entirely by himself.
  • The first time you met The Angel, she is done single handedly wiping out a fortress and saving the partisans inside by herself.
• Pineapple Surprise: You can shoot an enemy's grenade while he's still wearing it, earning XP points for a grenade shot and potentially taking out a few additional baddies in the explosion.
• Pinned Down: Sniper fire first causes the AI to hide in cover, generally refusing to exit their intended safe area unless pressured by an officer. This ends once cover is blown, where enemies actively chase after the player. Enemies also try pinning down the player by firing at the last known location or flushing them out with grenades.
• Pink Mist: There is usually a spray of blood and bits of skull flying around when you achieve a head shot. There are also frequently blood splatter spots on the walls or ground where you shot the enemy.
• Rebel Leader: Sofia "Angel" Di Rocco is the leader of a partisan group that Fairburne and Weaver make contact, and ultimately ally with.
• Red Baron:
  • Sofia is known as The Angel because she is a nurse.
  • Karl is known as The Shadow by German officers and The Desert Ghost by Africa Campaign veterans.
  • General Bohm is known as the Butcher of Bologna.
• Red Herring: During the Maggazeno level, Fairburne's and Weaver's contact in The Mafia acts rudely towards the former, and makes an implied threat that they're going to betray them to the Germans at any time. Not only is this not the case, but the Mafia turn out to keep their word on being friends of the Allies, right down to helping Karl Fairburne in the final level by providing him the location of Bohm's base of operations as well as transport. The real traitor, as it turns out, is Dorfmann.
• Red Shirt Army: The various resistance fighters are the counterpart to the Nazi troops and their Italian allies. Despite this, however, they prove to be surprisingly competent fighters, usually killing or pinning down large numbers of enemy soldiers even without Fairburne's help.
• Retcon: This game changes Karl's nationality from American to British by altering his backstory. Originally, he was the son of the U.S. ambassador to Germany, but here his father was the British ambassador to Germany and later the United States. As he was raised mostly in America, it explains how he's seamlessly able work for both the SOE and OSS.
• Satchel Charge: The Satchel Charge is made available to Karl Fairburne during the Bitanti Village mission, as a gift from Sofia di Rocco upon Karl discovering the whereabouts of the Partisan HQ. They're virtually unlimited in use, with Karl capable of planting them on vehicles and artillery guns. Depending on preference, the player can either set it off manually by triggering the wick, or simply shooting the explosives from a safe distance with their Sniper Rifle.
• Scare Chord: One of these, along with a flash of light to simulate light bouncing off a scope, indicates an enemy sniper can see the player.
• Scenery Gorn: The beautiful Italian countryside is ravaged by the war...
• Scenery Porn: ...but man does it look good, with a level of color, detail, and attention that the barren deserts of Tunisia simply couldn't show off.
• Secretly Dying: Late in the main campaign, it's revealed during an interrogation that Dr. Kessler is actually dying from liver cancer, something Karl suspected since his capture was suspiciously too easy.
• Sequel Hook: The ending of Deathstorm 3: Obliteration ends with a hint of the setting of the next game: the D-Day landings and the Normandy campaign.
• Shoot the Fuel Tank: Various vehicles with fuel tanks can be shot in the fuel tank triggering a vehicle destroying explosion.
• Shout-Out:
  • Quite a few to Captain America: The First Avenger.
    • The layout of Bohm's mountain base in Italy is quite similar to the layout of the main HYDRA base in Austria.
    • Bohm's final plan is quite similar to Schmidt's own. Specifically, using an advanced flying-wing jet bomber carrying guided missiles to attack an important Allied target.
    • Valkyrie Squad, an elite Fallschirmjager unit encountered in the Deathstorm Downloadable Content packs, resemble WWII-era HYDRA soldiers, complete with black uniform and thick flak jackets.
  • The names of the mission complete achievements are full of war references, most being quotes from Winston Churchill:
    • "The End of the Beginning" is named after a book written by him (Complete Mission 1).
    • "We shall fight on the beaches" (Complete mission 2)
    • "No compromise is possible" (Complete mission 3)
    • "Set Europe Ablaze" (Complete mission 4)
    • "We shall not fail or falter" (Complete mission 5)
    • "Never, never, never give up" (Complete mission 6)
    • "Plans are nothing; planning is everything" is not a Churchill quote, rather the achievement is named after a famous quote said by Former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower (Complete Mission 7)
    • "Success is not final" (Complete mission 8), although the quote is disputed if it even came from Churchill.
• Sniper Scope Glint: Enemy snipers are given away by the noticeable white glint given off by their scopes. Should they spot you, an audio cue is played. If they're about to fire on your position, a second cue follows.
• Sniper Scope Sway: Players have sway when aiming normally. The players heart rate, position, and even rifle choice can affect scope sway. Using the "empty lung" ability reduces or eliminates the sway.
• Sniping Mission: As with the previous entries in the series, every mission is a sniping mission. While other weapons and methods are available the game is built around sniping.
• Spoiler Cover: That Horten flying wing in the background of the page image? Turns out Bohm supervised the construction of one in his mountain fortress, intent on using it as a delivery system for the anti-ship missiles and by extension, against Eisenhower's command ship and the Allied invasion fleet during Operation Avalanche.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Several, ranging from toolboxes, ammo crates, and fuel drums, to entire airbases and even an entire town.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Once again, Karl is tasked with stopping Nazi wunderwaffe projects underway.
  • In the main campaign, he is tasked with taking down a brand-new radio-guided anti-ship missile system, the Ms 300 "Razor" (based on the Hs 293), being produced for the Luftwaffe, under the leadership of one Dr. Kessler and SS-Oberstgruppenfuhrer Heinz Bohm.
  • As it turns out, the delivery system for the new missile isn't just restricted to older prop-engine bombers like the Do 217 shown in the opening. Bohm even managed to construct a prototype flying-wing jet bomber, clearly inspired by the Horten Brothers designs.
  • The Deathstorm Downloadable Content missions focus on Karl Fairburne stopping the Nazis from building and deploying a successful nuclear warhead to be used should the Allies try to invade Western Europe. Not only that, but the planned delivery system for these proposed warheads would be the Arado Ar 234, the world's first jet-powered bomber.
• Super Prototype:
  • The crashed P-51 Mustang Fairburne is tasked with blowing up in the 3rd mission is an advanced prototype for mid-1943, featuring a then-experimental bubble canopy and a Packard V-1650 Merlin Engine not seen on earlier production models.
  • Bohm's delivery system for the Ms 300, a jet-powered flying wing bomber, also counts, being much faster and more advanced than the Do 217s normally used for carrying the missiles.
• Tactical Withdrawal: If you are discovered and pursued by guards, pinned down, wounded, or in any trouble with enemies bearing down on you, a wise player escapes to hide and shake their enemies so they can come back to the fight when the enemy gives up looking.
• They Killed Kenny Again: Hitler can once again be killed in a DLC Mission. This makes the Fourth time that he can die in the series.
• Third-Person Shooter: The perspective when not aiming down sites is from a 3rd person perspective.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Karl's significantly more emotional and caring in the game than V2 or 3. He's appalled by both the massacre of the Italian resistance and the death of Sofia, while he also warms up to Weaver.
• Trigger-Happy: Anyone armed with automatic weapons tends to spray weapons fire in large volumes at their intended targets.
• Universal Ammunition: All of the weapons have compatible ammo by category instead of caliber or weapon type. Rifles fire rifle ammo, secondary weapons use secondary ammo, pistols pistol ammo and the suppressed ammo variations of both rifles and pistols for silenced shots.
• Unwitting Pawn: Rothbauer, despite being Bohm's dragon and confidant, is nothing more than a disposable tool for the latter, as evidenced by intel gathered and Weaver's words.
• Urban Warfare: The villas and villages and industrial locations are all urban settings with all that entails for combat.
• Video Game Caring Potential: For some players, the ability to learn details about each enemy’s background before taking the shot provides motivation to find ways to complete their objectives without indiscriminately wasting every German/Italian they see, instead reserving their bullets only for when killing becomes absolutely necessary—or for those specific enemies who really have it coming, while hopefully sparing as many of the regular guys as possible. This adds quite a bit of challenge.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Players can again shoot to wound and leave an enemy calling for help bleeding to death on the ground.
  • The various enemies can be selectively shot in various locations such as the testicles or repeatedly shot until they fall down.
  • Among the personal details that can pop up for a given enemy soldier when tagged with your binoculars is "Believes he will die here." You can decide whether or not he's right about that.
• Video Game Vista: Upon reaching the clock tower ruins in the "San Celini Island" mission, Karl, and by extension, the player, is given an excellent view of the rest of the beautiful island, which of course shows most of the targets and objectives of the rest of the map, and also establishes how much bigger the maps in this game are compared to its predecessor.
• What Measure Is a Mook?:
  • Played with regarding the intel you get on enemy soldiers by tagging them. Sure, you might have no qualms about killing the scumbag who machine-gunned a surrendering soldier, but what about the poor kid who cries for his mother at night?
  • Players can collect blood stained notes and letters from the corpses of slain enemies, some of which portray very personal and normal lives.
• Wham Episode: The entire final level, especially towards the end, is a string of reveals and plot twists.
  • First off, Fairburne, and by extension the player find out that Bohm was posing the entire time as a defector named Dorfmann.
  • Second, Bohm had intentionally been setting up his own men and bases to be killed and destroyed, ultimately to gain the trust of the SOE, OSS, and the resistance. This was so he could lure Sofia and the partisans in and wipe them out in one fell swoop, eliminating most of the threats to his entire operation.
  • Third: As it turns out, the anti-ship missiles weren't the only advanced weapons Bohm and Kessler came up with. Even the delivery system for the missiles was advanced, and in this case is a Super Prototype flying-wing jet bomber.
• Wide-Open Sandbox: This game is probably the closest example of this in the Sniper Elite series. The maps are huge and the game provides you different means of completing your missions.
• You Bastard!: Let your targeting binoculars hover over enemies long enough, and little snippets of their home lives and personal history pop up, just to drive home the point that you are killing other men. Some of them will have tidbits like "Likes to machine-gun people," which will generally elicit an "Okay, screw that guy, he's getting the first bullet" response. Some are quirky, like "Believes he's psychic." Others, though, will have "Father of two children," or "Originally enlisted as a clerk-typist." Even some of the Germans with a Kick the Dog history are humanized in collectible letters home, suggesting that they may not be all that proud of that war crime done in the confusion of the moment. Many of them worry about their families and just want to go home. While some violence can be avoided by a careful and stealthy player, there's no way around the fact that at least some of the enemy soldiers you blow away are just regular scared young men, not sneering melodrama villains.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Bohm does this to both his Co-Dragons Kessler and Rothbauer late in the main campaign. The first because he's dying from liver cancer and will no longer be of use to the Germans, and the latter for knowing too much about Bohm's final plan.

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