ENDING SPOILERS Was anyone else hoping this would happen as part of the ending?

Hitman: World of Assassination
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He was loyal to The Partners up until they made it clear that his past loyalty meant nothing to them, and they insisted he inject the killswitch into his neck. He’d just seen how callously they disregarded his mentor, and they’d just put his life in the hands of those he considered subordinates (the Washington twins).

The implication being that he knew about The Partners “secret” plans all along, and actively sabotaged them in anticipation that Diana and 47 would either find a way to discover The Partners with or without his help.

It’s kind of interesting in that they subverted the traditional buid up with this sort of plot structure, usually the Constant would be introduced as the main villain and the reveal of The Partners as his puppeteers would be the escalation of the threat. In this case they used the Constant turning on the Partners as the escalation since now he had both the smarts and the funds.

Based on interviews it seems that IO Interactive had several plans going in and kept developing and redeveloping them as things went on, which is honestly a wise idea with a project of this scale where you’re releasing in parts and then getting feedback in response to each part.

However the Constant was introduced as the “face” of Providence early in Hitman 2016, so it seems likely he was always going to be the main antagonist. What’s less clear is how they wanted to characterise him, if they wanted to do more juxtaposing him with Lucas Grey, etc.

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Great summary :+1:

One thing that is unclear to me, which I spoke about in another thread, is did the Constant PLAN to be captured and most of everything that 47 and Grey did or not?

I mean in the sense - did he plan for 47 and Grey to take out the partners all along even before he was captured and maybe even leak information to them the whole way so that he could take full control of Providence, even perhaps planning his own capture as part of the ruse? If so this seems like a masterminded plan all along and would make 47’s line about “underestimating the Constant” in Hitman 3 make the most sense because he has essentially played them the whole way.

One part that makes this a possibility is that after Dubai the Constant calls Diana and she is surprised he has her number to which he replies “I have everyone’s number”. This may imply that the Constant was the one who called Grey in the cutscene after Haven posing as Olivia which at the time seemed to be a cutscene to implicate Grey as a possible traitor. Diana then goes on to say “You planned this. All of it”. Originally Diana thought that he had just “bribed a sailor” but this cutscene seems to suggest something deeper.

If this was meant to be the true story they didn’t do as much as I would like to convey this to the player and I think a simple line from Diana or Grey saying “the Constant has been playing us all along. He planned his own capture and escape” would’ve been more effective. It would also make more sense that 47 realises that they have been played all along when he says that they underestimated the Constant rather than him just being impressed by his sailor bribing skills if the above is the case.

What do you think?

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He played the hand he was dealt. :wink: More specifically he sabotaged the Partner’s escape plan in a manner that made him the sole beneficiary, then carried on doing their bidding waiting for an opportunity. The opportunity that came was when 47 and Grey kidnapped him at the Isle of Sgail.

He probably didn’t have a detailed plan, but he knew Janus’s death potentially exposed him, and if he was compromised the Partners would flee - so he was probably confident that Grey & Co would want to interrogate him and he could negotiate his way from there. It’s what he does after all.

I don’t think so. Rather than imply that Grey is cooperating, that scene marks the start of Grey’s hubris. If he was trying to be deceptive, he’d almost certainly be exposed immediately when Diana contacted 47. Instead he’s being careless.

Twenty years he’s had an itch he can’t scratch. Twenty years he’s thought daily about the childhood and the brother he was robbed of. Twenty years he has hungered for revenge against an enemy who could crush him like an insect.

When he’s first introduced Grey is ruthless, meticulous and goes to extaordinary lengths to hide his cards from everyone, including his allies. He sets off the Paris job purely to eliminate Novikov and cover his tracks, he then recruits a small army copying Providence’s methods (creating a chain of recruiters so very few have an overview of who is in charge or how to reach them).

After he restores 47’s memory and gets his brother back, he is practically giddy as a schoolboy and stops taking precautions. He travels with 47 to Dubai and then to Dartmoor, letting 47 do the primay mission while he plays support. He asks 47 to go to extra lengths so that he can speak directly to the partners.

He didn’t skip over the bit about the Constant escaping because of a conspiracy, he did it because in his mind that was one more “executive decision maker” running off with his tail between his legs, while doing Grey’s dirty work (robbing the Partners of their assets). It doesn’t occur to him that the Constant might continue the war, let alone that he might do it before Grey is done with revenge. What’s one ordinary man in a suit compared to the assassin who can fake a suicide and double agent status of an FSB agent on short notice?

The Grey who sent 47 to kill Novikov wouldn’t have been caught unawares, he would have had escape plans and have scouted out the area thoroughly, he would have anticipated an attack and set traps. That guy had his life’s work ahead of him, and was determined to see it through. The Grey who got ambushed in the woods was mesmerized by the fruits of his labors, and was ambushed as a result.

He was right to dismiss the Partners as being helpless without their wealth and influence.
He was wrong to under estimate their top controller and not see the rage and ambition that burned within Arthur Edwards.

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The problem is that Edwards’ “villain power level” didn’t seem so big in the second half of HITMAN 2. He’d gotten captured, and yes he escaped, but this ability to intercept or cheat messaging is stuff he was only able to establish in HITMAN 3.

In fact, in HITMAN 3 he suddenly seemed omniscient. I accept this as established by the middle and final act of HITMAN 3 and it was a good recovery in terms of the plot. But in second half of HITMAN 2… it was very muddy.

The knee-jerk reaction really in the ending of HITMAN 2 is that in the “clutching at straws” that @Kent points out, a bunch of them say: “Grey is a fuckin’ liar! The plan just got shot in the foot! The Constant is gone!” :stuck_out_tongue:

So… .That’s how you get to a lot of the player base thinking “Grey is a traitor” heading into H3. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I did acknowledge that by the time you get to H3, Arthur Edwards becomes a supervillain.

While we’re on the subject of Arthur Edwards, one thing I do wish would have happened is that the story were longer and Arthur gets to follow through on some of those lines he had at the start of H3 (“Providence can be an agent of change, Ms. Burnwood…”) And then when Diana is a Herald, would be pretty cool for Edwards to have his chance to show her what change means.

Something like TRAINING DAY when Denzel claims that: “The only way to clean the dirty system is from the inside! You gotta take your time. Play the game. Grow wise. Get you the keys to all the doors…And then you can change things…” And it’s convincing and you don’t know if Diana will go one way or the other.

That would have been cool.

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i wrote my take on the Story, which connects all the Games including HITMAN 1 and 2 a while back and i think this would have been much better than to screw it all over with this RetCon Nonsense.

@MrOchoa Can you give me a link to your take on the story?

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This is what happens when you have a giant chunk of the fanbase who don’t listen to Diana and so forget she exists and is 47’s supreme strategy advisor.

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What do you mean by advising? At the ending of Haven she draws a blank when the Constant escapes. We’re left with Lucas Grey simply saying something that isn’t true. :stuck_out_tongue:

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From his perspective it is true, hence the hubris.

They have the identities and locations of The Partners, who have been stripped of their assets and are now easy prey on the run.

That it was Edwards who took their assets and not Olivia is a minor wrinkle to Grey, which is our signal that he is going to make errors in judgement and be blindsided again by the Constant.

Grey can’t lie about Edwards fleeing or the circumstances of his fleeing because even though 47 is not there, Diana is - and she is shrewder and better versed in counter-intelligence than Grey and 47 could ever be put together.

The idea that Grey’s lying as part of a setup falls apart the moment you realize Diana is going to be present at any further planning and hence fall apart in seconds.

Lots of people say they want lots of things, and they rarely actually want those things even if they believe they do. Generally when people say “I don’t want/care about the story.” what they really mean is “I didn’t analyse it.”

Much like how people say they’re not effected by advertising.

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Grey definitely comes across as having underestimated Edwards. At the start of H3 he belittles the Constant as a “glorified desk clerk”. Unaware this desk clerk has begun pulling the strings and moving the earth beneath them.

Not impossible the message from Olivia actually read as: “The Constant has escaped!” and Grey’s reaction is… “It’s still going according to plan… because I never cared about the Constant anyway.”

But we only know this with fore knowledge of events in HITMAN 3 where it is clear he thought little of Edwards.

Except Diana is not present at all when H3 opens. Not in Dubai at least. 47 is instead crowded again by Grey. Who not only seems to be marshalling the entire operation at that point, he even tells 47 that he shouldn’t continue relying on Diana.

Grey also holds Diana responsible for the Constant’s escape, just short of implying she might be a traitor.

Grey: “I’m not the one who let him get away.”
47: “You still don’t trust her do you?”

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As I said, he doesn’t like executive decision makers, again - what is a ordinary looking man in a suit with a lot of phone numbers compared to an assassin who can fake the suicide of, and frame an FSB agent?

In Grey’s mind the ultimate evil in the world is The Partners - cut off the head and the body dies. Hence why Edwards has his line about how “Power can never die, it can only change hands.”

She was with Olivia at the end of Haven, so unless Grey’s plan was to go “Hey 47, um… let’s never talk to our allies again… even to get this information they have.” then he was going to have to deal with Diana, who is very much present and involved during Dartmoor.

He doesn’t like executive decision makers - the irony being that he’s been one for H1 & H2, and would probably have kept living through H3 if he’d kept thinking like one instead of wanting to fall back into his old partnership with 47.

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But it all just happened too fast. And too many things happened “off-camera”. We are left to speculate much about what happened after Haven and before the skydive in Dubai.

To me, Diana was the better character all throughout anyway. This story could have been told with Lucas Grey as merely being the corpse of Subject 6 (if they stuck to the very original story where Subject 6 didn’t survive) because the real important thing is the handprint in the Asylum. The memory juice, etc. could have all been tackled differently.

HITMAN 3’s story, for me, becomes much smoother once Grey is eliminated.

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Right that was what made me give up the Grey-traitor idea I had.

In the end the story turned out much more believable than what I expected after the memory-juice plot element. So I am glad I was wrong about the H3 story.

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The idea of a traitorous Lucas Grey relies heavily on how HITMAN 3 opens and where pieces are in play.

Mostly this is because of Haven’s confusing ending.

For example, if HITMAN 3 started literally from “Everything is going according to plan”… You’d still be in suspense. That is until you are shown inevitably what happened after.

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Grey underestimated Edwards for the same reason 47 let Victoria get kidnapped so many times: they were not designed to think big picture. They can manipulate events within the context of a contract quite well but they both have a sort of tunnel vision that takes over and that’s why they need to be paired with someone who directs them.

As for Edwards suddenly getting more powerful, I’m ambivalent. Yes, you could argue that with all that money comes people and technology that could easily intercept communications but it would have been nice to see the Partners use that in the previous games.

That being said, if the writers were actually going with the traitor angle and then decided to scrap it, they made the right choice.

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That comment about Victoria reminds me of something I was thinking about posting about - the ‘retconning’ of the story from the classic games. Do you think all of the events of the previous games happened exactly as we played/seen them or do you think they have also been retconned?

What I mean is we see 47 killing targets from all of the previous games in the Legacy trailer and we also see for ourselves these targets during the Colorado ending cutscene showing that these events definitely took place. But I often wonder if they have also been retconned to take place differently in the minds of the current writers.

I can’t imagine the 47 from the modern trilogy having a cage fight with Sanchez in front of everybody or any of the other wacky events that happened in Absolution. It seems to me that THIS 47 is like Daniel Craig in the new Bond films and the 47 from the classic series was Pierce Brosnan from his Bond films hence the changes from the whole cloning scenarios from the classics with the 5 fathers to the now genetically modified children that 47 and Grey seem to be now.

What do you think?

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I think the other games exist in a sort of reality-adjacent way: they happened but in slightly different ways in the WOA universe. For example, we see 47 shoot Dom Osmond but his barcode is untouched and he’s on the other side of the two way mirror.

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I agree 100%. And I think they handled it brilliantly in this way. I remember before 2016 one of the devs said that they intended for these games to have “47 in his prime”. And I personally really disliked the style of Absolution and some of the story aspects in it, so for me it is perfect to headcanon that things happened in certain different ways (or not at all) before we take control of 47 in 2016 but for those who liked Absolution it doesn’t wipe it out completely either.

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I think there are some important parts of Absolution to keep if we were to integrate it into the current timeline:

  • Diana needs to go rogue without telling 47 about her plans. That brings them up to 1-1 for leaving without an explanation and effectively contrasts with them working together in H2. They’ve learned that they work best when they work together

  • 47 needs to be affected severely by this. He clearly doesn’t shoot her but maybe he finds that he just can’t work well with other handlers like Travis

  • There needs to be some shady shit going on in the background with the ICA. Maybe they are in the beginning phases of working on making more 47’s with the bone marrow they took from the Franchise but they haven’t full on grown a Victoria yet. But 47 definitely needs to be instrumental in stopping it

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See I like to headcanon that a lot of that stuff didn’t happen at all and that the targets from Absolution that we see are just generic targets that 47 has been hired to kill in the past similar to Delgado :joy:

I like to kind of take these new games storyline at face value, as in like a player who has never played the classic Hitman’s before, as if they don’t exist. I actually think that makes Diana’s betrayal in H3 more unique and unpredictable if someone is playing the games for the first time while still providing a nod to the events of previous games for old school players i.e. Diana’s betrayal (or false betrayal) in Blood Money and Absolution.

Regarding the cloning situation, I think it is one that they seem to have left purposefully vague in the new games. Correct me if I’m wrong but did they ever establish if 47 and/or Grey were created/born in the asylum in these games or if they were children who were genetically modified? I can’t recall the details.

My personal belief has always been that they are indeed both clones but Grey was from an earlier series hence why he has hair and 47 doesn’t and why he also looks older than 47. I know they both shaved their heads in the comic but this may have been something that was genetically programmed into the later series of clones or something.

Just you mentioning The Franchise brings back good memories as well. The Franchise storyline in Blood Money is the reason why I wanted a face off with another deadly assassin in the new games at some point :joy: