So, something I’ve been pondering lately as I’ve replayed parts of the main game and really examined the whole “evil vs evil” nature of the Shadow Client vs Providence war. If we really look at the situation, although the game sets things up for us to see Providence as the greater evil, when looking at Grey’s militia, it’s really hard to view them in any better light. And it has me thinking on what Grey’s character, as portrayed in the games, tells us about this situation.
Everything we see of Grey and hear from his subordinates indicates that, like 47 and Diana, he despises people who think they can do what they want with their wealth and power without accountability, and he wants to avoid innocent casualties whenever possible. On the other hand, he’s also willing to compromise his principles on a short-term basis if it is necessary to succeed in an endeavor that is more important than his personal discomfort in his actions. We also know that every move Grey makes against Providence has a primary purpose, a secondary purpose, and at least one bonus.
For example, leaking the location of Jordan Cross to the Highmoores in order to lure out Thomas Cross served the primary purpose of securing the militia billions of dollars in necessary funding for their operation; the secondary purpose of taking a major Providence asset off the board; and ended up having not one, not two, not three, but four bonus outcomes as well: Jordan Cross was not available to inherent his father’s empire and so could not take his place within Providence; Jordan was punished for getting away with Hannah’s death even though it had been unintentional; Ken Morgan was present as well and so included in the contract, thereby removing a major corrupting force from the justice system; and Morgan turned out to be a reasonably important Providence asset himself, now no longer representing their interests. Grey carefully made his moves so that he not only avoided casualties, but actually achieved a net improvement in the state of the world.
With all that in mind, Grey still enlisted and allied himself with terrorists, assassins, mercenaries, murderers, torturers, spies, hackers, pirates and drug cartels. While one could argue that the classist, capitalist system of the world that Providence tried to keep in place and expand is responsible for the conditions that led to all of these people taking these paths in a theoretical sense, with the exception of Penelope Graves, these were all very violent, sociopathic, despicable people who were causing just as many problems for the average, decent people of the world as Providence was. It was a sort of chaotic evil against lawful evil, with Grey choosing to ally with these people because, as he said to Diana, sometimes even monsters serve a purpose. Grey needed to use these people because they were the only force with enough muscle to fight back against a foe as all-encompassing as Providence.
This brings me to my main question: what was Grey planning to do with the militia if they had won? A good quarter of the main campaign is 47 taking out Grey’s forces, including his top people, and he’s still killing bad guys each time; no matter if it’s a militia or a Providence target, every mission results in 47 making the world slightly better and slightly safer than it was before. And yet, despite the fact that Grey can feel emotions where 47 can’t, Grey never displays any sadness or regret over his people getting killed off. He expresses some mild annoyance at the fact that it’s setting back his operation a bit, but he also acts like he expected it to happen, which I think he did. He probably expected ICA to eventually retaliate and start taking out his militia. Considering that these people also think they’re untouchable and are ok with taking innocent lives at will (Rose, Reynard, Delgado, Kale, Crest), he should have despised them as much as Providence. Since he only showed any affection for Olivia, I think he did.
This leads me to believe that if Grey had succeeded in destroying Providence without getting 47 and Diana on his side to do so, Grey would have taken them out himself, or just sat back and let ICA have them. Grey seems to have chosen the people he did, not just for their skills, not just for their power, but because they were awful enough people on their own, he’d have no compunctions setting them up to get slaughtered as casualties of the war, or to finish cleaning up the criminal underworld once the war was over by eliminating them too.
Despite being closer to a “good guy” than 47, do you think Grey was ruthless enough to deliberately recruit soldiers that he knew he could wipe out once he didn’t need them anymore? Was he insidious enough to have the militia’s destruction be his secondary goal by pitting them against Providence and ICA, so that no matter who won which battles, the normal people just trying to live their lives free of fear or oppression would ultimately be the winners? It certainly fits his style of tactical approach. What do our Lucas Grey fans think? How about you, @Mini?
But yeah, I guess because of gameplay limitations we can’t do what 47 or Grey are really capable of. We know that Grey killed Kamarov and made it look like a suicide. I am sure 47 can do such things, too. But it would require more manipulation of the environment, which we can’t do in the games. The most we can do are accidents, but I am sure, canonically 47 is capable of much more!
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