Welp, I beat it.
AndâŚwow is this just as bad as I remember it being. The tailing is tedius, following Xander around the consulate is tedius, waiting around and not being to do anything is tedius! The whole mission put together is just unneccesarily long and convoluted, and I actively dreaded playing it, nevermind when I finally did.
For this run, I did the mission SA/SO, so some of that tedium is self-inflicted admittedly, but thatâs limited to all the guards in the consulate being enforcers (rather than a select few, which would still make this a PITA to complete), and that doesnât stop the courierâs long marketeer routines and Xander being impossible to distract. Itâs an absolute mess of a contract that needs reworking; by removing the complications, shortening the courierâs routine by getting rid of the painfully slow stalking quest, and making Xander have a longer routine that takes him in and around the consulate, instead of just constantly shadowing Strandberg, as if he were a super-enforcer guard. It makes it impossible to interact with him and makes the toilets and rooms that he frequently stands near pointless for isolation opportunities. There is a reason I didnât want this to re-run without it being reworked first.
The only fun part of the mission was when I was making my way through the consulate (I.E, the bits that I knew I could consistently pull off, and rely on the base game logic). Everything else was a slog. I had toâŚuhâŚârestartâ about 6-8 times overall. The killing of Xander wasnât that satisfying either (I used a Remote EMP + Gas Canister, which I hadnât done before), I felt more like I had finished a chore, rather than beaten a game that was hard.
For some positivity, the mission did make me feel like a cool secret-agent man (something the NPCâs around marrakesh kept pointing out to me when I kept crouching and hiding). So it has that going for it, I suppose.
Thereâs a very good reason that, when I reviewed the mission back in 2022, it was placed in my âNot great, but still redeemableâ tier (the second-lowest rung on my tierlist) for all the reasons I gave above. Still feels like a fair placement to me.
As I said a few days ago peeps; be careful what you wish for, because you might not like what you get.
Unedited gameplay is available here (Fair warning, itâs ~30 minutes long!)
If IO is reading this, please donât solely rely on replies from this forum, collect data from multiple sources and demographics, which will give you a wider reach of players and more variety when it comes to answers â hell, you have a newsletter via email, thatâs one data source right there!. As evidenced by the polling from this post, the picks by players are seemingly just targets that havenât ran in a while, not ones that are, you know, bad to play. Iâm still a bit surprised by how many people wanted the Angel of Death to re-run though, despite having similar issues to that of Pertti from The Bookkeeper in that they are impossible to isolate.
What this poll does show however, is something rather telling as to how people play the game on this forum; a good few of the top-rated poll responses require some level of speedrunning (or at least being in the right place at the right time) to complete (the notable exception being the Fixer); The AOD, Prince, Sensation, and Pharmacist in particular demonstrate this, as those run on strict internal timers, until the mission makes it very tricky to kill either of them as they walk around in public areas. Thatâs kind of ironic, consdering from what comments and posts Iâve read on here from members, people donât like having their fun restricted or want linear levels. Itâs almost like these werenât re-run as much in the past because players found them annoying to beatâŚthatâs something to think about.
The Fixer shouldâve been released as an ETA contract, instead of a re-run, or the very least both at the same time. As I said, the most common reasoning on here everyone chose it because it hadnât run since H2, which makes this data skew toward availability rather than how the mission plays. I have a strong suspicion that these answers would probably be quite different were the demographics of the poll opened up to more people (I.E, reddit, newletter subs, twitch, discord etc.) instead of solely focusing on one demographic that are more invested in the game.
On some more personal news:
If this wasnât obvious from a few days back, Iâm currently taking a break from HitmanForum for a bit. I have something else to post and reveal on Monday (so yes, this is a break from the break, but no way in hell was I gonna pass up the opportunity to rant about The Fixer), but after that, I wonât be online here for a while.
5 weeks and three days, to be precise.
Seeya Monday 
