I get the sense this is what’s happening. Wouldn’t be their first baffling narrative decision in WOA.
Consider this; The line is spoken in a very prominent place (the entire camera crew is an intentional callback to Paris), which suggests IOI wanted you to notice this news. I don’t think the writers were phoning it in or anything. Now, what their goal was, we can only speculate.
This. The Shadow Client’s identity is… what? 47 killed Diana’s… now wait a minute. The ICA is gone… wtf?! There’s a lot of narrative, shall we say, misteps.
Those make sense though? That’s just stuff you don’t like about the narrative, not that it doesn’t make sense. You’re misconstruing what I mean with something else entirely.
You said baffling narrative decisions. Being baffled is a subjective thing; what baffles one person may be perfectly understandable to another. These were narrative decisions that might have made sense, but I’m baffled why they chose to go with those rather than the other options they had to choose from. My point still supports your argument that the timeline clues are not the only baffling narrative choice IO had made; what baffles me is just different from what baffles you.
Being confused and baffled by decisions depends on the context, and can very much not be subjective as well. The timeline being retconned to be compressed in the latter half of 2016, H2 and H3 is baffling because it contradicts information given prior and there’s no reason to do it.
That’s a different type of bafflement I wasn’t referring to, I was referring to their decisions in the sense of prior information and new information working in harmony, not “I’m baffled by their story decisions, why didn’t they just do X instead of Y”. I wasn’t referring to it in a “decisions you didn’t like” kind of way, more of a “this makes no sense to do and it ruins what continuity has been already established.”
Two out of the three things I mentioned are exactly that.
What ones and how? All the things you listed were properly explained and aren’t baffling in the sense I was talking about.
Lucas Grey being 6 goes against previously established canon up to that time, requiring them to throw that line into the prequel comic about Ort-Meyer planting false memories in order to explain it. IO could have come up with a different and better explanation for who he was, options I’ve listed elsewhere on this forum, but they went with something confusing and contradictory to what had come before.
Same with Diana’s parents. Not only was there previously every indication that 47 had never committed assassinations outside the asylum prior to the first game, nor that he and Diana had any connection to one another prior to joining ICA, nor that any other organization was having Ort-Meyer tell 47 what to do, but it also contradicts backstory that was provided for Diana in material for Absolution, although most of that can still be retroactively reworked to match. Either way, was it really a necessary narrative decision to make 47 involved in that in any way? Yeah, it ended up working out at the end of H3, helping those events play out, but I’m convinced that those story beats came about after the 6/parents thing was established, making the changes drive the plot, not the other way around. My third point, the loss of the ICA, is likely a casualty of that.
Both decisions were confusing and required storyline reshuffling to make it work in continuity. Cohesive storytelling between games is IO’s weakest area.
Either way, if you don’t agree, you don’t agree. I don’t want to argue on it because I’ve been arguing with several people on several subjects for a week now and I’m worn out. The point is, in the abstract at least, I agree with your point, with the details varying.
(Note: I am speculating based on @iamtheguy55’s infographic, the theory I like the most.)
What is strange to me is before H3 came out, everything felt fit perfectly in the “Feb-Nov 2019” timeline. Including seasons and spacing between missions.
And I think it might have to do with the change of plan for the trilogy.
In 2016, creative director Christian Elverdam said they wanted to make the game feel contemporary, and the year 2019 is a part of the effort. My guess is the original plan was to release season 3 at the latest in 2019/2020, with the majority of the main missions taking place in 2019 and maybe some in 2020, making it feel “contemporary.”
However, we know that things didn’t all go well for them. The game didn’t sell well, so the plan was changed from releasing season 2 as DLC to making a full sequel. They went independent, with only small money and half of the staff. Not to mention Covid. So H2 came out in late 2018 and H3 in early 2021.
Therefore, to make things feel “contemporary,” IOI didn’t make H3 start in late 2019 and end in early 2020; instead, they made the ending(Untouchable) take place in 2021.
This really bugs me because, like you said, everything fits so nicely in there.
I’ve basically given up on trying to piece it together because of too many contradicting clues and wrote it off as just devs understandably not caring.
The briefing for Sean Rose states Thomas Cross was kidnapped 9 days before Freedom Fighters. He was kidnapped at Jordan’s funeral which was a week after his death.
That puts Freedom Fighters around 2 weeks after Club 27.
As for Paris and all that, fall fashion shows typically take place in February or March actually, from what I’ve seen.
You can find posters that say the museum exhibition lasts from November to February, as well as a mention of ‘2019’ on some fashion collection pics in the studio.
In the cutscene before Ark Society (November of SOME year), Gray says he killed Cobb a year ago. This event of course kickstarted the whole Providence war thing and Paris cannot have taken place too long afterwards.
Autumn Year X - Cobb dies
Autumn until February - Gray plans his war
February - Paris
This, alongside that museum poster and the info when fall fashion shows usually take place, is what makes me push for a February date so much.
The TV report in Nightcall puts Club 27 a month before Nightcall
I’ve outlined most of the important details in notes section of that infographic I made and I truly believe my version to be the most correct one given the available information.
Focus on the orange text. It doesn’t have everything I discovered and in fact it’s missing quite a few things but it does explain away some curiosities.
There will always be contradictions, such as the Ken Morgan one in Mendoza, the May 24 obituaries for the partners, Alexa’s grave, or the aforementioned 2019s in Paris but ultimately it’s a game of accepting the clues that are supported by the majority of others and ignoring the ones that are not.
I know I said I’ve given up on this literally on my previous post but I cannot pass up the opportunity to share what I know given how much time I put into this.
Yes, but define “a month.” Is it an exact 4 week/30 days timeframe? Is it a “this is April and it happened in March, so we’ll round it out to a month regardless of which day, when what I should be saying is ‘last month’ rather than ‘a month ago’?” While I think an exact month is probably the case, it could theoretically stretch the timeframe out to a 6 or 7 week difference between those two missions.
I am assuming you meant to quote the bit about Nightcall, as I can’t really see what’s wrong with the statement that FF was 2 weeks after Club 27.
Theoretically, yeah I agree but there’s a point where it’s stretched too far. If it’s April 30th and you say that March 1st was a month ago you’re almost unequivocally wrong.
I’d say the limit would be no more than around 45 days, so basically month and a half. More than that and you’re really pushing it.
Then again, this discussion goes far far deeper than what the devs ever envisioned for the topic.
In case there are any misunderstandings around Colorado and Bangkok though:
Date X - Bangkok
One week after Bangkok - Jordan’s funeral(according to that airport cutscene with Diana and 47)
9 days after Funeral - Colorado
Makes it at most like 17-18 days between the two.
Also, another thing to add, which is already in the graphic I made. 47 says to Diana after Nightcall “a week ago, Providence was the threat”.
The whole mission in Hokkaido was an attack at Providence directly and in its immediate aftermath Edwards stepped in to offer partnership to Diana in the fight against Gray.
So:
I actually have a bigger gripe with this one. Summer in Hokkaido is warm and pleasant and the climate would have to be reeeally messed up to have snow in July, especially that kind of amount. The earliest you’d expect snow there is late September in the mountains, and even then it probably wouldn’t be that much (I mean I was hiking up the highest peak there in late September and the worst it got was rainy and windy).
Situs Inversus just doesn’t fit for me in the same year as the H2 missions unless it takes place in the first few months of that year… 
I’ve read that the snow can remain in mountains even up to May, with the possibility of snowfall as late as April.
Again, doubt they put any thought into this but, Hokkaido could theoretically fit into late April or early May because it is a mountain resort that 47 visits.
One week after that we get Nightcall followed by a two month gap until Miami (has to take place a week before Colombia in July, according to TVs in Santa Fortuna) which I can only explain as the ICA having trouble tracking down Robert and Sierra for a while.
Another fix to this would be to move Santa Fortuna to June because there is also a June poster related to the band but I’ve always written that off as an old poster, in favor of the 24-30 July one related to the statue ceremonies we actually see in the mission.
