Although I don’t like the comics that much, because I think they are ridiculous (I can’t get over that thing with the berlin wall), I like how they give a deeper look into 47s and Greys relationship.
I wished there were more dialogues between them in the game like they were in the comics.
And it’s a pity that some events make more sense when you have read them (like Greys escape from the institute and Greys fake death).
The Deus Ex Machina Soders moment is much worse, writing-wise, in my opinion.
They explained this better in H3 because H2, despite referencing the comic, it all gets muddled up due to the cinematics clearly not being finished to tell the story properly.
I don’t mind it. It rewards those who actually read the source materials; literal fanservice as it were.
Like I say, it was all a joint agreement between them both to take down the ICA and nothing really other than that. Sure, 47 trusted him for that mission, but I don’t think it was anything like his relationship with Diana or anything.
Totally agree with this!!
weird how i thought Grey died in England, but Ambrose has Grey asking for a task… leading to Ambrose.
Is Lucas Grey really dead?
Ambrose happens before Grey’s death. Between Vermont and Sgail.
not saying it was comparable to 47’s relationship with diana, though the trust between him and grey couldn’t be more explicit; at least, not without 47 mugging to the camera. i don’t recall there being much room for ambiguity, barring the end of h2 (though that is non-diegetic).
in fact, that he is so quick to join grey’s mission against providence and doesn’t really question it all that much (especially given grey’s penchant for using the people around him) was the most jarring part of the overall story for me; it all felt unearned.
I don’t see such a big difference to his relationship with Diana and the one he has with Grey. Like you said, he trusts Grey so easily. And when we see how deep their relationship was in the comics and we know 47 gained his memories back, it makes sense that he sees Grey as a close friend. They were bffs in those comics though 
i might be misremembering or got the wrong end of the stick, but doesn’t grey cause 47’s crisis of faith in diana after the mission in dubai? am i on crazy pills?
No, Diana disappearing after Dartmoor and later turning up on camera wearing a Providence herald pin is what makes him start questioning it. All Grey’s speech to him does is make him question whether he wants to continue following Diana’s orders anymore, or retire as a Hitman, or just decide for himself who he wants to kill.
He literally has an entire minute in “Homecoming” not believing a word Grey says, constantly with a gun in his face. He starts to realise Grey may be who he says he is once he shows him the handprint and their matching scars.
“You’re a terrorist with nothing to lose; you’d say anything!”
Hell, he has Grey in an execution pose, kneeling with his back to him and a gun at his head.
Something which 47 has never really had the opportunity to do. He only continues at the end of Carpathian so the power void providence leaves isn’t filled, and explicitly says it’s his decision to do so.
a whole minute? blimey 
“cause” was too strong a word, but i’m pretty sure he seeds some doubt which is then exacerbated by diana and the pin. at least, that’s what i took away from the conversation.
“you still don’t trust her” etc.
He had that opportunity multiple times. He retired after the first game, then made the choice to go back to it in the second, he could have walked away forever after both Blood Money and Absolution. And every time he’s taken a contract it’s his choice of whether to fulfill it or reject it. The whole thing IOI was going for at the end, of him killing from now on because he chooses to, can only be adhered to in the sense that he’s choosing to be a hitman, which has always been the situation. He can’t just choose to kill whoever he wants and still be a hitman, because the entire point of a hitman is that someone else wants someone dead and is telling you to do it, and paying you for it. Now, you can choose to except or decline that arrangement (an option he always had with ICA anyway), but you can’t decide your own targets.
That whole notion of 47 deciding for himself is not only redundant, but misguided, and it really annoyed me. Turning yet another fascinatingly morally-blank character into a revenge-seeker and then a righter-of-wrongs vigilante. And really, how much of it was him doing it for himself, and how much was because Grey wanted it so badly? Was he doing it all for Grey? I’ll take that as evidence of how committed 47 was to their friendship, if nothing else. Fortunately, Freelancer seems like it’s gonna find a common ground.
Weeeell… when you think about it, he is the best Assassin in the world and he knows that Grey is the Shadow Client who fooled him and the ICA for month. And now he has him there, unarmed, and he could kill him right away. But he is too curious, and when he enters that room he feels that something is going on (“this place…”).
So yeah, it is kinda impressive that 47 waited so “long” for making that decision, while he usually not even blinks an eye before killing his target.
Eh, he sometimes lets them explain themselves, if he’s in the mood to listen and thinks he can afford a slight delay. Swing King, Parchezzi, Jordan Cross, you get it.
I know, I just wanted to poiny out that 47 had this short amount of time where he didn’t belived Grey and still didn’t decided to kill him, but in this case, because he felt that something was going on, not just because he wanted him to explain himself.
Of course. My point being, so long as 47’s sense of danger isn’t firing on all cylinders, he’ll let a situation play out and not kill the target right then and there. He’ll let them run with the line, and the fact that Grey was specifically waiting for him and dropped his weapon, as well as the fact that they know from Colorado that he knows who 47 is somehow, on top of, as you said, the place making it feel like something bigger was going on, all contributed to his hesitation. He wanted to know who he was, how he knew him, why he was waiting for him, and what the whole shindig was about. Had none of those been factors, I’m certain that as soon as Grey turned around and 47 confirmed it was his target he was looking at, he’d have sent a bullet through Grey’s face.
The ending in Blood money deliberately leaves it ambiguous as to what 47 does after the game is complete, and Absolution is an even worse example to give, as we don’t know what’s canon and what isn’t. And even in the context of Absolution, the ICA is dismantled (which has since been retconned heavily by H3), and 47 once again goes off to parts unknown. Another ambiguous ending; this one just has a sequel hook that never goes anywhere. I can’t speak for C:47 or SA.
Not every time; i’d argue the great majority of contracts 47 takes on were chosen by Diana or the ICA (as repeatedly implied by the games).
So…giving him any kind of personality, even briefly, is bad? Jesus, man. I’m starting to think you just don’t want him to change.
My point was not about what he does, but what he could have done. He could have walked away from life as a contract killer forever. He didn’t.
Until explicitly confirmed otherwise within the games, assume all of it.
Not retconned at all. 47 says in the game’s opening monologue that the agency was reformed after Diana damaged it, and there’s no indication after Travis’s death that anything happened to the agency other than they finally got his division (presumably overseeing North American operations, but that’s conjecture) under control.
Same as the Blood Money ending above. But, Diana does say “welcome back,” implying that they’re in good with ICA again after clearing up how badly Travis was fucking them over.
Yes, but he does not have to take them. He is under no obligation to do any work ICA selects for him, and if Diana sent him one that he didn’t feel like doing, he could tell her to pass it on to another hitter. This is heavily implied to be the case in H2:SA when he flatly tells her that he does not care about her client, that he does not take regular hits, and he tells her how much she and ICA are going to pay him if they want him to do a job. 47 takes the contracts Diana and ICA select for him because he trusts their judgement and believes them to be fair in their acceptance of a client’s request; he can choose to pass it up at any moment.
He already has his personality, as set down in games 2, 3, 4, and 5. Having one isn’t bad; changing it to be like every other standard issue, factory-authorized antihero out there is, I wouldn’t say bad, but disappointing. We already have our assassins who kill for ideals, our rogue operatives defying orders to do what’s right, and our loose cannon cops who kill only criminals and avenge their families and ignore rules and laws because it gets the job done. And we relate to them because we are also human. 47 is a different human, and has every excuse literally built into his being and his lore to be different and to not be like every other antihero. And yet, they’re still sending him down that road anyway.
Ding ding ding, give the man a prize! Someone finally got it. No, I don’t want 47 to change; he has no need to change. He has, as described above, every reason already laid out to be different from other protagonists who do things that are normally bad, but ok when it’s happening to bad people. Those first four games, 47 is a bad guy; we cheer for him because not only are we him, but because he just so happens to usually kill even worse people. But, that’s not why he does it. Even characters like Jigsaw and Dexter give themselves moral excuses to do bad things to bad people. 47 does it because it’s a job and he’s a professional and he wants his cut. That’s it. There is a purity in that that’s missing as IOI takes him down this vigilante road. As I said, Freelancer looks like it’s gonna try to balance that, so I’ll hold off on proclaiming that they’re actually taking him down that road until after H3 is truly ended.