Even then it’s trash and full of retcons, absolute garbage.
Well, to hear a lot of players tell it, they don’t play for the lore anyway, and just skip past cutscenes and such. Therefore, if you don’t follow the lore, then you shouldn’t find it hard to follow the WoA storyline, because you’re already not following it at all.
The hell you say. Really, it’s only about half bad. While I don’t consider them “retcons” as much as expansions to the lore (I only consider a retcon as such when lore is changed with no explanation or reason), the changes made to the established lore really enhance the story that was being set up. The problem is, the story being set up fumbled the ball three different times, once in H2 (Grey is a clone brother to 47 and is on his side), and twice in H3 (Grey dies in the 2nd mission with virtually no fanfare during or after to indicate we lost someone important; the ICA is destroyed for reasons that are not only incorrect but completely undone by the trilogy’s end, making the agency’s downfall utterly pointless).
The story being built up with 47 in the middle of the Shadow Client vs Providence war, and even where it was going after Grey’s identity was revealed, was really excellent, it was exciting thinking about where this was going, how it was going to conclude. But then, once it got to H3, it was like a Stephen King novel where they didn’t know how to end it, so they just decided to trim the fat and kill off two important aspects to the story and call it “drama.”
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Even then, the Ending to WOA was rushed in my opinion. And the fact that IOI only confused players more by adding Ambrose in the wrong place for over a year doesn’t help. People only knew that it was a H2 mission (in lore) because they found out by other means, otherwise it just seemed like IO adding another mission to the already finished lore.
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I don’t like to consider the Overachievers side-story as canon. Yes, it’s considered canon because IOI sanctioned it, even though it’s really just fanfiction, and also some of the characters mentioned in it appear in H3 missions and describe some of its events. However, IOI has accepted supplemental material as “canon” before, and then altered it to suit the story - the Enemy Within novel being a good example, even though its events as described are now impossible thanks to WoA, but 47 remembering that he killed clone 6 was still kept as part of the lore in a different context thanks to the Birth of the Hitman comic. So the events of Overachievers can easily be dissected for the parts that can stay and the parts that can go.
My reason for not wanting to consider it canon is simple; whoever wrote this story decided to present the assassination of Jasper Knight via jet ejector seat in 47’s Final Test mission as the way in which Eric Soders took him out. Not only does this change the context of that mission, as Diana makes it seem like it’s a spur-of-the-moment idea that she and 47 simultaneously hit upon after hearing NPC dialogue and the actors were just supposed to go along with it, not knowing it would result in an actual death, but it also takes away from the idea that 47 so impressed everyone watching with taking out the target in such a clever and blame-free way that Soders had no choice but to clear him for agent status. It was meant to imply that 47 did it better than Soders did, not just because he got past tighter security, but that he pulled it off as an accident that no one expected. Soders, canonically, should have simply completed the mission in a more traditional fashion, with a garrote or a suppressed pistol. Overachievers having Soders pull that same maneuver cheapens 47’s trial to become ICA’s best before he’s even sent on a real mission.
As such, at least the comments between Diana and Soders that refer to Soders having performed that same kill, I dismiss as pure fanfiction.
Overachievers was written by the head writer of the trilogy
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Yeah, after the fact. That it comes from someone involved with the series doesn’t change anything. In a way that’s worse because then it means that the whole point of those initial two missions in WoA was sullied by someone who helped cook it up in the first place, and instead of leaving it alone, they created supplemental material that takes away from its impact.
Man it’s funny because as soon as Arti started talking about this Overachievers side story in today’s stream, I was like “ooooh boy Heisenberg’s gonna have feelings about this!”
Honestly, I had no idea that had happened until after I made that post. I didn’t know anything even related to Overachievers was being discussed anywhere, the thought of the story and my feelings about it just popped into my head, I posted, an hour later I came back to the forum and there it was, part of today’s discussion. But the two were honestly unrelated. If I’m lying, I’m crying, and I ain’t shed a tear.
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