HITMAN World of Assassination has been killing it (pun intended) with its Elusive Target contracts lately. Some put you in totally unique gameplay scenarios, like Patient Zero Requiem, while others have you managing multiple NPCs to make sure only one comes out on top. These missions are a ton of fun, so I was very excited for the next season’s target: Taylor “The Wizard” Graves. This one isn’t as spectacular as previous contracts, but I’d say it’s still good for a run or two.
This contract tasks Agent 47 with defending Tim Quinn, CEO of Quantum Leap, who’s gotten really into MMA recently and challenged Taylor “The Wizard” Graves to a cage match battle to the death. It’s a pretty funny premise, being asked to save a dumb billionaire from his own stupid decisions and hubris, but the mission doesn’t really go much further beyond that. The core mission story here revolves around the right of the second, where you can sub in for Quinn and win the match. You simply ring the bell to call the round, follow Quinn and his trainer to a secluded location, knock out everyone in the vicinity, do a few quick time events against Graves, and you win. That was exactly how my first successful run played out. I had failed two times before that, since there are a lot of people who can easily notice you changing disguises, but once I figured out sightlines, it was over all too quickly.
So while most of the mission briefing and context around the mission make it seem like your goal is to protect Quinn, your singular goal is actually to kill Graves. I was a little confused until I rewatched the briefing, and I think they could have done a better job contextualizing why you’ve been hired to kill Graves. Everything in the briefing and the mission itself is focused on preventing him from killing Quinn, and I think running with that context would have actually made for a more interesting mission. While I was still confused about the actual objective, I tried getting intentionally caught and causing a disturbance to get Graves to flee the scene. This obviously failed the mission, but I think it would have made for a cool loophole were the objective really to protect Graves.
As for killing Graves, you don’t have too many options there. There are the standard tactics of course: poisoning, shooting him in the face, etc., but you’re really intended to follow the mission story. This makes Level 2 of the contract, where the game asks you to go suit only and entirely unnoticed, pretty difficult. It’s doable, sure, but I’m not that good at Hitman. I’m left feeling underwhelmed by The Wizard, not only after the stellar string of contracts IOI has been putting out, but also as its own mission. It might be cool if you’re a fan of Graves and there’s some humorous dialogue, but I probably wouldn’t recommend someone reinstall the game to try it. If you have it already installed, sure, give it a shot or two, but otherwise, you’re not missing much if you don’t get this done before the contract expires.
