Noel Crest (also known as The Ronin) is a self-appointed militia commander and a target who appears in the Shadows in the Water mission in Ambrose Island, the seventh mission of HITMAN™ III.
Background[]
He had not always been so ambitious nor so capable. Crest lacked security as a child growing up in the midwest. He was poorly anchored and inconsistently cared for by his immediate family. They were far from well-off, and as a result of his unmet material needs and his unmet social needs he was extremely vulnerable to being swept up in his local organized crime scene. At the time Crest was still young and quite small, not to mention more than eager to take risks that might impress his bosses. He was frequently assigned to break into houses in search of blackmail material, infiltrating through doggy doors or narrow window gaps and sifting through documents and even the contents of the occasional safe (once he mastered the art of cracking them.) This experience and praise that followed fostered his budding confidence and stoked his desire to master the most subtle of the criminal arts. By the time he was too big to squeeze through a dog flap, he no longer needed to.
He began to discreetly offer his services to the wealthy and privileged at the first whiff of scandal, steadily filling a little black book with a who's who of dodgy executives and morally dubious members of the elite. Crest learned to reach a little further every time, and the jobs he undertook became bigger and more ostentatious; wiping particularly sensitive records from a law firm's database at the behest of a rival legal team, retrieving evidence from police cold storage lock-ups to conceal a client's ill-doings, even sanitizing the crime scenes themselves to remove every trace of what had happened there. Every job was harder than the one that came before, the rewards greater. His skills grew in tandem with his bank balance, yet he still held on to his unquenchable need to be recognized by those above him.
Crest was recruited for his skillset as well as what Grey believed was an eagerness to be lead, but in the absence of a leader, Crest clearly grew tired of being a follower. He aspires to turn the militia's remaining resources towards large-scale heists, restoring and even expanding their influence in the process. To that end Crest believes an influential group of pirates endemic to the Strait of Malacca (a waterway through which 40% of the world's shipping traffic passes) would be invaluable allies. The loss of the Delgado cartel damaged the mobility of the militia severely and Akka's ad hoc syndicate could restore it, with the with the additional benefit of providing a smoke screen for their activities in the area. Really, they're everything Crest could have asked for.Personality[]
Noel Crest is famously known as one of Lucas Grey's lieutenants. Shortly after Lucas orders a halt and usurps leadership of the private militia, Noel goes rogue, planning to use their resources to orchestrate a grand heist. After stealing an Ether satellite with the help of a pirate syndicate, Noel himself, who currently lives on Ambrose Island, appears to be planning to use the satellite heist to blackmail the pharmaceutical company.
Noel is approachable and gets easily hooked by the island's faulty equipment and items when preparing for confrontation. He intends to use the militia's assets to form a robbery squad. Beating his crew in a slapping match earned him 47 positions in private. He tends to overestimate his allies, in a way he prepared that his soldiers might anger Akka, or that she might blame him for the failure of his men.
When Noel approaches the boat being repaired by the village's coast, he will be hesitant for it to be fixed as early as possible. When he dines in the village's restaurant, he is also choosy in a way that he wants a specific chef to prepare his meal in the restaurant. When the Antenna's console has been manually tampered, he gets paranoid and will run all the way to the militia's hangout to attempt to reset it. He eventually gets frustrated for no one else being capable of fixing the tampered machine.
During the Shadows in the Water mission, Noel and his mercenaries have joined forces with Akka and her pirate gang on the Andaman Sea in raiding a parcel tanker in the South China Sea. Taking him out in the contract will cease his evil plans in attacking Ether.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Noel, the ICA Agents, Max Valliant, and Patrick Morgan are the only targets in the World of Assassination trilogy that are armed and willing to attack the player.
- Because Agent 47 has eliminated most of Lucas Grey's top lieutenants beforehand, Noel was able to easily take leadership of the militia. This forces Lucas Grey to reluctantly elect Noel to be in charge of his militia despite knowing that it is a bad idea hence allowing the events of Shadows in the Water to happen.
- Noel has been officially mentioned twice in HITMAN™:
- In The Showstopper, Sir Humphrey Titus Rutherford suggests hiring him as a fixer during a phone call.
- In Freedom Fighters, a militia member mentions him as one of the people seen within the camp.
- Noel and Akka are currently the only two targets in the third game that can synchronously be killed with a cannon in just one shot.
- He drops a DAK X2 Covert and an Ether Pamphlet when he is pacified or killed.
- Noel is one of only four targets who can be eliminated by another target, the other two being Ken Morgan, Tamara Vidal and Vitaly Reznikov.
- Noel is also one of only two targets to be killed as revenge by someone, with the other being Erich Soders.