The Fool on the Hill: The Heist and After

Contents

1. Extending Act 2 of Cyberpunk 2077
1. Inspiration
2. Here Be Spoilers
2. The Heist that Failed: Synopsis
1. The Relic
2. The Action
3. Where do we go from here?
1. What are the costs of keep-alive?
1. T-Bug
2. Jackie
3. Evelyn
4. New Branches in The Heist
1. Saving Jackie
2. Saving T-Bug
3. Saving V/Dex
5. Summary

Extending Act 2 of Cyberpunk 2077

It's an axiom of this essay and the essays in this sub-collection that Cyberpunk 2077 is a flawed masterpiece. It's further an axiom that a major reason that it is flawed is that the actual story was rushed, and that what was delivered is unfinished and substantially less than the original vision. I personally believe these two things, although the first more strongly than the second; but unless you provisionally accept them these essays will not make much sense to you.

My critique of the Cyberpunk 2077 story is that the player has in fact very little agency: very little that the player does significantly affects the outcome of the story. But that is, I believe, part of the authors' conception of the story: it is their story, and it is a dystopia. Therefore, I believe they would argue, the player should not be able to craft any heroic ending, any ending which makes a significant impact on the world. The best they can achieve is a not-unhappy fading away.

I'm not setting out, in this exercise, to change that. The changes that I'm proposing here are isolated to the second act of the story; the third act, and thus the endings, is unaltered. Similarly the first act is also unaltered. I think the first act could also be substantially extended without altering the third act, and that that, too, would make Cyberpunk 2077 a stronger work, but that is not this project.

So for a definition of terms, we will consider Act One to be everything up to The Heist, and Act Two to be everything from The Heist up to Nocturne Op55N1. The Heist thus serves as the hinge between Act One and Act Two, through which the hero must pass.

Inspiration

The primary trigger for this sequence of essays is a video piece by Shamus Young, Cyberpunk 2077: What if the Heist Worked?.

Here Be Spoilers

It should be obvious that this essay will contain very detailed analysis of Act Two of Cyberpunk 2077, and consequently will contain, essentially, all the spoilers. If you have not played the game but intend to, and do not wish to know the plot in advance, you should not read this essay.

The Heist that Failed: Synopsis

Act One establishes that our protagonist, V, is a rootless young person in the dystopian metropolis of Night City, where they (gender is optional) are trying to establish themselves as a 'merc', short for mercenary, but in the argot of the place meaning an armed freelance available for hire for odd jobs that may involve lawbreaking and possibly the use of deadly force. V has established a friendship with Jackie, another inexperienced merc who has a more established pattern of relationships within the city — his mother owns a bar, and his girlfriend runs a shop selling mystical artefacts.

Together, Jackie and V are approached by Dex, who seeks to employ them to steal an experimental biochip, the Relic from Arasaka Corporation. Dex presents himself as a powerful and experienced 'fixer' — an agent who hires mercs on behalf of clients to do jobs — but the narrative subtly undercuts this presentation and we sense he's not as big a shot as he's pretending to be. Arasaka is genuinely a very big deal: it is probably the most powerful single entity in the world of Cyberpunk 2077, certainly more powerful than what remains of the United States of America.

The Relic

The Relic has two separate but related functions:

1. To store a complete backup of a human mind, with all memories, drives, desires, ambitions;
2. When inserted into the neural port of a person who is brain-dead, to restore that backup into the new body.

The Action

Dex introduces V to two further key characters: Evelyn and T-Bug.

T-Bug is a net-runner, a sophisticated network hacker with expertise in breaking into networked computer systems. She's presented by Dex as very experienced and extremely proficient, but again while it's clear she's more experienced than V or Jackie we're given clues that she may not be as proficient as she claims.

Evelyn is somewhere between a prostitute and a courtesan. She is currently sleeping with Yorinobu Arasaka, the heir apparent to the Arasaka empire, but it is not clear whether he views her as his lover or as a prostitute. Whichever, she has access to the hotel suite in which he is staying, and to a lot of his secrets.

Evelyn is intelligent and ambitious. She has discovered that Yorinobu has stolen the Relic — a unique and extremely important prototype — from the corporation. She discovers, probably from Yorinobu himself, that NetWatch, a corporation specialising in network security, would pay a very high price for the Relic. She has therefore decided to steal the Relic from Yorinobu and sell it to NetWatch, with whom she's made contact and has a deal, although while hawking the Relic around she's also made contact with a another potential customer, a Haitian net-runner gang called the Voodoo Boys.

V and Jackie — with support from T-Bug over the network, although she is not physically present with them — break into Yorinobu's hotel suite using information supplied by Evelyn, and steal the Relic. Before they can make their getaway, however, Yorinobu returns, so they hide, in best Shakespearian fashion, behind the arras. Saburo Arasaka, father of Yorinobu and the chairman and effective controller of the Arasaka corporation, now appears.

There is a brief argument between Yorinobu and his father, which becomes a physical fight; Saburo dies. Yorinobu raises the alarm, claiming Saburo has been poisoned. He leaves the room.

It's from this point I intend to suggest changes, but the current narrative path will remain one of the possible narrative paths, and, to understand the changes, it's important for you to understand what is being deviated from; so I shall complete this synopsis.

Jackie and V then try to escape from the hotel. In the process they fall from a considerable height and are both injured. The container holding the Relic is damaged. The Relic must be stored in conditions very similar to those within a human brain, and it happens that in this world more or less everyone (certainly including both V and Jackie) has a neural port fitted via which biochips can be inserted into their brains. To save the Relic, Jackie slots it into his own port. This has the additional benefit that they no longer have to carry the container, which is very bulky.

Shortly after this T-Bug is detected by Arasaka's network security and is killed remotely over the network, which is a thing which is possible in this world, don't argue, just accept it.

To complete their escape from the hotel, V and Jackie have to traverse several corridors which are now heavily patrolled by armed guards, and although it probably is possible to sneak through this using stealth it's certainly very difficult — I have tried a number of times and have not succeeded. So it is virtually certain that by the time V and Jackie reach the getaway car they will have sustained bullet wounds in addition to their injuries from the fall.

In the car, Jackie bleeds out, and, knowing he is dying, passes the chip to V. It is therefore in V's neural port from this point on, and for narrative reasons it must be so, whatever changes we make.

V returns to Dex, who, in a panic because the heist has gone disastrously wrong and Arasaka is urgently seeking the culprits, shoots V in the head and dumps V's body in a landfill.

Where do we go from here?

So where do we go from here? Which is a way that's clear

Still looking for that blue jean, baby queen Prettiest girl I ever seen See her shake on the movie screen

OK, so, how do we alter this?

Firstly, the existing narrative path must remain as an option, and more than an option, as the default path that will be followed unless the player does something specific to alter it. The only detail that must be changed is that, instead of Jackie plugging the Relic into his neural port when containment is breached, it is plugged into V's. The narrative justification for this could be that Jackie has a chip with the plans of the hotel in his neural port.

Secondly, what are we trying to achieve by altering it?

Both Jackie and Evelyn are well-developed, interesting and attractive characters and there's a widespread view among critics that they're thrown away to achieve fairly cheap emotional impact. Certainly that's Shamus' view, and it's also mine. T-Bug, while a less developed character, is also interesting and could be developed further. I haven't seen any critic mourn the loss of Dex, but you could make a case for him, too.

Jackie, obviously, currently dies in The Heist and the player cannot save him, and this feels to me like a cheat. Evelyn's future after The Heist, in the game as it exists, is also unalterably tragic and bleak, and there's nothing you can do to save her.

So, obviously, part of what we're trying to achieve is simply to create more paths through the story, to give the player more agency and to increase replayability; but another part of what we're trying to achieve is to give the player a hard but achievable interim goal of keeping V's friends in the game alive.

What are the costs of keep-alive?

T-Bug

I really can't see that there are any costs to keeping T-Bug alive. She has no established relationships with any other characters except Dex, and Yoko Tsuru the owner of a net-runner supply shop in Kabuki. So if T-Bug stayed alive as someone you could run into in the Afterlife bar from time to time, and maybe turn to occasionally for net-running advice and perhaps supplies, then that would have no impact on any existing elements of the story.

She could even grow into a potential romance interest with a quest-line of her own without much affect on existing content.

Jackie

Jackie is established as V's close friend and frequent collaborator. As almost all existing quests depend on V working alone, and those that don't, require a collaborator who is not Jackie, we'd need a narrative reason why V and Jackie no longer collaborate so closely. Fortunately, that's easily provided. Jackie has sustained a significant injury in the fall. Both Misty, his girlfriend, and Mama Welles, his mother, will want to take care of him and seek to persuade him not to do anything so dangerous in future. So while you can still see him — perhaps at the El Coyote Cojo bar and at Misty's shop — and perhaps do some open-world activities or perhaps even new side-quests together, he's now hen-pecked and has to be home for his tea, so you don't see him so much.

Jackie cannot become a romance interest because it is established that he is loyal to Misty.

Evelyn

Evelyn is established as a close friend of Judy Alvarez, who is both an exceedingly important character and a potential (lesbian only) romance interest. It's not clear whether they have ever been lovers but there's at least a hint that Judy is very much attracted to Evelyn. If Evelyn is to be rescued it will inevitably alter Judy's quest line, but not enormously because most of Judy's quest line is concerned with a (failing) attempt to rescue Evelyn.

If the romance with Judy is to remain open, it's necessary that Evelyn is not romantically interested in Judy. Romance with Evelyn would obviously be a possibility.

New Branches in The Heist

New branches in The Heist start after the fall through the glass roof. Both V and Jackie are injured; Jackie is bleeding badly; and T-Bug has been detected by Arasaka's cyber-security team and is at critical risk.

Saving Jackie

A new optional goal is introduced to locate a first aid room/clinic within the hotel and, within it, locate a synthetic blood hypo and dressings (similar to those we see in other quests). If you get these within a time limit, Jackie's bleeding will be arrested and he will survive. However, he's still significantly more injured than V, so after leaving the hotel, V will leave him either at Victor Vector's clinic or at his mother's bar before going on to see Dex.

If Jackie is still alive, we probably replace his ofrenda (funeral) with his wedding to Misty, at which you could also have the possibility to help repair the relationship between Misty and Mama Welles. He could give you his pistols after the wedding, possibly with Misty saying that he won't be needing them any more.

Saving T-Bug

A new optional goal is introduced to locate the hotel net runner's room which you have already located so you can already plan a route to. Arriving there you find that an Arasaka security team has already arrived there and disconnected the flathead. If you can defeat this team and sever the connection between the hotel and T-Bug within a time limit, T-Bug will survive.

To sever the connection you will need some degree of Breach Protocol skill.

Saving V/Dex

At some stage V has to become braindead, or at least nearly so, in order for the Relic to initiate its second function, because unless this happens we lose Johnny Silverhand and thus most of the rest of the plot. The current way this happens, and the simplest way for it to happen, is that Dex shoots V in the head.

When V arrives at the No-Tell Motel after the heist, Dex will already know whether T-Bug has survived. There may be a new conversational option which will lead to an outcome in which Dex decides not to shoot V in the head. This would then allow Dex and V to meet with Evelyn, and subsequently V and Evelyn to meet with NetWatch. But before V could meet with NetWatch, the shooting in the head/activation of the Relic would have to have happened, otherwise V and Evelyn would just sell the chip to NetWatch and, again, we'd lost Johnny.

A quest line is plausible in which NetWatch are able to study the chip while it is in V's head and are sufficiently satisfied that they're persuaded to pay some money — a large sum, but not nearly as much as Evelyn had envisaged. After Dex has taken his share, there's not a lot left for V and Jackie, and as Jackie (if still alive) is more injured, V may just give their share to Jackie.

If NetWatch are satisfied they will succeed against the Voodoo Boys and the I Walk The Line quest will be lost. However, the Voodoo Boys, realising they have been betrayed, will strike back at Evelyn, resulting in the destruction of her doll chip and significant psychological harm. But she's not at Clouds, and can be taken in immediately by Judy, so the quests Automatic Love, The Space In Between, and Disasterpiece are lost and it's unlikely that Evelyn will subsequently commit suicide.

However, we still need to get through the Black Wall. It's possible that the Voodoo Boys still exist somewhere but they will be even more hostile and suspicious than ever, so patching back in to Transmission will need a new intervening quest. Alternatively, we need a hero-level net-runner. Candidates are

1. Spider Murphy may still be alive and if so may by now be a very experienced net-runner;
2. Nix is established as a highly experienced net-runner attached to Rogue's squad;
3. At a pinch, T-Bug, if still alive, might to, but that would be much more of a stretch.

With the chosen net-runner, we need a new quest line taking V (and Johnny) up to the meeting with Alt. A lot of content, including Johnny's memories, can be taken directly from the existing Transmission quest, but Transmission itself can't be used on this path because it depends on Brigitte, who will not be available.

Also, to get to this alternative path, someone (not Dex) has to shoot V in the head.

Summary

So, the new branching points are

1. Save Jackie: no significant change to anything, except Heroes, and you can continue to optionally do open world stuff with Jackie as a companion.
2. Save T-Bug: no significant change to anything, except you may talk to T-Bug at the Afterlife bar or on the phone.
3. Persuade Dex not to shoot V at the end of the Heist: if so, Dex remains alive, Evelyn (probably) remains alive. A few days subsequently, V gets shot in the head by someone else (rando in the street?), and spends some time convalescing. If Takemura is present, then the existing material with V at Victor Vector's can be spliced in here. There is a meeting with NetWatch. On this path, Automatic Love, The Space In Between, and Disasterpiece are lost. A new quest with Evelyn and Judy is needed to splice into Ex-Factor, in the course of which we learn in conversation with Evelyn those things which in the existing game we learn from braindances in Both Sides Now. On this path, it is probably Evelyn who is pushing for the revolution at Clouds, but Judy is in full support. From Ex-Factor there's a chain as now leading to Pyramid Song, but there's a new alternative branch leading to an Evelyn romance.
4. Agree to sell to NetWatch: if so, V spends an unpleasant few days being poked and prodded by NetWatch medics and scientists, in scenes not unlike Where is my mind?. Then a chain of new quests involving the chosen net-runner, up to and including Transmission replacement.

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