Ending - Main choices seem a little short-sighted

[manwhat]

All the main characters basically seem to be obsessed with the fact that the world they live in is unchangeable. The best you can do is make things slightly less bad. Even Nin is dumb enough to think the answer is 'working within the system'. "if you blow up the flop farms then you disrupt infrastructure" is treated like some kinda gotcha when it's the fault of the corporations in the first place. "We're holding the world hostage, therefore you need us".

For the first half of the game you seem to think your objective is 'building a case'. What case? You know the government and the police are owned by the corporations and so are the media companies, this is literally said within the game. There's no version of that plan that actually works in any way.

If Nin wanted to do the 'right thing' with her superpowers then she'd be assassinating the CEOs of Wanpei (shouldn't be too hard considering they hold meetings in the lobby).

I can't tell if this is intentional, or if it's an oversight of the dev's own worldview.

edit: to be clear, I'm not saying "why is there no big happy ending in this cyberpunk game", but that no character even seems capable of considering the idea. Nin thinks she's 'biding her time' but doesn't even seem to be able to stating or thinking what she would do even if she 'got her chance'.

The other oversight is, there's no reason at the end in the final choice that you can't hit the stun grenade *and* the detonator at the same time - both living to fight another day, and dealing a blow to Vision.

[manwhat]

The other thing that struck me as weird is how characters seem to be obsessed with the law and what is 'legal' as if something being legal makes it right, or as if being on the side of the law makes you a good person.

Multiple characters seem to have this attitude and it's just... bizarre. We already know the corporations control the government (in the game *wink*) , so why would any of the main characters believe that the laws the government makes have any 'goodness' or legitimacy to them? "Wow, they made slavery legal, so I don't care about fighting slavery now".

[冯小貘]

I find it reasonable. It's kind of like why Batman never kills. Yep, this world is rotten to the core. But the law is the law. Even sooted law is the closest thing to "rightness". Without a boundary of sorts, heroes eventually become villains as they get one step more radical every day. This is especially true to Nin, who's obsessive compulsive and has a terminal case of superhero complex.

With that established, feeling powerless is a matter of course. If you're 35+ year old, you'd know very well how little difference one person could make.

[manwhat]

Originally posted by 冯小貘:

I find it reasonable. It's kind of like why Batman never kills. Yep, this world is rotten to the core. But the law is the law. Even sooted law is the closest thing to "rightness". Without a boundary of sorts, heroes eventually become villains as they get one step more radical every day. This is especially true to Nin, who's obsessive compulsive and has a terminal case of superhero complex.

With that established, feeling powerless is a matter of course. If you're 35+ year old, you'd know very well how little difference one person could make.

That's... not how good and law work at all, that's the whole point of ethical frameworks. The idea that you need the law to be good is absurd. Humans evolved from pack animals; even pack animals collaborate in groups because it's simply a survival strategy. Even rats have been observed to help other rats in need, when there was no clear reward.

Nin explicitly claims she has no particular ethical framework and literally judges things moment to moment for what is right. I don't think this is really true, or maybe it's framed poorly in the game or translation. What is mostly consistent with her actions is that she believes in doing 'the most good for the most people', and that only she has the power to do that most good. The example that she says she would sacrifice children to save herself is consistent with that worldview, if she truly believes she could save more people overall than those children would be able to save.
So, short version, Nin is a hardcore long-term utilitarian.

23 is a lot simpler, she's obsessed with Nin but is scared of going too far and feels that some actions are inherently wrong (a deontological framework), so she uses the law as a shield. It's a nonsensical justification but it can be accepted as the character being irrational.

Basically the issue seems to be, the characters talk about 'good' or in Lawrence's case 'justice' but the game doesn't seem to want to actually put those into words and describe what kind of ethical framework they're using.

---
Obviously one person by themselves can't make lasting change, that's the big flaw in Nin's worldview - you can only fight back by organising as a collective, no matter who you are. The closest ending to this is joining up with the Moonflowers (and hoping Frances and maybe some of the others find you too), but that also seems to end up with a Jason Dai who's least interested in actually doing that. Still a shame you can't blow the stun grenade AND the bomb detonator.

[telesticsummer]

A civilization powered by so much misery and suffering deserves to be destroyed. I don't care about the collateral, I hit the switch. It's a testament to how well-written the game is that as much as I ended up loathing Nin, what she was saying was reasonable. I just didn't agree with it. She is a coward. Her fence sitting facilitates the evil she thinks she's resisting. It would be better to drag the world kicking and screaming back into the Stone Age than to have your morning commute powered by hundreds of thousands of sufferpigs hooked up to a server bank a mile below the surface. Rip the band-aid off, Nin. Lawrence was right.

[Xijit]

I didn't blow the lab, but only for the sake of Fran and the real Jason.

Something that is brought up in a hallway dialogue, but then forgotten by the ending, is that most of the "flops" being purchased are then wasted as the sub company buying them are just doing it to keep other companies from being able to "out flop" them in a hypothetical scenario. No one actually need the overhead that is being produced, and the vast majority of what the Flops are being used for is basic tasks that humans could do. The idea of using Juicer farms as a form of socialized unemployment is nice, until you consider that the reason why there is so much unemployment is because they gave all the jobs to the AI that consume the flops being produced.

The only real fall out from knocking the system offline would be that working class people would then go back to doing the working class jobs directly.

[x3n]

Originally posted by manwhat:

All the main characters basically seem to be obsessed with the fact that the world they live in is unchangeable. The best you can do is make things slightly less bad.

Because it is by author's setting. The only alternative is the moonlighters who were fighting this exact system, but from what we've told through journals and dialogs, not very successfully.

Originally posted by manwhat:

Even Nin is dumb enough to think the answer is 'working within the system'.

She's just being manipulated by Grandma. I think she finally failed the test, cause now when needed Grandma can use 'the greater good' motivation to steer Nin in the needed direction, affecting her moral compass.

Originally posted by manwhat:

For the first half of the game you seem to think your objective is 'building a case'. What case? You know the government and the police are owned by the corporations and so are the media companies, this is literally said within the game. There's no version of that plan that actually works in any way.

This is actually my main quarrell with the game as well. I just dont get the motivation and the setup here: OWL is specops government unit, but controlled by corps, but also have a neutral arbiter Grandma that is allowed to do her own agenda, with agents that break the law when needed cause its justifiable at the end, but also going rogue when they please when they think that somebody breaks the law OR its not sitting right with their moral compass.

Like, WTF? Why was Vision investigated by Nin originally? Shouldn't all corporations then be a target cause everybody has their own secret R&D? Is it a OWLoboros with agents just waging war against everybody else?

Originally posted by manwhat:

If Nin wanted to do the 'right thing' with her superpowers then she'd be assassinating the CEOs of Wanpei (shouldn't be too hard considering they hold meetings in the lobby). I can't tell if this is intentional, or if it's an oversight of the dev's own worldview.

The point was to instill some sort of fatalism: even if you remove the specific persons from their positions (let's say, arrest Silencio CEO, Yan, was it?), the overall machine/corporation/Vision/society will just continue as usual and replace them with someone else. That's also corraborated with dialog between Grandma and Chameleon in which he asks what if red room was blown up, to which Grandma states that some other corporation will just pick up the pieces and continue the work. The problem here is the idea, not the realisation, which is why 'blowing up the red room' ending for me personally is a bit of an infantile cope-out that doesnt change anything.

Originally posted by manwhat:

The other oversight is, there's no reason at the end in the final choice that you can't hit the stun grenade *and* the detonator at the same time - both living to fight another day, and dealing a blow to Vision.

Because flashbang ending is not about fight with Vision - it never was. You are either motivated by your own safety and egoism, taking over Jason's body as MBU as means to survive, or you choosing to care for his aspirations, which are also egotistical and focused around his and his girlfriend safety. Never in that mindset you would care about a greater picture - you're not Nin, those are not something that you care about.

You could argue that going to OWL is more logical for him, heck, he even tells you very much the same the night before, but everything else about OWL told by 23 and Nin and Grandma's own words tells you, that by joining OWL you would be only manipulated further, again and again, under constant surveillance, with your girlfriend being used as basically a hostage for your cooperation until you're no longer needed and then eliminated as a gene-edited human.

So, yeah, no children tantrum, no fight for a greater good, just an attempt to escape and preserve your freedom.

[_C@nG@C@_]

Originally posted by x3n:

You could argue that going to OWL is more logical for him, heck, he even tells you very much the same the night before, but everything else about OWL told by 23 and Nin and Grandma's own words tells you, that by joining OWL you would be only manipulated further, again and again, under constant surveillance, with your girlfriend being used as basically a hostage for your cooperation until you're no longer needed and then eliminated as a gene-edited human.

Still that's the only sensible, logical path forward. ( imo of course, also the ending I choose ).

Jason and Frances 'normal, happy ordinary civilian' lives were over the moment she got that hard drive and confronted the CEO. there's no going back to 'normal life' after that.. it is what it is - you stared at the abyss, it stared you back and now it knows all about you. - the manipulation aspect will aways exist no matter what, the only difference is how well equiped and prepared to fight back against it you really are when the heavy blows start coming your way. by joining OWL you now have a high profile team, a structure to rely on to be a 'big fish' in the aquarium instead of just a runaway civilian, alone and cornered by forces too large to put up any kind of resistance, protecting your girlfriend in this situation would be simply impossible..

Jason is a super-human like Nin. he will be fine, maybe even feared. just like she is. or at least not someone you should mess with if you have any sense. Fran was already trying to make a difference from the start, she is not super human but now she is much more powerful - and dangerous - with OWL's structure, resources and inner contacts. she even says to Jason that they are now big players on the board and CAN make a difference against the crazyness of the world. The two now have aligned interests. only now with a structure and qualified personnel to actually make a difference.

All the other options are like you said: an infantile cope-out that doesnt change anything. ..these corporations are like a hydra. cut off one head and two more are born in its place. blowing up the lab not only would not make any difference, it would also provoke so many inocent deaths also for no legitimate reason.. since the whole city is AI driven and the absence of it would be complete chaos, disorder and mass accidents in a catastrophic domino effect.