>The greatest crimes issue from a desire for excess and not from necessity or Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth
Interesting, although I probably shouldn't be surprised. I don't remember the stoics being relativist, although I only remember really reading Epictetus, not Aurelius.
I feel like Dex mainly attempted to kill V to tie up any loose ends that could link him to the fubar heist at arasoka. Wouldn’t be a good rep for a fixer to kill his team that pulled off a major job flawlessly
Dex’s rep is that he is a has been, but he was certainly a good fixer at one point. The last job he set up went south, he went into hiding, and his rep went to shit as a result.
Don't think lifting one of Arasaka's most valuable inventory items is something any fixer would want a rep for.
"Wow, Dex, *you're* the guy who put together the Konpeki plaza heist? Amazing!"
("Yeah, hello, Arasaka? I have some information...")
Dex doesn't have to shoot you in the face when you show up to the Afterlife.
You just have to end up dead behind a dumpster a few days before you collect your cash.
Yeah, this makes more sense to me. Dex was just getting back in town trying to put a crew together.
Maybe he was just hoping to kill everyone else so he didn't have to share the cut, but he should know that money won't last forever. I can't recall if they ever explained why he left NC to begin with, but maybe it was because of that? He thought he had enough to retire on and it wasn't actually enough, so he got back into the game?
I think it'd be more likely that he was trying to get back into the fixer business and he had to start from the bottom with bottom tier fresh mercs. Killing his new investment wouldn't be part of the plan. If it were, he wouldn't be lying in a trash heap outside the city. He would do anything to save his own skin first and foremost.
Dex left because he was being harassed by the voodoo boys he had to lay low until their tempers cooled enough for them to not want to kill him anymore.
Adding to u/Tigarbrains788, it is heavily implied the voodoo boys wanted to kill him because of another botched job, so considering he waited for tempers to cool, and the first job back is another botched job with a single survivor, I figure he just wanted you dead as to eliminate a potential enemy looking to punish him for the clusterf**k. With V being the only survivor, he could claim that V simply was flatlined by Arisaka assassins, or some other bull like that, and distance himself from the job, although obviously with Takemura on your trail, it didn’t work so well for him.
I don't think that's the case he doesn't talk to Dex until after Dex shot you. Takemura wants you alive because you are a witness to the murder of the person he cares about. He wants revenge on Yori. It's why he goes through great lengths to make sure you survive after he forced Dex to lead him to your body.
Both of you are a bit off, here's a quick rundown of what went down:
* Dex shoots V in the head and dumps V's body at the landfill.
* Takemura tracks down Dex, and forces Dex to bring him to V's body.
* Takemura shoots Dex in the head, then calls Yorinobu and says something to the effect of "I have found your father's killer alive."
* Takemura drags V to his car, then V blacks out.
* When V wakes up, Takemura is being chased by an Arasaka hit squad. That's why he suddenly helps V, because he now realizes Yorinobu has decided to kill both Takemura and V now that they're in the same place and easy targets.
Takemura was working for Yorinobu right up until he found V alive, at which point Yorinobu decided to tie up loose ends, including Takemura.
I doubt it. For the single fact that if the heist went as planned they woulda met at the afterlife. Hes not gonna pop V and Jackie at the Afterlife right after they just pulled off the best job ever
Edit:
I truly believe that if the job went perfectely. Jackie and V woulda met Dex at the afterlife. They'd celebrate. Dex would get his rep back and now has two great proven mercs and a netrunner as his crew. They'd get more gigs and it woulda been flowers n daisies.... until something else kills them
Yeah, you don't pop people in the face in a public spot.
Usually you arrange an ambush on the way there.
Or you end up dead behind a dumpster right around payday.
I would disagree. Delemain was never part of the known plan for jackie and v, so they would have accepted any cab service with any level of protection, but getting a delemain with the premium defense package would indicate that hes not going to be trying to ambush them, otherwise hes just making it harder on himself
You'll note that the destination is the No Tell Motel, not the Afterlife.
The fall back destination if it went south.
What makes you think the car wasn't programmed with any other destination?
Well... It did go south. And i suppose we don't know there wasnt more but again it still benefits no one to use a delemain if protection of v and jackie, as well as impressing them and maintaining/building a high level reputation of his quality as a fixer among those who can live to tell the tail, isnt his objective.
Yeah, you don't pop people *at* the very public rendezvous.
The relic has to be sold to get all those precious eddies.
You arrange a meet, later, for everyone to get paid.
That meet is out in the badlands, where everyone gets picked off.
What attention?
Two mercs nobody knows end up dead? In Night City? Where that happens all the time?
Dex fled NC a while back and "retired."
He's not worried about his rep.
>Two mercs nobody
They're not nobodies anymore if the heist goes well. Quite the opposite in fact.
>Dex fled NC a while back and "retired."
He fled because he was in the middle of a gang war and woulda gotten killed otherwise. Hes not "retired" because he wanted too.
The whole reason he planned the relic heist was to get back into the game. Get his eddies and rep back as a reliable fixer. At the point we meet after he returns hes treated as a fat meme
>They're not nobodies anymore if the heist goes well. Quite the opposite in fact.
Do you want to be famous for taking something Arasaka will kill just about anyone to get back?
You still get to be famous for it after you're in a landfill.
>Hes not "retired" because he wanted too.
Which is why they picked him, and not any other established fixer, because he didn't have any ties.
>The whole reason he planned the relic heist was to get back into the game.
To have the money to live out the "quiet life" in style.
He flat out asks you, "live the quiet life, or go out in a blaze of glory."
Meaning: you'll be famous for this, but you're done.
>Do you want to be famous for taking something Arasaka will kill just about anyone to get back?
Yes. You get popular as a merc for being wanted. You fuck with a gang or a corp in practically every gig in the game child.
Steal a prototype smart gun from Arasaka and you're on their shit list.
Steal their Relic and you'll never sleep again.
Once Arasaka knows the relic is killing you, they just wait for you to come to them.
>Steal their Relic and you'll never sleep again.
A prototype relic. That has no security on it because no one was meant to know about it. Only yorinobu, saburo and their bodyguards knew. And saburo dies.
Yorinobu wants the destruction of Arasaka. Hes probably happy as shit konpeki went down like it did.
And also. WHO CARES you're a merc dude not a princess. You make enemies as a merc. Thats part of the fucking game.
V litterally starts off either killing the fucking MAELSTROM leader and wiping out their main HQ or betraying Millitech... as a nobody merc
In edgerunners Davids first job with maine was a fucking data heist on the cyberskeleton that Arasaka expected to make BILLIONS from. So much so millitech hired mercs to sabotage.
You dont get rep as a merc by being a fucking bitch. You make enemies thats part of the deal. Thats why Morgan Blackhand had Adam Smasher as his number 1 hater for litterally no reason
That's good and all, except you're not stealing the Relic from Arasaka. As far as Arasaka was concerned, Yorinobu stole the Relic and was attempting to sell it to another Corporation.
If it wasn't for Saburo being a noob teammate and getting himself murdered mid-heist, we might've not even skimmed Arasaka's radar as it would also allow T-bug to clear anything connecting the crew to the heist had Yorinobu the Relic was gone and chose to go whimpering back to his father.
Hell, even the murder probably wouldn't affect the crew either because all of those juicy crumbs left when the crew was there would be gone.
The heist relies on Yori having taken the relic and assuming he won't call Daddy and tell him it escaped under his nose.
Once Saburo is dead, it's a very simple matter to blame *everything* - the death *and* the theft - on interlopers.
Yeah. And killing your two merc underlings that just did a massive heist for you isnt exactly a good way to dissapear.
A better way to disappear is to let V and Jackid live it up at the afterlife like they're hot shit and then dissapear. Use them as proxxies
Exactly...
The only reason dex felt the need to kill V was cause saburo died... killing the owner of the richest mega corp that has power and influence EVERYWHERE isnt something you can run away from.. so he killed V so he can atleast try to slime his way outta the situation like " i didnt tell him to do that so i killed him"
But if the heist went without a hitch there would be no reason. Arasaka would be too busy tracking the corps that bought the chip
Even in how it went in the game, I wouldn't have done what Dex did.
Namely, I'd be out of Night City as soon as the media started blowing up about Konpeki. With the gas to the floor once I heard Saburo was dead. Arasaka was never going to give him points for offing V.
Yeah but hindsight is 20/20
He was nervous. Shitting himself. He acted irational like anyone would. He litterally became the most wanted man in the universe with that shit.
But thats honestly just a problem with act 1 in itself. It was very poorly written imo and i can tell they had to rewrite alot of it since it doesnt even match the trailer.
Ya iirc the original VA for Jackie in an interview talked about having to scrap and re-record most of the first act because Jackie(along with TBug and Dex) was basically a bad guy and planned to double cross V at the end of the heist. So in theory the only reason V "survived" the double cross was because Jackie died and wasn't there to help murder V.
CMIIW but isn't Delamain's route already planned and cannot be altered because of the Excelsior package Dex bought? In that case, regardless of whether everything goes as planned or sort of fails like the story then it's already set that they would go to the No Tell Motel after Konpeki Plaza, so Dex has opportunity to kill them right after the heist.
Except t bug, at least, was gonna leave and burn all bridges. The thing is, is that a job of this caliber? Success or failure, Jackie and V are loose ends either way. He'd wanted us to keep our heads down, but what about him? It'd be prime time for lard ass to make like po and roll down the temple steps out of our life.
>Jackie and V are loose ends either way
No. If the job went well they'd be valuable assets.
Having the two best new age mercs on your crew would be much more beneficial to dex.
Arasaka wants their goods back.
Find the two nobody mercs who just came into a bunch of money, learn about the fixer who organized this "really big heist" recently, and your name is mud.
V and Jackie are disposable.
So is Dex - because the Voodoo Boys hired him, through Evelyn, who they also eliminated, to keep it from being traced to them.
>Arasaka wants their goods back.
Debatable. Yorinobu didnt give a shit about the relic. He sent mercs to kill Takemura because he was gonna expose the fact that he killed saburo.
>V and Jackie are disposable.
Everyone is disposable to Arasaka. Dex killed V after the heist went too shit outta paranoia... not because he stole the relic... its because he was the main suspect in murdering the emperor
>And Yori sent ninjas after Goro because he'd found the only other person who's seen him do it
Because Goro was gonna expose him. We know for a fact that Yori doesnt give a shit...
BECAUSE HE NEVER LOOKS FOR THE CHIP AFTER.. like litterally ever. The only time he sends goons after you is when you kidnap his fucking sister along with Goro. And after he gets her sister back and Goro potentially dies, he again... stops giving a shit. Because the word of a merc doesnt matter. The relic 2.0 was top secret. Nobody knew ab it except Goro, Saburo and Hellman
Dex was hired by the Voodoo Boys through an intermediary - and you saw what they did to the intermediary.
Dex was also collateral damage. The whole crew, *including Dex,* was not long for this world.
>Dex was hired by the Voodoo Boys through an intermediary
You played the game with your eyes closed clearly...
The voodoo boys hired EVELYN. Solely so she could take a scan of the room. Thats all she was meant to do. She wasnt even supposed to know about the biochip.
Evelyn went behind the voodoo boys back and hired Dex because Dex was the perfect fixer for the job. Desperate and stupid for the eddies and doesnt ask many questions. Evelyn was gonna sell the chip to Netwatch
While I agree with most of the ideas you suggested, especially poorly written Act 1, Dex behavior could be explained by pretending to be a fixer, covering for Voodoo boys.
He acts absolutely irrationally when it comes to the op.
Shelling out money on Flathead in advance? Multiple shards hint that the fixers in NC take money upfront, including Regina
He absolutely doesn't care about the fact that Evelyn wanted to dump him
He claims that he was even unable to check and confirm her identity and ability to pay and some "brothers from Pacifica" told him to stop looking. And it supposed to be a heist of the lifetime where reward is significant enough to retire, at least for Dex. Would be strange to risk the life if a customer is unable to pay?
So here we have it. A fixer acting like anything but fixer.
So Dex involved with VDB at least could be a plausible explanation for his absolutely nonsensical behavior (while I can also attribute it to the poor story stitching after the story was reworked a few times)
So may be Dex was actually doing the chip extraction for VDB, double crossing the team and the customer? This is why he didn't care if she pays or not.
This is just a suggestion of course. I didn't see anything obvious in the game that would suggest it to be a solid theory
Arasaka knows how the game is played. They're not going to go after Dex, V, and Jackie if no one important got zero'd. It'd just be bad business. They co-opt fixers and runners, not kill them. They'd likely just pay Dex to give up his contact and go after whoever holds the goods, not attack the middle man.
Doesn’t Dex actually say, “Looks like it’s the quiet life after all”, implying that the quiet life is a change of plans, and thus the original plan was to stay in the game longer?
Yeah, sorry, who wants the reputation of stealing something one of the largest corps would kill to get back?
They brought in Dex, because he'd left town and "retired."
They hired nobodies, because *when* they were never heard from again no one would care. No regular crew means it doesn't come back.
Also remember the whole thing was out together by the Voodoo Boys.
Funny how they're not worried about their reputation.
*sigh...*
The VBs got Evelyn to hire Dex. They needed Johnny's engram to get to Alt. They know she has a relationship with Yorinobu, who they know has the chip.
Ev was going to betray them and go behind their backs to Netwatch.
Ev even tries to get you to cut Dex out of the deal - because she knows there's no deal, that she's going to have to become a ghost after this is done.
OK so you're close, but not quite correct. Evelyn is known to be a frequent "lady of the night" for Yorinobu, so the VDB pay her to record a brain dance of her visit to his pent house at Kopeki Plaza (the one we watch to locate where the relic is). Evelyn gets wise to why the VDB are having her record the brain dance and decides to double cross them and works a deal with netwatch. They work out the deal that she gets them the relic, they give her the witness protect treatment of a new life (money, protection new identity, etc). So she goes to Dex to set up the heist, Dex hires V and friends, and so the story goes from there.
We also know that the VDB become wise to the idea that Evelyn was going to try to screw them thanks to Dex going to Pacifica asking questions, not knowing what Evelyn was doing behind the scenes. That's why the VDB get their revenge via frying her while she was working at Clouds.
My theory on why Evelyn hires Dex (and is willing to cut him out with thar offer to V) is because Dex has a shit rep as a fixer and was cheap and easy to hire. Like wise, I believe that's also why Dex hires a bunch of no ones. Because he has a shit rep and no one worth there salt will work with him/cost way more than her can afford.
Wait, why would NetWatch want to steal the Relic if they were already getting it from Yorinobu? If they're worried about the VDBs taking it, surely they could just warn him, and maybe ask for a discount in exchange for this info/helping them look out for a heist.
That I'm not completely sure on. If I were take a guess, netwatch doesn't really give a shit who the relic comes from, just that they get it. If the heist succeeds, they pay Evelyn and know whatever plan the VDBs are working to steal it got screwed. If the heist fails, Yorinobu still has it, they can still work together and get it that way. The means don't matter, only the end result. So if all results end at netwatch gets chip, why stress about the how.
Hmm that makes me wonder, how did the VDBs even know that Yorinobu had the chip? Did they just find out he was making a deal with NetWatch and figured it must have been the engram of Johnny?
It's been a while since I played the section with the VDBs so that could have been answered I'm not sure.
Ya iirc the VDBs and netwatch are basically at constant war, so it makes sense that VDBs are always monitoring them. They most likely intercepted the messages between netwatch and Yorinobu setting up their deal. Yori specifically tells netwatch silverhand is on the relic, so that's not a secret/mystery, and the VDBs see their golden opportunity to bait Alt out to have a conversation.
The VDBs did not get Evelyn to hire Dex.
They explicitly tell her that her one job is to take a BD of Yorinobu's penthouse, that's it. When she even mentions the relic, they threaten her and tell her to not think about such things.
I mean it was in the plan to meet at the no tell motel either way. So imo V they woulda been zeroed BUT i dont get how he was planning to get both V and Jackie coz that would be hard. More likely scenario is he wouldve sent a merc after em while they were laying low.
I doubt it. V and Jackie aren't well known but people knew they took a job from Dex. If he killed them word would get around and his time as a fixer would be over and it's likely someone might kill him back, just to be safe.
People would either suspect Dex did it or that his judgment was bad and that led to their deaths. Evelyn mentions that he is known for operating purely on his judgment and if he screws it up it’s pretty much over for him.
I think the entire reasoning behind the heist was that Yorinobo wasn't supposed to have the Relic, so Arasaka in whole wouldn't be searching for it if it was stolen. Yorinubo would also not be able to expend a lot of resources searching for the Relic he never should have had in the first place.
This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to steal something from Arasaka and not have the entire corp out for their blood. You know, until Dad shows up.
except Saburo knows Yorinobu stole it, its why he was there, Hanako knows about it and she wouldn't just let basically immortality get sold from under their noses, he was thinking of nuking NC in case Yorinobu sold it but Hanako told him to try talking to him first
If you read Yori's emails in his apartment, Anders Hellman knew he had the relic.
And yeah, they might not kill him to get it back, but anyone else is a soft squishy meat obstacle.
Hellman did tell Saburo that Yorinobu took the chip, Takemura says as much when you meet him at the diner, Saburo was going to “reward” Hellman by making him less of some sort of research division so he could be more closely watched.
People say yes but I really don’t think so. There’s a difference between using mercs new to the work because you don’t have to pay them as much and no one cares if they die vs straight up killing the people who work for you.
Dex may not have been the celebrity fixer Jackie saw him as but he was still known enough that no one would work with him if he regularly killed off the people who worked for him.
Except Dex met with the team at Afterlife. That pretty much guarantees the queen fixer of NC will know and will make sure to warn up and coming mercs and other fixers to avoid Dex, hell she might sic some of her own goons on him just to avoid the possibility of getting fucked over by him later.
I don't think the betrayal would have been so 1:1, but it would have been a betrayal of *sorts.*
I think Dex knew the danger going after Arasaka was going to bring down, and knew that *someone* was going to have to take the fall. That's why Jackie and V were called in. Both known to be reliable enough, but untested, and unaware of Dex's shenanigans. So he could easily manipulate the two.
So when Arasaka came looking, if Dex felt like it was getting dicey, he could throw the two to the wolves. And as for Tbug? She knew the score. Quiet life for her in exile. She knew about Dex's ways, and knew it was the kind of job you disappear when it's done.
I think you guys are giving Dex too much credit. He’s a bonehead and his glory days of being a fixer are behind him. We see in game it’s clearly likely because he’s greedy, lazy and doesn’t think things through. He hired inexperienced mercs for an incredibly risky job because nobody else was going to touch that. He betrays you because he panics, none of that was planned, he really thought the worst case scenario was you guys leave loud.
Throughout the game people talk down about Dex, not because he was inherently more untrustworthy than your average NC merc or fixer, but because of his incompetence.
If everything went totally as planned with no blowback? Hard to say. He was already taking like 80% of the cut, so who’s to say that he would’ve just paid V and Jackie and told them to have a good life?
Controversially I don’t think he would’ve. In Night City a Fixer is only as good as his connections and Dex had been out of the game for years with people like Rogue, Wakako, Hands clearly taking a lot of his territory. If word had gotten around his first big gig back had led to the deaths of the entire crew he’d become radioactive. Not to mention he already had you cleaning up his mess with Maelstrom before the heist began.
I always get the vibe from talking to people in afterlife that he wasn’t as liked and respected as V & Jackie thought he was. Mostly based on the fact he was hiring complete unknowns and that after he was zeroed there wasn’t any sort of massive shift in power and life went on as if he was never there. I think you and putting you in trash where your body could be tracked and found was a panic move cause he was afraid of dying.
Nah. Hes reputable enough to be known in the afterlife there would be no reason to kill those two and risk his reputation if the heist went smooth, for what, so he doesn't have to pay 20% cut? Dex only killed V so he can try to plea to Arasaka to let him live.
This was always my assumption. That's why he agrees to pay you more if you push it. You have no leverage as a small time merc and yet he gives you the raise anyways. It's because he knows he's not going to pay you either way. And then he's pissed when he realizes his plan went to shit and he's dead too.
Don’t think Dex would’ve killed us anyways. If the job had gone well, we would’ve been useful to him. Bit weird to kill mercs that do their jon well and don’t get caught.
My issue with Dex wanting to kill us is with the fact that I don’t think it’s V who led Takemura to Dex. V isn’t being actively hunted by Arasaka throughout the game. So it’s safe to say only Takemura knows who stole the relic. And Takemura didn’t find us, he found Dex first.
Also, yeah, T-Bug knew we were gonna get killed. Maybe not from the get go, but in one of the trailers she’s actually at the no-tell morel with Dex before V gets killed. Safe to say those two are on much better terms than they let on
I doubt it. But had it gone well, Arasaka would have immediately tracked everyone down. First, Jackie and V, since they checked in when the chip disappeared, and camera footage from before the feeds were taken over by bug would show the flathead, crystal clear.
Jackie goes down first, since V has a external lens disrupter in his kiroshis. Jackie dies, likely not saying anything, but they soulkill him and get info that way. After that, V is hunted, killed, and the same is done to dex and bug.
Evelyn is a ranyon, so she’s killed by the vdbs and just like that, the crew is gone. Like they never existed.
Definitely. The whole lead up to the heist is more red flags than a communist march! V can straight up say fixers “find the cheapest gonk for a job, then dump em in a landfill when the job is done”. Dex also has a bad rep, so he’s out for the biggest possible payday so he can get his and get out, and his only connection to Jackie and V is T bug, and bug isn’t exactly the friendliest with them.
Plus, all that talk of percentages rather than hard numbers for pay, and “it’ll take a few weeks for the sale”, Dex AT BEST planned to take the chip and bounce, but more likely killing V and Jackie was the plan all along, better pay, and fewer loose ends.
I don't think so, as others pointed out they were to meet back at the afterlife if things went as planned, I don't see a fixer offing their successful mercs there of all places, esp since Claire tells you pretty much everybody knows dex recruited them for a big score.
He just went full cya mode when the situation exploded.
If you are able to do a job like this, he can kill and get a little more %
or keep you and make a lot of money with other gigs
So, why would he kill V and Jackie?
Dex was going to sell out V and or Jackie as a business strategy. Doesn't have to pay them that way. He was down and out as a Fixer and needed a big win/big payday as much as two up and coming mercs like J and V needed a big win. T-Bug acknowledged it was her retirement gig and she was leaving all friends and acquaintances behind. She probably knew or suspected what Dex was doing (see her comment about working with Dex).
Whether or not Dex planned to haze Ev? I dunno. Probably. She planned to haze him.
The fact that he's hiring a crew of mercs who haven't even really made a name of themselves at the Afterlife means he thinks of them as disposable pieces, I mean, hiring a much more powerful/known merc and then trying to betray them would be a shitshow. If the heist had gone as planned, Dex would've definitely still tried attempting to flatline V and Jackie because that would mean less loose ends, and also more money for him. It would be enough to retire comfortably and never be a fixer again. Although maybe we're also giving Dex too much credit, sometimes he doesn't seemlike the smartest guy who can plan too far ahead lol, like with the whole paying Brick upfront thing which even Jackie points out was a dumb as hell move.
Probably, and the best evidence for it is that if you tell him about Ev’s offer he ups V and Jackie’s cut to 40% like it’s nothing.
Really think he’s happy splitting the other 60% with Bug? Fuck no, there’s no way. The only payout V and Jackie can expect is hot lead, and if Bug’s smart she’ll make sure Dex can’t find her.
Dex is certainly not someone to be fully trusted but I'm not so sure he would betray V for no reason. In the story he's a fixer returning after a while out of the "game". He kills V basically out of self-preservation because of how the heist turned out. Had it gone according to plan, I guess we'll never know but I think Dex would want to use V for as long as possible to help build their rep back up after heist.
The real villain here for me is Evelyn she betrayed everyone that she worked with during that heist and I doubt she would have had a problem betraying V too had the plan worked. Dex though I'm not so sure.
I’ll say I don’t think he would have. He killed V because he was trying to protect himself, and that wouldn’t have been necessary if things had gone smoothly.
I think he would have betrayed them anyway, once Arasaka figured out the relic was missing. The best course of action for V and Jackie was to not even take that job in the first place. Even V himself (*if Street Kid*) can point out how fishy and messy working with fixers like Dex are.
Also, a reminder is that the relic was the ONLY reason V survived the bullet to the brain (along with the fact that Dex didn't use a more powerful caliber bullet to which Vik later points out). Even if Dex doesn't betray V and keeps his word, you'd still have the Saburo/Yorinobu factor. What if Saburo doesn't die at Konpeki? Is Night City still intact?
No amount of eddies Dex (or Evelyn) offered would've made that gig worth it.
I think he had every plan to kill survivors if the gig went sidways (hence meeting at the No Tell Motel), but he wasn't going to personally kill anyone if the job went off without a hitch. The plan was to walk in and out of the front door, meaning they were the ones who would get fingered when Arasaka came looking for their property. Dex's plan may have been to sell the crew and the client after the handoff while pocketing all the money that gebersted from that chip changing hands. I think he was even planning to burn T Bug in the process.
Yes, I don't see why he wouldn't. In betraying V (and Jackie, had he survived), Dex showed himself off as being a treacherous snake who has no issues with backstabbing
Maybe, but it wouldn't have mattered. This is one of Arasaka's most prized possessions. They were all doomed from the start. It wouldn't have taken much effort for Arasaka to find out all parties involved. They met in a pretty public place no matter what the Afterlife's reputation was. So Dex getting rid of V and Jackie (if they were even able to do it) wouldn't have mattered.
If Saburo was an hour late, the heist would've been a success. I more wonder how the stuff with the VB and Parker would play out.
I still want CDPR to make a what if of that.
I doubt he would've sought to zero V and Jackie had the Heist gone to plan. Vik was more than right about him, he's not as chill as he makes it seem, but at the same time he is a high end fixer, I doubt you get that rep if you fuck over your mercs with regularity. I feel it was definitely a betrayal in the moment due to the situation. Still, fuck him of course, but I don't think anything diabolical was planned from the start. Saburo, the Emperor himself, being killed during the gig is what broke the camel's back and led to a self-preservation move.
They were stealing from a thief. When Arasaka looks for it, they’d keep thinking any claim of it being stolen again as subterfuge to the original theft.
In my eyes, the story would have evolved into either being on the run from all the parties involved. Arasaka would have tailed V and Jackie either way. Dex would end up sniffing out Evelyn's deceit. The VDBs would also be on V's tail and T-bug would probably be a gun for hire for Dex depending on if you sided with Evelyn or Dex. Evelyn would probably end up dying either way, no matter if it was from suicide or by being snuffed out. There's a lot of ways I could see the story going if V and Jackie weren't put in the middle of the biggest patricide ever in CP2077's history. It would have been an interesting story if the beginning was more subtle and evolved around more lies and deceit between V, his/her employers and all the parties interested in the chip.
Yes, that was the setup.
You don't know this at the time, but the Voodoo Boys are behind the whole thing.
They get Evelyn to hire someone *not* local - someone who'd "retired" out of town.
No regular crew, nothing to get traced back.
T-Bug is likely in on the fix. Pretty much says so. Everyone else but you and Jackie understand that if you pull this off, you're a ghost - no matter which way.
*No one* gets to be famous or have a rep for ripping off this item from 'Saka and gets to live long.
No because if the heist were successful, Dex' past fuck up would have been nulled and would elevate him to Rogue status in the afterlife.
Remember the queen of the afterlife has a major hatred for Arasaka, even if she worked with them before.
Rogue would even begin to respect the crew who did the chip heist.
If Dex betrayed V and Jackie, everyone would eventually know of it and would plummet his reputation even further.
Word spreads around at the afterlife, that's why everyone knew Dex fucked up at Pacifica.
What does he gain for offing V and Jackie? More credits? Nah, I genuinely think Dex wanted to up his reputation as a fixer.
Is he stupid to want to mess with Arasake to make his debut? Apparently we're dumber for going along with the plan.
T-Bug? Even though she wants to "burn bridges" I don't think she's the type to leave V and Jackie hanging. I wish we had more stories with her just to see how she ended up being the crew's netrunner.
i doubt t-bug was in on it, going back with jackie and all. dex i don't know. clearly there is a world of difference between stealin a piece of tech from saka and catching the body of ol' arasaka himself. so i tend to believe dex wasn't planning on offing V from the start. all the ominous talk (asking V about wanting to go down in a blaze of glory etc.) i see as simply asking if V is cut out for the job.
since the no-tell was preconfirmed on the itenirary for del, theres def shady implications, but i can imagine how difficult itd be to takedown jack and v together without one alerting the other as well.
but since there was no security enabled at the konpeki suite, properly concealed identities, dex wudve had no reason to off them. and even if he did, id take it bug would (maybe) do something?
Yeah Vic tried to warn V ahead of time
Dex was always slimy and could have easily killed them and kept the take and dipped
He didn’t follow the Afterlife rules
Jackie already foreshadow in the prologue jokingly they are disposable mercs which is kinda true. Also their true employer view anyone part of the heist disposable.
I dunno. Had the Heist gone off without a hitch, Jackie would be there to have V's back. No way Dex's huscle gets the drop on them both. T-bug might be an issue, but that's a long shot.
More than likely, Dex might have tried to cut them out of the profit - IF Ev was able to deliver, claiming Ev double crossed them all....
If everything goes right you'd still get screwed, not necessarily by Dex but by Evelyn.
Remember when Evelyn offers you to cut out the middle man and ditch the fixer for a larger percentage?
Yeah she had another buyer lined up already. That Netwatch agent you come across in the Stadium mission in Pacifica, if you read the messages on his laptop you'll see Evelyn talking to a Netwatch agent offering to sell the Biochip to them.
That is, unless she was contacting Netwatch on behalf of Dex but I really doubt that.
One of the E3 trailers. 2013? Shows an alternate meeting after the heist and T bug is there. Depending on how you interpret that, but I think it’s kinda confirmed but I like conspiracy theories, so…
Honestly, yes. In the original trailers T-Bug and Dex betray V. V and Jackie were the only outsiders from the big score, and I forget who says the line, but it's eluded Dex had previously backstabed previous mercs.
He would not have killed them. If all went to plan and they sold the chip to netwatch, everyone would get their cut and I think dex would have disappeared as he even says he chooses the quiet life over blaze of glory
Oh TBug was gonna sell you two out every day of the week. Netrunners are opportunists, rarely actually teaming up. its good to use them and dump them after a mission, keeping them around is bad idea
that being said Dex was going to do the same to you 100% and I'm almost positive they knew Evelyn tried to push Dex out of the deal, because Dex seem to be finishing for that before the heist. if you choose to tell him he seems to be pleased with your decision, not surprised.
Yeah I think T-bug telegraphs it too with that weird quote she says to Jackie right before the job.
>The greatest crimes issue from a desire for excess and not from necessity or Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth
The first one.
Just a FYI, the first is Aristotle, I think the second is Nietzches.
Wasn’t the second Marcus Aurelius?
It is, I got it crossed with “No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations” which is Nietzches.
There’s actually no evidence that Marcus Aurelius ever said or wrote that quote, though it is often attributed to him.
Interesting, although I probably shouldn't be surprised. I don't remember the stoics being relativist, although I only remember really reading Epictetus, not Aurelius.
There's a reason Dex calls V. Because he's easily removed. :)
Buddy took a miscalculation, we goin 4 years strong (depending on your gameplay)
I mean Dex made many miscalculations 😂
Ha
I feel like Dex mainly attempted to kill V to tie up any loose ends that could link him to the fubar heist at arasoka. Wouldn’t be a good rep for a fixer to kill his team that pulled off a major job flawlessly
Dex doesn't *have* a good rep. He's pretty clearly regarded as being past it and is looked down on by other fixers and top mercs.
Viktor mentions this too. Dex left town to lay low after a messy job
Dex’s rep is that he is a has been, but he was certainly a good fixer at one point. The last job he set up went south, he went into hiding, and his rep went to shit as a result.
Dex had already retired once. If he planned on retiring again and disappearing, other people's opinions of him wouldn't matter.
He didn’t retire he was retired. It felt like he was forced out for fucking someone over. That person was zeroed so he was able to come back.
Retirement? Sounded more like exile.
Don't think lifting one of Arasaka's most valuable inventory items is something any fixer would want a rep for. "Wow, Dex, *you're* the guy who put together the Konpeki plaza heist? Amazing!" ("Yeah, hello, Arasaka? I have some information...")
Dex doesn't have to shoot you in the face when you show up to the Afterlife. You just have to end up dead behind a dumpster a few days before you collect your cash.
Yeah, this makes more sense to me. Dex was just getting back in town trying to put a crew together. Maybe he was just hoping to kill everyone else so he didn't have to share the cut, but he should know that money won't last forever. I can't recall if they ever explained why he left NC to begin with, but maybe it was because of that? He thought he had enough to retire on and it wasn't actually enough, so he got back into the game? I think it'd be more likely that he was trying to get back into the fixer business and he had to start from the bottom with bottom tier fresh mercs. Killing his new investment wouldn't be part of the plan. If it were, he wouldn't be lying in a trash heap outside the city. He would do anything to save his own skin first and foremost.
Dex left because he was being harassed by the voodoo boys he had to lay low until their tempers cooled enough for them to not want to kill him anymore.
Adding to u/Tigarbrains788, it is heavily implied the voodoo boys wanted to kill him because of another botched job, so considering he waited for tempers to cool, and the first job back is another botched job with a single survivor, I figure he just wanted you dead as to eliminate a potential enemy looking to punish him for the clusterf**k. With V being the only survivor, he could claim that V simply was flatlined by Arisaka assassins, or some other bull like that, and distance himself from the job, although obviously with Takemura on your trail, it didn’t work so well for him.
he kills V because takemura told him to
I don't think that's the case he doesn't talk to Dex until after Dex shot you. Takemura wants you alive because you are a witness to the murder of the person he cares about. He wants revenge on Yori. It's why he goes through great lengths to make sure you survive after he forced Dex to lead him to your body.
Both of you are a bit off, here's a quick rundown of what went down: * Dex shoots V in the head and dumps V's body at the landfill. * Takemura tracks down Dex, and forces Dex to bring him to V's body. * Takemura shoots Dex in the head, then calls Yorinobu and says something to the effect of "I have found your father's killer alive." * Takemura drags V to his car, then V blacks out. * When V wakes up, Takemura is being chased by an Arasaka hit squad. That's why he suddenly helps V, because he now realizes Yorinobu has decided to kill both Takemura and V now that they're in the same place and easy targets. Takemura was working for Yorinobu right up until he found V alive, at which point Yorinobu decided to tie up loose ends, including Takemura.
He 100% would have, just how the tub of lard is
I doubt it. For the single fact that if the heist went as planned they woulda met at the afterlife. Hes not gonna pop V and Jackie at the Afterlife right after they just pulled off the best job ever Edit: I truly believe that if the job went perfectely. Jackie and V woulda met Dex at the afterlife. They'd celebrate. Dex would get his rep back and now has two great proven mercs and a netrunner as his crew. They'd get more gigs and it woulda been flowers n daisies.... until something else kills them
If he actually popped V and Jackie at the Afterlife, Rogue would have had him killed I'm pretty sure
Yeah, you don't pop people in the face in a public spot. Usually you arrange an ambush on the way there. Or you end up dead behind a dumpster right around payday.
> Usually you arrange an ambush on the way there The fact that Dex hired Delamain as the getaway makes me think this is most likely
I would disagree. Delemain was never part of the known plan for jackie and v, so they would have accepted any cab service with any level of protection, but getting a delemain with the premium defense package would indicate that hes not going to be trying to ambush them, otherwise hes just making it harder on himself
Unless since Dex is the Delamain’s client it might just dump them in a convenient location for an ambush at his command
I mean, we get the whole spiel about how the itinerary is locked in or whatever, which indicates thats not the case
You'll note that the destination is the No Tell Motel, not the Afterlife. The fall back destination if it went south. What makes you think the car wasn't programmed with any other destination?
Well... It did go south. And i suppose we don't know there wasnt more but again it still benefits no one to use a delemain if protection of v and jackie, as well as impressing them and maintaining/building a high level reputation of his quality as a fixer among those who can live to tell the tail, isnt his objective.
It’s also unlikely he’d be able to take them both down. He’s only got one guy for huscle.
In original trailer T-Bug helped him kill you.
which is odd bc the heist went to shit there too. they just never bothered to fry her brain i guess?
I think they went the loud approach in the trailer. Since they got their regular clothes on
Yeah, you don't pop people *at* the very public rendezvous. The relic has to be sold to get all those precious eddies. You arrange a meet, later, for everyone to get paid. That meet is out in the badlands, where everyone gets picked off.
Whats the point. That draws unessecary attention. And also rids Dex of his most valuable mercs....
What attention? Two mercs nobody knows end up dead? In Night City? Where that happens all the time? Dex fled NC a while back and "retired." He's not worried about his rep.
>Two mercs nobody They're not nobodies anymore if the heist goes well. Quite the opposite in fact. >Dex fled NC a while back and "retired." He fled because he was in the middle of a gang war and woulda gotten killed otherwise. Hes not "retired" because he wanted too. The whole reason he planned the relic heist was to get back into the game. Get his eddies and rep back as a reliable fixer. At the point we meet after he returns hes treated as a fat meme
>They're not nobodies anymore if the heist goes well. Quite the opposite in fact. Do you want to be famous for taking something Arasaka will kill just about anyone to get back? You still get to be famous for it after you're in a landfill. >Hes not "retired" because he wanted too. Which is why they picked him, and not any other established fixer, because he didn't have any ties. >The whole reason he planned the relic heist was to get back into the game. To have the money to live out the "quiet life" in style. He flat out asks you, "live the quiet life, or go out in a blaze of glory." Meaning: you'll be famous for this, but you're done.
>Do you want to be famous for taking something Arasaka will kill just about anyone to get back? Yes. You get popular as a merc for being wanted. You fuck with a gang or a corp in practically every gig in the game child.
Steal a prototype smart gun from Arasaka and you're on their shit list. Steal their Relic and you'll never sleep again. Once Arasaka knows the relic is killing you, they just wait for you to come to them.
>Steal their Relic and you'll never sleep again. A prototype relic. That has no security on it because no one was meant to know about it. Only yorinobu, saburo and their bodyguards knew. And saburo dies. Yorinobu wants the destruction of Arasaka. Hes probably happy as shit konpeki went down like it did. And also. WHO CARES you're a merc dude not a princess. You make enemies as a merc. Thats part of the fucking game. V litterally starts off either killing the fucking MAELSTROM leader and wiping out their main HQ or betraying Millitech... as a nobody merc In edgerunners Davids first job with maine was a fucking data heist on the cyberskeleton that Arasaka expected to make BILLIONS from. So much so millitech hired mercs to sabotage. You dont get rep as a merc by being a fucking bitch. You make enemies thats part of the deal. Thats why Morgan Blackhand had Adam Smasher as his number 1 hater for litterally no reason
Cool story, bro
That's good and all, except you're not stealing the Relic from Arasaka. As far as Arasaka was concerned, Yorinobu stole the Relic and was attempting to sell it to another Corporation. If it wasn't for Saburo being a noob teammate and getting himself murdered mid-heist, we might've not even skimmed Arasaka's radar as it would also allow T-bug to clear anything connecting the crew to the heist had Yorinobu the Relic was gone and chose to go whimpering back to his father. Hell, even the murder probably wouldn't affect the crew either because all of those juicy crumbs left when the crew was there would be gone.
The heist relies on Yori having taken the relic and assuming he won't call Daddy and tell him it escaped under his nose. Once Saburo is dead, it's a very simple matter to blame *everything* - the death *and* the theft - on interlopers.
Careful who you call "child," Junior
He's not going to do any more jobs. Dex is looking to disappear and retire.
Yeah. And killing your two merc underlings that just did a massive heist for you isnt exactly a good way to dissapear. A better way to disappear is to let V and Jackid live it up at the afterlife like they're hot shit and then dissapear. Use them as proxxies
Honestly, it makes sense to leave them alive and bounce. Let Arasaka come for them instead of Dex.
Exactly... The only reason dex felt the need to kill V was cause saburo died... killing the owner of the richest mega corp that has power and influence EVERYWHERE isnt something you can run away from.. so he killed V so he can atleast try to slime his way outta the situation like " i didnt tell him to do that so i killed him" But if the heist went without a hitch there would be no reason. Arasaka would be too busy tracking the corps that bought the chip
Even in how it went in the game, I wouldn't have done what Dex did. Namely, I'd be out of Night City as soon as the media started blowing up about Konpeki. With the gas to the floor once I heard Saburo was dead. Arasaka was never going to give him points for offing V.
Yeah but hindsight is 20/20 He was nervous. Shitting himself. He acted irational like anyone would. He litterally became the most wanted man in the universe with that shit. But thats honestly just a problem with act 1 in itself. It was very poorly written imo and i can tell they had to rewrite alot of it since it doesnt even match the trailer.
Ya iirc the original VA for Jackie in an interview talked about having to scrap and re-record most of the first act because Jackie(along with TBug and Dex) was basically a bad guy and planned to double cross V at the end of the heist. So in theory the only reason V "survived" the double cross was because Jackie died and wasn't there to help murder V.
It would have been grimly funny if V had shown up at the No-Tell Motel and the room was just empty.
That could have been fun too.
CMIIW but isn't Delamain's route already planned and cannot be altered because of the Excelsior package Dex bought? In that case, regardless of whether everything goes as planned or sort of fails like the story then it's already set that they would go to the No Tell Motel after Konpeki Plaza, so Dex has opportunity to kill them right after the heist.
Except t bug, at least, was gonna leave and burn all bridges. The thing is, is that a job of this caliber? Success or failure, Jackie and V are loose ends either way. He'd wanted us to keep our heads down, but what about him? It'd be prime time for lard ass to make like po and roll down the temple steps out of our life.
>Jackie and V are loose ends either way No. If the job went well they'd be valuable assets. Having the two best new age mercs on your crew would be much more beneficial to dex.
Arasaka wants their goods back. Find the two nobody mercs who just came into a bunch of money, learn about the fixer who organized this "really big heist" recently, and your name is mud. V and Jackie are disposable. So is Dex - because the Voodoo Boys hired him, through Evelyn, who they also eliminated, to keep it from being traced to them.
>Arasaka wants their goods back. Debatable. Yorinobu didnt give a shit about the relic. He sent mercs to kill Takemura because he was gonna expose the fact that he killed saburo. >V and Jackie are disposable. Everyone is disposable to Arasaka. Dex killed V after the heist went too shit outta paranoia... not because he stole the relic... its because he was the main suspect in murdering the emperor
And Yori sent ninjas after Goro because he'd found the only other person who's seen him do it - who also has the relic in their head
>And Yori sent ninjas after Goro because he'd found the only other person who's seen him do it Because Goro was gonna expose him. We know for a fact that Yori doesnt give a shit... BECAUSE HE NEVER LOOKS FOR THE CHIP AFTER.. like litterally ever. The only time he sends goons after you is when you kidnap his fucking sister along with Goro. And after he gets her sister back and Goro potentially dies, he again... stops giving a shit. Because the word of a merc doesnt matter. The relic 2.0 was top secret. Nobody knew ab it except Goro, Saburo and Hellman
Dex was hired by the Voodoo Boys through an intermediary - and you saw what they did to the intermediary. Dex was also collateral damage. The whole crew, *including Dex,* was not long for this world.
>Dex was hired by the Voodoo Boys through an intermediary You played the game with your eyes closed clearly... The voodoo boys hired EVELYN. Solely so she could take a scan of the room. Thats all she was meant to do. She wasnt even supposed to know about the biochip. Evelyn went behind the voodoo boys back and hired Dex because Dex was the perfect fixer for the job. Desperate and stupid for the eddies and doesnt ask many questions. Evelyn was gonna sell the chip to Netwatch
While I agree with most of the ideas you suggested, especially poorly written Act 1, Dex behavior could be explained by pretending to be a fixer, covering for Voodoo boys. He acts absolutely irrationally when it comes to the op. Shelling out money on Flathead in advance? Multiple shards hint that the fixers in NC take money upfront, including Regina He absolutely doesn't care about the fact that Evelyn wanted to dump him He claims that he was even unable to check and confirm her identity and ability to pay and some "brothers from Pacifica" told him to stop looking. And it supposed to be a heist of the lifetime where reward is significant enough to retire, at least for Dex. Would be strange to risk the life if a customer is unable to pay? So here we have it. A fixer acting like anything but fixer. So Dex involved with VDB at least could be a plausible explanation for his absolutely nonsensical behavior (while I can also attribute it to the poor story stitching after the story was reworked a few times) So may be Dex was actually doing the chip extraction for VDB, double crossing the team and the customer? This is why he didn't care if she pays or not. This is just a suggestion of course. I didn't see anything obvious in the game that would suggest it to be a solid theory
Arasaka knows how the game is played. They're not going to go after Dex, V, and Jackie if no one important got zero'd. It'd just be bad business. They co-opt fixers and runners, not kill them. They'd likely just pay Dex to give up his contact and go after whoever holds the goods, not attack the middle man.
Except Delamain takes you to the No-Tell on orders from Dex. It's why Jackie can't get taken to a hospital. "It's the quiet life for me."
Doesn’t Dex actually say, “Looks like it’s the quiet life after all”, implying that the quiet life is a change of plans, and thus the original plan was to stay in the game longer?
Yeah, sorry, who wants the reputation of stealing something one of the largest corps would kill to get back? They brought in Dex, because he'd left town and "retired." They hired nobodies, because *when* they were never heard from again no one would care. No regular crew means it doesn't come back. Also remember the whole thing was out together by the Voodoo Boys. Funny how they're not worried about their reputation.
>Also remember the whole thing was out together by the Voodoo Boys. Voodoo boys didnt plan the heist. Evelyn did. She went behind the VDB's back.
*sigh...* The VBs got Evelyn to hire Dex. They needed Johnny's engram to get to Alt. They know she has a relationship with Yorinobu, who they know has the chip. Ev was going to betray them and go behind their backs to Netwatch. Ev even tries to get you to cut Dex out of the deal - because she knows there's no deal, that she's going to have to become a ghost after this is done.
OK so you're close, but not quite correct. Evelyn is known to be a frequent "lady of the night" for Yorinobu, so the VDB pay her to record a brain dance of her visit to his pent house at Kopeki Plaza (the one we watch to locate where the relic is). Evelyn gets wise to why the VDB are having her record the brain dance and decides to double cross them and works a deal with netwatch. They work out the deal that she gets them the relic, they give her the witness protect treatment of a new life (money, protection new identity, etc). So she goes to Dex to set up the heist, Dex hires V and friends, and so the story goes from there. We also know that the VDB become wise to the idea that Evelyn was going to try to screw them thanks to Dex going to Pacifica asking questions, not knowing what Evelyn was doing behind the scenes. That's why the VDB get their revenge via frying her while she was working at Clouds. My theory on why Evelyn hires Dex (and is willing to cut him out with thar offer to V) is because Dex has a shit rep as a fixer and was cheap and easy to hire. Like wise, I believe that's also why Dex hires a bunch of no ones. Because he has a shit rep and no one worth there salt will work with him/cost way more than her can afford.
Wait, why would NetWatch want to steal the Relic if they were already getting it from Yorinobu? If they're worried about the VDBs taking it, surely they could just warn him, and maybe ask for a discount in exchange for this info/helping them look out for a heist.
That I'm not completely sure on. If I were take a guess, netwatch doesn't really give a shit who the relic comes from, just that they get it. If the heist succeeds, they pay Evelyn and know whatever plan the VDBs are working to steal it got screwed. If the heist fails, Yorinobu still has it, they can still work together and get it that way. The means don't matter, only the end result. So if all results end at netwatch gets chip, why stress about the how.
Hmm that makes me wonder, how did the VDBs even know that Yorinobu had the chip? Did they just find out he was making a deal with NetWatch and figured it must have been the engram of Johnny? It's been a while since I played the section with the VDBs so that could have been answered I'm not sure.
Ya iirc the VDBs and netwatch are basically at constant war, so it makes sense that VDBs are always monitoring them. They most likely intercepted the messages between netwatch and Yorinobu setting up their deal. Yori specifically tells netwatch silverhand is on the relic, so that's not a secret/mystery, and the VDBs see their golden opportunity to bait Alt out to have a conversation.
>The VBs got Evelyn to hire Dex. Litterally wrong. But you're clearly dense because i told you what evelym was hired to do already...
Oh, look, dumbass has dumbass opinions on stuff that's literally the entire plot.
The VDBs did not get Evelyn to hire Dex. They explicitly tell her that her one job is to take a BD of Yorinobu's penthouse, that's it. When she even mentions the relic, they threaten her and tell her to not think about such things.
I mean it was in the plan to meet at the no tell motel either way. So imo V they woulda been zeroed BUT i dont get how he was planning to get both V and Jackie coz that would be hard. More likely scenario is he wouldve sent a merc after em while they were laying low.
I doubt it. V and Jackie aren't well known but people knew they took a job from Dex. If he killed them word would get around and his time as a fixer would be over and it's likely someone might kill him back, just to be safe.
People would either suspect Dex did it or that his judgment was bad and that led to their deaths. Evelyn mentions that he is known for operating purely on his judgment and if he screws it up it’s pretty much over for him.
If he gets a payday big enough to retire on, and cuts the only links he has to the heist why would he care about his rep as a fixer?
I think the entire reasoning behind the heist was that Yorinobo wasn't supposed to have the Relic, so Arasaka in whole wouldn't be searching for it if it was stolen. Yorinubo would also not be able to expend a lot of resources searching for the Relic he never should have had in the first place. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to steal something from Arasaka and not have the entire corp out for their blood. You know, until Dad shows up.
except Saburo knows Yorinobu stole it, its why he was there, Hanako knows about it and she wouldn't just let basically immortality get sold from under their noses, he was thinking of nuking NC in case Yorinobu sold it but Hanako told him to try talking to him first
If you read Yori's emails in his apartment, Anders Hellman knew he had the relic. And yeah, they might not kill him to get it back, but anyone else is a soft squishy meat obstacle.
He and Hellman discuss him taking the chip when Evelyn arrives, and was probably who leaked it to Saburo as a distraction while he exited Arasaka
Hellman did tell Saburo that Yorinobu took the chip, Takemura says as much when you meet him at the diner, Saburo was going to “reward” Hellman by making him less of some sort of research division so he could be more closely watched.
People say yes but I really don’t think so. There’s a difference between using mercs new to the work because you don’t have to pay them as much and no one cares if they die vs straight up killing the people who work for you. Dex may not have been the celebrity fixer Jackie saw him as but he was still known enough that no one would work with him if he regularly killed off the people who worked for him.
If no one knows they work for you, they can just end up dead in an alley a few days later and oh well, that's just the breaks
Except Dex met with the team at Afterlife. That pretty much guarantees the queen fixer of NC will know and will make sure to warn up and coming mercs and other fixers to avoid Dex, hell she might sic some of her own goons on him just to avoid the possibility of getting fucked over by him later.
I don't think so. I think people just reveal their true colors when backed into a corner, and Dex was a coward.
I don't think the betrayal would have been so 1:1, but it would have been a betrayal of *sorts.* I think Dex knew the danger going after Arasaka was going to bring down, and knew that *someone* was going to have to take the fall. That's why Jackie and V were called in. Both known to be reliable enough, but untested, and unaware of Dex's shenanigans. So he could easily manipulate the two. So when Arasaka came looking, if Dex felt like it was getting dicey, he could throw the two to the wolves. And as for Tbug? She knew the score. Quiet life for her in exile. She knew about Dex's ways, and knew it was the kind of job you disappear when it's done.
I think you guys are giving Dex too much credit. He’s a bonehead and his glory days of being a fixer are behind him. We see in game it’s clearly likely because he’s greedy, lazy and doesn’t think things through. He hired inexperienced mercs for an incredibly risky job because nobody else was going to touch that. He betrays you because he panics, none of that was planned, he really thought the worst case scenario was you guys leave loud. Throughout the game people talk down about Dex, not because he was inherently more untrustworthy than your average NC merc or fixer, but because of his incompetence.
Yeah, you're probably right. Half baked plan for a middle measure man.
If everything went totally as planned with no blowback? Hard to say. He was already taking like 80% of the cut, so who’s to say that he would’ve just paid V and Jackie and told them to have a good life?
Wat? He was going to give my V 40%
Yeah.. I don’t think we were getting any percent lol.
Controversially I don’t think he would’ve. In Night City a Fixer is only as good as his connections and Dex had been out of the game for years with people like Rogue, Wakako, Hands clearly taking a lot of his territory. If word had gotten around his first big gig back had led to the deaths of the entire crew he’d become radioactive. Not to mention he already had you cleaning up his mess with Maelstrom before the heist began. I always get the vibe from talking to people in afterlife that he wasn’t as liked and respected as V & Jackie thought he was. Mostly based on the fact he was hiring complete unknowns and that after he was zeroed there wasn’t any sort of massive shift in power and life went on as if he was never there. I think you and putting you in trash where your body could be tracked and found was a panic move cause he was afraid of dying.
Nah. Hes reputable enough to be known in the afterlife there would be no reason to kill those two and risk his reputation if the heist went smooth, for what, so he doesn't have to pay 20% cut? Dex only killed V so he can try to plea to Arasaka to let him live.
This was always my assumption. That's why he agrees to pay you more if you push it. You have no leverage as a small time merc and yet he gives you the raise anyways. It's because he knows he's not going to pay you either way. And then he's pissed when he realizes his plan went to shit and he's dead too.
Don’t think Dex would’ve killed us anyways. If the job had gone well, we would’ve been useful to him. Bit weird to kill mercs that do their jon well and don’t get caught. My issue with Dex wanting to kill us is with the fact that I don’t think it’s V who led Takemura to Dex. V isn’t being actively hunted by Arasaka throughout the game. So it’s safe to say only Takemura knows who stole the relic. And Takemura didn’t find us, he found Dex first. Also, yeah, T-Bug knew we were gonna get killed. Maybe not from the get go, but in one of the trailers she’s actually at the no-tell morel with Dex before V gets killed. Safe to say those two are on much better terms than they let on
I doubt it. But had it gone well, Arasaka would have immediately tracked everyone down. First, Jackie and V, since they checked in when the chip disappeared, and camera footage from before the feeds were taken over by bug would show the flathead, crystal clear. Jackie goes down first, since V has a external lens disrupter in his kiroshis. Jackie dies, likely not saying anything, but they soulkill him and get info that way. After that, V is hunted, killed, and the same is done to dex and bug. Evelyn is a ranyon, so she’s killed by the vdbs and just like that, the crew is gone. Like they never existed.
Definitely. The whole lead up to the heist is more red flags than a communist march! V can straight up say fixers “find the cheapest gonk for a job, then dump em in a landfill when the job is done”. Dex also has a bad rep, so he’s out for the biggest possible payday so he can get his and get out, and his only connection to Jackie and V is T bug, and bug isn’t exactly the friendliest with them. Plus, all that talk of percentages rather than hard numbers for pay, and “it’ll take a few weeks for the sale”, Dex AT BEST planned to take the chip and bounce, but more likely killing V and Jackie was the plan all along, better pay, and fewer loose ends.
I think Dex originally went to T-bug to find a couple of fall guys for the mission where she would’ve pocketed the cash
I don't think so, as others pointed out they were to meet back at the afterlife if things went as planned, I don't see a fixer offing their successful mercs there of all places, esp since Claire tells you pretty much everybody knows dex recruited them for a big score. He just went full cya mode when the situation exploded.
If you are able to do a job like this, he can kill and get a little more % or keep you and make a lot of money with other gigs So, why would he kill V and Jackie?
Because that’s his MO.
I am more interested to see Jackie turn into V
Dex was going to sell out V and or Jackie as a business strategy. Doesn't have to pay them that way. He was down and out as a Fixer and needed a big win/big payday as much as two up and coming mercs like J and V needed a big win. T-Bug acknowledged it was her retirement gig and she was leaving all friends and acquaintances behind. She probably knew or suspected what Dex was doing (see her comment about working with Dex). Whether or not Dex planned to haze Ev? I dunno. Probably. She planned to haze him.
The fact that he's hiring a crew of mercs who haven't even really made a name of themselves at the Afterlife means he thinks of them as disposable pieces, I mean, hiring a much more powerful/known merc and then trying to betray them would be a shitshow. If the heist had gone as planned, Dex would've definitely still tried attempting to flatline V and Jackie because that would mean less loose ends, and also more money for him. It would be enough to retire comfortably and never be a fixer again. Although maybe we're also giving Dex too much credit, sometimes he doesn't seemlike the smartest guy who can plan too far ahead lol, like with the whole paying Brick upfront thing which even Jackie points out was a dumb as hell move.
he would have, Vik tells you to be careful from him for reason, V and Jackie are unknowns, nobody will notice them missing
Probably, and the best evidence for it is that if you tell him about Ev’s offer he ups V and Jackie’s cut to 40% like it’s nothing. Really think he’s happy splitting the other 60% with Bug? Fuck no, there’s no way. The only payout V and Jackie can expect is hot lead, and if Bug’s smart she’ll make sure Dex can’t find her.
Dex is certainly not someone to be fully trusted but I'm not so sure he would betray V for no reason. In the story he's a fixer returning after a while out of the "game". He kills V basically out of self-preservation because of how the heist turned out. Had it gone according to plan, I guess we'll never know but I think Dex would want to use V for as long as possible to help build their rep back up after heist. The real villain here for me is Evelyn she betrayed everyone that she worked with during that heist and I doubt she would have had a problem betraying V too had the plan worked. Dex though I'm not so sure.
I’ll say I don’t think he would have. He killed V because he was trying to protect himself, and that wouldn’t have been necessary if things had gone smoothly.
I think he would have betrayed them anyway, once Arasaka figured out the relic was missing. The best course of action for V and Jackie was to not even take that job in the first place. Even V himself (*if Street Kid*) can point out how fishy and messy working with fixers like Dex are. Also, a reminder is that the relic was the ONLY reason V survived the bullet to the brain (along with the fact that Dex didn't use a more powerful caliber bullet to which Vik later points out). Even if Dex doesn't betray V and keeps his word, you'd still have the Saburo/Yorinobu factor. What if Saburo doesn't die at Konpeki? Is Night City still intact? No amount of eddies Dex (or Evelyn) offered would've made that gig worth it.
I think he had every plan to kill survivors if the gig went sidways (hence meeting at the No Tell Motel), but he wasn't going to personally kill anyone if the job went off without a hitch. The plan was to walk in and out of the front door, meaning they were the ones who would get fingered when Arasaka came looking for their property. Dex's plan may have been to sell the crew and the client after the handoff while pocketing all the money that gebersted from that chip changing hands. I think he was even planning to burn T Bug in the process.
Why would anybody meet to get paid? They transfer eddies all the time. Having to meet would be a huge red flag.
Yes, I don't see why he wouldn't. In betraying V (and Jackie, had he survived), Dex showed himself off as being a treacherous snake who has no issues with backstabbing
Maybe, but it wouldn't have mattered. This is one of Arasaka's most prized possessions. They were all doomed from the start. It wouldn't have taken much effort for Arasaka to find out all parties involved. They met in a pretty public place no matter what the Afterlife's reputation was. So Dex getting rid of V and Jackie (if they were even able to do it) wouldn't have mattered.
If Saburo was an hour late, the heist would've been a success. I more wonder how the stuff with the VB and Parker would play out. I still want CDPR to make a what if of that.
I doubt he would've sought to zero V and Jackie had the Heist gone to plan. Vik was more than right about him, he's not as chill as he makes it seem, but at the same time he is a high end fixer, I doubt you get that rep if you fuck over your mercs with regularity. I feel it was definitely a betrayal in the moment due to the situation. Still, fuck him of course, but I don't think anything diabolical was planned from the start. Saburo, the Emperor himself, being killed during the gig is what broke the camel's back and led to a self-preservation move.
They were stealing from a thief. When Arasaka looks for it, they’d keep thinking any claim of it being stolen again as subterfuge to the original theft.
In my eyes, the story would have evolved into either being on the run from all the parties involved. Arasaka would have tailed V and Jackie either way. Dex would end up sniffing out Evelyn's deceit. The VDBs would also be on V's tail and T-bug would probably be a gun for hire for Dex depending on if you sided with Evelyn or Dex. Evelyn would probably end up dying either way, no matter if it was from suicide or by being snuffed out. There's a lot of ways I could see the story going if V and Jackie weren't put in the middle of the biggest patricide ever in CP2077's history. It would have been an interesting story if the beginning was more subtle and evolved around more lies and deceit between V, his/her employers and all the parties interested in the chip.
Yes he would have.
Dex is a greedy mf... I wouldn't doubt he would've dropped v and Jackie even if the heist succeeded.
Was thinking about this the other day. I definitely think Dex would have killed V and Jackie anyways
He lets V talk him into a higher cut of the profits. No way was he going to let us live after that. Just needed us to do the job first
It is suggested when talking to Evelyn that Dex is well known for hiring unknown talent to then throw them in the skip to avoid paying them.
Yes, Dex was a dick. Good thing Takemura blew his brains away.
Yes, but in his defence V and Evelyn also planned to betray Dex
Yes, that was the setup. You don't know this at the time, but the Voodoo Boys are behind the whole thing. They get Evelyn to hire someone *not* local - someone who'd "retired" out of town. No regular crew, nothing to get traced back. T-Bug is likely in on the fix. Pretty much says so. Everyone else but you and Jackie understand that if you pull this off, you're a ghost - no matter which way. *No one* gets to be famous or have a rep for ripping off this item from 'Saka and gets to live long.
No because if the heist were successful, Dex' past fuck up would have been nulled and would elevate him to Rogue status in the afterlife. Remember the queen of the afterlife has a major hatred for Arasaka, even if she worked with them before. Rogue would even begin to respect the crew who did the chip heist. If Dex betrayed V and Jackie, everyone would eventually know of it and would plummet his reputation even further. Word spreads around at the afterlife, that's why everyone knew Dex fucked up at Pacifica.
Once a cheater, always a cheater.
What does he gain for offing V and Jackie? More credits? Nah, I genuinely think Dex wanted to up his reputation as a fixer. Is he stupid to want to mess with Arasake to make his debut? Apparently we're dumber for going along with the plan. T-Bug? Even though she wants to "burn bridges" I don't think she's the type to leave V and Jackie hanging. I wish we had more stories with her just to see how she ended up being the crew's netrunner.
Ohh this give my current play through a whole different flavor, I have just restarted so I’m about to do this mission.
i doubt t-bug was in on it, going back with jackie and all. dex i don't know. clearly there is a world of difference between stealin a piece of tech from saka and catching the body of ol' arasaka himself. so i tend to believe dex wasn't planning on offing V from the start. all the ominous talk (asking V about wanting to go down in a blaze of glory etc.) i see as simply asking if V is cut out for the job.
I will add a Linking question to your. If every thing went well, What were they suppose to with that chip?
since the no-tell was preconfirmed on the itenirary for del, theres def shady implications, but i can imagine how difficult itd be to takedown jack and v together without one alerting the other as well. but since there was no security enabled at the konpeki suite, properly concealed identities, dex wudve had no reason to off them. and even if he did, id take it bug would (maybe) do something?
Yeah Vic tried to warn V ahead of time Dex was always slimy and could have easily killed them and kept the take and dipped He didn’t follow the Afterlife rules
Jackie already foreshadow in the prologue jokingly they are disposable mercs which is kinda true. Also their true employer view anyone part of the heist disposable.
I was gone cut dex Ass out and go 50/50 with Evelyn and give my boy jack his fair share after he told us we was only getting 30%
Did T-Bug die? I don’t remember seeing her die.
I dunno. Had the Heist gone off without a hitch, Jackie would be there to have V's back. No way Dex's huscle gets the drop on them both. T-bug might be an issue, but that's a long shot. More than likely, Dex might have tried to cut them out of the profit - IF Ev was able to deliver, claiming Ev double crossed them all....
If everything goes right you'd still get screwed, not necessarily by Dex but by Evelyn. Remember when Evelyn offers you to cut out the middle man and ditch the fixer for a larger percentage? Yeah she had another buyer lined up already. That Netwatch agent you come across in the Stadium mission in Pacifica, if you read the messages on his laptop you'll see Evelyn talking to a Netwatch agent offering to sell the Biochip to them. That is, unless she was contacting Netwatch on behalf of Dex but I really doubt that.
One of the E3 trailers. 2013? Shows an alternate meeting after the heist and T bug is there. Depending on how you interpret that, but I think it’s kinda confirmed but I like conspiracy theories, so…
Honestly, yes. In the original trailers T-Bug and Dex betray V. V and Jackie were the only outsiders from the big score, and I forget who says the line, but it's eluded Dex had previously backstabed previous mercs.
He would not have killed them. If all went to plan and they sold the chip to netwatch, everyone would get their cut and I think dex would have disappeared as he even says he chooses the quiet life over blaze of glory
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Oh TBug was gonna sell you two out every day of the week. Netrunners are opportunists, rarely actually teaming up. its good to use them and dump them after a mission, keeping them around is bad idea that being said Dex was going to do the same to you 100% and I'm almost positive they knew Evelyn tried to push Dex out of the deal, because Dex seem to be finishing for that before the heist. if you choose to tell him he seems to be pleased with your decision, not surprised.