Phantom Liberty's Sidequests And Their Relationship to the Main Quest

Everyone knows that the Phantom Liberty sidequests, both the Mr. Hands gigs and otherwise, betray the fact a great deal more effort was put into them than many of the base game's, especially gig-wise. In particular, something that intrigues me about a few of them is that, and for this you don't an especially close reading, are clearly placed and designed in such a way as to have clear parallels to the main quest and in particular to Songbird's story, which is what Phantom Liberty ultimately is about.

The three I'm thinking about in particular are Prototype in The Scraper, No Easy Way Out, and Roads to Redemption. Prototype and No Easy Way Out are accessible partway through the main quest and hence offer the player early examples of the kind of duplicity that they're already facing in it. Roads to Redemption, which becomes available after finishing the main quest, acts as a sort of epilogue and postscript; in other words, even the sequencing of these quests is pretty deliberate in my view.

Let's start with how all three of these parallel Songbird's story:

1 - Prototype's main character is Hasan, a Zetatech employee who thought he'd made a big break by joining up with them, but soon realized he was under-appreciated and 'caught by the balls', according to the database, which also adds that 'by some miracle he always lands on his feet'. He has some high-level chrome and schematics that can get him out of Zetatech, but he feels compelled to deceive V in getting out. V can send him back to the corp, let him go entirely (with terrible results for him), or help him out.

2 - No Easy Way Out's main character is Aaron. someone who was talented in a specific field, taken in by a questionable organization, given an implant with dubious consent at best by them, and now wants to escape and is willing to lie to get out. Remember, this is Aaron, not Songbird. Unlike Hasan, we know he's done some terrible things as part of his organization, but we also see in his endings that he's not a bad person at heart, becoming a trainer for kids.

3 - Roads to Redemption's main character was Nele, a terrorist and true believer in her organization's ideals who grew disillusioned after she was (being tricked, seemingly) involved in a big bombing that killed many people. Of note is that Johnny mocks her lack of spine, but her backstory - family being farmers who lost their land to a corp - is just like Johnny's big speech about corporations and entropy. Just like Hasan, she's on the run from a corporation and misleads V about it. V can let Biotechnica get her or help her.

Once we look at them like this, it's clear that their stories all have a similar structure to Songbird's, even though none of them are quite the same in scale or detail: they all are running in some way from a big organization, either a corp or a gang; they all have some kind of plan, either to escape or (in Nele's case) to stop a massacre, but need V's assistance in it; and in all three cases those plans get screwed up and they end up losing what little autonomy they have, at the mercy of V's choices.

Let's look closer at Aaron. His implant isn't being used, but nonetheless his talent for being boxing is being utilized by his organization in a way that benefits them. Songbird's netrunning became a tool for the NUSA, and was killing her in the process; the only thing being killed for Aaron is his passion for it, but that's exactly where this story illuminates something about her. The angle of her story that Aaron covers is desire for freedom; as fits a cyberpunk story, no individual talent goes for long without being bought up or taken by a corp (we see a similar idea with Kerry in the base game). Aaron wants to be free and we see from his outcomes that he really will follow a decent path (giving his best at boxing or training kids) if freed. Incidentally, the method used to disable his implant happens to be very close to Tower V's problem.

That's when we meet Angie, the charismatic woman who was able to bend the Animals to her whims despite not having anything like the physique that they usually respect the most. This is the only one of the three quests that has a figure in it akin to Reed or Myers, who is there to persuade us not to help the person in question. She emphasizes unsavory things about him such as his past as an enforcer for the Animals, just as Reed tries to redirect from the question of trusting Songbird, emphasizing the Blackwall's danger instead; the methods of persuasion are different, but they fill the same role of getting the player to rethink their support for the person they just talked to (here, and in the Birds with Broken Wings conversation with Songbird). She reveals Aaron's deception just as Reed does (in reference to forcing down SF1 and working with Hansen).

But most intriguing is one of V's options here: they can refer to him as a 'cornered animal', phrasing which almost exactly matches one of Songbird's text messages where she says that V reminds her of herself in being such a cornered animal. In both of these cases, the people in question feel that they have nothing left to lose, and hence revert back to being an animal - in the sense of desperation and reverting to instinct, yes, but in a broader sense, as well. Being reduced to an animal means reverting to instinct, and in Songbird's case, her instincts had been shaped by her years in the FIA, to mean using deception and to think of others are tools. Still, being reduced to an animal, I think, also has a metaphorical meaning here: of being stripped of precisely those kinds of social adaptions. In other words, Aaron drops his Animal 'heavy' behavior and all the violence, and Songbird eventually drops her deception if sided with. Being reverted to an animal therefore is, ironically, an opportunity to return to one's own humanity - dropping all the behaviors that one had learned to see as necessity to survive in a harsh world like Cyberpunk's. Hence, if we choose to help Aaron, V is doing something specific: they are choosing to judge him on the basis of what he is right now, rather than what he has done in the past. This is important.

And speaking of dropping socially learned views and behaviors on the path back to one's own humanity, this brings us to Nele. She was, it seems, disgusted enough by the Crimson Harvest's ways to turn against them, but an interesting note is how she talks about their plan when pressed by V about the kind of bomb they're using." What you want is the protein - human casualties," she says, and it's clear that this particular analogy about protein must have been some kind of in-house rhetoric at the Harvest. The game demonstrates cleanly to us that she retains some of their way of thinking even if in opposition.

If Aaron's quest was about freedom and what one will do for it, Nele's is unquestionably about guilt and regret; the same guilt that gives Songbird nightmares about Reed and makes her eventually confess. As befits a quest that follows the main quest, Roads to Redemption is even more upfront about the parallels as it now doesn't have to worry about spoilers. Nele says: "Can't turn back time, but I can still change what happens here, now - the future", "I regret it, I do. But can't turn back time" is one of Songbird's final lines just before her confession; in Cynosure, we can also see her worrying about not being better than the FIA that she's running from. While her quest lacks a parallel to Reed or Myers, she does have interesting comments on loyalty: that at the Harvest is 'like family'. Despite knowing that her group was radicalized and toxic by her own standards, she will has this basic sentiment that makes it hard to break away, and one can easily imagine the Stockholm Syndrome-like attitude that afflicts Songbird too, with regard to her abuser Myers (and blackmailer Reed, for that matter, though he is no Myers), when she tries to ensure Myers' survival in her plan.

After being trapped by Biotechnica in a car (this must be an intentional call back to how you helped Reed kill Aurore and Aymeric this way), Nele ends up needing V's help just as the other two do. If you help her, she talks in a way that must be intended as a way - again, considering its place as something that opens after completing Phantom Liberty - to explore what Songbird might have said if she had been able to talk after V saves her in the Wands ending. V was put in danger by Nele's deception by being put in Biotechnica's targets, and in fact will be again. Nele can only confess being afraid that if 'you found out the truth, you wouldn't help,' adding that she misjudged V. We will recall that 'needed your help, needed to be sure you would' was also Songbird's rationale for not trusting what was, to her a random Night City merc in the end.

To return to all three in general, what they all have in common is a loss of autonomy in some way - Aaron has his implant, Nele is hunted and has to hide, Hasan is literally imprisoned when we find him. In a sense, all of these are consequences of their own actions: Nele was happy to join a terrorist group. Hasan decided on his own to betray Zetatech. Aaron was a member of the Animals of his own accord and, if Angie can be trusted, chose to take the falls. Hence, all three of them find that they must rely on someone that they can not trust: all three lie to V almost as a matter of course, all of them with some scheme to land 'back on their feet'.

But V can get some kind of better ending for all of them: Hasan gets a shop in Dogtown away from the corpos, Aaron can learn to find fulfillment in nurturing young talent even if he can't be champion himself, Nele is the most ambiguous but at the very least she escapes imprisonment for the mean time. And all of this occurs when V decides to help them, in all three cases after knowing that they lied. The chain of consequences that they all face for their options are not per-ordained fates, but at every step are buttressed and continued by social structures and by the deliberate choices of people.

Ultimately, Aaron doesn't have to take a fall because of these consequences, but because Angie decides so; Hasan doesn't have to be taken by Zetatech, but for V choosing so; Nele does not have to be imprisoned by Biotechnica, but for them deciding to track her down (despite now being no threat and even actively helping them), and V deciding so. Society is made up of human beings, and hence all people's fates are decided, ultimately, by the decisions of other people, far more than by the power of their own choices. If someone 'has to face consequences', it is ultimately not because of moral laws; it is simply because that is more convenient an excuse for what other people wanted to do anyway. For instance, much as Reed would insist that Slider and the twins were facing consequences for criminality, we all know he would have killed them anyway, just as he probably does to Jacob and Taylor. How flimsy an excuse it is, is proven by these quests.

Hence Songbird; just like Hasan she is caged and desperate, just like Aaron reduced to a kind of cornered animal, and just like Nele she can find herself on one of the 'roads to redemption', but only if, as with all them, V decides to act on the basis of compassion, judging her as what she is, - a kind of kindred spirit, desperate and hurting - rather than what she has done.