Spoilers for some details near the end of Phantom Liberty
Butch:
Well, I didn't do as much as I should have done because I was dense and took forever to figure out what to do after I got through security. But I finally found the bag and the disguise. Ran through the train tunnels (that was pretty cool), took many elevators, heard Reed and Myers. I....have issues with Myers. Why did they take the time to do that bit in the skanky apartment, having a peaceful cigarette with Myers, hanging out, being friends? Is Myers really someone who could pull that off? Sure, she can be a fake faced politician, but that seemed authentic. Now this. I'm confused.
Anyway, did that.
Is the fight you mean the "return to the Tycho terminal" bit with many rooms with many baddies?
Loothound:
Yeah, overhearing Reed and Myers talking was quite the eye-opener. Certainly didn't make me regret siding with Songbird.
The fight I'm talking about happens in the monorail station. You have to hold off a bunch of NUSA soldiers while Songbird is in a control room trying to get the monorail train to come into the station. Did you do that fight?
Butch:
Oh. No, no I did not.
I did the "get through three or four rooms of baddies" bit. That wasn't so bad once I realized I could just run like holy hell.
No monorail yet, though. Also, no helicopter. When you get a little view of something and someone is all "We can't let that see us," it will, eventually, see you. I've played games before.
I'm still jarred by the dissonance of the Myers I saw last night and the Myers I sat on a balcony with. I'm just not happy with that inconsistence. I think they might be going for "All politicians are two faced," but...I don't know if it landed.
When it comes to faces.....
What's also interesting is that the most trustworthy dude I have met in Dogtown is Hands. Sure, Hands is out for himself and the power and the money, but he's upfront about it. He's not going to double cross you. If he wants you dead, he'll calmly and kindly inform you that he has put a bounty on your head. You know where you stand with Hands. And yet, he, for a long time, has NO face. He's practically hidden from everyone. Hell, when you meet him you get this line:
V: A FACE TO FACE meeting. I should be honored. (Emphasis mine)
Hands: You should. Not too many people get that and live.
Hell, V has changed faces.
Maybe the THEME here is you can't trust what people say, their face. Trust the doers. Trust the guy with no face, but the very effective hands. The fixer.
I'm trying to link this into the fact that a main, likeable character in the game is Johnny SilverHAND, but it's early. You do it.
Feminina:
OK, I didn't overhear anything, so you must tell me what Myers and Reed said.
On the whole notion of her having different faces, though, I was thinking about how Songbird herself talked about Myers way back at the beginning of all this, when they were still on the plane that hadn't yet come down in Dogtown. She seemed to respect and also be a bit fond of Myers – "we're taking heavy fire but she's still doing paperwork, typical Rosalind" but in a tone suggesting she liked her.
Songbird apparently worked fairly closely with Myers...so was she completely taken in by her sort of nice, friendly persona? Or is that persona in some way genuine, but Myers, as a politician, is so compartmentalized that she has multiple genuine personalities, and the cold, political ones just take precedence?
We see Reed (at least, I saw Reed) seeming to genuinely regret and feel bad about everything he's done with regards to Songbird (and Alex—alas, poor Alex, I felt bad about her), and yet I never got the sense he would do anything differently. He regrets that it was necessary, more than he wishes he hadn't done it.
Maybe that's Myers too. Maybe she can genuinely enjoy a friendly moment with someone whose company is pleasant, and quietly regret the necessity of treating them terribly later, but never second guess her sense that it is indeed necessary.
I don't know. But I think there is a lot here about that idea that people, including V/us, can say what we want and feel bad about what we feel bad about, but it doesn't change the consequences of what we actually DID.
Which is both what you said, Butch, about trusting actions more than words, and also—because we know this happens from the choices we've had to make as players—about how sometimes there isn't a good choice and you're always going to regret something.
Maybe Myers is genuinely both a relaxed, friendly person and a cold-blooded tyrant.
Butch:
Hmm. Doing what you must, even if it sucks, is a running theme, true. Even Johnny thought he HAD to do what he did at Arasaka tower. Ditto his girlfriend who wound up past the black wall. They knew what they had to do would have consequences, but did it all the same, even knowing it hurt people they cared about.
Hmm.
Myers, in the overheard conversation, repeatedly told Reed his duty was to his country, not to a person. Again, duty to the bigger picture (which Johnny is really all about, consequences be damned). That was a theme in the main game, after all. Johnny being about big ideas and society and whatnot vs. V just trying to survive.
Again, Hmm.
Wait, what happened to Alex? I haven't seen her since she killed Hansen. Did she not make it out of there?
Feminina:
Wait, Alex killed Hansen in your game? Wild.
I had to kill him myself, and he was a beast.
But no, in my game when I sided with Reed Songbird basically sent off an alert to Hansen that something was going wrong (when I was supposed to be loading the code into the weapon or whatever, there when we were disguised as the twins), and Hensen killed Alex-as-the-twin right there.
Butch:
Yeah! Alex was up there with Hansen, after the conversation you had disguised as the French woman. He's all up observing Song and V do the thing with the thing, and V gives a signal and Alex, who is disguised as the French dude, whips out mantis blades and kills him. Then, I'm all "I'm with you, Song," and Song overrides everything and we see Alex in there all "Reed! They're giving us the slip!" and that's the last I saw of her.
I was concerned about killing Hansen. Indeed, Looty was all "Have fun with the next fight," and I was all "Shit, Hansen," but then Alex did it and I was all "Oh. OK, then."
Well, there's non linear for ya.
Feminina:
Ah, OK then. Well, I'm glad Alex made it in one of the timelines. I liked her, although she, like all of us, had obviously done plenty of things she might have regretted, and I'm sure would have killed me in a second if it suited her.
Yet again, people doing things they feel they have to, even though someone is certainly going to get hurt.
I had to fight Hansen in a big warehouse room on the way out of there, and he wasn't any fun.
Loothound:
Ohhh, cool. A social commentary summed up by the dichotomy of "Face"vs "Hands." Faces are seemers, while hands are doers. Solid.
The funny thing about that is that you see the dynamic in the world all the time. In any organization you get the people who use their personality and charisma to be visible and get acclaim, and then the people who just quietly get the work done. Now this isn't universal, but a lot of times the personality people are not the best at doing the ground level work that makes their organization run (unless that work is highly visible). Meanwhile, the people who are focused on getting the work done are too busy to do the social glad-handing that goes along with being visible and getting recognition within the organization.
I have many strong thoughts about this dynamic (shocker, I know), but we'll just leave it there for now.
Feminina:
Hmm...but in this model Mr. Hands himself is only symbolically the 'do-er' since he in fact pays people to do literally everything. Which makes him a weird hybrid of the visible 'face' of his organization and the actual 'hands.'
In fact he's more like the 'brains' of the operation, but honestly I feel like this might be a stretch for this concept.
Loothound:
I think I made the comment about enjoying the fight with Hansen before Butch had made the Choice, but after I had replayed with the "side with Reed" line. The fight happens in the main atrium of the marketplace under the stadium. When you side with Songbird you don't fight him personally.
Along with the "people having different faces" thing, one of the things that you hear people say when they meet politicians and other big personalities is something to the effect of "it felt like they were really connecting with me," or "they were really listening to my concerns." I think for these people (and probably all of us sometimes, since I feel myself doing it when dealing with some of the people I supervise) when you are in the moment interacting with someone you immerse yourself in the interaction to the point where you really are genuinely sympathizing with them and being genuine. It's when you step away from that one engagement, and put what you need to do about it in the context of all the other demands that may overlap with what they're talking about that the mismatch occurs.
I think that's sort of the compartmentalization that Feminina was talking about. When doing that is a major part of your job, it probably looks bad to people on the outside of the situation who see it from multiple sides.
But maybe not that much of a stretch. Hands is a doer by extension, if not the actual being making the thing happen. He cares about what happens, not what he can get people to believe happens. It is the act that counts, regardless of who knows about it or how they feel about it. This isn't to say that "face" people don't care at all about what actually happens, but it is of secondary importance to what people perceive happens.
Feminina:
It's very true that having that ability to empathize in the moment might not really be 'fake', but could look that way later.
Because yeah, how hard is it to imagine, I don't know, sitting and genuinely sympathizing with someone who's sad about breaking up with their girlfriend, while also feeling that, in the bigger picture, they're well rid of her because she was a jerk? And then maybe saying that later to someone else, and if the first person overhears, they might think it meant you never cared how they felt, etc.
Being able to empathize with someone's concerns even if you don't personally share them is very human and not necessarily a sign that you're lying – but, as Loothound says, if a person feels they really connected with you about the importance of grain tariffs or something, and then later you vote against grain tariffs, they could view that as a betrayal, even if in fact you would say "I do genuinely understand how important this is to you, but I have to weigh that against the importance of this other issue to other people, it's not simple..."
And it's easy to assume that always comes down to "the other people paid me" with politicians (or V), but I like to imagine this cynicism is at least sometimes unwarranted, and there are SOME people who go into politics (or murder-for-hire) with a good will.
More politics than murder for hire, probably.
Loothound:
Okay, so both Myers and Hands are getting others to serve their agenda, so their roles are similar in that. Hands is very straightforward about it, and will tell it like it is. Myers, on the other hand, will tell people whatever she thinks they need to hear in order to get the result she wants. So, is the difference that Hands is straight-up paying for services, while Myers is expecting people to do it for abstract ideals? Isn't that what the big rant Johnny went on right before we met Reed was about, how people are always trying to sell you on some notion to get you to do what they want?
Feminina:
Fair.
Johnny is very distrustful of people with fancy ideals. Money is more honest.
At least in this society where money-making corporations run everything. Is what a corporate spokesperson says about something, or what the corporation pays for/sells us a more trustworthy indication of where their priorities are?
Obviously, the money.
And yet, this purely monetary outlook is really too much for the average person to stomach, right?
Even though we're doing what Mr. Hands wants because of money, we're also doing it because he mostly doesn't ask us to do things that are too terrible. If he regularly wanted to pay us to murder children, we would—probably—stop taking his jobs.
There IS a moral component to life even in a corporate city, and although we haven't formulated a platform on it, this could be framed as being about our abstract ideals. We certainly don't take Mr. Hands' jobs just because we agree with his vision for Dogtown (not that we actually know the details of what it is, or care), but we assume it's not worse than anyone else's.
I think we maybe feel manipulated by Myers, even though we didn't take that job because we agreed with her vision for the NUSA either, so did she ever actually deceive us? Maybe it just feels sleazy for someone to pretend they're doing something for some idealistic cause, and then it turns out they just want what's best for them personally. As Butch mentioned, Johnny is all about ideals, but it didn't conveniently turn out that attacking Arasaka tower was in his own best interests, so we can take him seriously.
Mr. Hands' honesty is more about saying that he wants what he wants, than it is about money specifically, and we're not opposed to ideals as much as we're opposed to pretending to have them when you don't. If you won't sacrifice for them, we distrust it.
Loothound:
Definitely. It can be both things at the same time. I will admit that my cynicism here is informed by being so closely involved with marketing, branding, and influential design. So much of what we do is about communicating things to people on an unconscious level that it's hard not to be constantly aware of how manipulative "messaging" can be. Even though I use the word manipulative, it's not always a bad thing. Human beings have limitations when it comes to absorbing and processing information, and good communication usually means taking that fact into account. It also means, however, that you can exploit that fact in ways that are dishonest and harmful to the people hearing the message.
Feminina:
So true! One can market and manipulate in favor of ideals.
"I want to make an ad encouraging people to support wildlife because I believe it is in the best interests of the nation even though I personally don't spend time in national parks" or whatever.
Butch:
Sweet Naked Zeus I come back from Wegmans to this.
Love it all. I shall touch none of it, except for the fact that we are defining Hands when Hands defined himself.
When you go back to do the very end bit with Hands, where he gives you the car, he's using all these Wizard of Oz metaphors, comparing you to Dorothy, etc. V asks "And who are you in this metaphor," and I certainly expected him to say "The Wizard, of course, the man behind the curtain." He didn't say that, though. He said "The narrator."
Which is interesting because one generally thinks of the narrator not as someone who is involved in the story. They aren't a character. They are telling someone else's story entirely.
Generally. Sometimes the narrator is the voice of the author proper, the manifestation of the "creator" in the story world.
He doesn't see himself as the man behind the curtain, pulling levels in a booth. He sees himself either as a casual observer, a relater of tales, or he sees himself as something far more potent than a man pulling levels making illusions. He sees himself as the very author of the stories unfolding below him.
But it's left ambiguous as to which.
Just figured we'd let the man himself chime in before we really define him.
Feminina:
Yeah, the narrator is an interesting choice as a character to identify with.
Superficially, as you say, it's just the person telling the story, so it might be someone relating events objectively like a news reporter.
But we're all familiar with the concept of limited and unreliable narrators, who may tell the story the way they want to rather than exactly the way it happened, and even an objective news reporter may not have all the information and be limited but what they were able to see.
I think he pretty obviously is NOT in fact just telling us what happened like a reporter, so we're left to wonder in what sense he could see himself as a narrator.
It actually seems likely to me that 'narrator' is how he hopes to present himself to others -- including in that moment V – rather than how he actually sees himself.
I can see him wishing to be known only for telling the story of how Dogtown came under new leadership, rather than for playing a part—he doesn't want to be a public face, and he also doesn't want credit for working behind the scenes. He wants to remain invisible to the average person. (Which could be very sensible since limited visibility means limited assassination attempts!)
Whether or not he actually believes this about himself we can't really know, but I would be sceptical since he's not obviously not completely clueless.
Loothound:
Beat me to it by that much. Self-reporting isn't automatically accurate or complete. Yes, Butch, the completely and totally obvious thing for Hands to have said at the end of that exchange is "the man behind the curtain." I think that's because it's the right answer. Just because he said something different, that just happens to elevate himself above the fray—heck, even almost deify himself, doesn't mean it's right.
Butch:
He is certainly the one person we've met in all of this game who really believes in soft power. The corps have big, garish everything to show "Look at us! Rich and powerful." Barghest be Barghest. The gangs plaster their logos everywhere. NCPD has people on every corner. Even the other fixers are far more active in their communities (publicly, you know what I mean). Johnny, certainly, believes in large, showy displays.
Hands does absolutely none of that, and yet, I came away from the whole game thinking that he was destined to become the most powerful man in Night City. Maybe he won't, but I still would bet on him.
He believes in tweaking the narrative here and there, as you say. No one ever remembers the narrator in a story, and yet, the narrator is, at some level, the most important part of it.
Hmm.
Loothound:
Yes, because being a "face" in a world like this is to paint a target on your back. He is perfectly willing to forego fame, prestige, notoriety, and all of the trappings of power because he is interested in real power. The power of doing. The power of Hands.
Sophisticated man, him. Obviously…
Butch:
Except he IS above the fray.
The other fixers are all in these rather ramshackle apartments and whatnot right there in the middle of everything. They have guards and people chilling with them. One's in a garage. Rogue is surrounded by the riff raff in a bar. One is just outside on a bridge!
Hands is way up in a tower. You have to get into a gold elevator and go WAY up to see him. He's all alone. He's literally looking down on everyone. None of the other fixers can say that. Only him.
Loothound:
Well, he'd certainly like to think so, which is why styling himself as the Narrator is pretty much on the nose for how he imagines his position in the world. He's a fixer, just like the others you mention, except that he tries to keep everything at arms length. The 'aboveness' you talk about is a show that he has staged for himself. The difference between him and the others is that he doesn't care if anyone else is in the audience with him to enjoy it.
Butch:
Well, and he's less involved. Take that gig where the guy went cyberpsycho. One ending (the one I did) was "send him to Regina," who is a fixer. There's never going to be a "send him to Mr. Hands." Hands would never touch such riff raff, whereas Regina would and did.
Loothound:
Sure, he's playing a much more sophisticated game than the other fixers, and his aspirations are more elevated, but he is not fundamentally different. He's the corpo of fixers, thinking that the money and power that he has separates him from the ordinary world.
Feminina:
That's an interesting thought.
He doesn't want his name on anything, he doesn't want to be KNOWN to be similar to the corpos, but are his ambitions significantly different? He wants to control the playing field (Dogtown) so that its optimally arranged for him to make money – he says as much at one point. This is pretty much what the corpos want.
Hm.
Loothound:
Yep.
Also, as thuggish as they can be, each fixer sort of has "people." As much as they're in it for the money, they're often righting some sort of wrong or enforcing some sort of community mores for their people. They are a part of some community or group in some way. Not Hands. He has no people, and he seems to scorn people who do things for reason other than money and advantage.
"Did I offend your sensibilities?"
Feminina:
Ooh, here's another angle – we all know the saying "the winner writes the history books." Maybe he's telling V he plans to be the winner and write/narrate the history, telling it how he wants (presumably without any mention of himself).
Loothound:
Well, we know that he's a reader, so I'd buy that (for a dollar).
Hmm, that reminds me. In an earlier post I mentioned that he was reading Edgar Rice Burroughs's "The Chessmen of Mars." I looked up the plot, and it involves this chess-like game where the people playing are moving living beings around on a large board, where they must fight each other to the death to "capture" the other piece.
A real window into the mind of Hands there?
Feminina:
Good point! They surely didn't throw that in there with the intention that it would mean absolutely nothing.
Butch:
Man, that's a nice touch. I totally missed that. Probably most people missed that.
Loothound:
So, that being the case, Myers and Hands are pretty much all about the same business. The difference is that Myers is willing to be…is duplicitous a fair word?…to manipulate people and feels okay doing so because it's "for an important cause," whereas Hands can afford to be straightforward because he doesn't need anyone to believe in anything.
I feel like the original Face vs. Hands angle has gotten awfully muddy here…
Feminina:
Yeah...we kind of started out with "Hands gets stuff done while Myers is just the political figurehead" and wound up with "Hands gets other people to do what he wants by paying them outright, while Myers convinces other people to think they're doing something noble that's worth more than money"...?
I guess we still have "Hands is transparent about the fact that he doesn't give a rat's ass about anyone, while Myers tricks people into thinking that she respects and appreciates them personally." Maybe.
It's certainly a lot less clear that there's a meaningful distinction between them, though.
Butch:
Yeah, but muddy means we talked the hell out of it, which is how we do.
We were on fire today, must say.
What I will say is that Hands was a pretty fascinating character. For someone you really interact with on the phone, and who never leaves his office, they really got a lot of him. Great writing.
Loothound:
Agreed. Getting to bump into him at the party is kind of the cherry on that sundae, too.
Feminina:
I think this is kind of a bonus that we get with the fact that this is DLC. Most of the fixers in the main game aren't really this developed (Rogue is an obvious exception), but since there aren't a lot of key characters in the Dogtown story, I think maybe they had the space to really build Hands into a significant player, and – intentionally or unintentionally -- a character that compares to Myers in interesting ways.
We didn't even ever really talk about Hansen, who of course is another figure at this level of power and influence.
Butch:
Mostly because I didn't think he was as fleshed out. He was mostly a snarly, bald bad guy.
Feminina:
Yeah, I really kind of expected that at some point we'd be given a chance to side with him, but that was never an option. He had a bit of a moment there at the party, but other than that it was all growled announcements over the speaker system (that part reminded me of Hannya).
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