ORIGINALLY WRITTEN: September 2023
DISCLAIMER: This post was originally unformatted and, frankly, messy. I posted it as a liveblog to the conclusion of the DLC's plotlines, and the different routes taken. I have tried to clean this post up and make it... somewhat coherent :3c
CONTENT WARNINGS: Phantom Liberty DLC Spoilers
So!! I finished watching runs of Phantom Liberty… and Vin’s getting a new canon. This DLC and its new ending are canon for him.
I just think the storyline does a great job at showing what vin really wants, and what it takes for him to realize that.
When this happens is after? You talk to the VDB. So Vin’s already been up shit’s creek by this point. There’s the shit with Ev. The shit with Takemura. The shit with the Aldecados. He’s been tugged around.
And then? Then his relic gets hacked! And he’s told to get his ass to the most dangerous part of NC? Alone? Yeah. Yeah. He’s not happy. Johnny isn’t either, but at this point Vin’s at a low and honestly could see him following Songbird hoping to die.
And then he gets everything thrown on him.
Hey I need your help saving the president. Hey I'm the president I need your help getting out of here; the attack came from the inside and I don't trust anybody. Hey you're now a federal intelligence agent and you're making contact with a sleeper agent bc my runner that contacted you went missing thx.
Hey I need your help saving the president.
Hey I'm the president I need your help getting out of here; the attack came from the inside and I don't trust anybody.
Hey you're now a federal intelligence agent and you're making contact with a sleeper agent bc my runner that contacted you went missing thx.
He’s already there, fuck it. Maybe some gonk-brain will kill him. But. But!
There is a part of him still kinda hopeful. Maybe one more step and he gets the help he needs. One more contact. One more task. And it just. Keeps. Going.
He’s pulled into the monotonous bullshit he tried so hard to escape from. Being pulled around on all these fronts again, especially as it comes out Songbird is the traitor; this has been in the works for what? Months now? Because she knows about Militech’s own version of SoulKiller and she, being led on by Meyers, was used as a bow and made a portal for the Blackwall to conduct govt espionage.
And naturally, Vin’s a little upset (he’s a lot upset), but fuck if he doesn’t need that tech. And it’s a hell of a lot better than the prognosis anyone else has given him so far!
But it just. Keeps. Getting. Worse!
Songbird leaves him for dead. Reed is stonewalling him. Alex is fucking dead. Johnny’s quieter than usual. He’s all alone in fucking Dogtown and the only person he feels remote trust for is feeding him nothing||. And it sucks! But he’s still trying to believe that he’ll get that out.
And there’s so many good convos with the characters in this DLC about morality, mortality, and consequence.
And it ultimately ends with Vin trusting Reed and them breaking Songbird outta MaxTac custody, bc surprise the Blackwall connection makes you go cyberpsycho. And she makes it to the derelict Militech lab that you go into alone alone, bc Johnny gets sliced and your comms are fucked. And there’s this whole sequence of almost dying, being hunted alien isolation style by a Blackwall AI-controlled spider mech, and then you find Songbird and she begs you to kill her. Begs. And Vin just… cant.
It’s ironic coming from him considering so many of his dumb decisions are an expression of his suicidality, but he helps. He continues to help!
And even after, he’s treated like shit. Reed keeps stonewalling him. President Myers is a cunt who cordially reminds him of the oath he took and the nice, tight leash she has around his neck.
And then? When he’s finally “rescued”? ||he doesnt even say goodbye to anyone. And that hurts the most. Arasaka ending sucked, sure, but this? No rooftop talk with Misty. No goodbye to Vik. Just a text explaining he’ll be outta town for a bit. And then it ends up being two years. He’s in a coma for two years. Alone. In Langley.
And when he wakes up, Reed continues. To. Stonewall. Him. Keeps it vague. Apologizes, sure, but even now he cannot bring himself to actually care. Which is understandable when you look at his character but. Vin is livid.
There was no closure. No guarantee he’d even wake up. He could have up and died and nobody would ever fucking know!
And then he gets back to NC and… oh.
Oh things changed. Things really changed:
And I just… the whole idea of Vin being forced into the background being both a relief and a terror to him is so… it’s so good. The idea that he lost everything again, but he now has control over that.
It fucks him up, that’s for sure. The dialog you have with Reed? With Vik? With Misty? Some real shit. He’s on the verge of that suicidality again, but he lived. He can live. He has control over that now.
And it’s for the first time in a long time, considering the fact he worked with arasaka counter-intel. He awaited death for so long, knowing it could come at any second, that there’s a… bitterness. In losing that feeling. A confusion in the fact he can just. Exist without consequence.
This is really the meat of it tho. The last bit. The fact that vin is both the exact same man he was and someone entirely new.
The fact that he changed and didn’t. That he’s messy and there is no truly happy ending for him, that he’s just… human.
That in the end, he still fucked over Johnny (except at least in the arasaka ending, he was kinda understanding to a point. Here? He’s just angry. Dejected. Vin’s last words to him were that he couldn’t forgive him for the shit he’s done to his body) and still lost the game of life.
He still lost. But he lost in the best way possible.
The legend of V is out there, but he doesn’t have to be that. Live up to it. He can just be… him. And I think that’s all he really wants, in the end. To learn who he is and to be him. A chance to just exist without consequence. To not have to make choices on who gets harmed and why. To make choices of dire urgency. To just… breathe.
It just took so much for him to realize that, and it’s going to weigh on him for god knows how long (if not his whole life, whatever remains of it).