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Cyberpunk villain IS NOT the actual villain. Dare I say, if you compare Yorinobu with V, he’s arguably a better person. Arguably. But that bar isn’t super high lol!
In this video, I go over the life of Arasaka’s heir, as well as his motives and ultimate goals. And man, is he so much more complex than what meets the eye. Its amazing how perspective is used to change how we view Yorinobu, and how much replay value exists in Cyberpunk as a result. I only wish that V’s lifepaths had more unique punches to them. But that’s a subject for another day.
Let me know your thoughts on Yorinobu, the ideas shared in this video, and on Cyberpunk in the comments below. Thanks for watching guys!
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I love your tidbit about perspective – nothing more true in history and Today’s world …Great video and yeah bravo to cd project for putting such depth in all characters! I need phantom liberty characters done
An important part of Yorinobu's background that wasn't mentioned in Cyberpunk 2077…SPOILERS FOR A 20 YEAR OLD BOOK…at the time of the Fourth Corporate War, Saburo actually tried to use Soulkiller on Yorinobu. In the "Firefront: Shockwave" book, the final mission for players is the attack on the Arasaka Tower in 2023. One of your goals is to raid the computer servers of the tower (never labelled as Mikoshi in the text, but it must have been an early version of it) to extract the engrams of Soulkiller victims – primarily Alt Cunningham, who is still trapped there at this stage. But one of the other engrams is labelled "Yorinobu." The players' paymaster (Militech/NUSA) know about this and want the engram so that they can try and use him to control the Arasaka Corporation.
In the Cyberpunk RED material, it is revealed that the Yorinobu engram was actually of a body double/decoy that Yorinobu had long been employing. Which is why he was able to rapidly move back into the Corporation and family after Kei's death, as the technology in the 2020s wouldn't have allowed Yorinobu's engram to move into a cloned body all that easily.
Nevertheless, Yorinobu knew that Saburo had attempted to "kill" his son's body and put his mind/soul into a digital prison, all to protect the Corporation and Saburo's interests. Saburo's thinking was that he couldn't kill Yorinobu because Hanako had asked him not to, but Soulkiller wasn't /technically/ killing the wayward son…good enough for lawyers? Regardless, this action – and Yorinobu's awareness of it – must have had a MASSIVE impact on the relations between Saburo and Yorinobu. Frankly I'm surprised the pair made it to 2077 without the two of them killing each other.
One of the theories is that in the Devil's ending Yorinobu and Hanako work together to kill their father and save Nightcity from the nuclear attack, that he plans to carry out as his diary shows. And the whole story with Saburo taking over the Yorinobu's body is just a ruse to avoid retaliation from the Saburo's loyalists like Takemura.
Thanks
i love these videos!!, i really hope you do a deep dive into mr hands one day!
I hope CD Project Red does a cyberpunk 2 this world is so big that its hard to tackle everything in one game maybe 2 can be a prequel where we play as Jonny Silverhand if not someone completely new
Killing (or at least trying to kill) Saburo was automatically making the world a better place, so I'd forgive a lot of Yorinobu's sins for just that one. Often felt like there should have been at least one endgame option where V joins up with or otherwise comes to terms with Yorinobu.
One thing I find interesting, and a solid argument in favor of Yorinobu's deep game. After Konpeki, if Jackie's body is sent to Vik's, Arasaka has absolutely no trouble tracking it down and doing an immediate grab. Btw, I suspect that, if Jackie had been sent to his mother's, it was public enough and with enough well-armed dudes nearby to deter any Arasaka grab team.
Further note. After her "kidnapping / rescue", Hanako seems to have very little trouble tracking V down.
Yet, with all the resources of Arasaka, Yorinobu cannot track down or even put out a hit on this solitary merc who is doing all sots of high-profile stuff around town – including, for crying out loud., publicly hanging out with Kerry Eurodyne and Us-Cracks. Questions there, absolutely. 🙂
Never thought Yorinobu was actually Yoribrobu
Dude caught wind his dad was gonna steal his body and decided to destroy his dads company
What makes Yorinobu a hero is that he hated how his father didn't care about how people in Night City are suffering because of him and are turning to a life of crime just to get a simple meal and to pay rent. Not to mention he wanted his father's Corporation to burn and to set the world free from his father's influence. Sure, he may have done morality ambiguous things, but hey not all heroes are perfect or always sunshine and rainbows
My biggest issue with this game is that Yorinobu didn’t expect his father to return as an engram, especially when you consider he was likely aware his father was scheming to use him as his second life.
Yorinobu is a FASCINATING character, and if you go into a first playthrough with enough old Cyberpunk 20xx lore knowledge, you feel like some stuff doesn't quiiiite add up for him as you play and it's REALLY interesting! I think he was used super well in 2077
Regarding your statement that Yorinobu was probably the most likely Arasaka (maybe) to have been the kind of person to help, there is one other! The younger Michiko, now going by the surname Anderson, proud NUS citizen, and head of the Danger Gal Detective Agency! They've been getting paid off since the previous NUSA administration to mess with Arasaka! Also they're all cybernetically enhanced gun-toting ninja catgirl detectives, which is basically the best thing ever! She probably doesn't really have enough lore to cover in a video (especially in the 2077 context since she only appears at the board meeting in the Devil ending), but what is there is pretty neat and very fun. Anyway, she would probably help, but she also isn't using the Arasaka surname anymore so idk if she counts.
The canyon between rich and poor. That’s ever more evident only 4 years on from the game’s release. Pro athletes making 20-70 million a year and signing contracts that mean the Team owns their body. Seriously if you sign a contract, the team demands you get a specific surgery to repair an injury, and you don’t. You just voided your multi million dollar contract. Corporations have already taken the step to owning some of the most ubiquitous words in the English language, they can force employees to do what they require with their own bodies. Sure the fancy gadgets are decades away, but the seeds of Corporate takeover were planted decades ago and have already sprouted. They’ve already successfully changed the way property ownership works. If you purchase a house, vehicle or equipment with smart tech, you don’t actually own it. You are licensing its use.
I can’t believe I only just found your channel and I cannot wait to binge your content tomorrow. 😭🙏🏽
Somewhere between the Voodoo Boys and Johnny's old apartment I had the thought "I kind of wish I could help Yorinbou…" During the Devil, I wish I could have ended him just to really fuck things up.
I don't think you ever answered me, I asked if you wanted to get married on a previous video….
That being said, I've noticed you've wasted a lot of precious video minutes on things that are not cyberpunk and I suggest that you delete most of, no all of your non-cyberpunk videos and for everyone you delete replace it with three more cyberpunk videos.
I liked to believe that Yori always planned to embrace Johnnys engram. They were kindred spirits fighting for the same cause. Together they would have completely dismantled Arasaka. I dont think it was any accident his engram was chosen for the relic, least of all because of Johnnys relationship to Alt. Maybe they would have gotten along.
I'm eternally grateful for CDPR in making a secret hero in the story. Also it's great for the replayability of the game that the first time you play you're encouraged to take everything at face value, including Silverhand's "memories", but on the second playthrough, or maybe even towards the end of the first, things are not adding up, you begin to question, and for once it's not because of bad writing, but competent, multi-layered storytelling.
Building off the ending tangent, the similarities between Yorinobu and the two main characters, V and Johnny were the cherry of this tragic sundae. If circumstances were a bit different, if V could have had even a good half hour alone to talk with Yori, (I keep thinking about that secret tunnel Nicolas Cage lured the President into in National Treasure 2) things would have turned out much better for V, Yori, and the world in general.
One thing I wish we knew more about, is Danger Gal, a company run by the least prominent Arasaka family member. I wonder why her company, with it's HQ in Night City was completely missing from the game. It's a rabbit hole I want someone to dive deeper into, but there's very little out there to dig through.
fuck it we doing another playthrough
I love how no matter how you change your perspective on any character or aspect in this game's story or world building, it ALWAYS ends the same, horrible. It just really shows how much power even those at the top have at controlling our future or our ending, which is none. Even with the same ideals and wants, with the different means to do so, it can change your perspective on that person fundamentally, I saw Yorinobu at the top and completely disregarded the ideals and beliefs he may have had simply because arasaka, and I wouldnt expect someone who was part of that lineage would even understand what it's like for the average night citizen. It's all so nuanced and I just love this game and its ability to tell so many stories all at once.
It's so sad, that Yorinobu wanted Hanako safe, and Hanako made her loving brother the new vessel of her father. That's so heartbreaking. But also fitting for Cyberpunk.
The irony is that Arasaka isn't even the worst corp. Like yeah, they do bad stuff. But Biotechnica runs human experiments and murders people who might create like sustainable cheap food sources for the public. While Militech is LITERALLY the power behind the NUSA government. It's kinda implied by the one ending of the DLC that several years later when V comes back to Night City, Militech has full control of Night City and basically has it under martial law (which might actually be the plot or setting of the sequel).
If anything, Arasaka has always just been the most publically 'evil' corp. In part to Militech also interferring. Cause canonically (as the books/modules are confirmed canon alongside the game) Johnny AND Morgan Blackhand raided Arasaka Tower in two teams and Militech were actually the ones who set the whole thing up (which also confirms that Johnny's memories as an engram have been altered or rewritten entirely).
So essentially, in a weird roundabout way, the "bad" ending for Night City is actually having Arasaka collapse and pull out of Night City and giving way for Militech to take over undisputed. With the irony being that the "Destroy Arasaka" endings being often considered the best V endings. Which reinforces some of Mike Pondsmiths comments about how seeking going out in a blaze of glory actually makes the world worse, and that all the 'legends' of Cyberpunk aren't actually changing things for the better. They might get fame/wealth, maybe even disrupt a certain faction like Arasaka. But all it does is enable other corps to take power and often for the worse.
So Yorinobu, V, and Johnny are all ironically the villains in a roundabout way. They basically hyperfocus on Arasaka as being their personal enemies, and don't even actually consider the greater/wider results of just recklessly burning it all down. They only think, "If I kill the big-bad, then the day is saved!" Neglecting the fact someone else either needs to clean up the mess, or take the throne.