Given that the Voodoo Boys’ questline is the only hard requirement to start the Phantom Liberty expansion in Cyberpunk 2077, many players will find themselves targeting it first to start cozying up to Idris Elba ASAP—but the penultimate quest will offer you a choice that can’t just be glossed over in your Dogtown dash.
You’ll be tasked by the Voodoo Boys netrunner gang to track down a Netwatch agent—essentially the Internet police—that’s been trying to take them down from the comfort of an abandoned mall nearby. However, when you actually reach the agent, one Bryce Mosley, he has a different story for you: the Voodoo Boys are using you as what they call a “ranyon”, a disposable agent meant to get fried along with him. At this point, you’ll be tasked to choose between the Voodoo Boys and Netwatch—but is Mosley telling the truth or just trying to save his own skin?
What’s the best choice in I Walk The Line?
The best choice for both V and the world at large is to side with Netwatch. Allow me to explain. Even on a small scale, Mosley is demonstrably correct despite his shady corporate ties. If you opt to knock him out and connect to his system, his warning proves to hold weight, as the Voodoo Boys then try to kill you remotely for your troubles. While Netwatch is beholden to corporate interests and not entirely trustworthy, the Voodoo Boys clearly see you as a disposable loose end and are willing to kill you for the crime of accepting a job from them.
But as is often the case in Night City, that’s not all. If you connect to Mosley’s system, the Voodoo Boys also take the opportunity to wipe out every Netwatch agent in the country, leaving the Net without any oversight. Johnny might argue that this is a good thing, if not for the fact that the Voodoo Boys’ stated goal is to break through the Blackwall.
The Blackwall is a massive cordon separating the usable Net from the lawless domain of rogue AIs, preventing both human netrunners from crossing over and meeting their swift deaths and AIs from crossing over into the public Net and influencing the real world. With nearly everyone in 2077 chipped with cyberware, the damage that unfettered AI could potentially inflict would be literally society-ending, far above the scale of the quickhacks you can access. Think of it as if dark web viruses could kill you in real life—and Netwatch are the only ones maintaining the Blackwall and keeping it intact.
The Voodoo Boys, on the other hand, believe that the day of reckoning at the hands of the rogue AIs is nigh and are trying to shatter the Blackwall both to accelerate this and throw in with what they believe is the winning team. Taking out all of its caretakers in one fell swoop is certainly a huge step towards that goal—meaning that, in short, V might have accidentally consigned the world to an AI-powered apocalypse by putting their faith in the Voodoo Boys. Oops!
It’s best for everyone, V included, if you trust the corps this one time. The topic of the Blackwall and rogue AI is expanded on massively in the Phantom Liberty expansion, perhaps hinting at a potential direction that the in-development sequel could take. For now, though, you’re better off just using the Voodoo Boys as sources of hidden treasure.
Published: Nov 11, 2023 05:09 pm