He’s an FIA agent through and through. He just does, what his superiors tell him. I wouldn’t call him a bad person but he never questions his orders.
yayecznica
Nah, he’s just too loyal to bad people
DoritoBanditZ
Short answer: Yes.
Long Answer: He is a bad Person because he is fully aware what happened to So-Mi at the hands of Myers, and despite claiming to care for her, he has not even spoken out against it. He also constantly says So-Mi deserves better and claims to want to help her, but his actions then show that he just tries to drag her back to Myers where she certainly won’t get any help. Which is comparable to someone dragging a slave back to their slaver, fully knowing what will await the slave.
He also says he dislikes Myers, claims he is helping her only because of his patriotism for the NUSA. He then proceeds to become Myers Lapdog, again. Even going as far as standing idly by while Myers mows down a entire Airport full of innocent people just to get to one Person. Last time i checked being patriotic is not an excuse to look the other way when your Leader commits War Crimes.
He also killed Tyler and Jacob.
On a Personal level he’s not a bad Person i think. But his actions definitely make him one. He knows Myers is a absolute power hungry Monster, yet he still follows her every Order. Blind loyalty can only excuse so much.
ApprehensiveBlood618
Yes, but no more so then half of NC, where he is average.
The world of Cyberpunk, there are very few actually good people. The rest are all bad to verious degrees and very few innocents.
BigTastyCJ
Reed is, as many do in Night City, just doing his job, do I think he is an out and out bad person, no, but i feel as though he has definitely been corrupted by the people he works with and for, and has done lots of bad things on the orders of bad people, but I feel as though he is slowly becoming more and more mute to his bad actions, causing him to become a worse person in the long run
InstructionFit950
Yes
EmotionalWerewolf271
Not a bad person, just someone who’s not too loyal to a bad cause. He still can redeem himself
Disastrous-Beat-9830
I don’t think Reed is necessarily good or bad. Rather, I think he is his own worst enemy.
The most interesting comment I’ve heard on portraying good and evil characters in storytelling comes from *Dimenson 20*’s Brennan Lee Mulligan. Granted, it was in the context of the *Downfall* mini-series on *Critical Role*, but he pointed out that good is so much more interesting than evil because an evil character has already made their choices. For a good character, the struggle is to keep staying good when one choice that you haven’t made yet could end up redefining you as evil in someone else’s eyes. I see that very much at work in *Cyberpunk 2077* because Night City is a place that does not expect you to be good; at best, it encourages you to be evil by passively giving you permission to follow the path of least resistance, and given the state of the world, that path of least resistance amounts to doing morally questionable things.
In Reed’s case, his moral compass has been twisted by people who gave up on their own morality a lifetime ago. He has been programmed to believe that anything that fulfills the NUSA’s objectives is good, and he justifies his bad actions because the idea of the NUSA — a stable, benevolent political entity — is what he is fighting for even when the reality of the NUSA does not live up to that promise. He is cognizant of that, but justifies it as acceptable because America has to get through this rough patch before the NUSA can become the entity that he believes it to be. His actions are supposed to fulfill that promise, even though there is an inherent contradiction in that the promise is being made by people who cannot be trusted to keep it. Reed seems to have convinced himself that if he just holds on for a little bit longer, then everything will get better.
Reed is his own worst enemy because he has every opportunity to walk away, but never takes it. He still feels guilt or shame over the failed operation that left him and Alex stranded in Dogtown, and has pinned his redemption to saving Songbird. He’s convinced that he knows best and has accounted for every variable, but he consistently underestimates everyone else. He rationalises Songbird’s treason by claiming some insight into her psychology, but then seems surprised that she was willing to turn against him when backed into a corner. He’s oblivious to the fact that his salvation will mean her condemnation, but it is ironic that her salvation will cost him nothing if he just walks away. In the end, he’s addicted to the life he claims to hate, and he doesn’t even realise it. In the same way that Johnny’s bombing of Arasaka Tower was used by the corporation to make themselves stronger, Reed’s quasi-rebellion against the NUSA as the only honest man in the organisation will just be used by the NUSA.
He’s neither good nor evil. He’s just a man who thinks he has far more control than he actually does, and whose belief has been encouraged by people who would seek to exploit it.
Kalaaleq93
Not necessarily, but he’s too loyal despite knowing everything.
“Who’s the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?” -Obi-Wan.
We can ask ourselves: Who’s the worst person, the worst person or the person who follows them?
ReplyNotficationsOff
Probably not before his sleeper agent state ended and went back to work. Most government agents are bad I would think .
Kalaam_Nozalys
Actions speak louder than words, and for all his nice words his actions are all terrible.
He is a hypocrite or coward.
South-Cod-5051
no, good and bad are simplistic world views, especially in Cyberpunk.
for the world to function, people like Reed and Takemura are essential, people like him need to do the dirty work and sacrifice their conscience, become villains so that the rest of us can live in peace, ignorance, hedonistic lifestyle and freedom.
in the grand scheme of things, Reed is alright, his thought process is the correct one, despite Songbird being his creation, she can never be free, she is just too dangerous to be let lose from a public safety perspective.
theman3099
Good and bad don’t exist in night city. You could argue Reed is good because he’s a law abiding citizen who is loyal to the NUSA while V is a literal criminal, however, when the people in power are evil themselves, are you truly good for following them and are you truly bad for opposing them?
ApatiteBuzzUltraRed
I’d say he’s man of his words. In the PL ending ,after 2 years all V’s chooms leave him except, Vic , Misty, Reed , Rogue .
Advanced-Page-4273
I would rather say that he’s neutral, because he’s blindly too loyal for NUSA and Myers. Reed is also too loyal for his old ideals, which sometimes don’t lead to happy endings.
Shizanketsuga
It’s not as simple as that. He is an extreme consequentialist. Not even cold-blooded murder is off the table if it serves what he believes to be the greater good. The big problem with that is that he believes that, at least for the most part, the greater good aligns with the goals of his superiors, and considering his superiors some severe doubts about that are certainly warranted. Failing to acknowledge that and to act on those doubts is, especially for somebody as perceptive as Reed, a sign that he is at the very least bad at being his own person. He drank too much of the Kool-Aid.
Stardama69
No. He’s merely Meyer’s bitch and occasional attack dog. He’s not evil, just not capable of seeing things through any prism other than that of his job. Proof is, his employers screwed him hard and yet he later came back asking for more because “that’s part of the job”.
notgonnareadthis
Literally CIA.
ehjhockey
He is idealistic but his ideals are dogma. They don’t get questioned. He does not second guess his choices. And he is genuinely prepared to die for them.
He is the mirror for Johnny the way SoMi is a mirror for V. Johnny hates corpos as a religion and he is the pope, messiah, and Holy Ghost of his own personal anti-corpo death cult. The same dogmatic certainty as Reed with no consideration as to what will happen if he actually accomplishes what he set out to.
The nuke made Johnny a terrorist, the following narrative was controlled by the corporate media, and Arasaka’s tower is still there. The people who suffered the most from his actions were rank and file middle management types, and the Nomads who cleaned up the radioactive debris from the destroyed tower. Getting SoMi to Meyers is a bad in so many ways, and it takes Reed years to see it. And he is completely powerless to do anything about it. But the only viable alternative for either of them is death. To both of them, it had to be done.
HAKERAV
Not full on bad but in the moral gray area.
incontinenciasumma
He does bad things but feels bad about them. Yeah, he is a bad person, with conscience, but still a bad person.
Jeebus_crisps
I think he’s his own worst enemy, fully aware of the shit he does but too uncompromisingly loyal that he’s incapable of doing anything else. There’s so many instances where he agrees shits fucked up, but just blows it off with “part of the job”.
Hellsinger7
He works in intelligence, that’s his job to do dirty work.
001-ACE
Hes a very stupid person
Scotsman86
He’s not a bad person because none of his decisions are his own effectively. He has no freedom to make judgement calls. He gets told to do something and he has to do it at any means.
He’s a good agent which makes him a bad person from an outside observer looking in. If he had more freedom though, he’d likely be a good person who would view Songbird going free as the right decision.
Kimnilsson1992
He not exactly good but he is not even close to beeing on the same scumbag level as Songbird
05032-MendicantBias
I think the phrase “I’m just following orders” apply here.
DragorovichGames
Yes but no. He has good intentions going in, but we all know how well good intentions go in nightcity.
urlond
Reed only does what he knows best, and that is being the dog that he is. He serves Myers as she is his boss, and top ranking official and will do everything she needs done regardless of outcome.
em_paris
He is, unfortunately, a shell of a person. He is beyond good or bad at this point. He will do horrible things that make him feel like shit just because he’s ordered to. He believes his life and decisions are out of his hands. I feel really sorry for him, but he’s a warrior in a war that never ends. I was happy to see him with a belly and a desk job.
Eternal-Living
Compared to what? Compared to most normal real life people? Absolutely. Compared to anybody in the cyberpunk world? Hes pretty average on the morality scale lol
36 Comments
Screenshot by me
He murders for the NUSA, I‘d say yea
He’s an FIA agent through and through. He just does, what his superiors tell him. I wouldn’t call him a bad person but he never questions his orders.
Nah, he’s just too loyal to bad people
Short answer: Yes.
Long Answer: He is a bad Person because he is fully aware what happened to So-Mi at the hands of Myers, and despite claiming to care for her, he has not even spoken out against it. He also constantly says So-Mi deserves better and claims to want to help her, but his actions then show that he just tries to drag her back to Myers where she certainly won’t get any help. Which is comparable to someone dragging a slave back to their slaver, fully knowing what will await the slave.
He also says he dislikes Myers, claims he is helping her only because of his patriotism for the NUSA. He then proceeds to become Myers Lapdog, again. Even going as far as standing idly by while Myers mows down a entire Airport full of innocent people just to get to one Person. Last time i checked being patriotic is not an excuse to look the other way when your Leader commits War Crimes.
He also killed Tyler and Jacob.
On a Personal level he’s not a bad Person i think. But his actions definitely make him one. He knows Myers is a absolute power hungry Monster, yet he still follows her every Order. Blind loyalty can only excuse so much.
Yes, but no more so then half of NC, where he is average.
The world of Cyberpunk, there are very few actually good people. The rest are all bad to verious degrees and very few innocents.
Reed is, as many do in Night City, just doing his job, do I think he is an out and out bad person, no, but i feel as though he has definitely been corrupted by the people he works with and for, and has done lots of bad things on the orders of bad people, but I feel as though he is slowly becoming more and more mute to his bad actions, causing him to become a worse person in the long run
Yes
Not a bad person, just someone who’s not too loyal to a bad cause. He still can redeem himself
I don’t think Reed is necessarily good or bad. Rather, I think he is his own worst enemy.
The most interesting comment I’ve heard on portraying good and evil characters in storytelling comes from *Dimenson 20*’s Brennan Lee Mulligan. Granted, it was in the context of the *Downfall* mini-series on *Critical Role*, but he pointed out that good is so much more interesting than evil because an evil character has already made their choices. For a good character, the struggle is to keep staying good when one choice that you haven’t made yet could end up redefining you as evil in someone else’s eyes. I see that very much at work in *Cyberpunk 2077* because Night City is a place that does not expect you to be good; at best, it encourages you to be evil by passively giving you permission to follow the path of least resistance, and given the state of the world, that path of least resistance amounts to doing morally questionable things.
In Reed’s case, his moral compass has been twisted by people who gave up on their own morality a lifetime ago. He has been programmed to believe that anything that fulfills the NUSA’s objectives is good, and he justifies his bad actions because the idea of the NUSA — a stable, benevolent political entity — is what he is fighting for even when the reality of the NUSA does not live up to that promise. He is cognizant of that, but justifies it as acceptable because America has to get through this rough patch before the NUSA can become the entity that he believes it to be. His actions are supposed to fulfill that promise, even though there is an inherent contradiction in that the promise is being made by people who cannot be trusted to keep it. Reed seems to have convinced himself that if he just holds on for a little bit longer, then everything will get better.
Reed is his own worst enemy because he has every opportunity to walk away, but never takes it. He still feels guilt or shame over the failed operation that left him and Alex stranded in Dogtown, and has pinned his redemption to saving Songbird. He’s convinced that he knows best and has accounted for every variable, but he consistently underestimates everyone else. He rationalises Songbird’s treason by claiming some insight into her psychology, but then seems surprised that she was willing to turn against him when backed into a corner. He’s oblivious to the fact that his salvation will mean her condemnation, but it is ironic that her salvation will cost him nothing if he just walks away. In the end, he’s addicted to the life he claims to hate, and he doesn’t even realise it. In the same way that Johnny’s bombing of Arasaka Tower was used by the corporation to make themselves stronger, Reed’s quasi-rebellion against the NUSA as the only honest man in the organisation will just be used by the NUSA.
He’s neither good nor evil. He’s just a man who thinks he has far more control than he actually does, and whose belief has been encouraged by people who would seek to exploit it.
Not necessarily, but he’s too loyal despite knowing everything.
“Who’s the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?” -Obi-Wan.
We can ask ourselves: Who’s the worst person, the worst person or the person who follows them?
Probably not before his sleeper agent state ended and went back to work. Most government agents are bad I would think .
Actions speak louder than words, and for all his nice words his actions are all terrible.
He is a hypocrite or coward.
no, good and bad are simplistic world views, especially in Cyberpunk.
for the world to function, people like Reed and Takemura are essential, people like him need to do the dirty work and sacrifice their conscience, become villains so that the rest of us can live in peace, ignorance, hedonistic lifestyle and freedom.
in the grand scheme of things, Reed is alright, his thought process is the correct one, despite Songbird being his creation, she can never be free, she is just too dangerous to be let lose from a public safety perspective.
Good and bad don’t exist in night city. You could argue Reed is good because he’s a law abiding citizen who is loyal to the NUSA while V is a literal criminal, however, when the people in power are evil themselves, are you truly good for following them and are you truly bad for opposing them?
I’d say he’s man of his words. In the PL ending ,after 2 years all V’s chooms leave him except, Vic , Misty, Reed , Rogue .
I would rather say that he’s neutral, because he’s blindly too loyal for NUSA and Myers. Reed is also too loyal for his old ideals, which sometimes don’t lead to happy endings.
It’s not as simple as that. He is an extreme consequentialist. Not even cold-blooded murder is off the table if it serves what he believes to be the greater good. The big problem with that is that he believes that, at least for the most part, the greater good aligns with the goals of his superiors, and considering his superiors some severe doubts about that are certainly warranted. Failing to acknowledge that and to act on those doubts is, especially for somebody as perceptive as Reed, a sign that he is at the very least bad at being his own person. He drank too much of the Kool-Aid.
No. He’s merely Meyer’s bitch and occasional attack dog. He’s not evil, just not capable of seeing things through any prism other than that of his job. Proof is, his employers screwed him hard and yet he later came back asking for more because “that’s part of the job”.
Literally CIA.
He is idealistic but his ideals are dogma. They don’t get questioned. He does not second guess his choices. And he is genuinely prepared to die for them.
He is the mirror for Johnny the way SoMi is a mirror for V. Johnny hates corpos as a religion and he is the pope, messiah, and Holy Ghost of his own personal anti-corpo death cult. The same dogmatic certainty as Reed with no consideration as to what will happen if he actually accomplishes what he set out to.
The nuke made Johnny a terrorist, the following narrative was controlled by the corporate media, and Arasaka’s tower is still there. The people who suffered the most from his actions were rank and file middle management types, and the Nomads who cleaned up the radioactive debris from the destroyed tower. Getting SoMi to Meyers is a bad in so many ways, and it takes Reed years to see it. And he is completely powerless to do anything about it. But the only viable alternative for either of them is death. To both of them, it had to be done.
Not full on bad but in the moral gray area.
He does bad things but feels bad about them. Yeah, he is a bad person, with conscience, but still a bad person.
I think he’s his own worst enemy, fully aware of the shit he does but too uncompromisingly loyal that he’s incapable of doing anything else. There’s so many instances where he agrees shits fucked up, but just blows it off with “part of the job”.
He works in intelligence, that’s his job to do dirty work.
Hes a very stupid person
He’s not a bad person because none of his decisions are his own effectively. He has no freedom to make judgement calls. He gets told to do something and he has to do it at any means.
He’s a good agent which makes him a bad person from an outside observer looking in. If he had more freedom though, he’d likely be a good person who would view Songbird going free as the right decision.
He not exactly good but he is not even close to beeing on the same scumbag level as Songbird
I think the phrase “I’m just following orders” apply here.
Yes but no. He has good intentions going in, but we all know how well good intentions go in nightcity.
Reed only does what he knows best, and that is being the dog that he is. He serves Myers as she is his boss, and top ranking official and will do everything she needs done regardless of outcome.
He is, unfortunately, a shell of a person. He is beyond good or bad at this point. He will do horrible things that make him feel like shit just because he’s ordered to. He believes his life and decisions are out of his hands. I feel really sorry for him, but he’s a warrior in a war that never ends. I was happy to see him with a belly and a desk job.
Compared to what? Compared to most normal real life people? Absolutely. Compared to anybody in the cyberpunk world? Hes pretty average on the morality scale lol
Yes.
Goverment Marionette the best one
Nah, he’s a W mans