Hello, everyone! And welcome to another PE proposal for another Cyberpunk villain. Following the success of the infamous Adam Smasher, I've decided to bring in another major villain for the franchise. And while she will be a tougher case than Adam given the heinous standards of the franchise, I can say with full confidence that she still easily passes the standards given her actions and her motivations. And she may have a small appearance in the game she appeared in, but her actions definitely have an impact.
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you: Maman Brigitte.
What's the work?[]
Cyberpunk is a sci-fi dystopian multi-media franchise that was kickstarted by R. Talsorian Games' Cyberpunk. It tells stories of the harsh and miserable life in the setting of Cyberpunk, where society has broken down, the government has become inffectual, and anything that can be a good life must be obtained by working for one of the mega-corps who basically control the world, such as Arasaka Corporation. It's also very common to obtain and modify one's body with cybernetic augmentations, but the stacking up too much cyberware will cause a person to go insane, which people call "cyber-psychosis.". The lore of the franchise revolves around Night City, California.
For this particular work, we are diving into Cyberpunk 2077, the 2020 action-adventure video game that follows the story of the solo mercenary named V, whose life gets turned upside down following a failed heist at the Konpeki Plaza, and is betrayed by a fixer who shoots him/her dead in the head. But he/she is unexpectedly revived by a relic he/she placed in their head, which is actually a construct of one of Night City's legends, Johnny Silverhand (played by the awesome Keanu Reeves), which is slowly erasing V's personality and will eventually kill him/her and allow Johnny to take control. With time running out for the merc, V must make a choice: find a cure or resign themselves to their fate, while also tying up any loose ends.
Who is Mamam Brigitte? What has she done?[]
Maman Briggite is the manipulative and treacherous matriarch of the Voodoo Boys, a Haitian gang that resides in Pacifica, specializingzed in hacking. She is also one of the greater-scope villains of the game, alongside the late Saburo Arasaka himself.
Background[]
From what we know about this woman, Brigitte was born and raised in Haiti. But following the native country's devastation due to earthquakes and several disasters, she and other Haitians decided to leave Haiti and move to Pacifica, Night City. Sometime later, she became a member of the Voodoo Boys before she eventually became the criminal organization's new leader. Like most of the Voodoo Boys, Brigitte was dedicated to discovering the Old Net's secrets. To do this, she would frequently scour the Blackwall for a safe way to pass through it by contacting the rogue intelligences on the other side. Brigitte and the Voodoo Boys hoped to gain favor with these AIs once they were free because they thought that eventually the Blackwall would fall and the wild AIs outside would break free to cause chaos in the net. Because of her and the gang's constant probing, they gained the attention of NetWatch, and they went ahead to stop them.
Cyberpunk 2077[]
In hope of obtaining a safe passage beyond the Blackwall, she decided to seek communication with the digit ghost in the Net, Alt Cunningham, using the engram of one of Night City's legends and Alt's old flame, Johnny Silverhand. Learning that it was in the possession of Yorinobu Arasaka in the form of the Relic prototype biochip, she decided to hire Evelyn Parker to find out where it was kept by braindancing and to steal it. However, after learning of her failure to steal the chip following Saburo's death and attempting to betray her, Brigitte hacked and spiked Evelyn to cover her tracks, leaving her half-comatose as a result. However, around the same time, Ti Neptune, one of Brigitte's lieutenants, discovered that a NetWatch agent had accessed their system and mapped out the Voodoo Boys' data fortress in Pacifica, but he and Brigitte were quickly hit with black ICE and frozen by the agent Bryce Mosley.
The two were kept in stasis by Mosley, until one of Brigitte's lieutenants, Placide, hired V to infiltrate the Grand Imperial Market, free them, and kill the agent. Following their work, V went to the Voodoo Boys' hideout to talk to Brigitte, who revealed her presence to help defuse a confrontation between Placide and the mercenary. When she found that the biochip she wanted was in V's brain, she brought them along to help her plan, explaining that she needed to use a piece of the biochip's memory to get in touch with Alt so that Alt would recognize the memory as Johnny's engram. Brigitte claims that she can take the biochip off of V's head if they assist her, but it turns out that this is a lie, and she has no intention of assisting them because she thinks they will perish in the process. She then enters the Net and unlocks the fragment of the biochip's memory before sending V through to the other side of the Blackwall. This then leads to possible outcomes:
- If V took Mosley's deal: If V took Mosley's deal, NetWatch will appear in the Net to attack Brigitte and the Voodoo Boys. However, Alt quickly flatlines Brigitte and her crew to prevent further conflict and NetWatch tracking her down.
- If V did not take Mosley's deal: After V returns from Cyberspace, Brigitte express surprise that they survived, while V angrily confronts her for manipulating them, something Brigitte is unapolgetic for and threatens V that Alt can't protect them since they aren't in the realmspace.
- If V decides to settle the score: Wanting revenge for being decieved by them and to avenge Evenlyn, V initiated a fight with them, killing Brigitte and many of her Voodoo Boys (including potentially Placidie).
- If V decides to leave the Voodoo Boys: Although annoyed with them alive and threatening them, if V decides to leave, wanting to do anymore with the Voodoo Boys, she begrudingly allows them to leave. This would make her a Karma Houndi since she doesn't really make anymore appearances in the main storyline.
Mitigating Factors?[]
Yeah, no. Again, Night City is full of many criminals and mercenaries, but the majority of them are proven to be decent people, as flawed as they can be. Additionally, a number of criminal gang leaders, including Brick of Maelstrom, as well as some gangs, like the Mox and the Valentinos, are shown to be amiable and reasonably decent individuals.
But Brigitte? Yeah, she has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
Firstly, despite her seemingly affable behavior, she is incredibly haughty and manipulative, as she tends to antagonize her freelance assets like V for small reasons and has no qualms about manipulating and betraying them. And despite the Voodoo Boys' loyalty towards her, she doesn't appear to share that loyalty, since she used her second-in-command Neptune as a human shield against NetWatch, taking the brunt of the neutral shock to save herself, while also being pretty dismisive of her loyal enforcer Placide, considering him to be a dumb brute.
There is a moment in the game if you don't attack the Voodoo Boys, where it is mentioned that she seeks to bring the entire Haitian community in Night City with her beyond the Blackwall, suggesting that she does care to some degree. But I really find this doubtful, because we really don't know that to be true and considering how she used her second-in-command as a human shield and looking down on her loyal enforcers (both of whom are Haitians), this moment seems even more questionable.
So overall, no. This woman doesn't seem to have any redeeming qualities nor mitigating factors at all.
Heinous Standards[]
OK, as I mentioned before, the heinous standards in the franchise are very high, as it contains a lot of heinous crimes such as murder, torture, assault, rape, horrific experiments, trafficking, etc. And 2077 is no stranger to these heinous standards. And yet, despite the massive heinous standards, I feel like Maman Brigiite passes the standards quite well, even when competed with the likes of Arasaka, Adam Smasher, and a few vile scumbags to name.
Firstly, let's go over her and the gang's basic actions. You see, she and the Voodoo Boys are heavily infamous in Night City mainly because of their despicable trait: their tendencies to backstab freelace assests. Due to their xenophobic nature towards anyone who is not affiliated with their gang, she and the Voodoo Boys tend to backstab their hired assets, regardless if they succeeded or not. It doesn't help that she and the Voodoo Boys tend to antagonize their assests for the smallest and pettiest of reasons. Even V and Johnny comes to absolutely despised them, with the two expressing relief when she and the rest of the Voodoo Boys are killed.
Now why do I bring her backstabbing traits up? Because that's connected with what she did in the overall story of the game. You see, the Reliec Heist that was set up by Evelyn and Dex? That was because of Maman Brigitte. During the events of the game, it was revealed that Brigitte hired Evenlyn to steal the reliec biochip Yorinobu kept in the plaza. This makes her indirectly responisble for what happened to V (since they had to place in the biochip in their head, which would lead to severe consquences), as well as the death of their best friend Jackie Welles and the netrunner T-Bug.
And following the heist's failure, she betrays Evenlyn, hacking and spiking half of her brain which would lead to her traumatic conga line due to being half-comtose, such as being raped by Woodman several times, and later she was given to Fingers, a peverted and disgusting ripper who was unable to fix her. Then he sold her to the Scavs, who do film snuff braindances. While we don't know what they did to her, considering the state she was in and the things the Scavs do... yeah, you can pretty much figure out what she endured. And sadly, because of such a traumatic experience, she committed suicide. And keep in mind, this is because of Brigitte frying her brain. Evenlyn's trauma conga line and death even had a personal effect on her close friend Judy Alvarez, who reacts with a vengeful desire towards those who hurt her such as Woodman and Fingers.
She also manipulates V into helping her and the Voodoo Boys, promising to help save their life, only for her to lie as she wanted them for a different purpose. And she also tried to spike V as well, even after helping kill the NetWatch agent. And what is this purpose she has in the game? Well, she wanted to use the consciousness of Johnny to make contact with his old flame turned AI Alt. And the reason for this? She wanted to use Alt to cast down the Blackwall surrounding the ruined cyberspace to allow hordes of malevolent AIs to undercover secrets of the Old Net, wage a hopeless war, and destroy humanity all while she joins forces with them in exchange for sparing her life. Their probing of the Blackwall even gain the attention of Netwatch, who went ahead to stop their attempts.
Remember, breaching the Blackwall is among the most vile things anyone can do, because if it gets breached, many rogue AIs will kill humanity in a horrible and painful manner and can cause massive-scale destruction since they can even possess things like vehicles (cars and planes) and crash into things. Brigitte is heavily aware of these consequences, but she doesn't care as long as she survives. And only she, since she clearly doesn't care about her men despite their loyalty to her. It's also worth mentioning that Slider, one of Brigitte's former lieutenants, left the Voodoo Boys because he found her obsession to tamper with the Blackwall to be too far. If criminals like him are heavily against messing with the Blackwall, that is a clear sign of how terrible the woman truly is.
And yeah, the resources are very high in Cyberpunk, but that isn't really a problem for Brigitte since she is the leader of the Voodoo Boys, a hacking organization, with Brigitte herself being a netrunner. Who tends to antagonize and backstab her freelance assests and seeks to free rogue AIs from the Blackwall and cause a hopeless war with humanity and have them destroyed, all while she has a chance of survival.
So yeah, with her back-stabbing traits, being indirectly responisble for the Reliec Heist, subjecting Evenlyn to a traumatic conga line, manipulating V, and attempting to breach the Blackwall in order to join forces with rogue AIs who will destroy humanity, I say she passes big time.
Final Verdict[]
A small but confident yes to this treacherous back-stabbing snake.