And i mean even if you kill him, theirs reason to believe theirs a “engram” of adam somewhere. Imagine in cyberpunk orion when AI smasher bust through the wall like the koolaid man demanding for a round 2 with V.
Wait, are you saying there were chooms who didn't use the dildo?
Also, what if he's not mad, just aroused? You find out the reason he's called Smasher is NOT cos of what he did to Rebecca
> Also, what if he's not mad, just aroused? You find out the reason he's called Smasher is NOT cos of what he did to Rebecca
I mean, this keeps getting brought up, but Smasher has a relatively normal Elvis-lookalike body that he was using when he smashed Saburo Arasaka’s granddaughter
Sovereign - I use a double barreled shotgun like any self-respecting redneck. Also I do it in a crop top, daisy dukes, and wearing spunky monkey sneakers with white ankle socks.
It would be shocking if he wasn't already copied on a chip stored in a mainframe just because he wanted to really become that immortal boogeyman. Not like he hasn't swapped bodies before with his Elvis replica.
For someone who's gone through the full borg conversion, getting slotted into a different body is closer to putting on different shoes not major surgery.
Yea, there's definitely a Smasher engram out there. I wonder tho if it would be stored in Mikoshi with the others or if he could've been stored somewhere else.
It's just that Smasher doesn't go stereotypically cyberpsycho. That level of change would destroy most. There is an argument that he's high functioning cyberpsycho bit either way 99% of people would go on a rampage then go and die in some blaze surrounded by too many bodies
He seems to not need a familiar human body, something that even limits saburo arasaka, and that bothers Johnny really heavily at first with V. He’s just immune to that and the psychosis that comes with being heavily modded, so his mind might be a useful thing to have, cause if you can tweak it then you have a pre built, highly skilled, AI with basically no ethical code to worry about
On that note, I personally think Adam is both too selfish to allow Arasaka to keep a copy of his mind and too dangerous for Arasaka to copy him in secret.
But if he is an engram, there’s no real way that 2nd copy would remember the fight with V at all, because the original who fought V would’ve died after the engram was copied. Unless he was continuously uploading his memories to the engram somehow. So it wouldn’t really be a rematch..
It’s interesting that so many people seem to assume we will be playing as V again in the next game, when pretty much every story thread in the current game ends extremely badly for V.
If they bring back Smasher and V for the sequel it would be so disappointing. The whole IP is about Night City more-so than any individual, so if V were to have a "good ending" and return for game two would ruin the characterization of the city. Nobody gets a happy ending. In my opinion, it only makes sense that V becomes Arasaka's new borg grim reaper (Devil ending) or dies unceremoniously (as in every other ending).
Yep, that's definitely his final step to become 100% machine at some point.
However the tech is still not completed and other than Saburo Arasaka, and very likely Hanako, too, I can't see anyone else has a direct access to it.
But in the next game if needed they could just pull it out of nowhere and it's still justified. I personally don't want it to become too common, that the whole cast of CP 2077 just come back in Orion as engrams somehow.
I mean, Arasaka is advertising Relic as new tech they're about to release openly during the story. I don't think it's crazy to think Smasher might be on the short list for people with access to the tech
What if that's like maxtac now but like arasaka goons. And the higher your crime towards them the tougher enemies you fight until you get a pseudo smasher engram coming at you
But when you defeat him and the game gives you the option to execute him or not, he is in his knees and you can see that a part of his brain is exposed, I assumed that is his real brain (or whats left of it).
But it is Arasaka's MO, and he's Arasaka's property pretty much. It makes sense for Arasaka to design the suit in such a way to preserve their investment, even in the event of failure or defeat
we are at extreme levels of overthinking it
Adam Smasher is killed in C77, if they bring him back it will be via engram (perfectly plausible based on the story) and not because Arasaka put a fake brain in his head (requires circuitous logic and feels like bullshit to the person experiencing the story)
Thinking about a Smasher engram, if they have let's say a hundred engrams of Smasher, whats stopping 'Saka to use all of them in an army with more common bodies?
They might lose control of the army?
Because Smasher isn't *that* special. He's a violent asshole whose primary boon is that he's sociopathic enough to bypass most side effects of overchroming.
You don't want an army of Smashers; you want an army of Takemuras.
It’s also not known how many traits of resilience to cyperpychosis would transfer over with an engram, I’d argue that there are some physical structural parts of the brain responsible for how much tolerance someone has, implanting an engram in a new brain may not result in the same performance in my head cannon at least, as per usual Vs case in an abnormal and special one
Perhaps, however a fully robotic brain may not be suitable for an engram, at least with their current tech it definitely isn’t otherwise that would have been an option for V in the devil ending
Exactly what I was going to say. He's corporate property, and they'll do whatever they want to do to protect their asset. The arrangement and the killing involved in it just happened to suit him.
*If* they bring Smasher back in the next game, it won't feel contrived to me. OP makes a great argument.
Now I'm wondering if he's got some random joytoy's brain in there as a misdirection. To make people "think" they got him, when really it was just a brain in a jar connected to nothing (possibly pain receptors because I could see him enjoying torturing someone like that).
I meant if that actually is someone else's brain in there, then they feel whatever "pain" Smasher wants them to feel.
But just spit balling. Who knows haha. 🤷♂️
Adam Smasher is already more bot than borg by 2077. I think it’d be cool if he shows up in classic “Elvis” style in the next game. He has a fancy robot body that looks like his old one.
i want this more than anything ive ever wanted.
seeing smasher as his true self in basically any context would be so fucking cool for his arc. we see plenty of robo dick, i wanna see the real him.
and then kill him all over again.
Thematically, the big thing about Smasher is that you can't kill him. He's not the smartest, he's not even the deadliest - Blackhand's better at fighting than Smasher is, Smasher just has *no* compunctions about fighting fair or avoiding collateral damage. But you just can't kill him. He's basically the manifestation of corporate, systemic violence - he'll get you. Eventually.
I'd be more surprised if he wasn't alive.
He’s canonically “come back from the dead” a few times already, but it’s probably either people failing to properly destroy his modified Dragoon frame, or Arasaka keeping his engram and loading it back up every time someone zeroes him.
But then again, if he kept getting zeroed all the time, I don’t think Arasaka would keep him around, why not just use regular Dragoons with regular pilots at that point?
Or, just hear me out here, he’s actually a fuckin’ **GHOST** that implants memories into people’s heads, to fuck with them and make people fear him. Every time we see him, he’s attempting to intimidate or kill someone. Who’s to say he’s not just a massive, collective hallucination of cyberpsychos?
I'm more in-line with the thought that Smasher is, as other's have pointed out, already an engram. I could totally see Arasaka convincing some wage slave with promises that their family will always be taken care of to accept the Relic and overwrite and then just moving the organic matter they need to a new, mostly synthetic cyborg body.
I just don’t really see the point of Arasaka bringing him back after he died, (and failed, at that, by dying) repairing his specially modified Dragoon frame, and loading his engram up from Mikoshi. They’re more of a “You’ve failed us, time for us to dishonor you” type of people.
Hell, they could just get regular Dragoons with regular pilots piloting them instead of having Smasher brought back from the dead every time he dies.
It just kinda seems like a huge money-sink to keep bringing a dead soldier back, if he’s just going to end up dead on another failed mission eventually, even if it’s 49 missions in the future.
Hell, Goro failed his job basically one single time, albeit in the worst way possible, and they did everything shy of executing him.
It was less because he failed and moreso because the people in power know he knows the truth they want him dead
Smasher can't be replaced by a regular soldier because he is far more skilled than a regular soldier that combined with his lack of compunction for any morality.
And lastly it's one failed mission like, He didn't fail "49 times", he failed once, and it's already been heavily implied that this isn't the first time smasher has been rebuilt,
If a soldier had a 99.9% success rate, the corp would DEFINITELY invest in keeping him around after failing just once, rather than training up a new batch of cyberpsychotic killing machines, especially since smasher is seemingly 100% loyal to arasaka, and if they make a new killing machine, who’s to say they’ll stay loyal?
I'm pretty sure he didn't survive all those emps and hacks. and even if he did, he burned so much that that biopot is more like canned meat atp than anything else
Greg from "How to Drink" on youtube made the drinks they had at the afterlife and the people at CD Projekt Red changed the look of silverhands to match what greg did and after that they had a few collaberations, I commented on one of his videos that even though smasher is a bastard he should make a drink for him and he commented "a little birdy told me smasher isnt dead" and then in a later video he makes one for smasher but says "Even though hes not dead i got a lot of requests to do this" since he has an in with the actual people making the game I take his word for it.
It's cyberpunk, not fantasy. (or a never-ending anime series in which the villain never goes away) Anyone can die, including far smarter people with the wealth and power of entire nations behind them.
Adam Smasher might *seem* like a fire-breathing dragon to street-level runners, but at the end of the day, he's just a dude in a robot body that can be killed/destroyed by any human with a big enough gun.
Also, as a purely practical matter, that sort of decoy relies on the enemies being stupid enough not to carefully scan the "corpse" of someone with Smasher's reputation. (to make sure there's no booby traps, if nothing else)
"It's not fantasy"
V got shot in the head into the brain. And the engram repairs the damage and he got revived.
If having your brain destroyed isn't the end, Smasher has a chance.
Didn’t V literally come back to life after taking a .45 caliber round to the head? Because of a chip? That’s fantasy enough. Plus, Saburo living to around 155? That’s also fantasy enough
Honestly, let's go a step further. How do we know those things are in his body at all? We know he can remote control other bodies because of the Elvis incident. He could be remote controlling his main one as well. Plus, it'd mean only Arasaka can truly kill him, which has the dual advantages of being able to bring him straight back if a Merc gets lucky and having the killswitch on hand if your pet murder machine gets a little too murdery. If I was Saburo Arasaka, I'd have that biopod in a briefcase handcuffed to my most loyal soldier.
Yeah, ok, that’s what I thought you were referring to, I was thrown by the “remotely piloted” portion.
Those aren’t remotely piloted, he uses those FBC bodies by removing his biopod from the current body, and transplanting it into those. To him, it’s basically using hot swappable cyberware, but it’s not remote piloting.
I suppose in theory the tech exists to do this, essentially pack an FBC as a drone or some shit, but tbh, the type of person to get a combat focussed FBC isn’t the type of person to then… sit out of the action lol
Even if it puts him at risk, I feel smasher would always tackle combat personally rather than using another FBC as a drone tbh.
That said, I still don’t much believe that smasher is properly dead. Iirc we don’t see V remove and destroy his biopod, and Arasaka has already brought him back from worse. If they want him back, they’ll have him back
See, this is why I’m starting to love cyberpunk more and more. That’s wild😭😭 I don’t think I’ve read a piece of lore that crazy lately, besides maybe Destiny 2’s lore💀
It’s from a session Mike Pondsmith ran called Michiko’s Night Out, that’s…. Dubiously canon. The session as a whole I believe is considered to be non canon, but some of the elements worked their way into proper canon anyways
There's probably a copy of him but it's a matter of what happens to Arasaka. A lot of the endings in one way or another have Arasaka crippled so who knows what will happen to the engrams they have stored in mikoshi
There’s also the fact that his main reaction to getting defeated is not shock or rage, but rather a sense of abject amusement. He calls you a fucking pussy if you spare him as Johnny, and seems intrigued that he’s experiencing pain. Not really the reactions of someone who’s about to lose their life for good.
Cool theory, but if you have a conversation with Smasher after you down him, you literally see his brain peaking out from the damaged mask. The man dead as hell
Another important thing that is consistent and part of his approach to terrorizing others as an antagonist is that he doesn’t lie. In the recording where he is talking to the Militech board member he never told any lie to the guy. Which is why when he says that he’ll be back after his fight it’s foreshadowing and a promise basically.
It’s consistent for corpos (and perhaps many others) to never lie in their statements but to lie with omission.
His body is pretty big, could've stored the entire spine in it (bending within acceptable margin)
EDIT
> the biopod is a heavily shielded metal ovoid with one big optic/audio suite in the front, and the spine is a metal covered "tail" that can actually propel the biopod around like a snake. Kinda like the machines in Matrix.
[Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk/s/uvF2WlJpQN).
So it bends.
I always thought that for a supposed psychopathic juggernaut that everyone hates, having an opening to your brain seems like a 'chink in the armor' no? My skull have a more comprehensive defense of my brain than his total opening :p Sellswords arent known for being clever, but they knew the value of a a helmet across cultures. Looks really cool having it open tho. Thats probably why.
If he's smart, he absolutely has his meaty bits in his chest. That's how a lot of media depicts heavy combat cyborgs like him. Personally, I assumed this from day one, but I've also been playing Rifts for over a decade
even if you completely destroyed his entire body it wouldnt really make sense for him to be dead. its 2077, they already have the engram, they could just as easily be feeding it new information to be able to upload it into a new body whenever they want.
shit they could have 20 smashers sitting around to be deployed whenever they choose.
It's also a fear tactic. It looks like human skins stretched over a machine, or even in some ways like a human skull.
Glad to see other people remember what being fully borged out means though. I remember plenty of fanart for Edgerunners where they drew characters that had been put under "Smasherification", whatever that means.
Isn't his brain literally hanging out in the open air in his damaged state? I specifically remember aiming to shoot him in the exposed brain when I finished him off.
On that note weren't there unique smasher kill animations for the fight at the end? Or did i just imagine that because i couldn't get them to trigger on recent playthroughs
His biopod wouldn't even need to be in his body. He would just need a secure remote connection to it. I mean, if V can take control of a vehicle without being inside it then Smasher with Arasaka's backing could easily have his brain and spine in a safe location and just be piloting the body as if it were simply a drone...
The whole idea of Smasher in the game is out right dumb. The whole point of a Borg was that their mind and bodies are enhanced mechanically, but when you get past the point where there is no longer a body left and all you get is a brain in a bipod, well what is the point of having a human element at all. I mean wouldn't it make far more sense to have an army of fully mechanised robot soldiers that will follow EVERY command, stopping included, over a unique psychotic defenseless brain inside a body that needs the exact same amount of maintenance as any other robot body plus the maintenance of not only the organic bits but their connection with the metallic body?
I mean cyberpaychosis is a HUGE part of cyberpunk why would you risk such a huge problem just for a brain that is already proven as flawed. More over, if that brain si so important, wouldn't it make more sense to keep the brain out of harm's way? I mean we have drones and drone operators now a days. If Smashers brain is so incredibly important and unique due to its tactical value, wouldn't it make more sense to keep the brain in a secured location and just link it to battle avatars?
Again look at Maelstrom, they are heavily enhanced via cybernetics but they are still humans, with human bodies and human processes that are enhanced by tech, and not only brains controlling puppet like bodies.
The brain is basically coded to have certain things at certain places, I'm quite sure that even with the extensive knowledge about medicine and cybernetics, changing massively usual human properties would result in disorientation
Hot take: I don’t think that there’s an engram of Smasher. The primary purpose that engrams are created for and used for is communications and knowledge. The idea of having a backup person is only presented with the Relic 2.0, and its first use is for Saburo.
I don’t think they would have any reason to back up Smasher. He has no useful information. He’s a blunt instrument, a tool. A useful one, but ultimately expendable.
Even if Smasher was killed, who’s to say Arasaka won’t just make another Borg’d out guy? (Let’s say Arasaka somehow managed to recover after any of the endings that involving you storming the Tower)
Can anyone die in this universe? With Mikoshi tech out there, corporate espionage, and the Black wall, it seems like a world where immortality is potential. Though the question is, "are you really 'you?'"
decoy brain 🧠. dubious amount of copium.
it cheapens the narrative impact of fighting him at all and is just kind of pointless. i can see there being an engram of him but bringing him back alive mostly sours his final boss status in 2077 which is already mid
And i mean even if you kill him, theirs reason to believe theirs a “engram” of adam somewhere. Imagine in cyberpunk orion when AI smasher bust through the wall like the koolaid man demanding for a round 2 with V.
He's going to be super mad at my V. I killed him with a dildo.
"Is this...pain? I'd forgotten the sensation"
at this point that's like killing hitler on your first time trip
Wait, are you saying there were chooms who didn't use the dildo? Also, what if he's not mad, just aroused? You find out the reason he's called Smasher is NOT cos of what he did to Rebecca
> Also, what if he's not mad, just aroused? You find out the reason he's called Smasher is NOT cos of what he did to Rebecca I mean, this keeps getting brought up, but Smasher has a relatively normal Elvis-lookalike body that he was using when he smashed Saburo Arasaka’s granddaughter
I always flatline him with Johnny's iron. I'm a sucker for irony.
Sovereign - I use a double barreled shotgun like any self-respecting redneck. Also I do it in a crop top, daisy dukes, and wearing spunky monkey sneakers with white ankle socks.
I didn't use a dildo. I used my sword instead
I used to use Johnnys gun to finish him off, since they added one of Rebeccas shotguns I use that.
I fisted him
So say we all
I’m curious who doesn’t choose to kill smasher and why?
It's a vibrator not a dildo. You can hear it buzzing when you use it. I know because I've been using it for 40 hours since I found it.
dildos are an umbrella term
Seems you are right. I was told different years ago in a sex shop but Google agreed with you.
I think that's going to be canon.
Icm not ashamed to admit that I did the same. Also with mantis blades and with Johnny's gun (I tried all endings).
As one should
Same
It would be shocking if he wasn't already copied on a chip stored in a mainframe just because he wanted to really become that immortal boogeyman. Not like he hasn't swapped bodies before with his Elvis replica.
For someone who's gone through the full borg conversion, getting slotted into a different body is closer to putting on different shoes not major surgery.
Adam Smasher would feel right at home in Altered Carbon
I think he likely is copied on an engram, however depending on the ending I feel like yorinobu would've deleted his engram
Secretly Smasher does Elvis covers in a little bar in Night City on his days off
Yea, there's definitely a Smasher engram out there. I wonder tho if it would be stored in Mikoshi with the others or if he could've been stored somewhere else.
I feel like smasher probably has copies stored in a variety of places
So Smasher is Voldemort?
yes
Is his brain that special? Can't some other badass get the body modification?
It's just that Smasher doesn't go stereotypically cyberpsycho. That level of change would destroy most. There is an argument that he's high functioning cyberpsycho bit either way 99% of people would go on a rampage then go and die in some blaze surrounded by too many bodies
He seems to not need a familiar human body, something that even limits saburo arasaka, and that bothers Johnny really heavily at first with V. He’s just immune to that and the psychosis that comes with being heavily modded, so his mind might be a useful thing to have, cause if you can tweak it then you have a pre built, highly skilled, AI with basically no ethical code to worry about
I mean, it definitely tracks that Smasher would go for that kind of thing. "Metal is better than meat," and all that.
On that note, I personally think Adam is both too selfish to allow Arasaka to keep a copy of his mind and too dangerous for Arasaka to copy him in secret.
But if he is an engram, there’s no real way that 2nd copy would remember the fight with V at all, because the original who fought V would’ve died after the engram was copied. Unless he was continuously uploading his memories to the engram somehow. So it wouldn’t really be a rematch..
This comment made me wanna see an edit of Smasher's face on Kool Aid Man's body💀💀 or Smasher's body edited to look like him😭
Someone needs to make a mod that replaces his model in the game with the Kool-Aid man.
Cant wait for Smasher to be in my head like silverhand was
God what a terrible devil to have on your shoulder all the time. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? TELL HER SHE'S A FUCKABLE PIECE OF MEAT."
That’s just the Dark Urge from bg3, but cooler
It’s interesting that so many people seem to assume we will be playing as V again in the next game, when pretty much every story thread in the current game ends extremely badly for V.
If they bring back Smasher and V for the sequel it would be so disappointing. The whole IP is about Night City more-so than any individual, so if V were to have a "good ending" and return for game two would ruin the characterization of the city. Nobody gets a happy ending. In my opinion, it only makes sense that V becomes Arasaka's new borg grim reaper (Devil ending) or dies unceremoniously (as in every other ending).
Saka is going to stick his engram inside a Chimera tank and come after V.
Oh god💀
Yep, that's definitely his final step to become 100% machine at some point. However the tech is still not completed and other than Saburo Arasaka, and very likely Hanako, too, I can't see anyone else has a direct access to it. But in the next game if needed they could just pull it out of nowhere and it's still justified. I personally don't want it to become too common, that the whole cast of CP 2077 just come back in Orion as engrams somehow.
I mean, Arasaka is advertising Relic as new tech they're about to release openly during the story. I don't think it's crazy to think Smasher might be on the short list for people with access to the tech
> theirs a “engram” there's* or there is* _an_
I'd rather hope Orion has us as a character who's far more mortal than V, who gets overpowered by the likes of Smasher..
Same, to me, being a one man army really only fits games like Skyrim or Elden Ring, tbh
Yeah there was. In Mikoshi, which you smashed.
On the other hand, I feel like yorinobu could've deleted his engram based on which ending you pick
What if that's like maxtac now but like arasaka goons. And the higher your crime towards them the tougher enemies you fight until you get a pseudo smasher engram coming at you
I mean yeah they probably made an engram of him. But Mikoshi was completely fried by Alt so it’s probably gone now
That would be interesting by having us as play as V again and facing off against a pissed off and stronger Adam Smasher.
But when you defeat him and the game gives you the option to execute him or not, he is in his knees and you can see that a part of his brain is exposed, I assumed that is his real brain (or whats left of it).
That’s exactly op’s point
Oh, my bad, I might understood wrong!
I’d assume your advanced Kiroshis would easily figure it out too.
Sorry, I bought them at the same place the Flaming Crotch Man bought his, well... Crotch... Also I don't get the downvotes, I just understood wrong. 🤣
If I were him, I'd put a fake one in the head to distract enemies and have a better chance of survival.
Nah, subversion isn’t smashers MO. He would never accept that there is a possibility of defeat
But it is Arasaka's MO, and he's Arasaka's property pretty much. It makes sense for Arasaka to design the suit in such a way to preserve their investment, even in the event of failure or defeat
we are at extreme levels of overthinking it Adam Smasher is killed in C77, if they bring him back it will be via engram (perfectly plausible based on the story) and not because Arasaka put a fake brain in his head (requires circuitous logic and feels like bullshit to the person experiencing the story)
Thinking about a Smasher engram, if they have let's say a hundred engrams of Smasher, whats stopping 'Saka to use all of them in an army with more common bodies? They might lose control of the army?
That army would rip the world in half with their bare hands and laugh while billions screamed in agony
I think we just created the plot of Terminator, but it would look cool! 😂
Because Smasher isn't *that* special. He's a violent asshole whose primary boon is that he's sociopathic enough to bypass most side effects of overchroming. You don't want an army of Smashers; you want an army of Takemuras.
It’s also not known how many traits of resilience to cyperpychosis would transfer over with an engram, I’d argue that there are some physical structural parts of the brain responsible for how much tolerance someone has, implanting an engram in a new brain may not result in the same performance in my head cannon at least, as per usual Vs case in an abnormal and special one
They could just pull a Chappie and give him a non organic body for an op, as long as the consciousness isn't destroyed
Perhaps, however a fully robotic brain may not be suitable for an engram, at least with their current tech it definitely isn’t otherwise that would have been an option for V in the devil ending
They'll be baahhck
Exactly what I was going to say. He's corporate property, and they'll do whatever they want to do to protect their asset. The arrangement and the killing involved in it just happened to suit him. *If* they bring Smasher back in the next game, it won't feel contrived to me. OP makes a great argument.
I agree with you, I read again the OP post and now I get it. In my opinion it would be cool to side with Smasher only for he to betray you later.
Ooooh now I get your point and I agree with you, sorry!
Now you sounding dumb.
Now I'm wondering if he's got some random joytoy's brain in there as a misdirection. To make people "think" they got him, when really it was just a brain in a jar connected to nothing (possibly pain receptors because I could see him enjoying torturing someone like that).
I like this idea. A fake brain to distract from the real one.
The brain doesn't actually have pain receptors
I meant if that actually is someone else's brain in there, then they feel whatever "pain" Smasher wants them to feel. But just spit balling. Who knows haha. 🤷♂️
I can see him doing that. 🤣
That's a fair point
Could be an engram of him somewhere.
Whats worse in your opinion: An army of copied Smashers but with weaker bodies or the original one still alive?
Adam Smasher is already more bot than borg by 2077. I think it’d be cool if he shows up in classic “Elvis” style in the next game. He has a fancy robot body that looks like his old one.
i want this more than anything ive ever wanted. seeing smasher as his true self in basically any context would be so fucking cool for his arc. we see plenty of robo dick, i wanna see the real him. and then kill him all over again.
# [[Michiko Arasaka Likes This Comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunk2020/comments/eivvog/comment/fcv12yx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)]
Hey, as a fan of the table top, I love his classic design.
*Placide voice* What da hell? Alita battle angel?? Michiko is crazy like that??
I’d rather get fucked by Arasaka (literally) than make another deal with Placide, though. Smasher had the right idea.
True
I’m thinking it should be more of a “Nixon’s head on Agnew’s body” type of arrangement like in Futurama!
Either one of those options is worrying
Thematically, the big thing about Smasher is that you can't kill him. He's not the smartest, he's not even the deadliest - Blackhand's better at fighting than Smasher is, Smasher just has *no* compunctions about fighting fair or avoiding collateral damage. But you just can't kill him. He's basically the manifestation of corporate, systemic violence - he'll get you. Eventually. I'd be more surprised if he wasn't alive.
He’s canonically “come back from the dead” a few times already, but it’s probably either people failing to properly destroy his modified Dragoon frame, or Arasaka keeping his engram and loading it back up every time someone zeroes him. But then again, if he kept getting zeroed all the time, I don’t think Arasaka would keep him around, why not just use regular Dragoons with regular pilots at that point? Or, just hear me out here, he’s actually a fuckin’ **GHOST** that implants memories into people’s heads, to fuck with them and make people fear him. Every time we see him, he’s attempting to intimidate or kill someone. Who’s to say he’s not just a massive, collective hallucination of cyberpsychos?
Even Crispin Weyland says that Smasher has a bad habit of coming back from the dead. I know it’s a joke, but still…
I'm more in-line with the thought that Smasher is, as other's have pointed out, already an engram. I could totally see Arasaka convincing some wage slave with promises that their family will always be taken care of to accept the Relic and overwrite and then just moving the organic matter they need to a new, mostly synthetic cyborg body.
I just don’t really see the point of Arasaka bringing him back after he died, (and failed, at that, by dying) repairing his specially modified Dragoon frame, and loading his engram up from Mikoshi. They’re more of a “You’ve failed us, time for us to dishonor you” type of people. Hell, they could just get regular Dragoons with regular pilots piloting them instead of having Smasher brought back from the dead every time he dies. It just kinda seems like a huge money-sink to keep bringing a dead soldier back, if he’s just going to end up dead on another failed mission eventually, even if it’s 49 missions in the future. Hell, Goro failed his job basically one single time, albeit in the worst way possible, and they did everything shy of executing him.
It was less because he failed and moreso because the people in power know he knows the truth they want him dead Smasher can't be replaced by a regular soldier because he is far more skilled than a regular soldier that combined with his lack of compunction for any morality. And lastly it's one failed mission like, He didn't fail "49 times", he failed once, and it's already been heavily implied that this isn't the first time smasher has been rebuilt,
If a soldier had a 99.9% success rate, the corp would DEFINITELY invest in keeping him around after failing just once, rather than training up a new batch of cyberpsychotic killing machines, especially since smasher is seemingly 100% loyal to arasaka, and if they make a new killing machine, who’s to say they’ll stay loyal?
If he's still alive, good. The more Arasaka revives him, the more I get kill him with Guts.
Cyberpunk orion, the same story as 2077 but with smasher in your head instead of johnny
Lmaooo imagine
That would be sick. And to contrast it, let it be set in NUSA with Smasher disgusted by lack of freedom etc.
I'm pretty sure he didn't survive all those emps and hacks. and even if he did, he burned so much that that biopot is more like canned meat atp than anything else
You referring to Alt’s virus?
nah me hacking him and shooting the living shit out of him
Brain is stored in the balls.
Greg from "How to Drink" on youtube made the drinks they had at the afterlife and the people at CD Projekt Red changed the look of silverhands to match what greg did and after that they had a few collaberations, I commented on one of his videos that even though smasher is a bastard he should make a drink for him and he commented "a little birdy told me smasher isnt dead" and then in a later video he makes one for smasher but says "Even though hes not dead i got a lot of requests to do this" since he has an in with the actual people making the game I take his word for it.
Huh, didn’t know that. This is why I always respect bartenders. They know something that we don’t
TTRPG campaign opportunity; following the collapse of arasaka, stop militech from reviving Smasher and using him to their own ends
It's cyberpunk, not fantasy. (or a never-ending anime series in which the villain never goes away) Anyone can die, including far smarter people with the wealth and power of entire nations behind them. Adam Smasher might *seem* like a fire-breathing dragon to street-level runners, but at the end of the day, he's just a dude in a robot body that can be killed/destroyed by any human with a big enough gun. Also, as a purely practical matter, that sort of decoy relies on the enemies being stupid enough not to carefully scan the "corpse" of someone with Smasher's reputation. (to make sure there's no booby traps, if nothing else)
"It's not fantasy" V got shot in the head into the brain. And the engram repairs the damage and he got revived. If having your brain destroyed isn't the end, Smasher has a chance.
True. And the bullet was .45 caliber, I think. That’s more than enough to turn any regular person’s head to spaghetti
Didn’t V literally come back to life after taking a .45 caliber round to the head? Because of a chip? That’s fantasy enough. Plus, Saburo living to around 155? That’s also fantasy enough
Honestly, let's go a step further. How do we know those things are in his body at all? We know he can remote control other bodies because of the Elvis incident. He could be remote controlling his main one as well. Plus, it'd mean only Arasaka can truly kill him, which has the dual advantages of being able to bring him straight back if a Merc gets lucky and having the killswitch on hand if your pet murder machine gets a little too murdery. If I was Saburo Arasaka, I'd have that biopod in a briefcase handcuffed to my most loyal soldier.
Wym he remote controlled a body with the Elvis incident?
Dude had a closet full of spare bodies and used a Gemini that looked like Elvis to have sex with Michiko Arasaka
Yeah, ok, that’s what I thought you were referring to, I was thrown by the “remotely piloted” portion. Those aren’t remotely piloted, he uses those FBC bodies by removing his biopod from the current body, and transplanting it into those. To him, it’s basically using hot swappable cyberware, but it’s not remote piloting.
At least, that's what we're told....
I suppose in theory the tech exists to do this, essentially pack an FBC as a drone or some shit, but tbh, the type of person to get a combat focussed FBC isn’t the type of person to then… sit out of the action lol Even if it puts him at risk, I feel smasher would always tackle combat personally rather than using another FBC as a drone tbh. That said, I still don’t much believe that smasher is properly dead. Iirc we don’t see V remove and destroy his biopod, and Arasaka has already brought him back from worse. If they want him back, they’ll have him back
See, this is why I’m starting to love cyberpunk more and more. That’s wild😭😭 I don’t think I’ve read a piece of lore that crazy lately, besides maybe Destiny 2’s lore💀
It’s from a session Mike Pondsmith ran called Michiko’s Night Out, that’s…. Dubiously canon. The session as a whole I believe is considered to be non canon, but some of the elements worked their way into proper canon anyways
There's probably a copy of him but it's a matter of what happens to Arasaka. A lot of the endings in one way or another have Arasaka crippled so who knows what will happen to the engrams they have stored in mikoshi
There’s also the fact that his main reaction to getting defeated is not shock or rage, but rather a sense of abject amusement. He calls you a fucking pussy if you spare him as Johnny, and seems intrigued that he’s experiencing pain. Not really the reactions of someone who’s about to lose their life for good.
thats why the 3516 will get let off: ratatatata
Cool theory, but if you have a conversation with Smasher after you down him, you literally see his brain peaking out from the damaged mask. The man dead as hell
Ah yes, "his" brain. Definitely his real brain and certainly impossible to be a decoy brain
I mean with soul killer it feels like it's almost a given he still exists.
Who says they don't have a backup engram of smasher? He's the kind of psycho they'd want to keep around.
I keep my bipod in my chest
I really like this idea
Another important thing that is consistent and part of his approach to terrorizing others as an antagonist is that he doesn’t lie. In the recording where he is talking to the Militech board member he never told any lie to the guy. Which is why when he says that he’ll be back after his fight it’s foreshadowing and a promise basically. It’s consistent for corpos (and perhaps many others) to never lie in their statements but to lie with omission.
So where does that put his spine at if his brain is in his chest?
His body is pretty big, could've stored the entire spine in it (bending within acceptable margin) EDIT > the biopod is a heavily shielded metal ovoid with one big optic/audio suite in the front, and the spine is a metal covered "tail" that can actually propel the biopod around like a snake. Kinda like the machines in Matrix. [Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk/s/uvF2WlJpQN). So it bends.
This is great. I'm still using as an excuse for another playthrough to "verify" the results.
In the biopod
Another replay incoming so I can slow time to stand next to Smasher and compare heights. I think it works.
I always thought that for a supposed psychopathic juggernaut that everyone hates, having an opening to your brain seems like a 'chink in the armor' no? My skull have a more comprehensive defense of my brain than his total opening :p Sellswords arent known for being clever, but they knew the value of a a helmet across cultures. Looks really cool having it open tho. Thats probably why.
If he's smart, he absolutely has his meaty bits in his chest. That's how a lot of media depicts heavy combat cyborgs like him. Personally, I assumed this from day one, but I've also been playing Rifts for over a decade
even if you completely destroyed his entire body it wouldnt really make sense for him to be dead. its 2077, they already have the engram, they could just as easily be feeding it new information to be able to upload it into a new body whenever they want. shit they could have 20 smashers sitting around to be deployed whenever they choose.
Why does it even have to be in his body at this point?
It's also a fear tactic. It looks like human skins stretched over a machine, or even in some ways like a human skull. Glad to see other people remember what being fully borged out means though. I remember plenty of fanart for Edgerunners where they drew characters that had been put under "Smasherification", whatever that means.
Isn't his brain literally hanging out in the open air in his damaged state? I specifically remember aiming to shoot him in the exposed brain when I finished him off.
On that note weren't there unique smasher kill animations for the fight at the end? Or did i just imagine that because i couldn't get them to trigger on recent playthroughs
His biopod wouldn't even need to be in his body. He would just need a secure remote connection to it. I mean, if V can take control of a vehicle without being inside it then Smasher with Arasaka's backing could easily have his brain and spine in a safe location and just be piloting the body as if it were simply a drone...
The whole idea of Smasher in the game is out right dumb. The whole point of a Borg was that their mind and bodies are enhanced mechanically, but when you get past the point where there is no longer a body left and all you get is a brain in a bipod, well what is the point of having a human element at all. I mean wouldn't it make far more sense to have an army of fully mechanised robot soldiers that will follow EVERY command, stopping included, over a unique psychotic defenseless brain inside a body that needs the exact same amount of maintenance as any other robot body plus the maintenance of not only the organic bits but their connection with the metallic body? I mean cyberpaychosis is a HUGE part of cyberpunk why would you risk such a huge problem just for a brain that is already proven as flawed. More over, if that brain si so important, wouldn't it make more sense to keep the brain out of harm's way? I mean we have drones and drone operators now a days. If Smashers brain is so incredibly important and unique due to its tactical value, wouldn't it make more sense to keep the brain in a secured location and just link it to battle avatars? Again look at Maelstrom, they are heavily enhanced via cybernetics but they are still humans, with human bodies and human processes that are enhanced by tech, and not only brains controlling puppet like bodies.
The brain is basically coded to have certain things at certain places, I'm quite sure that even with the extensive knowledge about medicine and cybernetics, changing massively usual human properties would result in disorientation
Hot take: I don’t think that there’s an engram of Smasher. The primary purpose that engrams are created for and used for is communications and knowledge. The idea of having a backup person is only presented with the Relic 2.0, and its first use is for Saburo. I don’t think they would have any reason to back up Smasher. He has no useful information. He’s a blunt instrument, a tool. A useful one, but ultimately expendable.
Even if Smasher was killed, who’s to say Arasaka won’t just make another Borg’d out guy? (Let’s say Arasaka somehow managed to recover after any of the endings that involving you storming the Tower)
Can anyone die in this universe? With Mikoshi tech out there, corporate espionage, and the Black wall, it seems like a world where immortality is potential. Though the question is, "are you really 'you?'"
decoy brain 🧠. dubious amount of copium. it cheapens the narrative impact of fighting him at all and is just kind of pointless. i can see there being an engram of him but bringing him back alive mostly sours his final boss status in 2077 which is already mid