Let me start off by stating that I am not in any way qualified to talk about ethics and morality. I am however qualified to talk about literary analysis. Spoilers for Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty, as well as Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. If you haven’t seen/played them, I would strongly recommend doing that as they are some of the best of their genre.

Something I shared a lot with the fanbase as I finished the story of Phantom Liberty was a bad taste in my mouth after watching Sol and Alex flatline the Cassel twins. Almost everywhere you look online about the Cassel twins will have the sentiment of not wanting them to die, or feeling off about killing them. I personally really enjoyed the characters, and was really able to appreciate their designs after I did a ton of reading about Cyberpunk between my playthrough of the main game and the DLC, as well as finally got my shit together with the french language. They were extremely interesting, in depth, and fleshed out characters within the story. Hell, we even got to know them as a part of our mission. It’s no wonder people felt off about zeroing them. A game only has so much playtime, a show so much screen time, and a book so many pages. Dedicating time and effort into fleshing out characters WILL leave players empathizing and growing attached to them, but this seemed a little more than just ‘I liked the characters’. And so I thought to myself: Why?

Now the obvious answer could be “awOOGA Aurore Cassel hot mmm yes french accent go brrrr she flirty me likey” But I’d like to not only think that we as a species have evolved to the point where we understand logic and restraint, but are also not swayed when a pretty girl notices us. Furthermore, even taking the fact that I really liked the character designs and a pretty lady noticed me (omgosh) I still had a bad taste in my mouth. Again, I thought to myself: Why? And trust me I think we can all agree that Harley Quinn and Bellatrix Lestrange are OBVIOUSLY extremely attractive and without a doubt a smash, but we can also completely understand that they deserve to die and we’re fine with that. So again, what gives? Well, to answer that question I’d like to bring my dear good friend Mike Ehrmantraut on to explain exactly why.

Mike Ehrmantraut serves as the definitive Anti-Villain of Breaking Bad, and probably the poster child of Anti-Villains. He’s doing definitively bad things, or villainous things, yet he operates under a strict moral and ethical code: He never harms innocents (besides that one time but that’s for later and iykyk), is extremely loyal to his men, his daughter and granddaughter, and his superior, and always minimizes harm whenever possible. He does things always in the way where the least amount of people are hurt, and he constantly sticks to this code. The code revolves around the fact that to Mike, there are two types of people: Those in the game, and those not. To him ‘the game’ is the drug trade, or business related to it. Pretty much every single person can be classified using this system; it’s fairly simple. If you’re in the game, you’ve signed up for everything that comes with it: a whole lot of easy and quick money, and a whole lot more of danger. People in the game don’t necessarily deserve to die, but it’s as they say: play stupid games, win stupid prizes. You’ve signed up for this, you know the stakes, people are going to die, it might be you. Same thing with war. The other guy at the end of the barrel might not be bad, but they’re on the other side. Mike, being both a veteran and an ex-cop in a dirty precinct knows this all too well and has completely adopted this code of ethics. It’s how he operates, it’s what keeps him grounded, restrained, and in check. I think we can all agree that while Mike is a bad person, he definitely didn’t deserve to die in the way he did, and he also has a clear set of ethics that make the best out of a broken world. The case I’m making for this essay is that the Cassel twins deserved to die as much as Werner Ziegler did.

Who are the Cassel twins, really? And how morally bankrupt are they as well? Turns out they’re actually quite similar to Werner Ziegler. While the twins outright admit that morality is a commodity, and money comes first before morality and ethics to them, Werner was also very much aware that he was building and designing a lab for at the very least someone far, far from the law, and was going to use it for suffice it to say less than moral means. This is shown when Mike asked Werner to think about the job, the secrecy, the amount of money he’s making, and the overall vibe of his boss. Werner wasn’t even just morally corrupt, he was naive as well. This is all to say that while Werner isn’t as intentionally evil as the twins are, he is still just as morally corrupt as they are. The result of his actions in his universe carry the same moral weight as the twins’ do. This is consequentialist logic, meaning the worth and weight of a person is judged by their actions, not their intentions or otherwise. Both actions are severely negative upon the world at large, therefore they both deserve to die under this framework.

It’s surprisingly sound, as there are different rules to normal parts of life. You can usually joke around with your friends, make edgy and dark jokes, insult them, but it is and should be just all in good fun and light hearted, and there’s a huge difference between keeping things between friends, and making things public. Between friends and family, we curse, berate, insult, laugh, scream, cry, and all the in between. But making something public, at a job, any professional setting, at school, or anything of the like, these are frowned upon, and for good reason (mostly). There are different rules of society for different parts of society. And for Mike, there are different rules for his line of work and for the games inside that line of work.

Now to tie this all together. Judging the twins, Mike, and Werner under cutthroat consequentialist logic, they all deserve to die. It’s clear, cut, and concise. Under Mike’s own pragmatic code, Werner does not deserve to die, and neither do the twins. This is because there is a key aspect that both Gus and the FIA failed to properly assess. The twins and Werner are not in the game. I know what you’re thinking: “But Rose! Y-you just said that t-they were in the g-game!” And you’d be right, my young little grasshopper, but not the game you’re thinking of. V says this themselves in Phantom Liberty:

“It is a game, your fuckin’ spy game they weren’t playin’. They were innocent!”

The quote from the game, verbatim. While the twins obviously weren’t innocent, and V was most likely making a snide remark at Sol and Reed at the same time, V gets the point. It’s also absolutely intentional that the dev’s used the term ‘game’. Because the Cassel twins truly were out of the loop of this crazy spy espionage. Yeah they knew that the FIA was poking in Hansen’s business and might’ve done something during the meetup, but they really weren’t in the know nor involved in this weird geopolitical war Hansen and Myers were playing. They weren’t innocents, they were merely skilled netrunners getting the information Hansen thought he needed. Same with Werner. Werner was in the drug trade game, because of his involvement, but again not with the geopolitical war between Gus and the Cartel. Same with the Cassel twins.

This is why I believe there are a lot of people left with bad tastes in their mouths when it comes to the FIA’s decision, and why Werner’s death hits people, including Mike, so hard. This reasoning holds up under utilitarianism and consequentialism, but not this code of ethics Mike has constructed, nor deontology, nor virtue ethics. It doesn't hold up in deontology because the intentions of Sol and Alex's actions were that of convenience backed up by a rationalisation built off of quicksand- in other words, they had faulty reasoning or were lying to themselves to make things easier. This is shown when the two state 'It was them or us, they wouldn't hesitate to rob us for all that we are, and they're pro criminals'. In Night City, everyone's a criminal. Hell, V broke into Konpeki Tower and stole one of the most prized treasures of Arasaka. Just because someone is a criminal doesn't give means to kill them outright, especially when the two were completely neutralised and again, weren't in the know of what was happening. Getting blindsided by an inner working of a plan just for the people on the in's convenience is not good reasoning whatsoever. It's also clear to see why this doesn't hold up in virtue ethics either, as we can use Mike as our virtuous person, which is quite relevant.

By applying both consequentialist logic and Mike Ehrmantraut’s pragmatic ‘code ethics,’ we see that Werner Ziegler and the Cassel twins, outsiders to their respective power games, are judged unjustly by insiders, revealing a hypocrisy within the NUSA's and the drug trade of Albuquerque's moral orders. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to moral and ethical complexity with these two pieces of media; like I said they’re both the best of their respective series’, and there is so much more to explore than just this. I’m looking forward to what else I’m going to have to say about these pieces of media, and I hope you do too, dear reader. Until then.

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