I am genuinely astounded that it appears like Cyberpunk's main story beats are held up almost single-handedly by Yorinobu constantly holding the idiot ball.
For reference:
1. Yorinobu trusting his prostitute (Evelyn) with access to THE VERY ROOM THAT HOUSES THE RELIC is what allows for the initial heist to take place due to Evelyn's surveillance.
2. Yorinobu kills his father seemingly on a whim without having planned for it, meaning Takemura's suspicions are instantly alerted. Later on this will screw him over as Takemura finds V and recruits him to try to get revenge.
3. Yorinobu betrays the ONLY person who trusts him 100% (Hanako, his sister) and tries to kill her. Later if you take Hanako's deal to save your life you find out that Hanako ALREADY KNEW Yorinobu killed their father and was ok with it since she trusted her brother, and her sole motivation for taking over Arasaka is because she realizes Yorinobu is trying to kill her and it's a matter of survival. Hanako was even willing to let Takemura die simply so that Yorinobu's awful cover story ("ummmm Saburo died of a mysterious """"poisoning"""" am I the CEO of Arasaka now guise plz plz plz ") could hold up and he could retain legitimacy. She was also fine with keeping Saburo's engram buried in Arasaka Tower forever because she also disliked her father (seriously just go on the Cyberpunk wiki and look at the tabletop lore, Hanako was still communicating with Yorinobu WHEN HE WAS ACTIVELY RUNNING A TERRORIST CELL TO KILL SABURO AND DESTROY ARASAKA, that is how loyal she was).
4. Yorinobu repeatedly fails to kill Takemura or V. Hell he doesn't even have to kill V since V doesn't even think about telling others about Saburo's murder since he knows no one will believe him. On Hanako's ending path you literally walk into a board room meeting of the Arasaka bigshots and they still don't believe you even with Hanako's backing, until Hanako pulls out Saburo's engram, because your word is worthless to them. But Takemura? Are you joking? How hard is one guy to kill? He even dies during the Hanako kidnapping if you don't try to save him - why couldn't he have been killed earlier before he got Hanako and V involved? Just send Adam Smasher after him or something.
5. Yorinobu's motivations in-game are, if not schizophrenic, then genuinely insane. Yorinobu in the tabletop was basically a Japanese patriot who didn't trust megacrops with the future. In the tabletop lore he works with the Japanese government to nationalize part of Arasaka. It stands to reason then that he should be working to, if not neutralize Arasaka from the inside, then at least place their remaining assets in the hands of the Japanese government so that Japan can have some measure of control.
The entire business with the Relic is sketchy as hell - if he had remained consistent with his previous characterization, Yorinobu would want to destroy such "immortal" technology and not allow elites to live basically forever off the backs of the poor. Instead in-game his major dispute with his father that leads to him killing him is due to wanting to sell the technology to Americans to get more money. Wut? How is Yorinobu greedier than Saburo, are you joking? Yorinobu literally turned his back to Saburo and tried to blow up Arasaka the first time because he was sickened with the moral boundaries Arasaka was breaking just to make a profit.
I was actually expecting the heist to be revealed in the end as some 500 IQ plan by Yorinobu to ensure that the relic and all relevant research data were destroyed so that no one could have it, and for Yorinobu's desire to kill you being based out of a fear of letting the technology live to be controlled by elites and megacorps. Hell they could have even written the suicide ending like Letho's conversation at the end of Witcher 2 where you realize that the main villian actually had good reasons and you didn't have to fight him. Instead on the Hanako path V ends up so confused as to what Yorinobu was even trying to accomplish that there is literally a dialogue option where V can call Yorinobu insane because nothing he did in the entire story ever made any sense.
For reference:
1. Yorinobu trusting his prostitute (Evelyn) with access to THE VERY ROOM THAT HOUSES THE RELIC is what allows for the initial heist to take place due to Evelyn's surveillance.
2. Yorinobu kills his father seemingly on a whim without having planned for it, meaning Takemura's suspicions are instantly alerted. Later on this will screw him over as Takemura finds V and recruits him to try to get revenge.
3. Yorinobu betrays the ONLY person who trusts him 100% (Hanako, his sister) and tries to kill her. Later if you take Hanako's deal to save your life you find out that Hanako ALREADY KNEW Yorinobu killed their father and was ok with it since she trusted her brother, and her sole motivation for taking over Arasaka is because she realizes Yorinobu is trying to kill her and it's a matter of survival. Hanako was even willing to let Takemura die simply so that Yorinobu's awful cover story ("ummmm Saburo died of a mysterious """"poisoning"""" am I the CEO of Arasaka now guise plz plz plz ") could hold up and he could retain legitimacy. She was also fine with keeping Saburo's engram buried in Arasaka Tower forever because she also disliked her father (seriously just go on the Cyberpunk wiki and look at the tabletop lore, Hanako was still communicating with Yorinobu WHEN HE WAS ACTIVELY RUNNING A TERRORIST CELL TO KILL SABURO AND DESTROY ARASAKA, that is how loyal she was).
4. Yorinobu repeatedly fails to kill Takemura or V. Hell he doesn't even have to kill V since V doesn't even think about telling others about Saburo's murder since he knows no one will believe him. On Hanako's ending path you literally walk into a board room meeting of the Arasaka bigshots and they still don't believe you even with Hanako's backing, until Hanako pulls out Saburo's engram, because your word is worthless to them. But Takemura? Are you joking? How hard is one guy to kill? He even dies during the Hanako kidnapping if you don't try to save him - why couldn't he have been killed earlier before he got Hanako and V involved? Just send Adam Smasher after him or something.
5. Yorinobu's motivations in-game are, if not schizophrenic, then genuinely insane. Yorinobu in the tabletop was basically a Japanese patriot who didn't trust megacrops with the future. In the tabletop lore he works with the Japanese government to nationalize part of Arasaka. It stands to reason then that he should be working to, if not neutralize Arasaka from the inside, then at least place their remaining assets in the hands of the Japanese government so that Japan can have some measure of control.
The entire business with the Relic is sketchy as hell - if he had remained consistent with his previous characterization, Yorinobu would want to destroy such "immortal" technology and not allow elites to live basically forever off the backs of the poor. Instead in-game his major dispute with his father that leads to him killing him is due to wanting to sell the technology to Americans to get more money. Wut? How is Yorinobu greedier than Saburo, are you joking? Yorinobu literally turned his back to Saburo and tried to blow up Arasaka the first time because he was sickened with the moral boundaries Arasaka was breaking just to make a profit.
I was actually expecting the heist to be revealed in the end as some 500 IQ plan by Yorinobu to ensure that the relic and all relevant research data were destroyed so that no one could have it, and for Yorinobu's desire to kill you being based out of a fear of letting the technology live to be controlled by elites and megacorps. Hell they could have even written the suicide ending like Letho's conversation at the end of Witcher 2 where you realize that the main villian actually had good reasons and you didn't have to fight him. Instead on the Hanako path V ends up so confused as to what Yorinobu was even trying to accomplish that there is literally a dialogue option where V can call Yorinobu insane because nothing he did in the entire story ever made any sense.