First of all: I'm aware that this is a game and his character actually fits into Night City. That is not my problem with characters like Jackie, the bad writing is.
For me Jackie Welles is a murderer and thief motivated by his goal to go up in the world and become a legend. He most likely killed dozends of people before you even meet him, a character like him would never act like Jackie does. He is just a walking hollywood cliche and i dislike badly written characters like that.
If you screw up the sneaking part in "the heist" for example you literally kill dozends of people with him and these people are not the "bad" guys. Noone will ever comment about this mass murder of security personell. Jackie is cursing and screaming like a madman the entire time (actually he started screaming while i was still sneaking, cause he bugged out).
Sure you might say it is just a game and yes you are 100% rigth it is just a game, but the same company has created the Witcher series and these games actually had believable characters.
Geralt, The Bloody Baron, Keira Metz, Vernon Roche, Siegmund Dijsktra to just name a few (yes i had to look some of them up). You know what the difference between them and most characters in Cyberpunk is? They are depicted as belivable human beings. They have goals, interests, problems and flaws.
What does Jackie have? Goal = Legend, Interest = Legend, Problem = Not legend yet, Flaws = ...
And regarding him getting out of the gangs, sorry but he is a merc now. He literally does the exact same thing he did before, the only difference is that he does work for both sides instead of just one side.
you misunderstand night city.
the security personnel are trained killers, the cops are trained killers, the gangster are killers. Their lives are a war for survival. V is a killer. Jackie doesn't love killing, he kills when its him or the other guy. If you do corpo beginning, you see he doesn't take hit jobs, (corpo V does though). Corporations are thieves, read the shards, they commonly send security to rob and kill whoever they need to. Also Jackie follows Vs lead, if you go stealth, he goes stealth. Every character does the same killing Jackie does, even Judy. Little kids have Guns. He is a soldier with no choice.
This is not a peaceful world. In spite of this Jackie holds on to optimism, he tries to tell jokes and break the tension he wishes for success, so maybe one day he doesn't have to live this life. Yes, they have people who kill during their job, and still tell jokes and seem goofy in other situations. this isn't unreal.
Jackie wants to make it, because In NC you either succeed or you die. He quit the Valentinos. As a merc, you choose what you will, or won't do. In a gang/corpo you do as ordered. I mean if you hate Jackie for killing, you must hate every other charachter in the game. except maybe Kerry, Misty, Vic.
Add panam, Saul, rogue, Johnny, Judy, V, River, aldecados, Takamura, to your list.