Remember Brendan from Cyberpunk 2077? If the answer’s no, I don’t blame you. He’s a talking vending machine you can run into and end up going off on a short series of side quests about, but I totally missed him in my fist couple of playthroughs. Anyway, spoiler alert, but that quest arc in the base game ends pretty tragically, something a modder’s now changed via the addition of an extra bit which lets you pay to have the semi-sentient snack box installed in V’s flat.
Prolific Cyberpunk modder Deceptious is behind this short extra mission, which they’ve dubbed ‘Brendan’s Death Song’ in honour of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song I can’t admit often makes it into my playlists. I’m more of a basic Californicationy kinda bloke, what can I say?
With this work installed, after running into Brendan the vending machine outside of Megabuilding H8 in Japantown and running through the trio of quests involving him, things usually end with him telling a final gag before undergoing a programming change that’ll get rid of his chatty quirkiness. Think the ending of Blade Runner, except Roy Batty’s spent his life giving out more free snacks than he should have.
But, what if Harrison Ford could have paid some dudes to pick up Roy Batty, bring him back to life, and install him in the wall of Deckard’s flat? Sounds pretty horrifying to be honest, but it’s probably a lot less horrifying when this mod does it as a way of letting you keep a bit of Brendan in your cyber-life. Once the machine’s been added to the default Megabuilding H10 apartment via a quest heavy on text messages, he’ll be available for some brief conversation and occasionally dish out a free drink.
“He goes silent during partner dates in H10, but does have a small change of appearance when the partner is there,” Deceptious teases, in case you were worried about being virtually cockblocked by a coin-operated flatmate.
To get the mod up and running, you’ll need to grab Deceptious’ Quest Core, plus standard Cyberpunk advanced tweak enablers ArchiveXL, RED4ext, and TweakXL. Oh, and a tolerance for groan-worthy gags. Let’s face it though, if you saw the headline of this article with my name in the byline and have read this far, you’ve almost certainly got that. Or you just like hearing about intriguing Cyberpunk mods.
