Legacy of Handsome Jack
To those who have finished the episode, the loathed and beloved antagonist from the Borderlands franchise apparently lives on as a digital ghost...but one that apparently has found a home in Rhys's cybernetic implants. This leads me to the following question:
How did he end up there?
Rhys's backstory and character describes him as wanting to follow in Handsome Jack's footsteps, but we are not privy to exactly how that came to be. We are also not privy to how Rhys got his robotic arm or eye, which is how Handsome Jack seemingly manifests as a digital ghost. This leads me to believe that Rhys had some sort of accident which led him to receive Hyperion technology to replace his injuries. This may have been the cause of his loyalty to Hyperion, and perhaps Jack....though I suspect that around this point Handsome Jack may have installed some sort of digital back-up of himself at the time of the surgery.
I suspect the major conflict with Rhys will be Handsome Jack's ghost attempting to forcefully take control of Rhys's body and attempting to make Rhys personality more like his own...which may explain why Rhys's eye is yellow by the time he starts explaining his story to The Stranger.
Comments
Actually when you plugged Nakayama's ID into your brain you plugged in a copy of Jack's AI into your brain as well. Nakayama was obsessed with Jack and probably created a AI version of him to always have with him.
Other than that information you missed I think your prediction about Rhys's eye and Jack trying to take over is spot on.
Remember that ID drive that Rhys got from Nakayama's corpse?
Well that guy was obsessed with cloning Jack by any means necessary. Who knows what kind of data was in there.
Jack never showed up before Rhys used it, anyway.
What GoldenPaladin and Blue Shadiw said, I believe Nakayama is a DLC character from Borderlands 2. Nakayama must of had all info about Jack from his DNA, memories, and personality on that ID chip.
A conflict within Rhys would be an interesting way to go, as like the achievement said he's the devil on your shoulder.
It has been leaked that there will be a DLC from Borderlands The Pre Sequel where Dr Nakayama creates a Jack A.I
Can't wait for Telltale's writing of Handsome Jack which will probably be so much better
implying it was bad before, which it wasn't.
From the Borderlands wiki page describing Nakayama:
"Nakayama is a scientist who has become distraught after the death of his idol, Handsome Jack. Through further misfortune, a Hyperion transport ship that he was on crashed on the primitive continent of Aegrus, leaving Nakayama to fend for himself in hostile territory. To that end he resumed the kind of experimentation that he had done for Hyperion, grotesquely modifying both himself and some of the local fauna. Very soon he seized on a plan to clone his idol, Handsome Jack."
I guess that Nakayama had to make a AI version of Handsome Jack if he was going to create a living clone. The AI was stored in his ID drive.
That's one thing I don't want Telltale to do. Handsome Jack was already a really well written antagonist, they shouldn't change him that much.
There will be a DLC on Pre-Sequel about it
There's no confirmation on that. Yes, files were found for such a mission but that doesn't mean it'll ever see the light of day. Could be a mission they never completed and got scrapped. Hopefully we'll see it one day, but it isn't for certain.
From what I've read the files were only a recent inclusion (there was a mysterious hot fix update the other day that didn't seem to impact the game at all, and that's supposedly when they appeared), rather than something that had been there since the start.
If that's the case I doubt they'd go to the trouble of adding something that they weren't planning on using.
I actually first heard of files for this "help Nakayama build a Jack AI" side mission at least a month ago on tumblr so shrugs I dunno! That's interesting if those found recently were newly added to the game.
As I mentioned in another thread, it'd be cool if this mission ended up being one of the Tales "unlocks" for TPS. I'm just not giving my hopes up is all. xD
Everyone typically thinks one step ahead, but Jack likes to think twenty steps ahead and then ad-lib the rest. In the Pre-Sequel when he was in the vault he saw his own death, so perhaps he planned for his daughter to be killed, the Warrior to be useless and his demise. Why? Well, Jack wants power and to rid Pandora of them pesky bandits for the profits, but his ambitions require more than flesh and bones. So he had Nakayama clone his personality, or basically him, so in the case of his demise that some form of Jack could run Hyperion. So on comes Rhys, who worked hard for a promotion, trampled over people to get it and then Vasquez denies him his job and discusses a plan to buy a vault key in front of Rhys. Maybe, Handsome Jack noticed Rhys's potential and planed Vasquez's assassination and the Vault Key deal, and found a way for Shade to get a hold of Nakayama's body. Doing so will ensure that Rhys would run into his AI and ensure his need to install it, so Handsome Jack and Rhys could get promoted to CEO of Hyperion. Doing this allows jack total control of Hyperion and since he's AI he can be extracted and implanted in another poor sap or a robot. Maybe this is all an elaborate plan by Jack.
I'd say you're spot on with this theory, though I have a feeling that by the time we get to present Rhys and Fiona, Rhys has somehow managed to break free of Jack's AI, maybe by installing new cybernetics, thus the new ECHO - eye, plus the hand?