I’m a big fan of the “the mentor dies to push the student forward” trope, so it makes sense to me that Jackie dies and that pushes us into Johnny’s camp, for better or worse. And Johnny is a worse Jackie in every way (except that he’s modeled after and voiced by Keanu Reeves), until he’s not, which takes a while.

Still, I felt it would have fit to have more time bonding with Jackie. They imply it in the opening movie after the prologue, but it would be nice to actually go through with all of it. I feel like it makes more sense if you’re playing a guy, but since they let you play a woman and they got such a damn good voice actor to voice her, not using her makes about as much sense as replacing Keanu Reeves with some rando for whatever reason. As a nerd, pairing Asuna (SAO) with Neo (The Matrix) is just too freakin’ cool to pass up. So anyway, girls tend to have it rough in Night City, so it would stand to reason it would take longer for V(alerie) to trust Jackie, not just one mission and then a montage of hanging out. Mass Effect, I think 2 or maybe 3, did this so much better, especially if you were romancing Liara (the blue chick), you had all this extra time to build a solid friendship with Garrus (the tall greyish, blueish alien with the ridged forehead). You could altneratively romance him, but if you weren’t going for that, the game made a hell of a friendship between him and FemShep that was believable, you could fully expect Garrus to follow you to Hell and back at the end of the trilogy. (Granted, that is a whole trilogy and not just a first act. Still, Mass Effect laid the foundation a decade prior.)