Let’s talk about the DLC and how Jimenez is shown in a different light there, okay?
While reading this post, please keep in mind this post is coming from a Ruvik fan who hated Marcelo up until the DLCs. It is mainly geared toward people who hate him, but may be eye-opening for others as well. I didn’t put a ton of hard work into this blog in the past 5 months just to be disregarded and unfollowed because I address some things about a character you hate right now. This post also took me hours to make so please read with an open mind.
I wouldn’t have to make this post if it weren’t for the inconsistencies in the game in the first place. A lot of important information that can’t be ignored was put into the DLCs that should have been in the main game.
Let’s address some elephants in the room first:
considering Mobius as a whole and what they’ve done, there is no doubt they would have killed Ruben regardless of him having time to set up traps and regardless of Jimenez. The big fish will always eat the small one.
(again, coming from a Ruvik fan:) both Ruben and the Administrator have done worse things than Jimenez ever did, yet whoever talks about Jimenez in a non-hateful way gets scrutiny
The point of this post is that after the way the DLC shows Jimenez, you can’t help but look at him at least a bit differently compared to how he is presented in the main game only.
Let’s take the scene that made people hate him:
when he comes for Ruben with Mobius people, if you only saw this in the main game, you’d think that he knew here that Ruben is going to be killed by Mobius. However that is not the case if you consider everything in the DLCs:
- on the tapes in the DLC he says that at one point Ruben retreats to his mansion, and is only willing to come to work on STEM, and that Jim feels uneasy about this bc Mobius might be looking on them.
- once Ruben calibrates the machine to work with his brain only and keeps to himself in the mansion, Jimenez expresses how he is afraid what Mobius might do to him if he doesn’t reverse the calibration and he will drag Ruben to Mobius if he has to (to reverse the calibr. so Mobius doesn’t fucking kill him) and this is probably what we see in the main game when he comes for Ruben with the Mobius people.
Marcelo did not think that Mobius would kill him, that is not why he is there in the main game in that one scene, and here is proof why:
When you listen to the DLC tapes back to back (they are on youtube in one video!), Marcelo is in despair and his voice is utterly sad and disappointed when he finds out that Ruben is dead. The voice actor does a great job making you feel everything as well. Please do go and listen to it.
It is also explained how the name “RUVIK” emerged, and this is why I’ll keep calling him Ruben in my posts as often as possible.
Outside of the tape, in the scene when he learns about Ruben’s death in the DLC he is heavily distressed as well (also on youtube in any playthrough, please watch it):
So to sum it up, based on main game only you’d think that Jimenez went for Ruben to kill him in that lab scene but after you see the DLC he did not know that Mobius was going to kill him and he was genuinely sad and distressed upon finding out. This is major info that should have been in the main game and not in a DLC. It’s very important when it comes to his personality.
He also expresses earlier in the DLC that it’s due to his own carelessness that Mobius learned about the existence of Ruben and that Ru. was introduced to Mobius but Jim was hoping for Ruben to chill out once getting more test subject and professional gear. It’s also on Marcelo’s tapes in the DLC.
“But he did steal his research???”
Yes he indeed did so, and it’s a cockroach thing to do as Ruben would say. However consider this: Mobius was constantly manipulating and threatening Jim that he will be replaced if he didn’t do so and so. Jim needed to be reputable to have power at Beacon, so he stole the work of Ruben, guessing his because he was the only one being a genius there with a useful research. Jimenez having power at Beacon was the reason that Ruben could go on so long with his research, because Jimenez would bend the rules so Ruben would get a lot of freedom. So no stolen research -> no power to Jim -> no bent rules -> no free reign for Ruben.
Of course he is an asshole for gaslighting Ruben in the scene when he confronts him about the stolen research, he also says cruel things to him, no doubt about that. He too comes off very arrogant and pompous, he should have just said why he did it so Ruben understands. It is still, ofc, not an excuse to plagiarize.
I just really wish all this is obvious to the average player or fan, because if you really dig deep you can hardly hate Jimenez as much (or at all) as just based on the main game.
When he is talking to child Ruben in the beginning that he should not be worried about how he looks but what’s inside his mind that matters, I thought that was really sweet and there is such an amount of mentor-pupil potential in this relationship that should have been shown more it’s unreal. Jimenez surely was the father figure to Ruben instead of Ernesto, it’s just tragic how everything went down.
So again to sum up: - “he killed Ruben” - no he did not, Mobius did, he didn’t know they were gonna kill him, tho it’s only shown in the DLC - “he stole his research” -> to have power at Beacon so he can cover for Ruben and bend the rules for him
And his looks, well… He looks like Anthony Hopkins with a rather good body for someone his age, it’s all personal preference.
It def. makes me feel some type of way that I need to make such an extensive post about why I don’t hate a fictional character to “justify myself” because it’s convenient to ignore canon it seems, or maybe because many people don’t know his DLC tapes. I HOPE that at least you see him in a different way after reading this or that you understand why I don’t hate Marcelo.
Even if you still hate him after this, please be considerate with others who don’t hate him.
Let me talk some more about this, since I wanted to add info to the original post I made anyway.
@ozmawesker answering here because I can’t reply as a sideblog
Even if I didn’t elaborate, the things I discuss in the post and the things you say can exist at the same time. What you said doesn’t undermine what I talk about in the post. I simply focused on info that was presented in-game through flashbacks and audio tapes, so it is not a matter of “buying it” or not, as it’s not just random info I made up.
There are several reasons why he went into STEM:
- to see if Ruben was really there, because the patients kept talking about a “hooded figure”. He went behind Mobius’ back by entering STEM.
- to know “if a sane mind would weather the physically draining experience”. (on DLC tapes)
- to know what Ruben wanted with the second STEM prototype, the wireless one (on DLC tapes)
- he surely wanted to be worthy in the eyes of Mobius, therefore gaining more power, and he gradually goes erratic on his tapes towards the end, however some things to consider:
he went through “months of indoctrination” by Mobius, so eventually he was brainwashed
Mobius wasn’t the reason why patients kept dying in STEM, Marcelo blamed himself and wanted to go in there to “suppress the more unsavory aspects of it”, however it turned out that those unsavory aspects happened due to Ruben’s “conscious influence” (on DLC tapes)
he wanted to go behind Mobius’ back by entering STEM without their permission so they can’t “steal his work” too (referring to him successfully using Leslie as a way out) like they did with Ruben, and many before Ruben (as Kidman says), and like that, he could be “worthy”
- to see if Leslie really was the way out. He also got really excited when he realized Ruben also just wanted to get out (right before Amalgam Alpha stepped on him).
He stayed in STEM because, much like everyone else in there, couldn’t get out so easily. “He shouldn’t have joined Mobius in the first place” - true, no one should have.
Not related to your comment but I wanted to mention regardless:
I forgot to mention in my OG post how after Ruben’s “death”, Marcelo wonders if it was Mobius’ plan all along to kill Ruben.
Also, Marcelo has a really strong mind, therefore he was practically the only one Ruben couldn’t “possess” like he did with Joseph, Seb and Connelly (Kidman doesn’t count because of the injection she got). We see this when his nose is bleeding in a scene with Seb, but he doesn’t turn into a haunted like everyone else does after a nosebleed. Makes you wonder, since Ruben can’t take over his mind, that Ruben doesn’t know about the full truth regarding Marcelo, so he has a warped memory of him like he does with Laura / Reborn Laura. I’ll tag some people who are also in on Marcelo lore to see if I missed something or if I’m not correct. @boxohobo @mradministratorsir @candybrained-pumpkin
With the amount of inconsistencies in the game, it can happen.
I must admit you had me up until the part where Jimenez knew Ruben’s brain and consciousness was still alive and well in that machine but he apparently didn’t “end it all” for Ruben because of his scientific curiosity.
I truly can’t like the guy at all for pushing aside the fact that Ruben is still a human in there and is experiencing atrocities.
And if he hated the anagram “RUVIK” so much, I’m curious as to why in the beginning he mutters “Ruvik is…”
Thank you for reading the post. I’m not sure I understand the first part of your comment, but I’ll try my best to answer. I’ll try to cover everything, so it will be long. In my post, I talk about his reaction in the scene when the Administrator shows him the artificial body, not about that choice being morally okay or not. Obviously it’s not a morally okay decision, but neither is serial killing and torture on Ruben’s part, or the grand scheme of world domination on the part of Mobius. That’s what makes the story going.
If you say you had me up until there because you wonder about my take on that: he, in my opinion, changed his mind about smashing the glass because he recognized that Mobius would eliminate him if he did so (which they would absolutely do, he was just a “small fish”), and this way (meaning he won’t break the glass), he can study STEM, and go up the career ladder at Mobius and “prove his worth”. My friend’s take on this (who is neutral towards Marcelo) is the following: in her opinion, Mobius was using Ruben’s brain as a core anyway, and he did not want to draw attention to himself, which I didn’t think about before, but it’s a good theory. Those are 2 personal takes, because its not a secret that the official storytelling is lacking in the game. You are allowed to dislike characters, I do dislike some too. I did not say everyone has to like him. The world would be boring if everyone liked the same things. However, due to the unfortunate events of the -once again- faulty storytelling, his character needed some clearing up about info that is only shown in the DLC. Many people either did not play them, or skipped listening to his tapes, so having everything that happens in the DLC in one post is not hurting anyone. And regarding the anagram part: there is a flashback scene in the DLC between him and the Administrator, when he talks about Ruben, he looks at the Admin and quickly corrects himself to Ruvik. On a tape, he talks about how Mobius started calling him Ruvik as a crude joke, and since he is planning to move up the career ladder at Mobius, he will not anger them by being the only one who calls him Ruben. And a totally different aspect of this, from the devs POV in my opinion: the game was built around the concept of the character “Ruvik”, they added his full name later into development. Since the first chapter sets the tone for the entire game, the devs needed to namedrop the main “spooky” character in a hood people saw in the trailer, hence the opening scene with Marcelo and the detectives. The broken storytelling, the plot holes and the fact that they show him entirely differently in the main game vs the DLCs could have been avoided if the devs put more thought into presenting the story in a way that is a bit more straightforward. It relies too much on finding documents and tapes throughout the game and DLC, and while I personally like that, many people will not understand half the story. Even if we pretend that the DLCs don’t exist, and that he brought the Mobius men to catch Ruben, a serial killer was off the streets as a result of that. Plagiarism and betrayal is not a bigger offense than serial killing. But luckily the DLCs exist, so some things were cleared up. I just wish that all the hatred that people aim towards Marcelo only, would be refocused on Mobius, since they are the ones pulling the strings. They used and eliminated many before Ruben, indoctrinated and used Marcelo as their puppet, and they would have killed both Ruben and Marcelo once they were of no use to them. Some hatred could also be redirected towards the abusive father that is Ernesto, and the village mob that set the kids on fire. And let’s not forget Ruben is not an innocent little guy either. I get that Ruben is so well-loved because he is that tragic mysterious handsome character type, he used to be my fave as well. But the fact that people nail Jimenez to a cross while ignore all the things Mobius has done, and the fact that Ruben, after all, is a mentally disturbed serial killer, is not fair. And after all the whole reason I made this post was the ugly behavior some people presented towards anyone who didn’t hate Jimenez.
