Tragic Realization
So I shot Felix in Ep1 thinking he was heartlessly backstabbing his own adoptive children. I figured it didn't matter because he killed himself by opening the briefcase (an oddly amateur move given his experience). It did sting a bit when he called Fiona his favorite in his last moments. I felt confusion and regret build after that as I found out all the care and effort he had gone to in the care package he left behind at the hideout.
When I found Felix was an option for the endgame team I googled a lets play and discovered how messed up what actually happened was.
So apparently Felix took the money out of the briefcase, replaced it with fake cash, stashed the real cash in the furniture in the back of the vehicle, rearmed the bomb, and then killed himself while praising his adoptive daughter. His plan was always to commit suicide to make it look like the cash was destroyed to protect his children from Vallory's vengeance, and he stuck to that plan with his dying breath even if Fiona mortally wounded him.
Only the way things ended up the money was all lost in the desert during the monster attack, Vallory found an excuse to hunt the group anyway, and Felix died with his daughters hating him and never to know the truth. He gave up everything and it all turned out to be a pointless waste.
I really wasn't expecting such heavy emotional weight to be hidden in a side option like this. I kind of wish Fiona and Sasha at least found out the truth in the scenario in which he dies. As is this is one of the sadder moments I've come across in a TT game, though the real impact of killing Felix is only to be discovered if he lives so I guess most players who killed Felix or let him die don't even find out that it was all an act and completely selfless.
Comments
If you don't shoot him, Felix is alive. He literally escaped just to get out of Vallory's beef.
I'm still convinced this was a last minute change but even if it wasn't Felix still betrayed them.
If Felix never "betrayed" us then Vallory would hunt us down and just kill us with her god damn rocket launcher, no questions asked.
But what confuses me is he still goes to open the case and you have to yell at him to throw it. If he knew the bomb was inside why the fook did he open it?
I've heard that the explosion if you let him die was actually a flashbang and Felix would end up in a Helios jail cell and live either way in an old script but Telltale ended up changing that in the final game possibly to add replay value in your choices.
From the way I see it, It was Felix's final farewell to Fiona and Sasha since he states that this is his final gift to the both of them in motivating them to pursue greater lifestyles than being con artists. Either way, he still leaves the money in the cabinet for Fiona and Sasha to find, he just wanted Vallory and Hyperion to go after him instead and given that the end result might not end well for him, it would make sense that he would commit suicide. Warning him, I can only say in my theory that Felix was really dead set on fooling Fiona and didn't want her to gather suspicion of what he was doing since he didn't want either of them following in his con artist footsteps.
Yeah, I killed Felix back in Ep. 1. He seemed like a suspicious dude and a notorious con artist who I just couldn't trust. Turns out in the end, Felix did care for his girls
He apparently used a flash bang? He disabled the bomb when swapping the money.
Well, in the original plans, I guess.
Really!? Well maybe I won't shoot him in my next playthrough.
If he switched the briefcases, then why did he blow up in all the playthroughs where he...blew up?
The way I see it, it works out both ways. If you let him die, he was just a scuzzy guy and didn't know about it and actually died and didn't switch them, because i mean, he blew up! But if you spared him, then he knew all about it and switched them! It seems like the guy Felix is was based off of your choice.
There's too much evidence that he cared about the girls for me to believe that he was really screwing them over. Between their gifts, the warning he left them, and setting Athena to guard them I think his backstabbing being a con is straight up canon.
At the end of the day I just have to believe that the message you get on character selection if you shoot him or choose not to warn him about the bomb - indicating that Felix is dead - is only strictly true from Fiona's perspective. The guy was obviously playing around with bombs for a while before this from what you see around the hideout and you never find a body. So I think he swapped out the bomb for a flashbang and made a break for it with the last million dollars. He could very well have used a shield designed to handle the blast too, that tech is common on Pandora. I figure he just isn't selectable because Fiona doesn't know to reach out to him and Felix is staying away out of a reasonable fear of being shot before he can explain himself.
If you think about it the EchoComm which was modified for live transmission was hidden with the money stash. For all we know the EchoComm was in the caravan with the money the whole time. Felix' original intention could have been to call the girls to tell them what really happened and about the money when things had settled down and they were no longer in danger from Vallory, which would indicate his intention was always to convincingly fake his death and that the bomb which exploded was never intended to be lethal but merely a distraction (and an effective one given the fake burning money everywhere). This would also explain how he found the money again as he could have just tracked the EchoComm and given Fiona the coordinates.
I wish I could find evidence of Felix being imprisoned on Helios in one version of the game after faking his death. So far I've only found unsubstantiated rumors of this but it sounds credible. Even without this I think Felix faking his death just makes more sense and the alternative that he really disgraced and killed himself as an empty sacrifice is too crushing for me to stick with.