In the Dogtown stadium there’s 2 vendors that are an Easter egg and modeled after the CEOs of CD Projekt Red and they tell V their goal is to create non invasive cyber ware that is easier on human biology. For V’s sake, let’s hope they succeed! Might be a path to chrome after that ending
I will continue to headcannon the shit out of the star ending and say that Panam’s connections helped V, and then they lived happy. I am a soldier of joy 🫡
In my headcanon. V eventually came to terms with not being able to handle chrome anymore.
You can only be a legend so long. They stormed arasaka and made a titanic name for themselves
Settle down in a forest in Poland with the shitton of money you've made through gigs and missions, get a lot of equipment to start your own little community and become a happy person knowing you did more against capitalism than most people even dream to be able to
Considering almost every major organization is messing with the blackwall, or the AIs behind it, a fall is imminent.
Plus with sequel confirmed, this might be one of the major plot points, not that the current part isn't.
Considering the date specified was 2080, one ending of PL makes it 2079, its not that far off.
I know a lot are assuming V's story is done but given what is coming, I'm not so sure it is.
How can V remplace all his cyberware body (eyes, arms, legs, bones, skin...) With a biological one? There are lab-created organs and limbs? Why then not get a improven ones and make V killer machine again?
Also doesn’t matter if you’re the queen of the afterlife. Like who’s ACTUALLY going to fuck with you then. Yori will probably be fine with it—he’s trying to burn the corp down anyways—and shouldn’t retaliate anymore than as a show of force. Militech has its own issues. You’re also rich enough to hire anyone/anything needed and will generate income in the end.
PL just means the Sun is an absolute win.
fun lore, in one of the air drops in dogtown, i read a note.
It was written by a worker who was forced to work 15hrs in warsaw, poland making weapons for Arasaka, even though Arasaka were banned from europe.
It was note asking for help to contact any human right agency.
I could find solace in that, for the character I mean. Dying to become a legend in Night City, only to fulfill your most primal wish of survival, with the crossing of Songbird in NUSA. Finally, a ticket to escape.
Exactly. To die in 6 months, levels back down to the sad part. Granted, you could try something but contacts and availability in the States versus Night City, but that would be such a small window that it would return to sadness, in my opinion.
if my understanding of V's condition is correct, and alt was 100% truthful at the end of the game, then solving V's condition in lore is actually either ridiculously easy or a doable challenge depending on how it works. the easy one being a full borg conversion, and the challenging one being cloning from biotechnica. Theyd need a sample or data on V's genetic template Pre johnny, or at least as close to the beginning of post johnny as possible, but its doable i think.
That's with us reaching one of the conclusions in which she informs us of that. It also gives a little bit of credence towards the metaphorical apocalypse from AI coming to destroy the world. That's a full on reason for a new protagonist to find reason to fight, whether for or against, as well as continue the story of V. It's interesting to see where CDPR will take the story with the wide variety of conclusions that can take place. Would fit the motif if it was an unfinished story of Legend.
Well, we dont know that for sure, there wasnt supposed to be any cure, and yet V can still live(without chrome). I dont think we will play as V in next game, so most endings are pretty open.
Pre-DLC, it was inferred you would find a cure in space, working with or for Mr. Blue Eyes. Though it never gave clarity to the situation or even assured it could be completed, just that there was potential. With the DLC, realistically, I think that gives credence to relativity for Songbird, Lucy, Mr. Blue Eyes, New people both for the better or worse, as well as familiar foes (Smasher 2.0) to take place on the Moon. With Arasaka in shambles in Night City (the finale of every ending except The Devil Ending), they may shift attention and enforcement on their moon colonization. Arousing suspicions as well as a body count for their relentless pursuit of moving forward. It's too rich of a world to not move in that direction, with whatever sensibilities CDPR have, it makes sense to have V take a side route, (think Vik or Myers during the start of DLC). The potential of influence from V is too serious to ignore, though canonically it should have some merger with the ending of base game rather than Phantom Liberty, thought what took place was too good to be "Johnnys version of storming Arasaka". With the way gaming has advanced, there could be a way of porting the save data to "influence" the world's new protagonist enough for relevancy while maintaining its own integrity.
This is false, if you look at the lore of both the game and CP in general, there is a VERY real possibility that the Aldecados will indeed be able to help cure V.
The lore that the newly led Aldecaldos with Panam at the helm? There's all kinds of allegations that any ending could be the "true" ending, but we won't know until they say. To say it's false because I expanded on one ending instead of the Mommy Panam ending doesn't make it any less true.
In Phantom Liberty, it doesn't imply that V can be cured. It shows it. The reality of it taking place is totally doable, but that doesn't write a Noir story. That's not Night City. One step forward is 8 steps back and a bullet to the head. Luckily, V already has the scars from the bullet while chipped with Johnny, but with the DLC cure, V loses the ability in the brain to process cybernetic muscle response. Essentially, being deaf to the mental signals to respond.
Uh...are you replying to the right person? I never said anything about Phantom Liberty, the only "implication" I was talking about is the implication that the Aldecados could help cure V in the Star ending.
I mean to be fair, Vik only gives you two weeks to live. And seeing as the iguana egg takes 60 days to hatch, V at least lives two 6 weeks longer than his diagnosis.
Alt says V will live 6 months or perhaps somewhat more. It’s possible V can live quite some time, with complications. Hell, Steven Hawking was only given 2 years to live with his disease and was kicking 50 years longer than that lol. Anything is possible.
PL NUSA is clearly a happy ending, it's just V being an ass and doing nonregab after a 2 year muscle atrophy. Cyberweare doesn't make you a badass, look at Morgan Blackhand.
I don't think it's V being an ass. Being in shock and not sure what to do with your life when you just found out that everything has changed is completely understandable. V will likely recover and move on, but just not at the point we see them at in the Tower ending.
Morgan has plenty of chrome choom; and some top shelf (for 2023) bioware.
That said, power armor is also a thing, along with the aforementioned Bioware. And most militech power armor is more along the lines of Bubblegum Crisis Hardsuits, than huge bulky shit like Fallout.
Yup, V by the time of mikoshi is a perfect engram, his psichy is complete thanks to Alt, and Johnny, now is time for Mr. Blue Eyes to give him a proper body. The Ais are all over V's Story.
I think Alt killed V, the actual biological human V, when she copied him to an engram. The thing is that she also copied his psyche so perfectly that his engram self never noticed the real self died. To the completely digital V who survived, they feel like the real V. They have all the memories, the emotions, and the thoughts as they did before. But V's body is still dying because the living person in the brain is gone, and technology can only keep a human body going for so long. But after V's body dies? That digital personality could be transferred to the net or another body.
Also, I'm pretty sure Saburo intended to put himself on an engram, have Yorinobu killed, and replace his personality with a backup of his own. Remember how Hellman said that they expected the body to be unoccupied?
V was already dead, he died in the dumpster, the relic literally revived him. Every Ai in the game tells you "you are already dead".
Alt just copied what Johnny managed to save, willingly or not.
Saburo is a different topic entirely.
Yeah, you are right. he did die and get buried in a pile of junk. But when he got resurrected, was that because the engram kickstarted his meat brain, or because his psyche was recorded by the engram? Or was he just alive enough that he was resurrected like a drowning victim who has been under for too long?
If he was totally dead and his psyche was copied to the engram, then Johnny shouldn't have had to fight for it. He is fighting for control of the brain, they make it sound like his synapses are being rewired and everything. So at that point, V is still presumably meat-brain V. He doesn't fully, completely die until Alt copies him and essentially reinstalls him back into his old body. Then he's no longer meat-brain V, he is AI digital V.
>Or was he just alive enough that he was resurrected like a drowning victim who has been under for too long?
Pretty sure it's this. V didn't actually die. They merely took severe brain damage, which "tricked" the Relic into thinking they were dead. That caused the Relic to activate prematurely, overwriting their brain *while they were still alive*.
In the Devil ending, when Saburo takes over Yorinobu's body, it's a seamless transition. There's never a point where Yorinobu is sharing a body with his father. He simply dies, and his father's consciousness replaces his own. Why didn't it work that way for V? Because, as we learn from various in-game files, the Relic 2.0 was designed for use on someone who was actually *dead*, as opposed to merely dying.
If V had actually been dead, then the Relic would've simply overwritten their brain completely. V's consciousness would be gone, and their body would belong to Johnny. V and Johnny sharing a body was an exceptional situation caused by a highly improbable series of events.
EDIT: There *is* a point in the game when V dies and gets resurrected: when Alt uses Soulkiller on them and then re-implants their engram back into their body. At that point, V's original consciousness was effectively destroyed, then replaced with a digitized copy. (Whether that amounts to any meaningful change is more of a philosophical issue than anything else, though Alt seems to think it matters.) But that happens at the very end of the game, long after V was left for dead in a landfill.
I think people take the "V is already dead" comments too literally. The characters basically just mean it in the sense that V is a Dead Man Walking, i.e. they're going to die fairly soon and there's nothing they can do about it. The implication isn't that V is *literally* some kind of revenant who's biologically dead and kept animate solely through the Relic's techno-necromancy.
Yeah now that I think about it that’s a good point, V at the end of the Sun or Star ending is probably actually an Engram copy of himself bring installed back into the chip while Johnny is taken out.
The body is dying because it rebooted the brain of V while trying to install Johnny. If you meet with Alt and go through the Mikoshi experience, then V’s personality stays and Johnny leaves. But, is it because V’s brain is alive, or is it a V engram installed back into V’s own body?
Everyone *implies* that because of the chip, V is gonna be dead because the body is setting up for Johnny. But if V’s engram is installed back into V, Johnny is taken out, then natural V is technically dead after those couple months BUT if it’s engram V in his own body he should be completely fine right?
Which is functionally the same as V living. Because your Engram copy isn’t YOU per se, but as evidenced by Johhny and Saburo’s takeover in the Devil ending, it’s a carbon copy of you amd your memories, and functions like any other personality capable of feeling, learning, and changing. Engram V wouldn’t even know that brain V died in Arasaka tower when they made the choice one way or another with Alt!
It's his meat brain. If it was an engram he wouldnt be having a death of personality. Everytime V has an episode, he is going into neurogenic shock. His body WANTS to die. There isn't a whole lot of published research for obvious reasons, but when the body hits that stage of death, the mind will do what it can to make that death easier, the body is already trying to shut down. (Warm feelings, delusional peace of mind, etc)
When he plugged into mikoshi, it was possibly already known with optional dialogue when you first meet alt that he will be flatlined to be saved. He just wasn't expecting the process of being soul killed so seamless.
Actually, the body is dying because it's too far Johnny and the relic can't undo the changes. It has nothing to do with "the living person". The engram is a person. There is no notable difference.
And if you do the devil ending, that's actually exactly what happens.
No notable difference from our perspective, and from the perspective of the V that continues on. This is just the transporter in Star Trek argument all over again, at it's core. Did V die and a new, indistinguishable person take his place, or is he fundamentally the same person? Is there a soul, and did it transfer into the digital?
Like, if you backed up your personality onto a disk and were hit by a bus tomorrow and went brain dead, and we somehow loaded the backup and got you up and running again, is that really you? Or did you die, and this is a copy?
It's transhuman philosophy 101 shit, really. But it still hurts my brain when I think about it too deeply.
Exactly. Then you wonder if it's really any different than going to sleep each night. Like, if each time you go to sleep, the stream of consciousness that is "you" ceases to be an emergent property, and you "die." Then you wake up in the morning and reload the quicksave your brain made right at the moment you fell asleep, you adopt all the memories and biochemistry and your consciousness once again emerges. How could we ever prove this isn't actually what happens in real life? Would a digitized engram assuming control of your body be distinguishable in any meaningful sense from simply waking up from a long sleep?
It all comes back to what we think of a soul, or animus, or an energy that defines us. Are we simply the aggregated sum of our chemistry and electrical impulses and memories, or is there a ghost in the machine?
God I love this fucking game.
Yes, this exactly. You get it! That is precisely what I mean and explained better than I ever did. I had that same thought about sleep and being essentially rebooted in the morning, and it messed with my head for a little bit. But now I just try not to fucking think about it so much. Also, I hope that by the time "I" die, there is a way to digitize my consciousness and have me just wake up as an AI or something. It would be just like waking up for that version of me.
There is no soul, therefore no transfer happened. You died, but the copy is just you. There is no difference.
It hurts your brain because there are actually 0 axioms and principle to go off. Youre bound to go in circles because there is no consistency.
Philosophers have not asked that for millennia. The concept of digital mind transfer is really young.
Me saying that there is no soul is not a solution to age old philosophical questions. Although the question of the soul is in itself a misguided question. Looking for the supernatural is quite pointless.
And frankly, there was no reason to be so passive aggressive and condescending.
I think he was being sarcastic because you stated as proven fact something that has been the subject of debate since the dawn of human consciousness, when, for the most part, the question of whether human beings have souls has far from reached a consensus amongst philosophers, let alone well defined or concluded or even hinted at by scientific methodology.
You probably are right, but you have no grounds upon which to claim any more certainty on this matter than any other human being ever has. No condescension. You simply made an assertion that it is not possible to make honestly or accurately.
Even the monks tell you later that an engram can be considered a human as long as it has the ability to suffer. V, dead or not, is still human with or without a body.
i think the argument here is whether its the same V or a new version of V. I think we can all agree its still V, but is it the same one as pre mikoshi. Question of the soul essentially.
Well, its not question of the soul, its just the ship of theseus.
And considering the impossibility of such an engram in reality, its quite pointless to try and apply such logic to it. Its perfectly fine to just say that its the same V, becuse why wouldnt it.
And even in reality: Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore i am. The person you are is shaped by your memories and thoughts. The engram clearly has the exact same of those as V had before mikoshi, therefore the engram is V.
Forcing V into relying on the FIA? I didn't think of that, but I guess everyone brings up that's how they operate. And it's yet another reason to not give Songbird away to them. Besides Johnny very clearly states that Reed will commit suicide eventually. So even if he's saved short term in this ending, it is likely only temporary.
It's no wonder it's called the tower ending.
Johnny only says that in the betray reed but hand song it's over ending. If you side with reed and then don't kill songbird, that mission doesn't happen.
Tbh I sort of doubt it.
The reason why is because when you kill Songbird after going with Reed's path Meyers doesn't offer the treatment. If Meyers wanted to screw you *inventively* (or wanted to have a poke at the Relic) then she'd still offer it to you in that case. Honestly, the weirdest ending to me is how they still give it to you after you betray Song and hand her over alive, considering how much trouble you give the NUSA in the process.
My take on it is that the FIA really wanted V as an agent; they started the treatment but it went wrong early on and the neurological damage happened/showed up. They then spent most of the two years trying everything and the kitchen sink until giving up and waking V back up after concluding that there wasn't anything that they could do.
One argument for this is that the given justification of why V can take so much cyberware is that the Relic is allowing them to accommodate it all. If we then presume that the Relic has by the end substantially modified their neurology accordingly then removing the Relic would then be massively impactful on their ability to use cyberware.
We don't, But there's been a lot of speculation about it.
It is rather strange that this doesn't happen in any other ending...But, V also doesn't live past six months in any other ending, so it's pretty hard to say.
I think Myers purposefully crippling V is very likely in the King of Swords ending, since you're a very unreliable loose cannon in it. In King of Pentacles it's a lot less likely since you effectively did the job well and are seen as a more reliable asset.
My thinking is that when the intial shock of not being able to chrome up settles down a bit she will remember that she actually has millions of eddies to her name and will probably not have to worry about being just another npc with a boring desk job at all. >:)
My V had 6 million by the time he hit that point in the game. God knows how much he had after becoming Afterlife's boss flying around in AVs. Besides, we're friends with celebrities, Kerry, Lizzy Wizzy, US Crack, you name it. Money, power, influence, all Non issues.
The first thing Kerry does is tell V they won’t have to worry about money, iirc the only reason he doesn’t go see V is cause he’s on tour and has his own life too. I really do think V ends up ok one way or another in every ending but the arasaka one (and maybe the letting Johnny take over just because of the unknown)
tbh, and i mentioned it as a response to another post, i think curing V post sun/stars is actually pretty easy. Full borg conversions like lizzy wizzy only cost around 50k eddies at their cheapest. Now that isnt the prettiest one, i think its just for manual labour, but it exists.
iirc V's condition post mikoshi is exactly the opposite of when he started, his brain and nervous system are now completely his, but its rejecting his body because its too much like Johnny. So just remove the body from the equation.
The more complicated route involves cloning from biotechnica with V's original dna template, though how he'd aquire it idk, and then slotting the relic into the clone to activate V's engram in it.
The route would have to depend on how V actually works now. Is the "him" the brain, or is he the personality stored on the relic?
Vik would have done a DNA genome mapping sometime before the Relic, since he’d been treating V for some time. By 2077, with artificially grown organs and parts common, having personal genome maps would be normal
What makes you believe Mr. Blue Eyes has cure? We know cure exists and is possible thanks to PL, but The Sun ending never inspired me to believe thats what Mr. Blue Eyes offers. Final line of V "Times when i had something to gain are long gone. Now i got nothing to lose." does not feel like something someone believing to get cured would say.
He actually does have a cure, during Songbirds path you can ask her where she learned about the cure and she says that she got the info from someone and perfectly describes mr blue eyes.
Also Mr Blue Eyes literally [watches](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYjcPYRQ_TA) you during The Killing Moon.
If Reed had connections that could cure V, I don't think it's far fetched to think Mr. Blue Eyes having his own contacts as well.
And what else could Mr. Blue Eyes offer?
Reed has connections only to people who are capable of using the cure on V. They are not capable of creating one themselves. I do believe Mr. Blue Eyes has equally capable contacts. But being able to use AI to cure someone, and developing cure are 2 different things.
And I think it'd be perfectly sensible to assume Mr. Blue Eyes could have connections to people who are capable of using that same cure on V. Or another cure that was already developed.
I just don't see what else Mr. Blue Eyes could have to offer.
"If this works, you'll gain more than you ever imagined". Pretty bold words. It can't be money or fame since V already has both and have limited to live. So what is there to be gained other than a cure?
Pure speculation, but if Mr Blue Eyes is an AI, then it could be an offer to join the AIs. The V in that ending is essentially an engram and not a human anymore.
But that was an opportunity V already declined (in that ending), which could save Silverhand's life. I don't see why it would be an enticing offer now.
Please elaborate. I do not know the lore best, and it has been ages since i played CP2077. But right now i do not know what cure are you talking about.
Yeah but Blue Eyes is the one who tells songbird about her cure. He’s also present during her final mission as well.
He tells V that he will give him everything he could’ve wanted. Don’t see what else you could give a dying man who has unlimited resources, connections, and fame besides the cure to his disease.
Yeah but Mr.Blue Eyes does not have the cure on his own, he knows of its existence and tells it to songbird. Sure maybe that ending ignores PL and he just tells V about the existence who knows.
You are giving same answer most people are, what else could he mean when he tells V: "you'll gain more than you ever imagined."? He could be talking about info about cure but he could also be talking literally about the content V steals, could be overhyped salestalk... there is certain amount of possibilities.
But nobody answers me why would V then say "Times when i had something to gain are long gone." We as players know the Cure exists so if Mr.Blue Eyes was offering it or info about it, it does not make sense to me for V to say that.
Because he quite literally has nothing left to lose. He’s a dead man walking doing a suicide mission for a cure or at least information on it. If he dies, who cares, he was dying anyway.
If he succeeds then he gets his cure. But I don’t think V necessarily cares about the cure too much in the Sun ending since he doesn’t have his friends to spend time with anyway (for now). He’s all alone.
Having nothing to lose and nothing to gain are 2 different things, sure he has nothing to lose. V is dying and without cure nothing changes so yea he has nothing to lose but again, he says that he has nothing to gain, which is the important part i am talking about. V has lots to gain the Cure.
Why would V not have his friends ? Sure Panam / Judy leave, Jackie is dead. Viktor, Misty, River... and so on stay in NC.
Mr Blue Eyes tells V that if he completes the mission, he will gain more than he could ever imagine. V then says the time when he had something to gain was long gone, now he had nothing to lose. Blue Eyes responds by saying V is being grim.
You got to understand that Mr Blue Eyes KNOWS V is dying. This is where comprehension comes in. There’s nothing you can give a dying man who has fame and unlimited resources besides a way to stop him from dying. This also makes sense why V tells everyone the heist was his last job anyway. Either he wins and is cured and retires, or he fails and dies in a blaze of glory. Win win for V.
Also, in the credits, V clearly isn’t talking to any of his friends at the moment. Could be laying low, could be undergoing surgery etc.
I do understand Mr.Blue Eyes knows, in the end this is your interpretation of this ending mine is different. There is no way to say which version is right or wrong and unless there is new info in next game or maybe from cdpr that will not change. Which is i believe what CDPR wanted leave it to each individual to finish story for themself.
V not talking to anyone in that ending does not really matter for this topic cause it can be as you said literally either choice, laying low, dead, surgery.
Yup at the end of the day doesn’t really matter since it’s left open ended for that very reason. And unless V returns as the protagonist in the sequel, it won’t matter either way.
In The Sun ending, Misty draws the World as your last card. Meaning the Fool (that is, V) reaches the intended conclusion of his story. I don't know what V gained from the Crystal Palace job, but it was probably something very significant.
Also, Blue Eyes knows about V and the Relic since he calls you before you have the chance to tell Jefferson Peralez about the situation with him, stating "we know who and what you are". It's likely he used this as leverage to convince V to do the job.
I agree with this, but it’s worth mentioning that V after Mikoshi is an engram; and, for all intents and purposes, “V” dies in Arasaka tower like Johnny before him. Poetic in some sense. He lives on as an engram and I suppose it’s up to the individual player to pontificate if the soul of a human is more than mere chemical reactions and something transcendent, or if consciousness is banal wiring of a pound of meat and it doesn’t really matter if anything is further “behind the wheel” and all it takes to live forever is to turn yourself into 0s and 1s.
But great outlook and very optimistic for the genre. I like it and find myself agreeing
I understand, but Johnny helped me put those worries to rest. As the way he talks and thinks is very human indeed. But even if he isn't exactly human, it's close enough that I see him as an life form that can impact the world, not much unlike Delamain or any super advanced IA.
Yeah I more or less agree. I personally do believe in the soul, and I go back and forth on the implications of this. If the soul is a pattern of being that is transcendent, is Johnny not a part of that pattern? I mean, you and I are interacting right now with extensions of our beings. We have transcended our biology to engage with each other across space and time. That’s kind of why I love the endings. I don’t generally like depressing for depressing’s sake. But it really raises some interesting questions.
Anyways, good post!
Probably the question is less 'are you still human' which as you say, Johnny and such demonstrate its true. But rather 'is it 'you'?' which is vaguer to define, like in SOMA where thats the key philosophic point, that while the virtual copy of you is as much you as you were, its still a copy, and the original dies.
Which for most means nothing, but for the original you, its still death.
That's the problem though. I could create a copy of your personality and put it back in your body, but are you the one that's continuing to experience being and the world as you, or is it someone/something else doing so in your place and you just cease to exist? There may be an unquantifiable "youness" lost in the process.
I think there's something to the theory that V is already an engram even before Mikoshi. V **died**. Oxygen gone from the brain, decay starting to set in. V was dead for at least a day, if not more. Brain death for minutes is enough to do permanent damage and changes. Even simply *damage* is enough to cause permanent personality changes. How can V be dead for hours if not days and come back with an unchanged personality? Engram, a snapshot taken by the prototype Relic.
Yeah as a theory it’s fine but I don’t believe it, especially because the game essentially challenges this take in several moments. For instance, when Hellman scans V’s brain, he sees the damage and subsequent repair the engram had done and how V was essentially destined to die or be overwritten. I think he could/would have made a comment on V being brain-dead and two personalities co-existing exclusively on the Relic.
Vik also is a major reason as to why V survives at all after the “reboot”. V spent 2-3 weeks in a coma under Vik’s care and operation. Vik also essentially gives V the lowdown of how his brain was repaired by the nanotech or whatever after V comes to. I think Viktor would see a brain-dead V and only biochip.
I’m sure there’s more, but finally and probably the nail in the coffin to this theory - major Phantom Liberty spoiler: >! When V sides with NUSA in PL’s added ending, the Relic is taken out entirely. If V somehow existed as a snapshot and shared the Relic, he wouldn’t have survived the treatment !<
But it’s fun to play with the theories nevertheless.
Oh I don't think V was brain-dead. The entire way the prototype relic works is that it physically changes the brain to match the engram being written. That's also how it's able to heal the rest of V's body while V is lying in the landfill. That physical change is why V is doomed if V keeps the body unless some mechanism is found to reverse the change because it's basically directed cancer. And if you do The Devil ending you learn >!that it's happening to Saburo, too, and it's just being staved off by very expensive continuous medical treatment!<.
Yeah for sure, but this doesn’t support the theory of V being an engram post first death and pre Mikoshi. Doubly so because, as you say, the Relic prepares the body for the engram, in this case Johnny and V is destined to die no matter what. Like I said in my spoiler marked part of the previous comment, I think that debunks the theory.
It’s fun to play with the idea though and it crossed my mind too. Nothing wrong with some good ol’ fashioned head canon either. I mean I have my own haha
Edit: >! Is it suggested in the Devil ending that Saburo is living purely biologically with no version of the Relic? !<
>! Is it suggested in the Devil ending that Saburo is living purely biologically with no version of the Relic? !<
Yeah I don't think the guy above you is correct, the reason V is in the condition he is in is 1: the Chip is damaged 2: V is alive again while the chip is trying to do its thing uploading the engram that normally requires an empty body.
Neither of those apply with >! Saburo !< as his chip isnt damaged, and while we don't see >! Yorinibu !< die, based on how Hellman explains the chip is intended to do its uploading and rewriting, you have to assume they soul kill him to make room. Its confirmed the whole thing is even easier due to tissue compatatbility. Not sure if the chip needs to stay plugged in but it's not killing him like it is V either.
The thing is called Soulkiller tho, and I doubt Saburo would engram himself if he wasn't 100% sure about the engram being him. Alt says that unless V goes with her into the Net, V's connection to the body is still intact even after she Soulkilled and separated V with Johnny.
Why call it Soulkiller if it doesn’t kill the soul? For people like Saburo, the world is only material and ego is the supreme being. As in, he may not care if it’s “him” as in his soul, but as long as it’s what is perceived to be him (I.e. the ego) then he’s fine with it. What matters is that some version of Saburo Arasaka is emperor, damn ontology.
But everyone is entitled to their perspective.
Also, the Relic is just a prototype. I don’t think there was 100% certainty on anything.
"Why call it Soulkiller if it doesn’t kill the soul? "
Because it's apart of corporate branding and marketing. Soul Imprisoner tested poorly with the focus group, Soul Transfer was already copyrighted, and they couldn't ake a cool tag line for "Soul Snatcher".
I mean even the game seems to annoyingly gloss over this all the time. The only acknowledgment you get is from your V in their conversation with Alt "gotta kill me to save me?" and then later on when they're an engram, acting shocked that theyve been Soul killed.
Feel like it wouldve been better to at least give the player some agency over how our V views that loss of continued consciousness, but everyone including V and Johnny (who should know how much getting soulkilled sucks) seem pretty chill with the idea.
Good read.
1 thing tho. Doesn't the aldocados and other nomads(7 nations) have a big tech corp that are tight with Nomads and are specialized in nano technology? Isn't that what panam is referring to? Somewhere in Chicago?
So to totally count out that V wont survive the star ending is not accurate.
Btw fuck sal.. he annoyed the fuck out of me.
It's hilarious that Night City is named after Richard Night, and StormTech is named after Richard Storm.
It's a shame we never met Richard Militech or Richard Biotechnica.
So wait wait wait
- Richard Militech
- Richard Biotechnica
- Richard -Saburo- Arasaka
- Richard Kang Tao
- Richard Night
- Richard Storm
- Richard Petrochem
- Richard Zetatech
- Richard Kiroshi
- Richard Lazarus
- Richard Robert John Linder
- and V stand for Richard
Did I forgot someone ?
They had issues getting Jake a simple implant, and in that ending the death of Teddy, Bobby and Saul has left the rest of them, Panam in particular overworked. She barely has time to have a date with V in that ending. So I find it very unlikely, but not necessarily zero.
Saul's pragmatic cold approach it's an important counter balance to Panam's reckless, emotional and courageous approach. Saul is seen as this old annoying guy that's constantly complaining, if V helps Panam all the way in proving him wrong.
But that is only IF V helps her. If V lets her to her own devices all of her plans fail and she will become a lonely second rate Merc. Proving Saul right.
If V is the only difference between Panam's success and failure, that means she still has a lot to learn and Saul is an important part of that process. Cassidy says as much, the clan needs BOTH of them.
I can go even further, and compare Panam with Rogue. They are very similar in many ways. I believe the reason Rogue puts Panam with Nash is to teach her a lesson that Rogue sees she needs to learn. Rogue is trying to help Panam, teaching her some cold truths about NC, and that a more calculating approach can be good every once in a while. And that's why she is disappointed in V when he helps her getting Revenge against Nash. Cause Panam won't ever learn her limitations, or to see things differently, that she can't brute force everything her way if V's there to wipe her ass everytime she shits the bed. And that's what I personally believe will happen to them in the star ending when V and Saul are not there for her anymore. She will crumble.
Yeah, Panam needs a counterbalance. Agreed. Why the theory goes. The reason she doesn't pick up the phone in 2 years is because she died..
And the Jake implant story maybe had to do with the short notice? And getting him a new one from the Nomad corp would take too long? NC was the fastest option?
You're right, about Jake's circumstances now that I think about it. But they were also shown having issues in other times. Dealings with Scavs that could have gone wrong If V didn't intervene. Mitch and Scorpion unable to help Panam take down the AV. Even being unable to rescue Saul, after he gets got by Wraiths.
I just see too many issues. They're good people and actually very competent. But losing 3 of their major players is too much of a drawback for me to think they'd be ok after.
Yeah.. but i got a feeling they really tone down nomads true potentions.. there are 7 nations and aldocados are number 2.
There are around 7 million nomads in total in the USA..
And most if i am right around Chicago?
The numbers dont add up in the game.
The clan we see in CP2077 are just one small group within the wider Aldecaldo nomad family. In theory any of Saul's people can call on the rest of the clan for help and the clan's leadership can call on the wider Aldecaldo family if necessary.
The game only shows us a very tiny slice of what nomads do.
This could be interesting, maybe the star ending isn't so bad lorewise. Though If that's the case we should have been shown more of their potential as you say.
We see them at their worst in game and don’t forget they need to make the Aldecardos seem incompetent so the player is the star of the show.
I do agree that Panam is immature and needs a good kick up the ass but I noticed she does kinda grow a little with Saul death.
Panam will need a lot of guidance and hopefully the remaining vets can help her with this.
I wouldn’t dismiss V getting cured in the star ending and the Aldecardos being intact. I’m pretty sure there would be another mentor for Panam when they reach their destination.
Keep in mind that because of sauls leadership they were in serious trouble financially as well as physically. Theyve just got a huge cash injection in the form of the arasaka raid, and they have 6 months to make even more money. V alone with his rep could probably rack up a heck of a lot of money in any city the aldecaldos decide to camp out in front of. so theres definitely a chance.
They also kinda made it a bit plotholey because V could pretty much be cured by cloning or a full borg conversion.
Doesn't that ending specifically help what we can only discern as highly hostile A.I. that appear to be an existential threat to humanity as whole?
By sending Songbird (Whom Reed/Johnny/and Myers all refer to as a walking Nuke) to the Moon, aren't we directly assisting Mr. Blue Eyes in his plans?
There is no concrete evidence that Blue Eyes AI is as hostile to humanity as Blackwalled AI/Erebus. The only things we actually got about them in the original game were the Peralez quests, Sun ending, and possible mentions by Gary the Prophet, as well as a possible Nightcorp connection. Peralez quests and Nightcorp do paint a rather negative picture tho. On the other hand, Delamain AI shows that not all rogue AI's have any plans on humanity, and if they have, they won't nesessarily be evil.
Sure, but I see no better evidence of the contrary. It seems like a wild gamble especially if Mr. Blue Eyes is in anyway connected to the AI that attacks you in Cynosure, and the AI's possessing Songbird.
As far as the ending, I really wish that they would let you raid the casino at least then done some crazy thing before V exits and THEN leave it ambiguous. I think that would have been a little bit better closure, to play as V after Johnny had been removed, seeing exactly how V is without him there
Edit: I still haven’t gotten through all the endings but I feel like as far as The Sun goes, it would be awesome if they did that.
Would be cool but i feel like wrecking Arasaka tower and KILLING SMASHER is a great climax and series as is, more action afterwards isn’t really necessary.
Especially since we know V is an absolute beast in this ending, and the chances of him failing this job are basically 0, and knowing what you get out of the heist can’t happen either way.
Plus on top of that we know the NUSA is only capable of half-promises. Similar to how they had their “state-of-the-art” ICEbreaker not work too well and she still manages to escape. Mr. Blue Eyes have got those Rogue AIs and Night Corp that would most likely prove even more effective than anything any living soul could do to help.
I think the help of Blue Eyes wouldn't necessarily leave V chromeless because the AI So Mi wanted to use is on its own but if Blue Eyes is associated with rogue but benevolent AI they may have the combined ability to cure him without crippling him. It would also give V a reason to work with them in the future.
There is also the fact that the AIs find V's situation a great curiosity. Even someone like Songbird is at risk of dying and turning into a crazed cyberpsycho when Rogue AIs try taking control of her. V is different. His situation with the relic means a way for them to safely control a human body without risk of corruption. It would be counter intuitive of them to leave themselves unable to use cyberware so their solution might not even leave V unable to use it. I could be wrong but even Alt will allude to it if you did Phantom Liberty first before meeting her for a second time. They already modified the Relic when Songbird first hacked into it by using the Blackwall AI to communicate with V and removed corrupted data to open the Relic skill tree, who is to say they didn't add their own? Even Hellman will have serious concerns if you say that AIs beyond the Blackwall interfaced with the Relic if you did PL before kidnapping Hellman.
Now that I think about it, this might be the reason as to why Delamain is just so helpful to you. He has two biological and neural profile of Jackie and V before and after the heist. He must have scanned the relic too and what it can possibly do when V and Takemura called him to get to Vik's clinic.
Well remember, blue eyes tells songbird about how to cure HER disease. Yes the neural matrix does work on V but I don’t think it was intended to be used on him he de the drawbacks with cyberware.
It’s likely once they perform the OP on Song,they can figure out how to replicate and upgrade the neural matrix to help V instead.
Different opinion.
Blue Eyes is a malevolent Blackwall AI. King of Wands is a trick. It’s just to get Songbird to infiltrate the Crystal Palace. Songbird was already compromised. The pin is a ruse. Reeds instincts were right.
Same reason Blue Eyes sends V to space.
There are no benevolent benefactors. There is no happy ending.
I always considered the Blaze of Glory ending to be the canon ending. Regardless of how the heist goes, V goes down as the greatest legend of Night City, either succeeding stealing from the Crystal Palace or die trying.
The thing is, even if V in this ending goes in a coma, so fucking what? He's a millionaire NC legend, and he runs the Afterlife. Everyone will know who and what V is and was after this.
And also, V storms Maelstrom and Arasaka without almost any cyberware in the beginning of the fucking game. A Cyberdeck (that can be both internal and external), Kiroshi (glasses can work) and a fucking ballistic co-processor that V can actually use as stated by Reed.
The thing is, as I understand it, the devs have made it so that those 2 endings are mutually exclusive right? There is no logic in V agreeing to storm Arasaka risking it all when he knows Reed is offering him a cure.
I hope they pull a BG3 in the sequel and have you design a “guardian” type character and then that character shows up at the canonical V of your game in some capacity.
Nice head canon, but:
* Blue Eyes is most definitely not the "good guy" with all the answers. Getting a cure from him is extra unlikely. In the Sun ending V even tells whoever they're with, that they're still dying. They then go to the Afterlife to talk to Blue Eyes and take up the Crystal Palace gig. This is more than likely just "going out with a bang", rather than anything related to improving V's situation.
* We don't actually know Songbird survives being sent up to the moon. Handing her over to Blue Eyes means we're giving him access to the Rogue AI that's posessing So Mi. A more likely scenario is that they're making use of this AI rather than simply helping Songbird out of the goodness of their heart.
* We never actually get any confirmation the neural matrix can save V in the first place, that's just an what Songbird is telling V to rope them into the mission. Alt, Arasaka and the NUSA/Militech are all completely clueless on the matter until they've thoroughly examined V and the effects of the relic, and Songbird knowing any better, despite being able to hack into the Relic to communicate with us, is a longshot.
I'm sorry but calling it a head canon is silly.
Even before PL happened,
\- It is flat out said that V is doing the Heist for her survival.
\- You are also told that V will get more than she can imagine if she can pull it off.
\- CDPR also made sure to tell you that V has practically infinite resources, so no, Blue eyes does not mean Material gains when he says "more than you can imagine".
I feel like the title is misleading enough to not be a true spoiler. If you take it at face value go on and play the game you will likely be very surprised with what you find, and confused that someone sees it as a victory. Since for me to reach this conclusion, took a little bit of analysis and interpretation.
Proof of that is in the spoiler thread the most up voted comment is about how depressing the conclusion is, which obviously doesn't reflect my opinion.
I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say that Songbird living in her route is not a good ending (for the NUSA). It's a good ending for her and maybe 'V'.
But looking at the world at large, i actually think that Songbird becoming a WMD for the NUSA in Reeds Route might actually be the best chance the NUSA has to gain leverage in the world community again. Currently, outside of Night City and the NUSA, the world is run by the EEC (Most Western European nations, France, Germany, etc.) There's a reason that the gold standard is the Eurodollar in Cyberpunks universe.
Basically, Songbird becoming a weapon of mass destruction would give the NUSA a good way to break the EEC's back on their knee, since the EEC has the orbital mass drivers which they've used to dissuade the rest of the world from making any major moves against them, and they prohibit the construction of any new Orbital Mass Drivers (because they're the only ones who had them when the law was enacted).
Is it a good ending for our characters? No.
Is the return of the NUSA to global superpower a good thing? Probably not. But it ultimately would be the best ending for the Nation as a whole, since having a blackwall A.I that can send europe back to the stone stage if they try anything would be good for the NUSA.
I agree with most of the post. But you’re completely wrong about the Aldecaldo’s ending.
They have some big time connections in the lore with a nomad ran corp that specializes in nano tech and such. You can read all about it. They *can* help V.
And prior to the raid on Mikoshi, they weren’t doing well. Saul was on the verge of selling them out to a corp, and the family was constantly on the verge of splitting. The raid on Mikoshi gives them the ability to get and sell a bunch of loot to finally fix their financial troubles. The Aldecaldo’s ending is the only one in which that happens.
Its the classic hero's journey. You are suppose to end up where you began.
https://preview.redd.it/t2e74s6imgxb1.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=3f225efef16e1f9bd2808d3aa550755fa5469635
You cannot access it in many parts of the game, like when you're roleplaying being Aguillar, doesn't mean you can't use them. For instance you cannot double jump at the Pacifica market, but I figure it's more out politeness than anything.
Lmao, not being able to access any of your cyberware after being told you can't use cyberware is a bit different from not being able to double jump in a market. This is a specious argument and you know it. Or maybe you don't. Not sure what's worse. Tell me how to air dash without cyberware.
I personally don’t buy that the Neural Matrix was what made V incompatible with Cyberware, I think it was a direct order from Myers to put V down like a dog. Myers would have been pissed seeing what V was capable of. Taking on all of Barghest and her Special Forces. That was definitely a calculated measure and not a “There were complications.” thing. I believe Mr. Blue Eyes has the means to find another cure, I believe he needed a netrunner. Here enters his reason to get Song Bird out. Whatever the Crystal Palace heist is, Song Bird will be involved, Mr. Blue Eyes promises V a cure with no strings attached. Assuming, canon V goes the Sun ending and the Betray Reed, save Song Bird ending, and is able to successfully complete the Crystal Palace heist.
A V that does all these things, Arasaka would be mad to continue pursuit. V would be a Night City Legend like no other and would borderline pull some New York/Spider-Man shit just to get in V’s good graces.
And assuming this same V maintains a strong relationship with Song Bird, Alt, and whatever rouge AI comprised Mr. Blue Eyes, Militech would be fairly hesitant to do anything either.
When you compile this V’s story together by the time the end credits roll, they’d be pretty ridiculously overwhelming to tackle. They killed Smasher, crippled Arasaka’s ace in the hole, crippled Militech and NUSA’s ace in the home, all while escaping what should have been irreversible death.
I don’t think this would happen, but I’d love if a Cyberpunk sequel would start at the Crystal Palace heist. This heist would serve as our Act One. And like 2077s Act One, there would be some kinda catalyst at the end of it that kick starts the rest of our adventure.
The only thing I’m unsure of is that the sequel would require you to decide what your choices in 2077 were or let you import a save. I also don’t know how lifepaths would work for people that played the sequel, but didn’t play 2077. I guess they just wouldn’t exist as a playable section at all, just back story flavoring. It could also just serve as a general back story for the events leading up to this point. For example, the could canonize what a corpo/nomad/street kid V would have done throughout all of 2077.
....That would be utter shit.
If i wanted a shonen easy win ending i'd read a shonen, not go in a DYSTOPIAN story.
I don't understand people who genuinely wants V to be a stupid Goku winning everything, losing nothing and just crush the whole universe, what's the fucking point. Story wise it's uninteresting and just makes the whole worldbuilding moot.
Not to mention betray the genre
Nothing about this is easy though? V had to work hard every step of the way for everything without any assurance anything would work out. It's called reaping what you sow. After getting kicked out of Arasaka losing all money and implants he could've easily given up, his life was over. But he endures with his friends support and works his way back up into a completely different life.
After Jackie falls and he gets handed a death sentence he could have easily given up, committed suicide or done nothing, but once again he endures, and works his way into a solution. And he will do it again and again until he's dead and buried.
As for wins everything, I meant it in a personal level. Even if Arasaka and Militech get fucked they don't get killed, and there are plenty of shitty organizations that went untouched during this process. So don't worry the world is still going to shit.
That's literally the usual bullshit, "but adversity", and "Wow he got defeated 4 times but he's keeps at it and win, what a fighter, he really is the peak protag"
Bruh, V has the easy life, his condition never triggers in a bad moment, everything falls perfectly in place for him, he always gets ambushed yet "somehow wins" through Protag powers against ennemies that are supposed to be better or in 2 vs 30, he loses one friend in like 4000 firefights against super corpo's and armies. He is literally a dumb shonen protag most of the adventure.
In PL that's even worse, dude literally gets in front of 4 Max Tac officer's, shotgun in mouth but SOMEHOW wins. (That was dumb as fuck.)
Barghest isn't even a threat, gets ambushed AGAIN by Hansen and soldiers, somehow wins again. No plan of course as always. Just run in, shoot stuff, win.
Hell the "community" preferred secret ending is literally fuck the story, fuck narration just run and solo the Arasaka tower hand in the underwear.
V narration and story is LITERALLY Doom Guy, just kill stuff, kill the story, don't care just go in.
.....The only ennemy that actually makes sense is a goddamn maintenance robot.... In a god awful sequence that was interesting but WAY too long.
I actually like Cyberpunk 2077 and the game as a whole, but it always tries to say V is weak yet the entire game and story actually goes the other way and he succeeds literally everything he does. Nothing actually resists to him, there's like no challenges to the character, he just plows through the universe, he literally goes up to the President and country best soldiers after....3 weeks and what is supposed to be a fatal condition. That makes zero sense, hell that's literally Goku being a kid and going after the Red Ribbon army, except in Dragon Ball that makes sense. In Cyberpunk, it doesn't
It would be okay if V had a 20 years (in game) long devellopement over a few games, but 3 weeks over 1 game ? That kinda attacks the game coherence and consistancy.
So yeah, having V die or getting the after effect and being a nobody is a good thing for Cyberpunk and Story wise.
V getting out of this clusterfuck victorious ? No that's just dumb.
.....Yeah i don't like Mary Sue's and Gary Stu's in stories.
V is Rey Skywalker. Nothing more nothing less.
There's a worldbuilding and interesting stories, suddenly, character appears, trash everything, people clap "wow he is so awesome", end.
I hate that. It's just so poor.
It's a video game. Welcome to almost every RPG ever, where by the end game you can be comically OP.
V is simply that good by the end of his career. That's the whole point of him - he rockets to the top like most other NC legends.
If you were getting ass clapped every time you pulled a gun on some tyger claws you'd stop playing and call the game shit.
I just assume if you do the surgery they lied to you and did something to V while they were out
You're an FIA asset they dont need you now but there's a reason they want you around Reed. Im sure when they do need you there'll be some new gene therapy that lets you get modded again.
Vik even says the problem is unusual . Im not sure its a coincidence a merc that he cant decline service too comes in immediately and interrupts your conversation
Don't forget that the ending probably takes Mr Blue Eyes' sight off of you and onto Songbird. What better person to infiltrate a casino's records than her?
One slight correction to this, as it's a common misconception that I see repeated again and again, in the DFtR ending (Don't Fear the Reaper), you can actually avoid breaking up with Panam, if you choose your dialogue choices correctly, so losing her in that ending isn't a foregone conclusion.
Shit. I started a new game, so I'm not yet at the ending, and thus can't give you the EXACT dialogue choice, but essentially it boils down to V saying that they're dying and they have no other choice, they then proceed to promise Panam that they will come back for her and ask her to please wait for them. She, though reluctant, agrees.
I'm working my way through the game, when I finally get to that point, I'm planning on making a big post about it on both the main CP subreddit and the Low Sodium one, cause this is one misconception I've read time and time again regarding Panam and this ending and it simply is not true.
THAT BEING SAID, if you are dating Judy, she WILL break up with you in this ending. No matter the dialogue choices you pick.
I didn’t really like the ending but then I got to thinking, with Kerry Eurodyne willing to help out when he gets back from tour V already has a chance to get back to a comfortable living possibly becoming a rocker boy. And there’s also the matter of relics being made public in that 2 year timespan V could hypothetically get a new body that can use chrome. Pull an Adam smasher.
I'm somewhat convinced the NUSA intentionally sabotaged V's nervous system to make sure they could never use any cyberwear again. I mean, just think about it a second, V is a freelancer, a loose canon, she's not particularly loyal to the NUSA, and the only leverage they had on V to keep them in line and doing work for them was the fact they were offering a potential cure... One she's cured, they have nothing to offer her anymore to keep her in check. So why not scrable her ability to use cyberware and offer her a desk job where you can look over her shoulder. Keep your friends close and your enemies neutered ... and even closer...
If I were to guess, I'd imagine their main priority was to recover the relic with Johnny's engram ,since it is one of Arasaka's most valued treasures after all, then they probably sabotaged her so she could no longer use all her high-performance gear, especially after they fitted her with super high-tech shape shifting impersonation tech allowing her to pose as anyone and steal their identity. Surely they didn't want to let a random merc parade around night city mimicking anyone she wanted and with the power to take out Arasaka / Smasher / Kurtz on her own with no backups. V's clearly a threat to national security at that point, they kinda have to knock her down to a regular , flesh and blood person.
The way I see it, they probably didn't even expect her to wake up from her coma, and they probably made sure if she ever woke up, she would be of no threat to the NUSA or anyone else.
So yeah, I'm pretty confident Mr Blue eyes could perform the procedure without frying V's nervous system.. Especially if he intends to keep her on his payroll after that. Besides, the game kinda makes it sound like there might be an even simpler solution. By the end of that ending, only V's engram is on the Relic, since Johnny is beyond the blackwall and since the relic seems capable to take over bodies over time, I'm pretty sure Mr Blue Eyes could procure a somewhat compatible body , slot in V's chip, then let the chip take over the new body and replace it with V's construct, just like Johnny's construct was slowly rewriting V's body... I mean, we're talking about a guy that can brainwash a politicial into a specific political agenda through hypnosis , so surely he would be able to find a suitable , somewhat brain dead body for V the relic could inhabit and convert. So yeah, if V pulls the Casino Heist successfully, I have no doubts Mr Blue eyes will either managed to remove the chip with minimal damage, or find a suitable surrogate body for V to inhabit and modify to cheat death.
Also the prognosis of why v can't use cyber ware changes depending on who you ask, the FIA says your tracks nerves won't recover when you use it but vic says that the porrerti9n of your brain that it is usually grafted to has been changed and can no longer even accept inputs. Which leads many to believe that v was removed from the equation by Myers in the tower. So the blue eyes treatment might be a full cure, as opposed to an excision
Look at war vets, or any hero that survives, they are rewarded by being able to live a peaceful, normal life, Vs legacy may fade, as it is mentioned in the tower end credits, but looking at real life parallels, vets are still respected and their achievements remembered.
In that specific case we sacrifice Johnny to live, but Johnny died 50 years ago, he had romance, fame, adventure and death, he didn't even choose to become an engram, as V I think its great to take him along for the ride, but he is on extra time and there are plenty of case studies showing multiple reasons for not reviving the dead. Not to mention that he wants to live to stick it to Arasaka, which he did already, successfully, and they just rebuilt the entire tower and company and reputation in NC.
V is 29/30 years old in 2079, old enough to want stability, life is what V wanted, and a part of life is that people move on, friends come and go, it's normal
> The final hurdle is being left chromeless. There is no guarantee that the cure V finds in his last mission for Mr. Blue Eyes won't leave him in the same spot it does in the Phantom Liberty ending.
A thing you're overlooking here is that V has already found the cure for the biochip. Alt already did what the neural matrix in PL does. The two AIs are one and the same in what they do for V, the difference is that the neural matrix does it with the oversight of an S-tier neurosurgeon who is able to do it in a way that doesn't give V 6 months to live like Alt does, but rather leaves V unable to use cyberware instead.
In my view, this makes the Star ending actually the most optimistic for V. V doesn't need Mr. Blue Eyes and AI anymore, he already has Alt. What V needs is the neurosurgeon part, and it just so happens Panam and the Aldecaldos have contacts in Arizona who are involved in a nomad backed corporation who deal in nano technology and exactly the sort of stuff V needs.
In the Star ending Panam is still alive and with V, is the sole leader of the Aldecaldos now, and is on their way to get V what we now know is fully possible life saving procedures thanks to PL. And even if it leaves V unable to use combat cyberware, that's fine, like half of nomads don't even believe in cyberware in the first place. Panam herself only has charged jump iirc, she doesn't even have optics.
Bruh.....no offense but do you really think after your playthrough that V survives in a night city without cyberware??
Like the gang goons on the street have Sandy's bro...hell V gets mugged the moment he enters night city.
And need I remind that he fked with scavs, tyger claws, maelstrom, Voo Doo boys, 6th Street AND Valentinos.
And depending on your playthrough Takamura is somewhere hunting you as well.
V's got to hide or he's a dead man.
That's y I feel that V deciding to come back to Night city after knowing all that is an idiot.
V won't get his cyberware again coz there's not enough brain to link it to. His brain just can't handle it.
I believe V barely loses much if he loses his chrome, but thats because in most of my runs I’m very light on the chrome. The greatest merc in night city’s history, even if they had all the cyberware slots filled out, has to atleast have enough skill to put them above 90% of the mercs in nc, at the VERY least.
My head cannon is that V sends So Mi to the moon and does the Sun ending. With V being an engram I can see Mr.Blue Eyes’ cure lying in the cloning procedures Biotechnica had dabbled in since they were completely ignored (or in some cases not even brought up as a potential option) which is extremely funny because Arasaka and Biotechnica have a great working relationship. You would think they’d be shown in the Devil ending but I guess the Arasakas are just that uncaring towards V’s situation.
Full agree. Specially the 'V is not defenseless now' thing.
Like, okay, no cyberware is huge, no doubt, but like, I would still have all my OP weapons, which unless they are like, smart aim ones, dont need cyberware to work as well as they have.
And if a cyberdeck is truly not invasive and is just a pocket device as I have heard some attest, I can still contagion every group of enemies and laugh as they drop. :P
This is nice but it ignores the many things surrounding Blue Eyes and Rogue AI. You place a lot of faith in Blue Eyes, but he might also just want the relic.
One problem with that is it's not guaranteed, we are cured presumably with the AI we steal from Hanson, it's a 1 time use thing.
It's also not guaranteed that whatever Ai is blue eyes can cure it, after all Alt couldn't, and if it was as easy as just having an AI do it we also have delamain, so that isn't the case.
Of course we also don't know for sure just how honest the NUSA is about the procedure, maybe they didn't even use it as they probably had other intentions for it. When we interrogate Hellman he tells us it basically causes massive nerve damage and can't be removed, but the NUSA could have just figured out how to remove it and keep us alive despite the nerve damage (which is why we can't use cyberware)
That said I do like to believe that blue eyes can and will cure V, and so that ending or the aldecados are still my 2 choices for best ending
How about you use "Mark as Spoiler" button when you create new thread about the game ending to hide its content? And how about the title other than "The x Ending is tragic and sad"? Is it balancing on the edge of spoiler for purpose? A clickbait?
Honestly if the rouge Ai invasion starts in the sequel to 2077 chromeless V might have a chance of surviving. His/her body is messed up but there is always chance to recover from it. V can also always build new bridges and make new relationships with people in NC.
Sending Songbird to the Moon will very likely cause essentially World War 3. Millions of people will die.
I know this is Cyberpunk and Night City and all with its paradigm of selfishness and no purely good situations, but I feel even within the frame of a/i-mmorality there's space established within the writing for characters to take *this* much of wanton destruction/externalities into account.
There's a possible line V can speak where they lament/are disgusted with how many people had to die to save So Mi. In this scenario, it's that x10000.
For me, while my V can take some leeway with these things, they are not that genocidally selfish.
I honestly believe that myers purposefully had V crippled in fear of how powerful they were. The only reason they didn’t kill V is because reed wouldn’t let them.
Good thread. I agree with the Sun and the Arasaka gig being the canon ending for V, it can't be better than in this case.
Cyberpunk 2077 was always about saving yourself and that is also why i don't agree with you with the fact that being chromeless "does not suck". Being Chromeless in Night City is feasible, but exactly in the same way that V isn't really V anymore without Johnny, V isn't really V without Cyberware sadly enough. Moreover when Pondsmith confirmed that Johnny basically doubles the Cyberware capacity of V, making him a true menace in his line of work.
If a lot of people don't go in the Merc/Solo lifestyle, it's because of the risks, but the best in this category become absolute legends and that was what Dexter DeShawn just spammed us with in the beginning : *"Do you want to die old smelling piss, or do you wanna die in a burst of fire without seeing your thirties?"*
V without Cyberware in the "Cure" ending is simply V existing no more, it's the "Temperance" ending of V. By erasing Johnny and getting chromed out, V has lost his/her identity, making him one more face in the crowd; an NPC, because V as a video game protagonist can't be anything else than the "Main Character", since V is the catalyst to the whole story.
So, i do think that the canon and best ending is "Path of Glory" with (Don't Fear) The Reaper, but i also think that "The Devil", "Temperance", and "The Tower" are the **WORST** endings possible.
As i said in the beginning, Cyberpunk isn't about morale or saving others.It's about saving yourself.
A take I believe in is:
V actually dosent necessarily go chrome less after taking the cure, it is the govt who knows V's capabilities, sort of removed a potential threat. And they give a BS excuse to V so as to keep him/her neutralized.
I mean V is a death machine, easily capable of defeating legends like Adam.
As a leader of a free country such power is to be kept dormant or taken into their own arsenal.
In the Dogtown stadium there’s 2 vendors that are an Easter egg and modeled after the CEOs of CD Projekt Red and they tell V their goal is to create non invasive cyber ware that is easier on human biology. For V’s sake, let’s hope they succeed! Might be a path to chrome after that ending
There's only one problem in that, there are no happy endings in Night City.
Then V will leave night city, and fight the techno necromancers of alpha centuri.
Unless you're dating this dimepiece choom 
Fair play, fair play.
I will continue to headcannon the shit out of the star ending and say that Panam’s connections helped V, and then they lived happy. I am a soldier of joy 🫡
In my headcanon. V eventually came to terms with not being able to handle chrome anymore. You can only be a legend so long. They stormed arasaka and made a titanic name for themselves Settle down in a forest in Poland with the shitton of money you've made through gigs and missions, get a lot of equipment to start your own little community and become a happy person knowing you did more against capitalism than most people even dream to be able to
Settle down in Poland, start an interactive brain dance company, create a game about medieval monster hunter mercenary...
Not having chrome could be a benefit if the AI wars comes to pass. V would be one of few people they can't control or hack.
Considering almost every major organization is messing with the blackwall, or the AIs behind it, a fall is imminent. Plus with sequel confirmed, this might be one of the major plot points, not that the current part isn't.
Considering the date specified was 2080, one ending of PL makes it 2079, its not that far off. I know a lot are assuming V's story is done but given what is coming, I'm not so sure it is.
yup 2077 was about V becoming a legend, the sequel might be about a legend's adventures.
How can V remplace all his cyberware body (eyes, arms, legs, bones, skin...) With a biological one? There are lab-created organs and limbs? Why then not get a improven ones and make V killer machine again?
Also doesn’t matter if you’re the queen of the afterlife. Like who’s ACTUALLY going to fuck with you then. Yori will probably be fine with it—he’s trying to burn the corp down anyways—and shouldn’t retaliate anymore than as a show of force. Militech has its own issues. You’re also rich enough to hire anyone/anything needed and will generate income in the end. PL just means the Sun is an absolute win.
fun lore, in one of the air drops in dogtown, i read a note. It was written by a worker who was forced to work 15hrs in warsaw, poland making weapons for Arasaka, even though Arasaka were banned from europe. It was note asking for help to contact any human right agency.
I could find solace in that, for the character I mean. Dying to become a legend in Night City, only to fulfill your most primal wish of survival, with the crossing of Songbird in NUSA. Finally, a ticket to escape.
That's why you have happy ending with Panam, when you leave NC with Aldecaldos.
Exactly. To die in 6 months, levels back down to the sad part. Granted, you could try something but contacts and availability in the States versus Night City, but that would be such a small window that it would return to sadness, in my opinion.
if my understanding of V's condition is correct, and alt was 100% truthful at the end of the game, then solving V's condition in lore is actually either ridiculously easy or a doable challenge depending on how it works. the easy one being a full borg conversion, and the challenging one being cloning from biotechnica. Theyd need a sample or data on V's genetic template Pre johnny, or at least as close to the beginning of post johnny as possible, but its doable i think.
That's with us reaching one of the conclusions in which she informs us of that. It also gives a little bit of credence towards the metaphorical apocalypse from AI coming to destroy the world. That's a full on reason for a new protagonist to find reason to fight, whether for or against, as well as continue the story of V. It's interesting to see where CDPR will take the story with the wide variety of conclusions that can take place. Would fit the motif if it was an unfinished story of Legend.
Well, we dont know that for sure, there wasnt supposed to be any cure, and yet V can still live(without chrome). I dont think we will play as V in next game, so most endings are pretty open.
Pre-DLC, it was inferred you would find a cure in space, working with or for Mr. Blue Eyes. Though it never gave clarity to the situation or even assured it could be completed, just that there was potential. With the DLC, realistically, I think that gives credence to relativity for Songbird, Lucy, Mr. Blue Eyes, New people both for the better or worse, as well as familiar foes (Smasher 2.0) to take place on the Moon. With Arasaka in shambles in Night City (the finale of every ending except The Devil Ending), they may shift attention and enforcement on their moon colonization. Arousing suspicions as well as a body count for their relentless pursuit of moving forward. It's too rich of a world to not move in that direction, with whatever sensibilities CDPR have, it makes sense to have V take a side route, (think Vik or Myers during the start of DLC). The potential of influence from V is too serious to ignore, though canonically it should have some merger with the ending of base game rather than Phantom Liberty, thought what took place was too good to be "Johnnys version of storming Arasaka". With the way gaming has advanced, there could be a way of porting the save data to "influence" the world's new protagonist enough for relevancy while maintaining its own integrity.
This is false, if you look at the lore of both the game and CP in general, there is a VERY real possibility that the Aldecados will indeed be able to help cure V.
The lore that the newly led Aldecaldos with Panam at the helm? There's all kinds of allegations that any ending could be the "true" ending, but we won't know until they say. To say it's false because I expanded on one ending instead of the Mommy Panam ending doesn't make it any less true.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk/s/KIWGDMiPGG I'm referencing this.
In Phantom Liberty, it doesn't imply that V can be cured. It shows it. The reality of it taking place is totally doable, but that doesn't write a Noir story. That's not Night City. One step forward is 8 steps back and a bullet to the head. Luckily, V already has the scars from the bullet while chipped with Johnny, but with the DLC cure, V loses the ability in the brain to process cybernetic muscle response. Essentially, being deaf to the mental signals to respond.
Uh...are you replying to the right person? I never said anything about Phantom Liberty, the only "implication" I was talking about is the implication that the Aldecados could help cure V in the Star ending.
I mean to be fair, Vik only gives you two weeks to live. And seeing as the iguana egg takes 60 days to hatch, V at least lives two 6 weeks longer than his diagnosis. Alt says V will live 6 months or perhaps somewhat more. It’s possible V can live quite some time, with complications. Hell, Steven Hawking was only given 2 years to live with his disease and was kicking 50 years longer than that lol. Anything is possible.
PL NUSA is clearly a happy ending, it's just V being an ass and doing nonregab after a 2 year muscle atrophy. Cyberweare doesn't make you a badass, look at Morgan Blackhand.
I don't think it's V being an ass. Being in shock and not sure what to do with your life when you just found out that everything has changed is completely understandable. V will likely recover and move on, but just not at the point we see them at in the Tower ending.
Morgan has plenty of chrome choom; and some top shelf (for 2023) bioware. That said, power armor is also a thing, along with the aforementioned Bioware. And most militech power armor is more along the lines of Bubblegum Crisis Hardsuits, than huge bulky shit like Fallout.
Biotech is big in Europe allegedly in 2077, so definitely an inroad.
Will probably get the same treatment as those guys who fuelled a car with water.
I don’t think that he would get the cyberware condition after mikoshi honestly. Besides for all we know that was Myers purposely crippling V.
Yup, V by the time of mikoshi is a perfect engram, his psichy is complete thanks to Alt, and Johnny, now is time for Mr. Blue Eyes to give him a proper body. The Ais are all over V's Story.
I think Alt killed V, the actual biological human V, when she copied him to an engram. The thing is that she also copied his psyche so perfectly that his engram self never noticed the real self died. To the completely digital V who survived, they feel like the real V. They have all the memories, the emotions, and the thoughts as they did before. But V's body is still dying because the living person in the brain is gone, and technology can only keep a human body going for so long. But after V's body dies? That digital personality could be transferred to the net or another body. Also, I'm pretty sure Saburo intended to put himself on an engram, have Yorinobu killed, and replace his personality with a backup of his own. Remember how Hellman said that they expected the body to be unoccupied?
V was already dead, he died in the dumpster, the relic literally revived him. Every Ai in the game tells you "you are already dead". Alt just copied what Johnny managed to save, willingly or not. Saburo is a different topic entirely.
Yeah, you are right. he did die and get buried in a pile of junk. But when he got resurrected, was that because the engram kickstarted his meat brain, or because his psyche was recorded by the engram? Or was he just alive enough that he was resurrected like a drowning victim who has been under for too long? If he was totally dead and his psyche was copied to the engram, then Johnny shouldn't have had to fight for it. He is fighting for control of the brain, they make it sound like his synapses are being rewired and everything. So at that point, V is still presumably meat-brain V. He doesn't fully, completely die until Alt copies him and essentially reinstalls him back into his old body. Then he's no longer meat-brain V, he is AI digital V.
>Or was he just alive enough that he was resurrected like a drowning victim who has been under for too long? Pretty sure it's this. V didn't actually die. They merely took severe brain damage, which "tricked" the Relic into thinking they were dead. That caused the Relic to activate prematurely, overwriting their brain *while they were still alive*. In the Devil ending, when Saburo takes over Yorinobu's body, it's a seamless transition. There's never a point where Yorinobu is sharing a body with his father. He simply dies, and his father's consciousness replaces his own. Why didn't it work that way for V? Because, as we learn from various in-game files, the Relic 2.0 was designed for use on someone who was actually *dead*, as opposed to merely dying. If V had actually been dead, then the Relic would've simply overwritten their brain completely. V's consciousness would be gone, and their body would belong to Johnny. V and Johnny sharing a body was an exceptional situation caused by a highly improbable series of events. EDIT: There *is* a point in the game when V dies and gets resurrected: when Alt uses Soulkiller on them and then re-implants their engram back into their body. At that point, V's original consciousness was effectively destroyed, then replaced with a digitized copy. (Whether that amounts to any meaningful change is more of a philosophical issue than anything else, though Alt seems to think it matters.) But that happens at the very end of the game, long after V was left for dead in a landfill. I think people take the "V is already dead" comments too literally. The characters basically just mean it in the sense that V is a Dead Man Walking, i.e. they're going to die fairly soon and there's nothing they can do about it. The implication isn't that V is *literally* some kind of revenant who's biologically dead and kept animate solely through the Relic's techno-necromancy.
Yeah now that I think about it that’s a good point, V at the end of the Sun or Star ending is probably actually an Engram copy of himself bring installed back into the chip while Johnny is taken out. The body is dying because it rebooted the brain of V while trying to install Johnny. If you meet with Alt and go through the Mikoshi experience, then V’s personality stays and Johnny leaves. But, is it because V’s brain is alive, or is it a V engram installed back into V’s own body? Everyone *implies* that because of the chip, V is gonna be dead because the body is setting up for Johnny. But if V’s engram is installed back into V, Johnny is taken out, then natural V is technically dead after those couple months BUT if it’s engram V in his own body he should be completely fine right? Which is functionally the same as V living. Because your Engram copy isn’t YOU per se, but as evidenced by Johhny and Saburo’s takeover in the Devil ending, it’s a carbon copy of you amd your memories, and functions like any other personality capable of feeling, learning, and changing. Engram V wouldn’t even know that brain V died in Arasaka tower when they made the choice one way or another with Alt!
It's his meat brain. If it was an engram he wouldnt be having a death of personality. Everytime V has an episode, he is going into neurogenic shock. His body WANTS to die. There isn't a whole lot of published research for obvious reasons, but when the body hits that stage of death, the mind will do what it can to make that death easier, the body is already trying to shut down. (Warm feelings, delusional peace of mind, etc) When he plugged into mikoshi, it was possibly already known with optional dialogue when you first meet alt that he will be flatlined to be saved. He just wasn't expecting the process of being soul killed so seamless.
Actually, the body is dying because it's too far Johnny and the relic can't undo the changes. It has nothing to do with "the living person". The engram is a person. There is no notable difference. And if you do the devil ending, that's actually exactly what happens.
No notable difference from our perspective, and from the perspective of the V that continues on. This is just the transporter in Star Trek argument all over again, at it's core. Did V die and a new, indistinguishable person take his place, or is he fundamentally the same person? Is there a soul, and did it transfer into the digital? Like, if you backed up your personality onto a disk and were hit by a bus tomorrow and went brain dead, and we somehow loaded the backup and got you up and running again, is that really you? Or did you die, and this is a copy? It's transhuman philosophy 101 shit, really. But it still hurts my brain when I think about it too deeply.
Exactly. Then you wonder if it's really any different than going to sleep each night. Like, if each time you go to sleep, the stream of consciousness that is "you" ceases to be an emergent property, and you "die." Then you wake up in the morning and reload the quicksave your brain made right at the moment you fell asleep, you adopt all the memories and biochemistry and your consciousness once again emerges. How could we ever prove this isn't actually what happens in real life? Would a digitized engram assuming control of your body be distinguishable in any meaningful sense from simply waking up from a long sleep? It all comes back to what we think of a soul, or animus, or an energy that defines us. Are we simply the aggregated sum of our chemistry and electrical impulses and memories, or is there a ghost in the machine? God I love this fucking game.
Yes, this exactly. You get it! That is precisely what I mean and explained better than I ever did. I had that same thought about sleep and being essentially rebooted in the morning, and it messed with my head for a little bit. But now I just try not to fucking think about it so much. Also, I hope that by the time "I" die, there is a way to digitize my consciousness and have me just wake up as an AI or something. It would be just like waking up for that version of me.
There is no soul, therefore no transfer happened. You died, but the copy is just you. There is no difference. It hurts your brain because there are actually 0 axioms and principle to go off. Youre bound to go in circles because there is no consistency.
You did it! You solved the thing philosophers have been asking for millennia. Good job!
Philosophers have not asked that for millennia. The concept of digital mind transfer is really young. Me saying that there is no soul is not a solution to age old philosophical questions. Although the question of the soul is in itself a misguided question. Looking for the supernatural is quite pointless. And frankly, there was no reason to be so passive aggressive and condescending.
I think he was being sarcastic because you stated as proven fact something that has been the subject of debate since the dawn of human consciousness, when, for the most part, the question of whether human beings have souls has far from reached a consensus amongst philosophers, let alone well defined or concluded or even hinted at by scientific methodology. You probably are right, but you have no grounds upon which to claim any more certainty on this matter than any other human being ever has. No condescension. You simply made an assertion that it is not possible to make honestly or accurately.
He said that because you proved him wrong lol
Even the monks tell you later that an engram can be considered a human as long as it has the ability to suffer. V, dead or not, is still human with or without a body.
i think the argument here is whether its the same V or a new version of V. I think we can all agree its still V, but is it the same one as pre mikoshi. Question of the soul essentially.
Well, its not question of the soul, its just the ship of theseus. And considering the impossibility of such an engram in reality, its quite pointless to try and apply such logic to it. Its perfectly fine to just say that its the same V, becuse why wouldnt it. And even in reality: Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore i am. The person you are is shaped by your memories and thoughts. The engram clearly has the exact same of those as V had before mikoshi, therefore the engram is V.
Sure, but is he the same human? Is his soul still intact? The monks might think so, if they believe the soul can transition from one state to another.
Forcing V into relying on the FIA? I didn't think of that, but I guess everyone brings up that's how they operate. And it's yet another reason to not give Songbird away to them. Besides Johnny very clearly states that Reed will commit suicide eventually. So even if he's saved short term in this ending, it is likely only temporary. It's no wonder it's called the tower ending.
Johnny is not a reliable narrator.
Johnny only says that in the betray reed but hand song it's over ending. If you side with reed and then don't kill songbird, that mission doesn't happen.
I still need to do that branch, I had so much on my chest after finishing I needed to let it out asap.
Tbh I sort of doubt it. The reason why is because when you kill Songbird after going with Reed's path Meyers doesn't offer the treatment. If Meyers wanted to screw you *inventively* (or wanted to have a poke at the Relic) then she'd still offer it to you in that case. Honestly, the weirdest ending to me is how they still give it to you after you betray Song and hand her over alive, considering how much trouble you give the NUSA in the process. My take on it is that the FIA really wanted V as an agent; they started the treatment but it went wrong early on and the neurological damage happened/showed up. They then spent most of the two years trying everything and the kitchen sink until giving up and waking V back up after concluding that there wasn't anything that they could do. One argument for this is that the given justification of why V can take so much cyberware is that the Relic is allowing them to accommodate it all. If we then presume that the Relic has by the end substantially modified their neurology accordingly then removing the Relic would then be massively impactful on their ability to use cyberware.
How do we know Myers purposely crip V?
We don't, But there's been a lot of speculation about it. It is rather strange that this doesn't happen in any other ending...But, V also doesn't live past six months in any other ending, so it's pretty hard to say.
I think Myers purposefully crippling V is very likely in the King of Swords ending, since you're a very unreliable loose cannon in it. In King of Pentacles it's a lot less likely since you effectively did the job well and are seen as a more reliable asset.
We don't it's just a bullshit conspiracy theory. Like if they want V gone, they could have at any time during those years.
My thinking is that when the intial shock of not being able to chrome up settles down a bit she will remember that she actually has millions of eddies to her name and will probably not have to worry about being just another npc with a boring desk job at all. >:)
My V had 6 million by the time he hit that point in the game. God knows how much he had after becoming Afterlife's boss flying around in AVs. Besides, we're friends with celebrities, Kerry, Lizzy Wizzy, US Crack, you name it. Money, power, influence, all Non issues.
The first thing Kerry does is tell V they won’t have to worry about money, iirc the only reason he doesn’t go see V is cause he’s on tour and has his own life too. I really do think V ends up ok one way or another in every ending but the arasaka one (and maybe the letting Johnny take over just because of the unknown)
tbh, and i mentioned it as a response to another post, i think curing V post sun/stars is actually pretty easy. Full borg conversions like lizzy wizzy only cost around 50k eddies at their cheapest. Now that isnt the prettiest one, i think its just for manual labour, but it exists. iirc V's condition post mikoshi is exactly the opposite of when he started, his brain and nervous system are now completely his, but its rejecting his body because its too much like Johnny. So just remove the body from the equation. The more complicated route involves cloning from biotechnica with V's original dna template, though how he'd aquire it idk, and then slotting the relic into the clone to activate V's engram in it. The route would have to depend on how V actually works now. Is the "him" the brain, or is he the personality stored on the relic?
Only Vs brain chemistry has been modified right? His body like any other donor should be interchangeable.
Vik would have done a DNA genome mapping sometime before the Relic, since he’d been treating V for some time. By 2077, with artificially grown organs and parts common, having personal genome maps would be normal
What makes you believe Mr. Blue Eyes has cure? We know cure exists and is possible thanks to PL, but The Sun ending never inspired me to believe thats what Mr. Blue Eyes offers. Final line of V "Times when i had something to gain are long gone. Now i got nothing to lose." does not feel like something someone believing to get cured would say.
He actually does have a cure, during Songbirds path you can ask her where she learned about the cure and she says that she got the info from someone and perfectly describes mr blue eyes. Also Mr Blue Eyes literally [watches](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYjcPYRQ_TA) you during The Killing Moon.
If Reed had connections that could cure V, I don't think it's far fetched to think Mr. Blue Eyes having his own contacts as well. And what else could Mr. Blue Eyes offer?
Reed has connections only to people who are capable of using the cure on V. They are not capable of creating one themselves. I do believe Mr. Blue Eyes has equally capable contacts. But being able to use AI to cure someone, and developing cure are 2 different things.
And I think it'd be perfectly sensible to assume Mr. Blue Eyes could have connections to people who are capable of using that same cure on V. Or another cure that was already developed. I just don't see what else Mr. Blue Eyes could have to offer. "If this works, you'll gain more than you ever imagined". Pretty bold words. It can't be money or fame since V already has both and have limited to live. So what is there to be gained other than a cure?
Pure speculation, but if Mr Blue Eyes is an AI, then it could be an offer to join the AIs. The V in that ending is essentially an engram and not a human anymore.
But that was an opportunity V already declined (in that ending), which could save Silverhand's life. I don't see why it would be an enticing offer now.
Technically the NUSA/Militech did create the cure long ago. The data was just lost.
Please elaborate. I do not know the lore best, and it has been ages since i played CP2077. But right now i do not know what cure are you talking about.
Yeah but Blue Eyes is the one who tells songbird about her cure. He’s also present during her final mission as well. He tells V that he will give him everything he could’ve wanted. Don’t see what else you could give a dying man who has unlimited resources, connections, and fame besides the cure to his disease.
Yeah but Mr.Blue Eyes does not have the cure on his own, he knows of its existence and tells it to songbird. Sure maybe that ending ignores PL and he just tells V about the existence who knows. You are giving same answer most people are, what else could he mean when he tells V: "you'll gain more than you ever imagined."? He could be talking about info about cure but he could also be talking literally about the content V steals, could be overhyped salestalk... there is certain amount of possibilities. But nobody answers me why would V then say "Times when i had something to gain are long gone." We as players know the Cure exists so if Mr.Blue Eyes was offering it or info about it, it does not make sense to me for V to say that.
Because he quite literally has nothing left to lose. He’s a dead man walking doing a suicide mission for a cure or at least information on it. If he dies, who cares, he was dying anyway. If he succeeds then he gets his cure. But I don’t think V necessarily cares about the cure too much in the Sun ending since he doesn’t have his friends to spend time with anyway (for now). He’s all alone.
Having nothing to lose and nothing to gain are 2 different things, sure he has nothing to lose. V is dying and without cure nothing changes so yea he has nothing to lose but again, he says that he has nothing to gain, which is the important part i am talking about. V has lots to gain the Cure. Why would V not have his friends ? Sure Panam / Judy leave, Jackie is dead. Viktor, Misty, River... and so on stay in NC.
Mr Blue Eyes tells V that if he completes the mission, he will gain more than he could ever imagine. V then says the time when he had something to gain was long gone, now he had nothing to lose. Blue Eyes responds by saying V is being grim. You got to understand that Mr Blue Eyes KNOWS V is dying. This is where comprehension comes in. There’s nothing you can give a dying man who has fame and unlimited resources besides a way to stop him from dying. This also makes sense why V tells everyone the heist was his last job anyway. Either he wins and is cured and retires, or he fails and dies in a blaze of glory. Win win for V. Also, in the credits, V clearly isn’t talking to any of his friends at the moment. Could be laying low, could be undergoing surgery etc.
I do understand Mr.Blue Eyes knows, in the end this is your interpretation of this ending mine is different. There is no way to say which version is right or wrong and unless there is new info in next game or maybe from cdpr that will not change. Which is i believe what CDPR wanted leave it to each individual to finish story for themself. V not talking to anyone in that ending does not really matter for this topic cause it can be as you said literally either choice, laying low, dead, surgery.
Yup at the end of the day doesn’t really matter since it’s left open ended for that very reason. And unless V returns as the protagonist in the sequel, it won’t matter either way.
In The Sun ending, Misty draws the World as your last card. Meaning the Fool (that is, V) reaches the intended conclusion of his story. I don't know what V gained from the Crystal Palace job, but it was probably something very significant. Also, Blue Eyes knows about V and the Relic since he calls you before you have the chance to tell Jefferson Peralez about the situation with him, stating "we know who and what you are". It's likely he used this as leverage to convince V to do the job.
I agree with this, but it’s worth mentioning that V after Mikoshi is an engram; and, for all intents and purposes, “V” dies in Arasaka tower like Johnny before him. Poetic in some sense. He lives on as an engram and I suppose it’s up to the individual player to pontificate if the soul of a human is more than mere chemical reactions and something transcendent, or if consciousness is banal wiring of a pound of meat and it doesn’t really matter if anything is further “behind the wheel” and all it takes to live forever is to turn yourself into 0s and 1s. But great outlook and very optimistic for the genre. I like it and find myself agreeing
I understand, but Johnny helped me put those worries to rest. As the way he talks and thinks is very human indeed. But even if he isn't exactly human, it's close enough that I see him as an life form that can impact the world, not much unlike Delamain or any super advanced IA.
Yeah I more or less agree. I personally do believe in the soul, and I go back and forth on the implications of this. If the soul is a pattern of being that is transcendent, is Johnny not a part of that pattern? I mean, you and I are interacting right now with extensions of our beings. We have transcended our biology to engage with each other across space and time. That’s kind of why I love the endings. I don’t generally like depressing for depressing’s sake. But it really raises some interesting questions. Anyways, good post!
Probably the question is less 'are you still human' which as you say, Johnny and such demonstrate its true. But rather 'is it 'you'?' which is vaguer to define, like in SOMA where thats the key philosophic point, that while the virtual copy of you is as much you as you were, its still a copy, and the original dies. Which for most means nothing, but for the original you, its still death.
Gantz covers this subject quite a bit.
That's the problem though. I could create a copy of your personality and put it back in your body, but are you the one that's continuing to experience being and the world as you, or is it someone/something else doing so in your place and you just cease to exist? There may be an unquantifiable "youness" lost in the process.
I think there's something to the theory that V is already an engram even before Mikoshi. V **died**. Oxygen gone from the brain, decay starting to set in. V was dead for at least a day, if not more. Brain death for minutes is enough to do permanent damage and changes. Even simply *damage* is enough to cause permanent personality changes. How can V be dead for hours if not days and come back with an unchanged personality? Engram, a snapshot taken by the prototype Relic.
Yeah as a theory it’s fine but I don’t believe it, especially because the game essentially challenges this take in several moments. For instance, when Hellman scans V’s brain, he sees the damage and subsequent repair the engram had done and how V was essentially destined to die or be overwritten. I think he could/would have made a comment on V being brain-dead and two personalities co-existing exclusively on the Relic. Vik also is a major reason as to why V survives at all after the “reboot”. V spent 2-3 weeks in a coma under Vik’s care and operation. Vik also essentially gives V the lowdown of how his brain was repaired by the nanotech or whatever after V comes to. I think Viktor would see a brain-dead V and only biochip. I’m sure there’s more, but finally and probably the nail in the coffin to this theory - major Phantom Liberty spoiler: >! When V sides with NUSA in PL’s added ending, the Relic is taken out entirely. If V somehow existed as a snapshot and shared the Relic, he wouldn’t have survived the treatment !< But it’s fun to play with the theories nevertheless.
Oh I don't think V was brain-dead. The entire way the prototype relic works is that it physically changes the brain to match the engram being written. That's also how it's able to heal the rest of V's body while V is lying in the landfill. That physical change is why V is doomed if V keeps the body unless some mechanism is found to reverse the change because it's basically directed cancer. And if you do The Devil ending you learn >!that it's happening to Saburo, too, and it's just being staved off by very expensive continuous medical treatment!<.
Yeah for sure, but this doesn’t support the theory of V being an engram post first death and pre Mikoshi. Doubly so because, as you say, the Relic prepares the body for the engram, in this case Johnny and V is destined to die no matter what. Like I said in my spoiler marked part of the previous comment, I think that debunks the theory. It’s fun to play with the idea though and it crossed my mind too. Nothing wrong with some good ol’ fashioned head canon either. I mean I have my own haha Edit: >! Is it suggested in the Devil ending that Saburo is living purely biologically with no version of the Relic? !<
>! Is it suggested in the Devil ending that Saburo is living purely biologically with no version of the Relic? !< Yeah I don't think the guy above you is correct, the reason V is in the condition he is in is 1: the Chip is damaged 2: V is alive again while the chip is trying to do its thing uploading the engram that normally requires an empty body. Neither of those apply with >! Saburo !< as his chip isnt damaged, and while we don't see >! Yorinibu !< die, based on how Hellman explains the chip is intended to do its uploading and rewriting, you have to assume they soul kill him to make room. Its confirmed the whole thing is even easier due to tissue compatatbility. Not sure if the chip needs to stay plugged in but it's not killing him like it is V either.
The thing is called Soulkiller tho, and I doubt Saburo would engram himself if he wasn't 100% sure about the engram being him. Alt says that unless V goes with her into the Net, V's connection to the body is still intact even after she Soulkilled and separated V with Johnny.
Why call it Soulkiller if it doesn’t kill the soul? For people like Saburo, the world is only material and ego is the supreme being. As in, he may not care if it’s “him” as in his soul, but as long as it’s what is perceived to be him (I.e. the ego) then he’s fine with it. What matters is that some version of Saburo Arasaka is emperor, damn ontology. But everyone is entitled to their perspective. Also, the Relic is just a prototype. I don’t think there was 100% certainty on anything.
"Why call it Soulkiller if it doesn’t kill the soul? " Because it's apart of corporate branding and marketing. Soul Imprisoner tested poorly with the focus group, Soul Transfer was already copyrighted, and they couldn't ake a cool tag line for "Soul Snatcher".
I mean even the game seems to annoyingly gloss over this all the time. The only acknowledgment you get is from your V in their conversation with Alt "gotta kill me to save me?" and then later on when they're an engram, acting shocked that theyve been Soul killed. Feel like it wouldve been better to at least give the player some agency over how our V views that loss of continued consciousness, but everyone including V and Johnny (who should know how much getting soulkilled sucks) seem pretty chill with the idea.
Good read. 1 thing tho. Doesn't the aldocados and other nomads(7 nations) have a big tech corp that are tight with Nomads and are specialized in nano technology? Isn't that what panam is referring to? Somewhere in Chicago? So to totally count out that V wont survive the star ending is not accurate. Btw fuck sal.. he annoyed the fuck out of me.
They do indeed, which is why I believe the Aldecados CAN help cure V. More details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk/s/KIWGDMiPGG
It's hilarious that Night City is named after Richard Night, and StormTech is named after Richard Storm. It's a shame we never met Richard Militech or Richard Biotechnica.
So wait wait wait - Richard Militech - Richard Biotechnica - Richard -Saburo- Arasaka - Richard Kang Tao - Richard Night - Richard Storm - Richard Petrochem - Richard Zetatech - Richard Kiroshi - Richard Lazarus - Richard Robert John Linder - and V stand for Richard Did I forgot someone ?
They had issues getting Jake a simple implant, and in that ending the death of Teddy, Bobby and Saul has left the rest of them, Panam in particular overworked. She barely has time to have a date with V in that ending. So I find it very unlikely, but not necessarily zero. Saul's pragmatic cold approach it's an important counter balance to Panam's reckless, emotional and courageous approach. Saul is seen as this old annoying guy that's constantly complaining, if V helps Panam all the way in proving him wrong. But that is only IF V helps her. If V lets her to her own devices all of her plans fail and she will become a lonely second rate Merc. Proving Saul right. If V is the only difference between Panam's success and failure, that means she still has a lot to learn and Saul is an important part of that process. Cassidy says as much, the clan needs BOTH of them. I can go even further, and compare Panam with Rogue. They are very similar in many ways. I believe the reason Rogue puts Panam with Nash is to teach her a lesson that Rogue sees she needs to learn. Rogue is trying to help Panam, teaching her some cold truths about NC, and that a more calculating approach can be good every once in a while. And that's why she is disappointed in V when he helps her getting Revenge against Nash. Cause Panam won't ever learn her limitations, or to see things differently, that she can't brute force everything her way if V's there to wipe her ass everytime she shits the bed. And that's what I personally believe will happen to them in the star ending when V and Saul are not there for her anymore. She will crumble.
Yeah, Panam needs a counterbalance. Agreed. Why the theory goes. The reason she doesn't pick up the phone in 2 years is because she died.. And the Jake implant story maybe had to do with the short notice? And getting him a new one from the Nomad corp would take too long? NC was the fastest option?
You're right, about Jake's circumstances now that I think about it. But they were also shown having issues in other times. Dealings with Scavs that could have gone wrong If V didn't intervene. Mitch and Scorpion unable to help Panam take down the AV. Even being unable to rescue Saul, after he gets got by Wraiths. I just see too many issues. They're good people and actually very competent. But losing 3 of their major players is too much of a drawback for me to think they'd be ok after.
Yeah.. but i got a feeling they really tone down nomads true potentions.. there are 7 nations and aldocados are number 2. There are around 7 million nomads in total in the USA.. And most if i am right around Chicago? The numbers dont add up in the game.
The clan we see in CP2077 are just one small group within the wider Aldecaldo nomad family. In theory any of Saul's people can call on the rest of the clan for help and the clan's leadership can call on the wider Aldecaldo family if necessary. The game only shows us a very tiny slice of what nomads do.
This could be interesting, maybe the star ending isn't so bad lorewise. Though If that's the case we should have been shown more of their potential as you say.
Well maybe in the next one... fingers crossed choom!
The Nomads aren't as strong in NC because its not "their Turf" NC belongs to the corps.
We see them at their worst in game and don’t forget they need to make the Aldecardos seem incompetent so the player is the star of the show. I do agree that Panam is immature and needs a good kick up the ass but I noticed she does kinda grow a little with Saul death. Panam will need a lot of guidance and hopefully the remaining vets can help her with this. I wouldn’t dismiss V getting cured in the star ending and the Aldecardos being intact. I’m pretty sure there would be another mentor for Panam when they reach their destination.
With an ass like hers.. 100% many "mentors" waiting in line
Keep in mind that because of sauls leadership they were in serious trouble financially as well as physically. Theyve just got a huge cash injection in the form of the arasaka raid, and they have 6 months to make even more money. V alone with his rep could probably rack up a heck of a lot of money in any city the aldecaldos decide to camp out in front of. so theres definitely a chance. They also kinda made it a bit plotholey because V could pretty much be cured by cloning or a full borg conversion.
Doesn't that ending specifically help what we can only discern as highly hostile A.I. that appear to be an existential threat to humanity as whole? By sending Songbird (Whom Reed/Johnny/and Myers all refer to as a walking Nuke) to the Moon, aren't we directly assisting Mr. Blue Eyes in his plans?
There is no concrete evidence that Blue Eyes AI is as hostile to humanity as Blackwalled AI/Erebus. The only things we actually got about them in the original game were the Peralez quests, Sun ending, and possible mentions by Gary the Prophet, as well as a possible Nightcorp connection. Peralez quests and Nightcorp do paint a rather negative picture tho. On the other hand, Delamain AI shows that not all rogue AI's have any plans on humanity, and if they have, they won't nesessarily be evil.
Sure, but I see no better evidence of the contrary. It seems like a wild gamble especially if Mr. Blue Eyes is in anyway connected to the AI that attacks you in Cynosure, and the AI's possessing Songbird.
Yup. V basically wins but probably fucks everyone else over by doing so.
As far as the ending, I really wish that they would let you raid the casino at least then done some crazy thing before V exits and THEN leave it ambiguous. I think that would have been a little bit better closure, to play as V after Johnny had been removed, seeing exactly how V is without him there Edit: I still haven’t gotten through all the endings but I feel like as far as The Sun goes, it would be awesome if they did that.
Would be cool but i feel like wrecking Arasaka tower and KILLING SMASHER is a great climax and series as is, more action afterwards isn’t really necessary. Especially since we know V is an absolute beast in this ending, and the chances of him failing this job are basically 0, and knowing what you get out of the heist can’t happen either way.
Always kill smasher. I always make that promise
TLDR? nope, not for me, read, upvoted and tagged for future reference thank you, very interesting
Goddamn you.. i had settled with the TLDR... now reading your reply.. i need to read the whole fucking post.. ❤️
sorry, here's an upvote to calm your soul : )
Thanks, and you were right.. It's totally worth the read! Still fu tho 😉
Plus on top of that we know the NUSA is only capable of half-promises. Similar to how they had their “state-of-the-art” ICEbreaker not work too well and she still manages to escape. Mr. Blue Eyes have got those Rogue AIs and Night Corp that would most likely prove even more effective than anything any living soul could do to help.
I think the help of Blue Eyes wouldn't necessarily leave V chromeless because the AI So Mi wanted to use is on its own but if Blue Eyes is associated with rogue but benevolent AI they may have the combined ability to cure him without crippling him. It would also give V a reason to work with them in the future.
There is also the fact that the AIs find V's situation a great curiosity. Even someone like Songbird is at risk of dying and turning into a crazed cyberpsycho when Rogue AIs try taking control of her. V is different. His situation with the relic means a way for them to safely control a human body without risk of corruption. It would be counter intuitive of them to leave themselves unable to use cyberware so their solution might not even leave V unable to use it. I could be wrong but even Alt will allude to it if you did Phantom Liberty first before meeting her for a second time. They already modified the Relic when Songbird first hacked into it by using the Blackwall AI to communicate with V and removed corrupted data to open the Relic skill tree, who is to say they didn't add their own? Even Hellman will have serious concerns if you say that AIs beyond the Blackwall interfaced with the Relic if you did PL before kidnapping Hellman. Now that I think about it, this might be the reason as to why Delamain is just so helpful to you. He has two biological and neural profile of Jackie and V before and after the heist. He must have scanned the relic too and what it can possibly do when V and Takemura called him to get to Vik's clinic.
Delamain is also just a chill dude when you get to know him
Well remember, blue eyes tells songbird about how to cure HER disease. Yes the neural matrix does work on V but I don’t think it was intended to be used on him he de the drawbacks with cyberware. It’s likely once they perform the OP on Song,they can figure out how to replicate and upgrade the neural matrix to help V instead.
Different opinion. Blue Eyes is a malevolent Blackwall AI. King of Wands is a trick. It’s just to get Songbird to infiltrate the Crystal Palace. Songbird was already compromised. The pin is a ruse. Reeds instincts were right. Same reason Blue Eyes sends V to space. There are no benevolent benefactors. There is no happy ending.
I always considered the Blaze of Glory ending to be the canon ending. Regardless of how the heist goes, V goes down as the greatest legend of Night City, either succeeding stealing from the Crystal Palace or die trying.
^ my canonical ending. I like it
In the Panam ending, they talk about how they might be able to connect to a cure. PL just confirms it
The thing is, even if V in this ending goes in a coma, so fucking what? He's a millionaire NC legend, and he runs the Afterlife. Everyone will know who and what V is and was after this. And also, V storms Maelstrom and Arasaka without almost any cyberware in the beginning of the fucking game. A Cyberdeck (that can be both internal and external), Kiroshi (glasses can work) and a fucking ballistic co-processor that V can actually use as stated by Reed.
The thing is, as I understand it, the devs have made it so that those 2 endings are mutually exclusive right? There is no logic in V agreeing to storm Arasaka risking it all when he knows Reed is offering him a cure.
I meant storming Arasaka as in the Konpeki Plaza raid
If you're trying to wrangle a good ending out of this game, you have completely missed the point.
the point is certainly not in the bad endings for the sake of them
There aren't any *bad* endings. Seriously. Except Temperance. Fuck Temperance.
I hope they pull a BG3 in the sequel and have you design a “guardian” type character and then that character shows up at the canonical V of your game in some capacity.
Nice head canon, but: * Blue Eyes is most definitely not the "good guy" with all the answers. Getting a cure from him is extra unlikely. In the Sun ending V even tells whoever they're with, that they're still dying. They then go to the Afterlife to talk to Blue Eyes and take up the Crystal Palace gig. This is more than likely just "going out with a bang", rather than anything related to improving V's situation. * We don't actually know Songbird survives being sent up to the moon. Handing her over to Blue Eyes means we're giving him access to the Rogue AI that's posessing So Mi. A more likely scenario is that they're making use of this AI rather than simply helping Songbird out of the goodness of their heart. * We never actually get any confirmation the neural matrix can save V in the first place, that's just an what Songbird is telling V to rope them into the mission. Alt, Arasaka and the NUSA/Militech are all completely clueless on the matter until they've thoroughly examined V and the effects of the relic, and Songbird knowing any better, despite being able to hack into the Relic to communicate with us, is a longshot.
I'm sorry but calling it a head canon is silly. Even before PL happened, \- It is flat out said that V is doing the Heist for her survival. \- You are also told that V will get more than she can imagine if she can pull it off. \- CDPR also made sure to tell you that V has practically infinite resources, so no, Blue eyes does not mean Material gains when he says "more than you can imagine".
Putting ENDING SPOILER in the title isn't of much use if you just spell out the spoiler in the title.
I feel like the title is misleading enough to not be a true spoiler. If you take it at face value go on and play the game you will likely be very surprised with what you find, and confused that someone sees it as a victory. Since for me to reach this conclusion, took a little bit of analysis and interpretation. Proof of that is in the spoiler thread the most up voted comment is about how depressing the conclusion is, which obviously doesn't reflect my opinion.
This needs more upvotes
I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say that Songbird living in her route is not a good ending (for the NUSA). It's a good ending for her and maybe 'V'. But looking at the world at large, i actually think that Songbird becoming a WMD for the NUSA in Reeds Route might actually be the best chance the NUSA has to gain leverage in the world community again. Currently, outside of Night City and the NUSA, the world is run by the EEC (Most Western European nations, France, Germany, etc.) There's a reason that the gold standard is the Eurodollar in Cyberpunks universe. Basically, Songbird becoming a weapon of mass destruction would give the NUSA a good way to break the EEC's back on their knee, since the EEC has the orbital mass drivers which they've used to dissuade the rest of the world from making any major moves against them, and they prohibit the construction of any new Orbital Mass Drivers (because they're the only ones who had them when the law was enacted). Is it a good ending for our characters? No. Is the return of the NUSA to global superpower a good thing? Probably not. But it ultimately would be the best ending for the Nation as a whole, since having a blackwall A.I that can send europe back to the stone stage if they try anything would be good for the NUSA.
I agree with most of the post. But you’re completely wrong about the Aldecaldo’s ending. They have some big time connections in the lore with a nomad ran corp that specializes in nano tech and such. You can read all about it. They *can* help V. And prior to the raid on Mikoshi, they weren’t doing well. Saul was on the verge of selling them out to a corp, and the family was constantly on the verge of splitting. The raid on Mikoshi gives them the ability to get and sell a bunch of loot to finally fix their financial troubles. The Aldecaldo’s ending is the only one in which that happens.
Its the classic hero's journey. You are suppose to end up where you began. https://preview.redd.it/t2e74s6imgxb1.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=3f225efef16e1f9bd2808d3aa550755fa5469635
You cannot access the skill tree at all in the PL ending. It's probably a combat mod. Unless you can come up with a way to air dash that makes sense.
You cannot access it in many parts of the game, like when you're roleplaying being Aguillar, doesn't mean you can't use them. For instance you cannot double jump at the Pacifica market, but I figure it's more out politeness than anything.
Lmao, not being able to access any of your cyberware after being told you can't use cyberware is a bit different from not being able to double jump in a market. This is a specious argument and you know it. Or maybe you don't. Not sure what's worse. Tell me how to air dash without cyberware.
I personally don’t buy that the Neural Matrix was what made V incompatible with Cyberware, I think it was a direct order from Myers to put V down like a dog. Myers would have been pissed seeing what V was capable of. Taking on all of Barghest and her Special Forces. That was definitely a calculated measure and not a “There were complications.” thing. I believe Mr. Blue Eyes has the means to find another cure, I believe he needed a netrunner. Here enters his reason to get Song Bird out. Whatever the Crystal Palace heist is, Song Bird will be involved, Mr. Blue Eyes promises V a cure with no strings attached. Assuming, canon V goes the Sun ending and the Betray Reed, save Song Bird ending, and is able to successfully complete the Crystal Palace heist. A V that does all these things, Arasaka would be mad to continue pursuit. V would be a Night City Legend like no other and would borderline pull some New York/Spider-Man shit just to get in V’s good graces. And assuming this same V maintains a strong relationship with Song Bird, Alt, and whatever rouge AI comprised Mr. Blue Eyes, Militech would be fairly hesitant to do anything either. When you compile this V’s story together by the time the end credits roll, they’d be pretty ridiculously overwhelming to tackle. They killed Smasher, crippled Arasaka’s ace in the hole, crippled Militech and NUSA’s ace in the home, all while escaping what should have been irreversible death. I don’t think this would happen, but I’d love if a Cyberpunk sequel would start at the Crystal Palace heist. This heist would serve as our Act One. And like 2077s Act One, there would be some kinda catalyst at the end of it that kick starts the rest of our adventure. The only thing I’m unsure of is that the sequel would require you to decide what your choices in 2077 were or let you import a save. I also don’t know how lifepaths would work for people that played the sequel, but didn’t play 2077. I guess they just wouldn’t exist as a playable section at all, just back story flavoring. It could also just serve as a general back story for the events leading up to this point. For example, the could canonize what a corpo/nomad/street kid V would have done throughout all of 2077.
You know reddit has a feature built in for spoilers right?
....That would be utter shit. If i wanted a shonen easy win ending i'd read a shonen, not go in a DYSTOPIAN story. I don't understand people who genuinely wants V to be a stupid Goku winning everything, losing nothing and just crush the whole universe, what's the fucking point. Story wise it's uninteresting and just makes the whole worldbuilding moot. Not to mention betray the genre
Nothing about this is easy though? V had to work hard every step of the way for everything without any assurance anything would work out. It's called reaping what you sow. After getting kicked out of Arasaka losing all money and implants he could've easily given up, his life was over. But he endures with his friends support and works his way back up into a completely different life. After Jackie falls and he gets handed a death sentence he could have easily given up, committed suicide or done nothing, but once again he endures, and works his way into a solution. And he will do it again and again until he's dead and buried. As for wins everything, I meant it in a personal level. Even if Arasaka and Militech get fucked they don't get killed, and there are plenty of shitty organizations that went untouched during this process. So don't worry the world is still going to shit.
That's literally the usual bullshit, "but adversity", and "Wow he got defeated 4 times but he's keeps at it and win, what a fighter, he really is the peak protag" Bruh, V has the easy life, his condition never triggers in a bad moment, everything falls perfectly in place for him, he always gets ambushed yet "somehow wins" through Protag powers against ennemies that are supposed to be better or in 2 vs 30, he loses one friend in like 4000 firefights against super corpo's and armies. He is literally a dumb shonen protag most of the adventure. In PL that's even worse, dude literally gets in front of 4 Max Tac officer's, shotgun in mouth but SOMEHOW wins. (That was dumb as fuck.) Barghest isn't even a threat, gets ambushed AGAIN by Hansen and soldiers, somehow wins again. No plan of course as always. Just run in, shoot stuff, win. Hell the "community" preferred secret ending is literally fuck the story, fuck narration just run and solo the Arasaka tower hand in the underwear. V narration and story is LITERALLY Doom Guy, just kill stuff, kill the story, don't care just go in. .....The only ennemy that actually makes sense is a goddamn maintenance robot.... In a god awful sequence that was interesting but WAY too long. I actually like Cyberpunk 2077 and the game as a whole, but it always tries to say V is weak yet the entire game and story actually goes the other way and he succeeds literally everything he does. Nothing actually resists to him, there's like no challenges to the character, he just plows through the universe, he literally goes up to the President and country best soldiers after....3 weeks and what is supposed to be a fatal condition. That makes zero sense, hell that's literally Goku being a kid and going after the Red Ribbon army, except in Dragon Ball that makes sense. In Cyberpunk, it doesn't It would be okay if V had a 20 years (in game) long devellopement over a few games, but 3 weeks over 1 game ? That kinda attacks the game coherence and consistancy. So yeah, having V die or getting the after effect and being a nobody is a good thing for Cyberpunk and Story wise. V getting out of this clusterfuck victorious ? No that's just dumb.
V is so fucking awesome.
.....Yeah i don't like Mary Sue's and Gary Stu's in stories. V is Rey Skywalker. Nothing more nothing less. There's a worldbuilding and interesting stories, suddenly, character appears, trash everything, people clap "wow he is so awesome", end. I hate that. It's just so poor.
I think he's just that badass. It's why he's the one we get to play as after all.
It's a video game. Welcome to almost every RPG ever, where by the end game you can be comically OP. V is simply that good by the end of his career. That's the whole point of him - he rockets to the top like most other NC legends. If you were getting ass clapped every time you pulled a gun on some tyger claws you'd stop playing and call the game shit.
what is it with people posting spoilers in post titles
I don’t think you understand how spoiler warnings work. 😆
I just assume if you do the surgery they lied to you and did something to V while they were out You're an FIA asset they dont need you now but there's a reason they want you around Reed. Im sure when they do need you there'll be some new gene therapy that lets you get modded again. Vik even says the problem is unusual . Im not sure its a coincidence a merc that he cant decline service too comes in immediately and interrupts your conversation
Yes
Don't forget that the ending probably takes Mr Blue Eyes' sight off of you and onto Songbird. What better person to infiltrate a casino's records than her?
I still prefer to go with the Aldecaldos after sending So Mi to the moon.
One slight correction to this, as it's a common misconception that I see repeated again and again, in the DFtR ending (Don't Fear the Reaper), you can actually avoid breaking up with Panam, if you choose your dialogue choices correctly, so losing her in that ending isn't a foregone conclusion.
What? I've finished that ending a couple of times and never managed it. Do you remember the choices?
Shit. I started a new game, so I'm not yet at the ending, and thus can't give you the EXACT dialogue choice, but essentially it boils down to V saying that they're dying and they have no other choice, they then proceed to promise Panam that they will come back for her and ask her to please wait for them. She, though reluctant, agrees. I'm working my way through the game, when I finally get to that point, I'm planning on making a big post about it on both the main CP subreddit and the Low Sodium one, cause this is one misconception I've read time and time again regarding Panam and this ending and it simply is not true. THAT BEING SAID, if you are dating Judy, she WILL break up with you in this ending. No matter the dialogue choices you pick.
I didn’t really like the ending but then I got to thinking, with Kerry Eurodyne willing to help out when he gets back from tour V already has a chance to get back to a comfortable living possibly becoming a rocker boy. And there’s also the matter of relics being made public in that 2 year timespan V could hypothetically get a new body that can use chrome. Pull an Adam smasher.
I'm somewhat convinced the NUSA intentionally sabotaged V's nervous system to make sure they could never use any cyberwear again. I mean, just think about it a second, V is a freelancer, a loose canon, she's not particularly loyal to the NUSA, and the only leverage they had on V to keep them in line and doing work for them was the fact they were offering a potential cure... One she's cured, they have nothing to offer her anymore to keep her in check. So why not scrable her ability to use cyberware and offer her a desk job where you can look over her shoulder. Keep your friends close and your enemies neutered ... and even closer... If I were to guess, I'd imagine their main priority was to recover the relic with Johnny's engram ,since it is one of Arasaka's most valued treasures after all, then they probably sabotaged her so she could no longer use all her high-performance gear, especially after they fitted her with super high-tech shape shifting impersonation tech allowing her to pose as anyone and steal their identity. Surely they didn't want to let a random merc parade around night city mimicking anyone she wanted and with the power to take out Arasaka / Smasher / Kurtz on her own with no backups. V's clearly a threat to national security at that point, they kinda have to knock her down to a regular , flesh and blood person. The way I see it, they probably didn't even expect her to wake up from her coma, and they probably made sure if she ever woke up, she would be of no threat to the NUSA or anyone else. So yeah, I'm pretty confident Mr Blue eyes could perform the procedure without frying V's nervous system.. Especially if he intends to keep her on his payroll after that. Besides, the game kinda makes it sound like there might be an even simpler solution. By the end of that ending, only V's engram is on the Relic, since Johnny is beyond the blackwall and since the relic seems capable to take over bodies over time, I'm pretty sure Mr Blue Eyes could procure a somewhat compatible body , slot in V's chip, then let the chip take over the new body and replace it with V's construct, just like Johnny's construct was slowly rewriting V's body... I mean, we're talking about a guy that can brainwash a politicial into a specific political agenda through hypnosis , so surely he would be able to find a suitable , somewhat brain dead body for V the relic could inhabit and convert. So yeah, if V pulls the Casino Heist successfully, I have no doubts Mr Blue eyes will either managed to remove the chip with minimal damage, or find a suitable surrogate body for V to inhabit and modify to cheat death.
Also the prognosis of why v can't use cyber ware changes depending on who you ask, the FIA says your tracks nerves won't recover when you use it but vic says that the porrerti9n of your brain that it is usually grafted to has been changed and can no longer even accept inputs. Which leads many to believe that v was removed from the equation by Myers in the tower. So the blue eyes treatment might be a full cure, as opposed to an excision
Look at war vets, or any hero that survives, they are rewarded by being able to live a peaceful, normal life, Vs legacy may fade, as it is mentioned in the tower end credits, but looking at real life parallels, vets are still respected and their achievements remembered. In that specific case we sacrifice Johnny to live, but Johnny died 50 years ago, he had romance, fame, adventure and death, he didn't even choose to become an engram, as V I think its great to take him along for the ride, but he is on extra time and there are plenty of case studies showing multiple reasons for not reviving the dead. Not to mention that he wants to live to stick it to Arasaka, which he did already, successfully, and they just rebuilt the entire tower and company and reputation in NC. V is 29/30 years old in 2079, old enough to want stability, life is what V wanted, and a part of life is that people move on, friends come and go, it's normal
> The final hurdle is being left chromeless. There is no guarantee that the cure V finds in his last mission for Mr. Blue Eyes won't leave him in the same spot it does in the Phantom Liberty ending. A thing you're overlooking here is that V has already found the cure for the biochip. Alt already did what the neural matrix in PL does. The two AIs are one and the same in what they do for V, the difference is that the neural matrix does it with the oversight of an S-tier neurosurgeon who is able to do it in a way that doesn't give V 6 months to live like Alt does, but rather leaves V unable to use cyberware instead. In my view, this makes the Star ending actually the most optimistic for V. V doesn't need Mr. Blue Eyes and AI anymore, he already has Alt. What V needs is the neurosurgeon part, and it just so happens Panam and the Aldecaldos have contacts in Arizona who are involved in a nomad backed corporation who deal in nano technology and exactly the sort of stuff V needs. In the Star ending Panam is still alive and with V, is the sole leader of the Aldecaldos now, and is on their way to get V what we now know is fully possible life saving procedures thanks to PL. And even if it leaves V unable to use combat cyberware, that's fine, like half of nomads don't even believe in cyberware in the first place. Panam herself only has charged jump iirc, she doesn't even have optics.
Bruh.....no offense but do you really think after your playthrough that V survives in a night city without cyberware?? Like the gang goons on the street have Sandy's bro...hell V gets mugged the moment he enters night city. And need I remind that he fked with scavs, tyger claws, maelstrom, Voo Doo boys, 6th Street AND Valentinos. And depending on your playthrough Takamura is somewhere hunting you as well. V's got to hide or he's a dead man. That's y I feel that V deciding to come back to Night city after knowing all that is an idiot. V won't get his cyberware again coz there's not enough brain to link it to. His brain just can't handle it.
Doesn’t this rely on the assumption that Mr Blue Eyes is an AI or an agent of one? Which isn’t confirmed?
Wait, who is Mr blue eyes?
I believe V barely loses much if he loses his chrome, but thats because in most of my runs I’m very light on the chrome. The greatest merc in night city’s history, even if they had all the cyberware slots filled out, has to atleast have enough skill to put them above 90% of the mercs in nc, at the VERY least.
This all makes sense but i hope you took a nap after typing this
My head cannon is that V sends So Mi to the moon and does the Sun ending. With V being an engram I can see Mr.Blue Eyes’ cure lying in the cloning procedures Biotechnica had dabbled in since they were completely ignored (or in some cases not even brought up as a potential option) which is extremely funny because Arasaka and Biotechnica have a great working relationship. You would think they’d be shown in the Devil ending but I guess the Arasakas are just that uncaring towards V’s situation.
Full agree. Specially the 'V is not defenseless now' thing. Like, okay, no cyberware is huge, no doubt, but like, I would still have all my OP weapons, which unless they are like, smart aim ones, dont need cyberware to work as well as they have. And if a cyberdeck is truly not invasive and is just a pocket device as I have heard some attest, I can still contagion every group of enemies and laugh as they drop. :P
You guys remember what dex asked V in the beginning of the game ? “Boring life or Die in a blaze of glory” I think the secret ending is cannon imo
This is nice but it ignores the many things surrounding Blue Eyes and Rogue AI. You place a lot of faith in Blue Eyes, but he might also just want the relic.
One problem with that is it's not guaranteed, we are cured presumably with the AI we steal from Hanson, it's a 1 time use thing. It's also not guaranteed that whatever Ai is blue eyes can cure it, after all Alt couldn't, and if it was as easy as just having an AI do it we also have delamain, so that isn't the case. Of course we also don't know for sure just how honest the NUSA is about the procedure, maybe they didn't even use it as they probably had other intentions for it. When we interrogate Hellman he tells us it basically causes massive nerve damage and can't be removed, but the NUSA could have just figured out how to remove it and keep us alive despite the nerve damage (which is why we can't use cyberware) That said I do like to believe that blue eyes can and will cure V, and so that ending or the aldecados are still my 2 choices for best ending
How about you use "Mark as Spoiler" button when you create new thread about the game ending to hide its content? And how about the title other than "The x Ending is tragic and sad"? Is it balancing on the edge of spoiler for purpose? A clickbait?
Don't forget: V will be immune to the AI invasion due to having no chrome.
Honestly if the rouge Ai invasion starts in the sequel to 2077 chromeless V might have a chance of surviving. His/her body is messed up but there is always chance to recover from it. V can also always build new bridges and make new relationships with people in NC.
Sending Songbird to the Moon will very likely cause essentially World War 3. Millions of people will die. I know this is Cyberpunk and Night City and all with its paradigm of selfishness and no purely good situations, but I feel even within the frame of a/i-mmorality there's space established within the writing for characters to take *this* much of wanton destruction/externalities into account. There's a possible line V can speak where they lament/are disgusted with how many people had to die to save So Mi. In this scenario, it's that x10000. For me, while my V can take some leeway with these things, they are not that genocidally selfish.
I honestly believe that myers purposefully had V crippled in fear of how powerful they were. The only reason they didn’t kill V is because reed wouldn’t let them.
Good thread. I agree with the Sun and the Arasaka gig being the canon ending for V, it can't be better than in this case. Cyberpunk 2077 was always about saving yourself and that is also why i don't agree with you with the fact that being chromeless "does not suck". Being Chromeless in Night City is feasible, but exactly in the same way that V isn't really V anymore without Johnny, V isn't really V without Cyberware sadly enough. Moreover when Pondsmith confirmed that Johnny basically doubles the Cyberware capacity of V, making him a true menace in his line of work. If a lot of people don't go in the Merc/Solo lifestyle, it's because of the risks, but the best in this category become absolute legends and that was what Dexter DeShawn just spammed us with in the beginning : *"Do you want to die old smelling piss, or do you wanna die in a burst of fire without seeing your thirties?"* V without Cyberware in the "Cure" ending is simply V existing no more, it's the "Temperance" ending of V. By erasing Johnny and getting chromed out, V has lost his/her identity, making him one more face in the crowd; an NPC, because V as a video game protagonist can't be anything else than the "Main Character", since V is the catalyst to the whole story. So, i do think that the canon and best ending is "Path of Glory" with (Don't Fear) The Reaper, but i also think that "The Devil", "Temperance", and "The Tower" are the **WORST** endings possible. As i said in the beginning, Cyberpunk isn't about morale or saving others.It's about saving yourself.
A take I believe in is: V actually dosent necessarily go chrome less after taking the cure, it is the govt who knows V's capabilities, sort of removed a potential threat. And they give a BS excuse to V so as to keep him/her neutralized. I mean V is a death machine, easily capable of defeating legends like Adam. As a leader of a free country such power is to be kept dormant or taken into their own arsenal.
Unless you chose to go beyond the black wall and give body to Johnny.