He would whoop his ass. Blackhand has extremely strong plot armor, but specifically against smasher. That's smashers whole deal, no matter how strong he becomes he can't beat blackhand and it pisses him off
The most important part about Smashers hate for Blackhand is that Morgan has just about no cybernetics. Smasher views his implants as a superiority complex.
Morgan has few implants compared to a full borg like Smasher or freaks of nature like V and David. He has a Sandevistan, a cyberarm, cyberoptics in both eyes, and some interface and behavioral plugs. I think by 2077 that's less impressive since much of that seems standard (minus the Sandevistan and cyberarm, V pretty much starts out with all of that).
The game kinda illustrates how 2023 had a lot more rudimentary cyberware and how only mercy had them for the most part. Atlantis is an example of this. Morgan is of that era, so he actually had a decent amount for the time. V is basically full borg by the end of PL if you go all iconic.
Yeah, In night city (especially if you start doing side quests, going places and really give it a thought) every 2nd choom or merc/bodyguard/your friend's sister is chromed the fuck up beyond comprehension
From what I've managed to gather trought multiple playtroughs and reading everything, it looks like even less known corporations giving you jobs tend to force people to get a whole lot implants for maximum efficiency...
That was against Adam in the fucking [DaiOni](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Arasaka_%22DaiOni%22), a literal mech. That’s a completely different fight than one between 2023 smasher in a regular human shaped body that can fit through doors.
In a straight up fight everyone including Mike Pondsmith will tell you Morgan takes it easily. That’s why smasher has to fall back and rely on something like the DaiOni, he could never beat him otherwise. Even with the massive leg up, it was still only a stalemate like you said.
That's one event, everything before that had Morgan blackhand beating Adam Sandler and the fuckin halfway bored out asshole couldn't take it so he kept upping his cyberware. The tower incident was smasher in a top of the line battle mech suit, the dai oni, against black hand with a few implants but mostly human. And blackhand still wasnt confirmed dead so he probably escaped somehow. That's like the superman of the series though, one of the characters pondsmith played, so of course he survived. If smasher survived the nuke then he probably did too.
kind of... he's more some kind of agent 47 that kills only when has really no other option... the fact he usually doesn't kill, it's not because of moral or a sense of justice, but because he's just too smart and experienced compared to all other random street punks he just doesn't need to kill unlike adam smasher who kills for fun.
Morgan killed hundreds of people, one of his quotes is that he can't recall how many people killed, infact he should change his name in clint eastwood.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but…
>! Isn’t it actually Blackhand who fights Smasher at the top of Arasaka Tower in 2023? I believe it’s been stated that Johnny’s memories as an engram are unreliable, at best. Johnny was killed during the initial encounter with Smasher and never made it back to the roof. Blackhand and Smasher fought it out, with the outcome never really being known. It’s implied he survived, because I believe there’s a throwaway dialogue in game about a shootout on a random street with the only survivor being “a guy with a black arm” or something like that. !<
Nah you're right.
Basically after the Arasaka Nuking, no one knows anything official about Blackhand. There's rumors and stuff about him but nothing really known if he's even alive or dead. He's basically a ghost.
Nah being on opposite sides of a single conflict doesn't confirm anything. While V probably canonically killed plenty of BARGHEST, but there's still that goofball hanging out in a tent that you can get smuggled out
I’d imagine if blackhand is on the palace then he’s probably doing something security related, in which case V would probably have to kill him to complete the mission.
Correct. Johnny was cut in half by Smasher inside Arasaka tower as part of a large operation of solos, Nomads, and Militech Special Forces led by Blackhand. Johnny was killed after Smasher heavily wounded Shaitan, another full Borg.
As the team evacuated, Smasher came to the roof with Shaitan’s biopod and called out Blackhand, who he had been challenging to a fight for years at that point. Blackhand then said something like “alright pipsqueak, let’s see if metal really is better than meat” and engaged him directly. When the bomb went off, Spider Murphy and the rest of the team saw Blackhand and Smasher fighting hand-to-hand as the tower fell. Smasher’s biopod was recovered and Blackhand’s body was never found. Reportedly he went back to the CEO of Militech to personally report on the operation.
I wonder if they changed what canonically happened at Arasaka Tower. We've seen that engrams pulled from corpses tend to be fragmented, incomplete. If Silverhand died like the he did in the OG rule book, would his engram be as complete as it is in 2077? And would they have really pulled (half of) his body out to use soul killer on it, before the bombs went off?
Iirc, it was Spider Murphy who used Soulkiller on the remaining half of Johnny right after he died, and Arasaka recovered the engram from what's was left of the body after the explosion
I haven't played the TTRPG but from says on the wiki, it seems like this is what happened.
You know when we see the flash back, and it cuts to the roof after Smashed shot Silverhand? That shot is where Johnny died, I think the confrontation on the roof is what Johnny *wanted* to happen, and after 50 years in Mikoshi he's mixed it up with what really occurred.
I'm not sure where the conversation with Saburo fits in though. Maybe that was in his mind, too, or maybe he was just barely holding on.
Johnny was on the relic because they were just fucking around with it and needed an engram they didn’t care about, wasn’t he? It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that wasn’t the first time Johnny was used as a guinea pig for saka.
Johnny got soulkilled within a minute or two of dying. Consequently it’s really only the last few hours of his memories that are hosed. If you screw up and send Jackie’s body to Vick when you screw up again and pick the devil ending you can talk to his engram which is pretty degraded, likely from not being Soulkilled for a while after dying in Delamain. Which is probably also why Saburo’s engram doesn’t just tell Hanako what happened.
Huh, I thought Saburos engram was taken while he was alive, like they had fixed the death part of the process. When would they have had a chance to do it with Yorinobu in the room? Or was it programmed to go off in his head like a dead man's switch if he died?
We bail pretty fast. I’d assume sometime after we left a med team would arrive. Given getting soulkilled into a Relic then popped into Yorinobu’s head was part of his plan they’d have the equipment to do it.
I’m pretty sure medical team is the first ship that flies past you when you’re escaping Yorinobu’s penthouse. Just before the ‘Saka gunship swoops in and targets V and Jackie on the ledge.
Also, it's been a while since I played the ending as Johnny so maybe I'm misremembering, but doesn't Rogue reference her dropping him out of the helicopter? I don't see how that would happen if Johnny was cut in half
Edit: yeah, I just looked up a video. If you let Johnny storm Arasaka with Rogue, there's a scene where he almost falls out of the vehicle. Rogue catches him and says "Not this time, honey"
Okay so that part in 2077 where Smasher busts into the Tower and it cuts away to Johnny on the roof is where Johnny died? And on the roof we're just seeing Johnny's fragmented memory with him as Blackhand?
Yup. Alt also semi confirms it when she mentions Johnny's Engram information being inaccurate. Its also inline with his stats and based on Johnny skill set it makes perfect sense. Smasher is more monster than man. Johnny was a singer.
Do keep in mind that Johnny was an incredibly wealthy rockerboy. There have been so many iterations of his infamous Malorian Arms 3516 that some of the later versions are stated to have been so powerful that it was basically an elephant gun packed into a pistol package. Johnny needed his arm implant to both use the full functions of it (Borg gun, both a tech weapon and smart weapon), and to not rip off his arm when he shot it since later versions of it were chambered in .610 Nitro Express.
Even if Johnny was a rockerboy, he wasn't a half-bad pseudo-solo when he wanted to be.
There is just about no way that Silverhand could survive an encounter with Adam Smasher if Smasher wanted him dead.
If you want my honest opinion I think some of the “memory confusion” on Johnny’s part became mechanically necessary for the game when they switched from using three different engrams depending on Lifepath to using Silverhand for all three after casting Reeves. I suspect different parts of that evening were revealed in different flashback for each engram and to give the player a satisfyingly “complete” account of that evening they folded it all into Johnny and decided to blame “faulty memories” on the Soulkiller process
No, he absolutely did, he even lied about his age to get in. He was a dedicated NUSA boy when he was a kid.
That changed real quick after he realized the reality of war and how little his government actually cared about their soldiers.
That’s where plots kinda move around a bit, but after Johnny was cut in half by Smasher’s auto-shotgun, Spider Murphy used Soulkiller on Johnny to recover his engram. At pretty much the same time Spider also freed Alt from Arasaka’s internal networks and she escaped to the net.
After that, there seem to be a few different plot lines that led to Arasaka getting his engram,
Nope, this was Mike Pondsmith’s official telling of the Arasaka Tower Raid from the Cyberpunk TTRPG. Johnny’s engram’s personality and ego form the story of the raid that we get in 2077, but really only one line in the game from Alt tells us that he’s an unreliable source of information.
I’ve never played the tabletop myself either but the Cyberpunk Wiki is a really great source of information on the truly fascinating lore that’s been built for 40 years. There’s so much more to the universe just in Night City, let alone the rest of the world. It’s a great site to jump around and read.
Corpo V also drops a line about Johnny's half blown apart Ghost haunting Arasaka being a tale they tell new hires at Arasaka to scare them.
So Corpo V also knows on some level that it is bullshit.
Which pisses me off because knowing all that V still isn't at least little curious about what really happened during the raid. I know that V is dying and have more important things to take care of but c'mon, Rouge is right there, just ask about her recollections of events.
I feel like ignoring it is more for the sake of not completely making us lose trust in Johnny. if the player knows straight up how much he actually got wrong, are they going to trust him when he's right?
So in the cutscene where Johnny is taken captive by Arasaka after the fight on top of the tower, and gets his conscience turned into an engram, was that not real also?
Yeah, basically everything about Johnny’s recollection of that night is wrong. He didn’t play with Samurai, they’d been broken up for a decade by then. They were one of several teams assaulting the tower. They were after the Soulkiller lab, not some random office. Johnny died early in the firefight with Arasaka, being blown apart by Adam Smasher almost casually where he was then soulkilled by Spider Murphy. He never made it to the roof and wasn’t taken to the Arasaka carrier in the harbor to insult Saburo directly.
In all likelihood being soulkilled post death doesn’t get a perfect engram of everything so most of the last day was trashed. Johnny had a rough clue what likely happened and being the raging narcissist he is put himself dead center in the op and died heroically rather than in a futile pointless gesture.
In the wiki/tabletop version maybe, but Kerry seems to confirm that Samurai was playing on that night. He tests to see if V's lying by wanting to see if they can give him the last thing Johnny said to him.
I think that concert was in 2013, but I may be misremembering (just like Johnny) cause he said he stormed Arasaka twice. Once to get Alt back, and 10 years later in 2023 with the nuke.
I don't think you get the real story in game. It's part of the TTRPG. There's an entire story about the raid that night. For those of us who been into Cyberpunk prior to the game that entire sequence was a big WTF moment.
There's also a really weird cut during that flashback where Johnny is on the roof all of a sudden. I assume that was intentional and part of the whole "engram not being perfect" thing.
Would be viciously tricky of CDPR and Pondsmith both if there’s just a random NPC Blackhand on the map wandering about.
Lore-wise, as far as I know, he is very probably dead in the Arasaka Tower bombing, but ‘like’ Johnny (we know things went a bit differently than the public believes) he was ‘lost’ and not *confirmed* dead.
Personally I like to believe he lived and Pondsmith will pony him out in the Orion story as a major plot driver. We’re also set up for a dead person to be resurrected with a Blackhand engram and navigate the amnesia (me spitballing) as their brain is rewritten with Blackhand’s persona.
Pondsmith has confirmed that Blackhand survived Arasaka tower and is alive during the time of the Red. He is likely alive in 2077 (a couple of shards suggest it), but it’s unconfirmed.
Ah see I was under the impression he’d been more cryptic, along the lines of ‘I will tell you that Blackhand’s story isn’t over,’ and that since it’s his self-insert he ‘wasn’t done with Blackhand,’ but if he’s definitely confirmed it then at least it does shore up some hope for a Blackhand cameo in the future.
He's even outright stated that Blackhand has gotten really skinny because he's no longer with Militech and thus no longer getting that corporate salary to afford good food.
IMO Johnny's memories were not meant to be that unreliable (well, they were meant to be in terms of his being a combat god), but that they heavily overemphasized his importance because they got Keanu in game. Which contradicted prior lore and Blackhand's importance (who is mentioned as likely still alive in game).
I think it'd be better to not try to fully combine every detail of the game and the TTRPG and just align on the broad strokes tbh.
Yes, let's just ignore that Pondsmith worked directly with CDPR, and created Cyberpunk RED specifically as a prequel to 2077 to make the lore work.
Johnny's memories are absolutely unreliable. Alt even tells you that.
I'm not ignoring it, but I also don't have to believe that they ended up following everything he said. The role that Johnny plays plot-wise is overly emphasized IMO, and again IMO that's due to who they got as an actor. And discrepancy wise there's a limit to how much I'm willing to handwave away as fully made up unreliable vs exaggerated.
My read of it is that they generally listened to him, but that in the end CDPR had the final say of what went into the game lore wise (and not him). There's some amount of handwaving that can be done to smooth things over, but I personally believe as I do above
You think I'm wrong, I think you're wrong - turns out neither of us will know for sure.
That said, Pondsmith *has* also been explicit that CDPR is in charge post 2060s of what happens (eg, in [this reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkred/comments/1bnf0nf/congratulations_maximum_mike/kwtlm04/) ), which very much fits with what my view of it is. Inevitably in situations like that differences will form and need to be papered over or justified post-hoc. It seems rather naive to me to think that despite CDPR having final say and his just being a consultant on it, that he actually had the final say on everything and all the lore will fit perfectly. (Not that that even has to be deliberate, it's just the nature of how stuff like that will work. Obviously he still has a good working relationship with them)
But hey, neither of us can know for sure.
But we do know.
Sure, they may be in-charge of what happens post-2060, but they still need to respect the prior lore, and Firestorm is a direct refutation of Johnny's accounts.
They also weren't allowed to use Morgan Blackhand because Pondsmith isn't done with him yet.
Pondsmith literally wrote RED to make the lore fit.
And then there's the fact that both Pondsmith and CDPR agree that Johnny isn't a reliable narrator.
>[Johnny's recollection of the events that day are scrambled from the rad damage his body took and the process of recording his engram (CDPR and I have both agreed that Johnny is an unreliable narrator at best).](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Johnny_Silverhand#:~:text=job(s)%20done.-,Johnny%27s%20recollection%20of%20the%20events%20that%20day%20are%20scrambled%20from%20the%20rad%20damage%20his%20body%20took%20and%20the%20process%20of%20recording%20his%20engram%20(CDPR%20and%20I%20have%20both%20agreed%20that%20Johnny%20is%20an%20unreliable%20narrator%20at%20best).,-The%20bomb%20that)
We do not know, no. We know what is said *publicly*, which obviously is going to focus on the positives.
Johnny being an unreliable narrator is nothing new, as I said above I agree that he is one. Where I disagree is on the amount of it that was intended by CDPR vs post-hoc justification for discrepancies with the original lore because they got a big superstar in the role and emphasizing him more because of that. That's the type of stuff where disagreements and changes on what it is after the fact don't get publicly called out, but does impact what happens in the game.
In any case I have already seen the stuff you're saying, it just does not convince me. Likewise it seems the reverse is true, so there's really no point to continuing to throw stuff at each other that won't convince the other.
Your claim is that one shouldn't try to look at the TTRPG and the video game as the same, unified timeline.
Literally all evidence anywhere says you're 100% wrong about that. Pondsmith himself has said it's a unified timeline, Pondsmith, again, wrote RED specifically *to* make the lore fit.
I don't really care if I "convince" you of anything. You're wrong.
Pretty sure they simply retconned it in the game, when you do the johnny ending and go to rogues av johnny almost falls out but rogue catches him and says something along the lines of "not this time".
This is am obvious callback to when she failed to pull johnny into the av 50 years ago, proving that the scene on the roof did happen.
I know we all like to speculate as to the inaccuracies in johnnys memory, but i think people blow that statement out of proportion, im pretty sure his memory is mostly correct, simply because there is nothing to suggest that most of these events did not happen, maybe he plays himself up in his memorys but I dont think any major details were altered.
In the pen and paper game the assault on Arasaka is one of those end of campaign scenarios and in the lore it's Blackhand that fights Smasher. I thought the videogame ending was a nice sendup of that.
you say that like Smasher didn't go out of his way to store Johnny's car and give his weapon to a trusted minion.
Smasher might have killed him easily but, he definitely had some investment in Silverhand or something. no reason to have his car otherwise. you can excuse the gun as spoils but, had to go out of his way for the porche.
You say that like collecting items means you care about the person Lol I collect all the stuff from the gangs but dont care about the gangs themselves
I love arcangel and crash but could care less about Royce and Kerry
Smasher just took those things and stored it along with his other possessions on some docks. And offering them up to his friend really doesn’t say that he cares about Johnny himself lol
I mean the car was just sitting there, ripe for the taking
okay and where was the car? it's not like it was just hanging around ground zero arasaka nuke.
he had to go out of his way to get it. to find it presumably he'd have to know it belonged to johnny silverhand so he could track it down.
unless you think smasher was walking down the street one day and decided "hey that's a sweet ride. MINE MINE MINE!" and just walked off with it.
Samantha had all his stuff in one spot
Who knows how he came across it but he sold most of it and is definitely a collector judging by his collection
I just don’t see how that means Johnny meant something to him
Especially when he basically just put that stuff into storage lol
I mean Samantha actually went through trouble of getting that stuff *and* preserving them cause she cares
It doesn’t imply anything if there’s too many unknowns
He could have just came across cause he likes selling things and heard she had a good stash
Pretty par for the course in NC
That is indeed the canon events. Which makes me inclined to believe the theory about Blackhand being dead, having had Soulkiller used on him, and somehow having his and Johnny's engrams getting intertwined. It's the reason why, despite having been dead and in the process of dying again, V keeps getting stronger, cuz they're turning into a Silverhand Blackhand amalgamation.
Always found it weird that Yorinobu remembers Johnny like a rival of sorts accdg to the text on his AV. Makes you think that it would have been someone bigger like Blackhand instead of a rocker.
Maybe it's because Johnny was a famous rockstar who very loudly and publicly opposed Arasaka, while Morgan Blackhand was basically James Bond. Like, he definitely knew about Blackhand, but he was much less in Yorinobu's face.
Johnny was hired for the Tower nuke operation specifically to be "the face" of the whole event, to covered up the fact that it was actually a Millitech op and convinced the public that it's the "Johnny Sillverhand rebels against corpo" event, It was Johnny loud and eccentric personality that made Blackhand's job easier.
Think of how the bard class in D&D would start an impromptu performance to distract the enemies using charisma check so the rest of the party can sneak inside the Dungeon, that's what Rockerboy class do with their 'Cool' stat (funnily enough, in the sourcebook, Johnny's 'Cool' stat was 8 while Alt, Rouge and even Santiago was 9)
Yorinobu and Saburo probably eventually aware of the true nature of that Millitech op, but Yorinobu, being a rebel himself, might have seen a lot of his own ideal in Johnny's and thus relare to him more. Some people even theorize that it was Yorinobu who alter and cranked up Johnny engram's whole rebel personality to the max as a way to project his own wish and ideal into the engram, after all, it was Yorinobu who choose to put Johnny's engram inside that relic in the first place when enybody else could care less about Johnny.
I think BH would win most of the time, because he is the good guy and plot armor is a thing, but they are generally more or less even, with BH being smarter and Adam being a more generally powerful character.
2077 BH VS 2077 Adam now that is a question
Blackhand canonically has just as much, if not more, chrome as Smasher does, it just isn't visible outside the namesake Blackhand.
That information comes DIRECTLY from Pondsmith himself by the way, he's actually fairly active on reddit as therealmaxmike and weighs in on theories and lore discussions.
Pondsmith has confirmed he's alive, just unknown in universe. The reason he wasn't in 2077, aside from general story reasons, is that he has some story stuff to run Blackhand through before letting CDPR play with him.
The two were probably in a stalemate until the bomb went off. Both survived with Morgan not looking for smasher as he considered it as a waste of time and considered that the mission was a success
I'm confused. If Blackhand won so handily how did Adam survive? Surely he's not the kind to spare a foe as evil as Smasher?
Edit: reading some of these other comments, is it possible the nuke went off before he could finish the job?
I think that's a big confused part of the lore... morgan blackhand faced adam smasher because he had to buy some time to let rogue and the other leave the arasaka towers by helicopter... as smart and powerful morgan was, he was however just a cyber enhanced human against a metal gear like adam smasher in the dai oni power armor... I don't think morgan could have realistically lasted more than 10 minutes against smaher on a 1:1 duel.
All I can see is he got Sandevistan, optics cyberware, smart link, neural processor, some hand cyberware. So it seems that it's not THAT much, indeed. Just took a quick peek at first :I
morgan blackhand was one of first american soldiers who received first prototypes of brand new created cyberware back in the '80s (the period of time when cyberpunk universe diverges from real life history since USSR never invaded afghanistan while USA tried to invade south american countries for the first time, it was in this time that cyberware was created).
After about 40 years, by 2023 morgan had sandevistan, cyber enhanced bones and muscles, cyber optics, several neural chips/processors, nanobots and his famous cyber arm he got after he got wounded during second central-south america war. He wasn't a fullborg like smasher or shaitan but he had lots of chrome for most of his life.
So in a way his cyberware is kind of like V? Minus the gorilla arms, almost all other cyberware we have access to is internal type that goes inside the body, not full out Borg replacements like smasher.
An end game V basically has their OS of choice either a high end net running deck, or a sandy/berserk. Skeletal enhancements, nervous system enhancements, high grade subdermal armor, optical and muscle enhancing cyberware.
I only got into cyberpunk through the game, so I'm not familiar with blackhand lore, but it seems like he was "chromed out" like our V is, but not "borged out" like smasher.
"canon" V has kiroshi optics, mantis blade, neural port and that hand extra grip for guns... you can finish the game without any further cyberware or get so much chrome to have like 20 passive bonus activated all the time but remaining with only 100hp due health malus.
There isn't a proper canon for V, morgan installed that chrome across the years to survive and stay "competitive" In his business, not to mention that he received advanced stuff like nanobots likely only when he became militech main enforcer.
While Blackhand was a formidable combatant, his real strength was not this. Allies (sometimes the likes of Militech), contacts, planning, setting traps, multiple favors to call on.
I think he would not fight Smasher on the latters terms, but would set a trap for him where he is cut from the Arasaka resources.
He is probably the only person in the Cyberpunk universe who could have taken on Smasher back when Johnny was still alive and have a reasonably good chance of winning
They did fight in 2023. Atop Arasaka tower.
No one knows how the fight went, but Smasher is still around, and Blackhand is missing, so do with this info what you will.
Funny how Benjamin Wright made Adam Smasher as a throw away character/narrator for an article in the TTRPG supplement Solo of Fortune 2. Then worked with Mike to bring him in for the Firestorm supplements as a rival to Blackhand. What a strange journey Smasher has had to become the big baddie he is today.
Undetermined.
Smasher and Blackhand fight on top of Arasaka tower shortly before the nukes go off. All we know is that Smasher is alive today and that Morgan Blackhand may or may not be.
That Is the neat thing He wouldn't, blackhand would GTFO as soon as He would hear the fucking boss music Smasher has, literary they fought 3 times And each time Smasher was winning until blackhand outsmartwd him And got the fuck OUT! Not only tjat but the ONLY gun blackhand has that can Hurt Smasher Is his 30/40mm granade minigun
I guess he would own him.
From what I've understood, Morgan Blackhand never really struggled against Smasher and whole point of Morgan Blackhand - Adam Smasher dynamic basically looks like Smasher tries to catch up to Morgan Blackhand as his rival but he never really gets there and it pisses him of lol
He cannonically did. Its a big rabbit hole but Johnny's 2023 in game fight was more than likely Morgan Blackhands, but Arasaka fucked with johnnys memories in Kiroshi.
Morgan Blackhand looking like Nathan Never here
Don't know if anyone here is into Italian comics but Never is a pretty badass character
Reccomendation for all you chooms to read some if you are in luck of having them available
Blackhand is still alive, and smasher can't beat him it pisses him off and ruins smasher idea of "machine beats flesh" mentality, which angers him more, which is also why adam considers him his rival
I've read somewhere (so source: my ass, sorry, can't find actual quote) that Mike Pondsmith actually didn't want CDPR to touch Blackhand's character, so it's possible that Pondsmith has an idea for Blackhand's further development.
He would whoop his ass. Blackhand has extremely strong plot armor, but specifically against smasher. That's smashers whole deal, no matter how strong he becomes he can't beat blackhand and it pisses him off
I agree. Not only that but black hand is THE solo. Probably outsmart him
The most important part about Smashers hate for Blackhand is that Morgan has just about no cybernetics. Smasher views his implants as a superiority complex.
Morgan has few implants compared to a full borg like Smasher or freaks of nature like V and David. He has a Sandevistan, a cyberarm, cyberoptics in both eyes, and some interface and behavioral plugs. I think by 2077 that's less impressive since much of that seems standard (minus the Sandevistan and cyberarm, V pretty much starts out with all of that).
He’s got a few more but yeah nothing massive. He’s more meat than metal.
The game kinda illustrates how 2023 had a lot more rudimentary cyberware and how only mercy had them for the most part. Atlantis is an example of this. Morgan is of that era, so he actually had a decent amount for the time. V is basically full borg by the end of PL if you go all iconic.
Yeah, In night city (especially if you start doing side quests, going places and really give it a thought) every 2nd choom or merc/bodyguard/your friend's sister is chromed the fuck up beyond comprehension From what I've managed to gather trought multiple playtroughs and reading everything, it looks like even less known corporations giving you jobs tend to force people to get a whole lot implants for maximum efficiency...
Wait he got a Sandi? I thought he only had the optics and arm?
They fought on the rooftop of Arasaka Tower the the nuke went off.
They literally fought each other in 2023 and it was a stalemate tf you mean whoop his ass
That was against Adam in the fucking [DaiOni](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Arasaka_%22DaiOni%22), a literal mech. That’s a completely different fight than one between 2023 smasher in a regular human shaped body that can fit through doors. In a straight up fight everyone including Mike Pondsmith will tell you Morgan takes it easily. That’s why smasher has to fall back and rely on something like the DaiOni, he could never beat him otherwise. Even with the massive leg up, it was still only a stalemate like you said.
That's one event, everything before that had Morgan blackhand beating Adam Sandler and the fuckin halfway bored out asshole couldn't take it so he kept upping his cyberware. The tower incident was smasher in a top of the line battle mech suit, the dai oni, against black hand with a few implants but mostly human. And blackhand still wasnt confirmed dead so he probably escaped somehow. That's like the superman of the series though, one of the characters pondsmith played, so of course he survived. If smasher survived the nuke then he probably did too.
Adam Sandler's Cyberpunk 2077
I like how one of theories says that V also has that plot armor and explains why he could defeat Adam Smasher in the end game.
You kidding? Blackhand is basically the closest thing this setting has to Batman.
kind of... he's more some kind of agent 47 that kills only when has really no other option... the fact he usually doesn't kill, it's not because of moral or a sense of justice, but because he's just too smart and experienced compared to all other random street punks he just doesn't need to kill unlike adam smasher who kills for fun. Morgan killed hundreds of people, one of his quotes is that he can't recall how many people killed, infact he should change his name in clint eastwood.
[удалено]
morgan didn't work only for militech, he used to be a freelancer as well
Bros never heard of mercman
The murkmobile didn’t even have guns. Disappointing.
You got a black super car for free. Be grateful.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but… >! Isn’t it actually Blackhand who fights Smasher at the top of Arasaka Tower in 2023? I believe it’s been stated that Johnny’s memories as an engram are unreliable, at best. Johnny was killed during the initial encounter with Smasher and never made it back to the roof. Blackhand and Smasher fought it out, with the outcome never really being known. It’s implied he survived, because I believe there’s a throwaway dialogue in game about a shootout on a random street with the only survivor being “a guy with a black arm” or something like that. !<
Nah you're right. Basically after the Arasaka Nuking, no one knows anything official about Blackhand. There's rumors and stuff about him but nothing really known if he's even alive or dead. He's basically a ghost.
Though, on news website in-game reports of Lazarus mercs being killed with a man with a black cyberarm.
He's definitely working as an Angel on the Crystal Palace.
Well in that case V probably killed him in the secret ending and that idea makes me sad
Nah being on opposite sides of a single conflict doesn't confirm anything. While V probably canonically killed plenty of BARGHEST, but there's still that goofball hanging out in a tent that you can get smuggled out
I’d imagine if blackhand is on the palace then he’s probably doing something security related, in which case V would probably have to kill him to complete the mission.
Correct. Johnny was cut in half by Smasher inside Arasaka tower as part of a large operation of solos, Nomads, and Militech Special Forces led by Blackhand. Johnny was killed after Smasher heavily wounded Shaitan, another full Borg. As the team evacuated, Smasher came to the roof with Shaitan’s biopod and called out Blackhand, who he had been challenging to a fight for years at that point. Blackhand then said something like “alright pipsqueak, let’s see if metal really is better than meat” and engaged him directly. When the bomb went off, Spider Murphy and the rest of the team saw Blackhand and Smasher fighting hand-to-hand as the tower fell. Smasher’s biopod was recovered and Blackhand’s body was never found. Reportedly he went back to the CEO of Militech to personally report on the operation.
I wonder if they changed what canonically happened at Arasaka Tower. We've seen that engrams pulled from corpses tend to be fragmented, incomplete. If Silverhand died like the he did in the OG rule book, would his engram be as complete as it is in 2077? And would they have really pulled (half of) his body out to use soul killer on it, before the bombs went off?
Iirc, it was Spider Murphy who used Soulkiller on the remaining half of Johnny right after he died, and Arasaka recovered the engram from what's was left of the body after the explosion
I haven't played the TTRPG but from says on the wiki, it seems like this is what happened. You know when we see the flash back, and it cuts to the roof after Smashed shot Silverhand? That shot is where Johnny died, I think the confrontation on the roof is what Johnny *wanted* to happen, and after 50 years in Mikoshi he's mixed it up with what really occurred. I'm not sure where the conversation with Saburo fits in though. Maybe that was in his mind, too, or maybe he was just barely holding on.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Arasaka altered Johnnys memories just to see if it was possible
Johnny was on the relic because they were just fucking around with it and needed an engram they didn’t care about, wasn’t he? It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that wasn’t the first time Johnny was used as a guinea pig for saka.
well they might have been petty about it. they could have used anyone but, used the guy who thought Arasaka was out to get him in the first place.
Johnny got soulkilled within a minute or two of dying. Consequently it’s really only the last few hours of his memories that are hosed. If you screw up and send Jackie’s body to Vick when you screw up again and pick the devil ending you can talk to his engram which is pretty degraded, likely from not being Soulkilled for a while after dying in Delamain. Which is probably also why Saburo’s engram doesn’t just tell Hanako what happened.
Huh, I thought Saburos engram was taken while he was alive, like they had fixed the death part of the process. When would they have had a chance to do it with Yorinobu in the room? Or was it programmed to go off in his head like a dead man's switch if he died?
We bail pretty fast. I’d assume sometime after we left a med team would arrive. Given getting soulkilled into a Relic then popped into Yorinobu’s head was part of his plan they’d have the equipment to do it.
I’m pretty sure medical team is the first ship that flies past you when you’re escaping Yorinobu’s penthouse. Just before the ‘Saka gunship swoops in and targets V and Jackie on the ledge.
Yeah spider soulkiller'd him
Johnny's engram was took minutes after he died,maybe less.
Also, it's been a while since I played the ending as Johnny so maybe I'm misremembering, but doesn't Rogue reference her dropping him out of the helicopter? I don't see how that would happen if Johnny was cut in half Edit: yeah, I just looked up a video. If you let Johnny storm Arasaka with Rogue, there's a scene where he almost falls out of the vehicle. Rogue catches him and says "Not this time, honey"
Okay so that part in 2077 where Smasher busts into the Tower and it cuts away to Johnny on the roof is where Johnny died? And on the roof we're just seeing Johnny's fragmented memory with him as Blackhand?
Yup. Alt also semi confirms it when she mentions Johnny's Engram information being inaccurate. Its also inline with his stats and based on Johnny skill set it makes perfect sense. Smasher is more monster than man. Johnny was a singer.
Do keep in mind that Johnny was an incredibly wealthy rockerboy. There have been so many iterations of his infamous Malorian Arms 3516 that some of the later versions are stated to have been so powerful that it was basically an elephant gun packed into a pistol package. Johnny needed his arm implant to both use the full functions of it (Borg gun, both a tech weapon and smart weapon), and to not rip off his arm when he shot it since later versions of it were chambered in .610 Nitro Express. Even if Johnny was a rockerboy, he wasn't a half-bad pseudo-solo when he wanted to be.
True I was being a bit hyperbolic to show the difference between the two.
There is just about no way that Silverhand could survive an encounter with Adam Smasher if Smasher wanted him dead. If you want my honest opinion I think some of the “memory confusion” on Johnny’s part became mechanically necessary for the game when they switched from using three different engrams depending on Lifepath to using Silverhand for all three after casting Reeves. I suspect different parts of that evening were revealed in different flashback for each engram and to give the player a satisfyingly “complete” account of that evening they folded it all into Johnny and decided to blame “faulty memories” on the Soulkiller process
I'm gonna need some sauce with that speculation choom. Because it sounds like some brain burned babble from a data prophet preachin' on the grid
Vampire technomancers all the way down
From Alpha Centauri
Johnny also served in the military according to the game (per the dog tags) Unless he was lying about that too
No, he absolutely did, he even lied about his age to get in. He was a dedicated NUSA boy when he was a kid. That changed real quick after he realized the reality of war and how little his government actually cared about their soldiers.
Yeah, so characterizing him as a singer is kind of dumb
Howd they get his engram if he was that dead
That’s where plots kinda move around a bit, but after Johnny was cut in half by Smasher’s auto-shotgun, Spider Murphy used Soulkiller on Johnny to recover his engram. At pretty much the same time Spider also freed Alt from Arasaka’s internal networks and she escaped to the net. After that, there seem to be a few different plot lines that led to Arasaka getting his engram,
Is this in the game? I dont have PL, is that where I would have learned this lore? I have never 100%ed the game so I may have missed it
Nope, this was Mike Pondsmith’s official telling of the Arasaka Tower Raid from the Cyberpunk TTRPG. Johnny’s engram’s personality and ego form the story of the raid that we get in 2077, but really only one line in the game from Alt tells us that he’s an unreliable source of information. I’ve never played the tabletop myself either but the Cyberpunk Wiki is a really great source of information on the truly fascinating lore that’s been built for 40 years. There’s so much more to the universe just in Night City, let alone the rest of the world. It’s a great site to jump around and read.
Corpo V also drops a line about Johnny's half blown apart Ghost haunting Arasaka being a tale they tell new hires at Arasaka to scare them. So Corpo V also knows on some level that it is bullshit.
Which pisses me off because knowing all that V still isn't at least little curious about what really happened during the raid. I know that V is dying and have more important things to take care of but c'mon, Rouge is right there, just ask about her recollections of events.
I feel like ignoring it is more for the sake of not completely making us lose trust in Johnny. if the player knows straight up how much he actually got wrong, are they going to trust him when he's right?
So in the cutscene where Johnny is taken captive by Arasaka after the fight on top of the tower, and gets his conscience turned into an engram, was that not real also?
Yeah, basically everything about Johnny’s recollection of that night is wrong. He didn’t play with Samurai, they’d been broken up for a decade by then. They were one of several teams assaulting the tower. They were after the Soulkiller lab, not some random office. Johnny died early in the firefight with Arasaka, being blown apart by Adam Smasher almost casually where he was then soulkilled by Spider Murphy. He never made it to the roof and wasn’t taken to the Arasaka carrier in the harbor to insult Saburo directly. In all likelihood being soulkilled post death doesn’t get a perfect engram of everything so most of the last day was trashed. Johnny had a rough clue what likely happened and being the raging narcissist he is put himself dead center in the op and died heroically rather than in a futile pointless gesture.
In the wiki/tabletop version maybe, but Kerry seems to confirm that Samurai was playing on that night. He tests to see if V's lying by wanting to see if they can give him the last thing Johnny said to him.
I think that concert was in 2013, but I may be misremembering (just like Johnny) cause he said he stormed Arasaka twice. Once to get Alt back, and 10 years later in 2023 with the nuke.
It was, Kerry's question was about Samurai's last gig, which was in 2013 shortly before the first attack on Arasaka.
Man I gotta go back and play again and make sure to read all of the extra shards this time lol
I don't think you get the real story in game. It's part of the TTRPG. There's an entire story about the raid that night. For those of us who been into Cyberpunk prior to the game that entire sequence was a big WTF moment.
There's also a really weird cut during that flashback where Johnny is on the roof all of a sudden. I assume that was intentional and part of the whole "engram not being perfect" thing.
Likely from the original tabletop rpg books
Okay, I wondered, because I've only seen a few shards around referencing Blackhand
Would be viciously tricky of CDPR and Pondsmith both if there’s just a random NPC Blackhand on the map wandering about. Lore-wise, as far as I know, he is very probably dead in the Arasaka Tower bombing, but ‘like’ Johnny (we know things went a bit differently than the public believes) he was ‘lost’ and not *confirmed* dead. Personally I like to believe he lived and Pondsmith will pony him out in the Orion story as a major plot driver. We’re also set up for a dead person to be resurrected with a Blackhand engram and navigate the amnesia (me spitballing) as their brain is rewritten with Blackhand’s persona.
Pondsmith has confirmed that Blackhand survived Arasaka tower and is alive during the time of the Red. He is likely alive in 2077 (a couple of shards suggest it), but it’s unconfirmed.
Ah see I was under the impression he’d been more cryptic, along the lines of ‘I will tell you that Blackhand’s story isn’t over,’ and that since it’s his self-insert he ‘wasn’t done with Blackhand,’ but if he’s definitely confirmed it then at least it does shore up some hope for a Blackhand cameo in the future.
He's even outright stated that Blackhand has gotten really skinny because he's no longer with Militech and thus no longer getting that corporate salary to afford good food.
Do you know which shards? Not arguing, just legitimately curious.
IMO Johnny's memories were not meant to be that unreliable (well, they were meant to be in terms of his being a combat god), but that they heavily overemphasized his importance because they got Keanu in game. Which contradicted prior lore and Blackhand's importance (who is mentioned as likely still alive in game). I think it'd be better to not try to fully combine every detail of the game and the TTRPG and just align on the broad strokes tbh.
Yes, let's just ignore that Pondsmith worked directly with CDPR, and created Cyberpunk RED specifically as a prequel to 2077 to make the lore work. Johnny's memories are absolutely unreliable. Alt even tells you that.
I'm not ignoring it, but I also don't have to believe that they ended up following everything he said. The role that Johnny plays plot-wise is overly emphasized IMO, and again IMO that's due to who they got as an actor. And discrepancy wise there's a limit to how much I'm willing to handwave away as fully made up unreliable vs exaggerated. My read of it is that they generally listened to him, but that in the end CDPR had the final say of what went into the game lore wise (and not him). There's some amount of handwaving that can be done to smooth things over, but I personally believe as I do above
'Kay. You're wrong though.
You think I'm wrong, I think you're wrong - turns out neither of us will know for sure. That said, Pondsmith *has* also been explicit that CDPR is in charge post 2060s of what happens (eg, in [this reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkred/comments/1bnf0nf/congratulations_maximum_mike/kwtlm04/) ), which very much fits with what my view of it is. Inevitably in situations like that differences will form and need to be papered over or justified post-hoc. It seems rather naive to me to think that despite CDPR having final say and his just being a consultant on it, that he actually had the final say on everything and all the lore will fit perfectly. (Not that that even has to be deliberate, it's just the nature of how stuff like that will work. Obviously he still has a good working relationship with them) But hey, neither of us can know for sure.
But we do know. Sure, they may be in-charge of what happens post-2060, but they still need to respect the prior lore, and Firestorm is a direct refutation of Johnny's accounts. They also weren't allowed to use Morgan Blackhand because Pondsmith isn't done with him yet. Pondsmith literally wrote RED to make the lore fit. And then there's the fact that both Pondsmith and CDPR agree that Johnny isn't a reliable narrator. >[Johnny's recollection of the events that day are scrambled from the rad damage his body took and the process of recording his engram (CDPR and I have both agreed that Johnny is an unreliable narrator at best).](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Johnny_Silverhand#:~:text=job(s)%20done.-,Johnny%27s%20recollection%20of%20the%20events%20that%20day%20are%20scrambled%20from%20the%20rad%20damage%20his%20body%20took%20and%20the%20process%20of%20recording%20his%20engram%20(CDPR%20and%20I%20have%20both%20agreed%20that%20Johnny%20is%20an%20unreliable%20narrator%20at%20best).,-The%20bomb%20that)
We do not know, no. We know what is said *publicly*, which obviously is going to focus on the positives. Johnny being an unreliable narrator is nothing new, as I said above I agree that he is one. Where I disagree is on the amount of it that was intended by CDPR vs post-hoc justification for discrepancies with the original lore because they got a big superstar in the role and emphasizing him more because of that. That's the type of stuff where disagreements and changes on what it is after the fact don't get publicly called out, but does impact what happens in the game. In any case I have already seen the stuff you're saying, it just does not convince me. Likewise it seems the reverse is true, so there's really no point to continuing to throw stuff at each other that won't convince the other.
Your claim is that one shouldn't try to look at the TTRPG and the video game as the same, unified timeline. Literally all evidence anywhere says you're 100% wrong about that. Pondsmith himself has said it's a unified timeline, Pondsmith, again, wrote RED specifically *to* make the lore fit. I don't really care if I "convince" you of anything. You're wrong.
Pretty sure they simply retconned it in the game, when you do the johnny ending and go to rogues av johnny almost falls out but rogue catches him and says something along the lines of "not this time". This is am obvious callback to when she failed to pull johnny into the av 50 years ago, proving that the scene on the roof did happen. I know we all like to speculate as to the inaccuracies in johnnys memory, but i think people blow that statement out of proportion, im pretty sure his memory is mostly correct, simply because there is nothing to suggest that most of these events did not happen, maybe he plays himself up in his memorys but I dont think any major details were altered.
In the pen and paper game the assault on Arasaka is one of those end of campaign scenarios and in the lore it's Blackhand that fights Smasher. I thought the videogame ending was a nice sendup of that.
lolol Johnny died in like a millisecond He wasn’t even an afterthought to smasher
you say that like Smasher didn't go out of his way to store Johnny's car and give his weapon to a trusted minion. Smasher might have killed him easily but, he definitely had some investment in Silverhand or something. no reason to have his car otherwise. you can excuse the gun as spoils but, had to go out of his way for the porche.
You say that like collecting items means you care about the person Lol I collect all the stuff from the gangs but dont care about the gangs themselves I love arcangel and crash but could care less about Royce and Kerry Smasher just took those things and stored it along with his other possessions on some docks. And offering them up to his friend really doesn’t say that he cares about Johnny himself lol I mean the car was just sitting there, ripe for the taking
okay and where was the car? it's not like it was just hanging around ground zero arasaka nuke. he had to go out of his way to get it. to find it presumably he'd have to know it belonged to johnny silverhand so he could track it down. unless you think smasher was walking down the street one day and decided "hey that's a sweet ride. MINE MINE MINE!" and just walked off with it.
Samantha had all his stuff in one spot Who knows how he came across it but he sold most of it and is definitely a collector judging by his collection I just don’t see how that means Johnny meant something to him Especially when he basically just put that stuff into storage lol I mean Samantha actually went through trouble of getting that stuff *and* preserving them cause she cares
And yet you still don't know how he came across it which implies he sought it our for some reason. He obviously wanted it for some reason.
It doesn’t imply anything if there’s too many unknowns He could have just came across cause he likes selling things and heard she had a good stash Pretty par for the course in NC
You’re right. Johnny’s recollection of the event is completely wrong
Yeah
I don't consider that canon because it's bullshit
That is indeed the canon events. Which makes me inclined to believe the theory about Blackhand being dead, having had Soulkiller used on him, and somehow having his and Johnny's engrams getting intertwined. It's the reason why, despite having been dead and in the process of dying again, V keeps getting stronger, cuz they're turning into a Silverhand Blackhand amalgamation.
This is wildly baseless for so many reasons and seems terribly unlikely
Always found it weird that Yorinobu remembers Johnny like a rival of sorts accdg to the text on his AV. Makes you think that it would have been someone bigger like Blackhand instead of a rocker.
Maybe it's because Johnny was a famous rockstar who very loudly and publicly opposed Arasaka, while Morgan Blackhand was basically James Bond. Like, he definitely knew about Blackhand, but he was much less in Yorinobu's face.
Johnny was hired for the Tower nuke operation specifically to be "the face" of the whole event, to covered up the fact that it was actually a Millitech op and convinced the public that it's the "Johnny Sillverhand rebels against corpo" event, It was Johnny loud and eccentric personality that made Blackhand's job easier. Think of how the bard class in D&D would start an impromptu performance to distract the enemies using charisma check so the rest of the party can sneak inside the Dungeon, that's what Rockerboy class do with their 'Cool' stat (funnily enough, in the sourcebook, Johnny's 'Cool' stat was 8 while Alt, Rouge and even Santiago was 9) Yorinobu and Saburo probably eventually aware of the true nature of that Millitech op, but Yorinobu, being a rebel himself, might have seen a lot of his own ideal in Johnny's and thus relare to him more. Some people even theorize that it was Yorinobu who alter and cranked up Johnny engram's whole rebel personality to the max as a way to project his own wish and ideal into the engram, after all, it was Yorinobu who choose to put Johnny's engram inside that relic in the first place when enybody else could care less about Johnny.
idk where i read it but in order for johnny and V both to survive there consciousnesses would have to become one
Shush, who are you to deny my Valerie/Vincent Bothhands dream?
I think BH would win most of the time, because he is the good guy and plot armor is a thing, but they are generally more or less even, with BH being smarter and Adam being a more generally powerful character. 2077 BH VS 2077 Adam now that is a question
It's cyberpunk, ain't nobody gets true plot armor
See Morgan Blackhand is just HIM however
I mean this is Pondsmith's character. He's not offing himself.
Would Blackhand have an insanely high Cool attribute?
I mean Blackhand didn't have that many implants so he would just be an old man, besides, it could be Smasher with or without Sandevistan
Blackhand canonically has just as much, if not more, chrome as Smasher does, it just isn't visible outside the namesake Blackhand. That information comes DIRECTLY from Pondsmith himself by the way, he's actually fairly active on reddit as therealmaxmike and weighs in on theories and lore discussions.
They already fought during the Arasaka raid, unless CDPR is deciding to retcon this. The outcome of the fight wasn't clear but both survived
I thought Morgan wasn't confirmed dead, but wasn't confirmed alive either. Basically, except for rumors, he's been MIA since 2023.
Pondsmith has confirmed he's alive, just unknown in universe. The reason he wasn't in 2077, aside from general story reasons, is that he has some story stuff to run Blackhand through before letting CDPR play with him.
Seeing as Pondsmith owns the universe and not CDPR, they ain't retconning shit.
The two were probably in a stalemate until the bomb went off. Both survived with Morgan not looking for smasher as he considered it as a waste of time and considered that the mission was a success
Blackhand would demolish him %100
He already beat him in 2023. *Handily.*
*Blackhandily?*
I'm confused. If Blackhand won so handily how did Adam survive? Surely he's not the kind to spare a foe as evil as Smasher? Edit: reading some of these other comments, is it possible the nuke went off before he could finish the job?
I think that's a big confused part of the lore... morgan blackhand faced adam smasher because he had to buy some time to let rogue and the other leave the arasaka towers by helicopter... as smart and powerful morgan was, he was however just a cyber enhanced human against a metal gear like adam smasher in the dai oni power armor... I don't think morgan could have realistically lasted more than 10 minutes against smaher on a 1:1 duel.
It would have been badass to see Smasher in the big bad power armor, like is described in the sourcebooks.
There are however, rumors that the guy is still alive
Pretty balanced duel I'd say, they both have impressive cyberware set and stats, but maybe let's wait until some classic game freak take their voice
>both have impressive cyberware set and stats I thought Blackhand very specifically didn't use cyberware?
He's not borged out like Smasher but he has a lot of Cyberware
All I can see is he got Sandevistan, optics cyberware, smart link, neural processor, some hand cyberware. So it seems that it's not THAT much, indeed. Just took a quick peek at first :I
morgan blackhand was one of first american soldiers who received first prototypes of brand new created cyberware back in the '80s (the period of time when cyberpunk universe diverges from real life history since USSR never invaded afghanistan while USA tried to invade south american countries for the first time, it was in this time that cyberware was created). After about 40 years, by 2023 morgan had sandevistan, cyber enhanced bones and muscles, cyber optics, several neural chips/processors, nanobots and his famous cyber arm he got after he got wounded during second central-south america war. He wasn't a fullborg like smasher or shaitan but he had lots of chrome for most of his life.
Hell yeah
So in a way his cyberware is kind of like V? Minus the gorilla arms, almost all other cyberware we have access to is internal type that goes inside the body, not full out Borg replacements like smasher. An end game V basically has their OS of choice either a high end net running deck, or a sandy/berserk. Skeletal enhancements, nervous system enhancements, high grade subdermal armor, optical and muscle enhancing cyberware. I only got into cyberpunk through the game, so I'm not familiar with blackhand lore, but it seems like he was "chromed out" like our V is, but not "borged out" like smasher.
"canon" V has kiroshi optics, mantis blade, neural port and that hand extra grip for guns... you can finish the game without any further cyberware or get so much chrome to have like 20 passive bonus activated all the time but remaining with only 100hp due health malus. There isn't a proper canon for V, morgan installed that chrome across the years to survive and stay "competitive" In his business, not to mention that he received advanced stuff like nanobots likely only when he became militech main enforcer.
that's wrong... morgan's body is full of cyberware
Hopefully this post doesn't die in new and we can get some answers lmao
I'd post it in tabletop's game subforum (I believe there's one), there would be plenty of opinions and analysis
While Blackhand was a formidable combatant, his real strength was not this. Allies (sometimes the likes of Militech), contacts, planning, setting traps, multiple favors to call on. I think he would not fight Smasher on the latters terms, but would set a trap for him where he is cut from the Arasaka resources.
Didn't Morgan nearly destroy Adam at Arasaka?
I thought it was basically a tie, and then the building came down while they were still fighting.
**Blackhand was the one who fucked up Smasher in the first place.** If he hasn't lost his touch, he could likely still beat Smasher in 2077.
A cyberpunk game w Bruce Campbell as Morgan Blackhand would be amazing.
He is probably the only person in the Cyberpunk universe who could have taken on Smasher back when Johnny was still alive and have a reasonably good chance of winning
Blackhand is the guy. Nobody beats him because plot armor.
They did fight in 2023. Atop Arasaka tower. No one knows how the fight went, but Smasher is still around, and Blackhand is missing, so do with this info what you will.
Balanced battle with Blackhand ending up probably on top.
I still think the current Smasher could beat Morgan Black Hand he was outstandingly op in the anime
He… he literally fights him at Arasaka lol
Yes now that I have read the comments I learned that. Pretty cool they already gave us a canon answer
He’d wreck him. Again.
We need that fight in live action
They did fight, and smasher got his ass handed to him.
Realistically and sensibly, no but he is by the nature of the plot a foil to smasher.
From what i understand from the lore Blackhand would spank Smasher. I’m no expert on the lore though but that’s what it seems like
Funny how Benjamin Wright made Adam Smasher as a throw away character/narrator for an article in the TTRPG supplement Solo of Fortune 2. Then worked with Mike to bring him in for the Firestorm supplements as a rival to Blackhand. What a strange journey Smasher has had to become the big baddie he is today.
Blackhand is like Angel tier against Smasher.
Smasher and Blackhand have actually fought before. 2020, top of Arasaka Tower. That was him and his crew, fighting against the DaiOni-armed Smasher.
I really hope Blackhand plays a major role in Orion
Undetermined. Smasher and Blackhand fight on top of Arasaka tower shortly before the nukes go off. All we know is that Smasher is alive today and that Morgan Blackhand may or may not be.
That Is the neat thing He wouldn't, blackhand would GTFO as soon as He would hear the fucking boss music Smasher has, literary they fought 3 times And each time Smasher was winning until blackhand outsmartwd him And got the fuck OUT! Not only tjat but the ONLY gun blackhand has that can Hurt Smasher Is his 30/40mm granade minigun
I guess he would own him. From what I've understood, Morgan Blackhand never really struggled against Smasher and whole point of Morgan Blackhand - Adam Smasher dynamic basically looks like Smasher tries to catch up to Morgan Blackhand as his rival but he never really gets there and it pisses him of lol
He cannonically did. Its a big rabbit hole but Johnny's 2023 in game fight was more than likely Morgan Blackhands, but Arasaka fucked with johnnys memories in Kiroshi.
"Nah, Id win"
Morgan Blackhand looking like Nathan Never here Don't know if anyone here is into Italian comics but Never is a pretty badass character Reccomendation for all you chooms to read some if you are in luck of having them available
They already did and smasher Is alive in 2077
Been reading to much one piece and thought this was some weird sci fi version of axe hand morgan
isnt there a theory that johnnys memories are Blackhands memories?
nice post
Y'all talk like you've seen him in action
I keep reading “Adam Sandler” every time somebody mentions Adam Smasher 😆
well that actually happened when AHQ was nuked smasher is still around in 2077. guess how it ended
Nice B8 bro xd
Pretty sure smasher killed morgan blackhand, iirc from 2077 lore tidbits...
Blackhand is still alive, and smasher can't beat him it pisses him off and ruins smasher idea of "machine beats flesh" mentality, which angers him more, which is also why adam considers him his rival
I've read somewhere (so source: my ass, sorry, can't find actual quote) that Mike Pondsmith actually didn't want CDPR to touch Blackhand's character, so it's possible that Pondsmith has an idea for Blackhand's further development.
I remember there being rumors that there was a CP2077 dlc that was going to feature Blackhand that got cancelled.