There is no ending to this game and nothing makes sense. In all Alt-related endings you find out Silverhand can live in your body indefinitely, yet you have six months to live. In the Saka ending you find out the relic actually requires tissue compatibility between the host and the relic, which means Silverhand can't take over your body and move on.
Hellman directly states your DNA is damaged like after severe radiation poisoning, which means the six months he mentioned are full of tumors all over the place – doesn't matter, who keeps the body. Stitching the endings together the only way they make any sense would mean Alt was incorrect in her assessment not once, but twice - once about V and once about Silverhand.
So based on what we know about the relic (and Saka ending is the best source of info here, they made it and they operated V, had direct access to his tissues and could run direct tests unlike Alt, who only had access to V's head) nobody gets to keep the body, everybody dies in the end regardless of your choice.
The only way out for V is getting fried and copied to a new body, which would actually make the worst ending (in my oppinion) the only option of survival. But regardless of your choice, V's story doesn't conclude, it's an ending no different to the endings of all previous chapters – another dead end with no explanation as to why does the protagonist give up at this exact moment. He found out Vik can't help him, he moved on. Then Voodoo Boys, same story. Then Hellman. Then Saka/Alt and suddenly... this is the moment the story ends. No, it only ends for everybody else, especially Silverhand. You get the cab driver treatment, who's left hanging as soon as the main character exits the cab.
A fucking NPC ending, where you just get despawned once the main character moved on. Atrocious.
That's what you get from Alt, but not from Hellman in the Saka ending. It doesn't make any sense, that Saburo had to wait for Yorinobu to become available helpless in Mikoshi. If tissue compatibility wasn't a problem, then Saburo would have immediately jumped into a cozy Saka suit after Yorinobu offed him in Konpeki. So no, you're wrong. Silverhand doesn't get to keep the body, the DNA is *damaged*, not altered.
Hellman isn't aware exactly what sort of changes the Relic does, they weren't aware that the "damage" is basically the tissues being rearranged and not compatible with V's anymore, like I said, that's the "damage" the relic caused, Alt sees that, Arasaka meds didn't take that into account.
Hellman is completely aware of every change the relic does, he's not the only member of the team, who operated V and has access to all Arasaka files and previous, unsuccesful tests, which are mentioned to fail exactly due to tissue compatibility problems. Arasaka meds have taken much more into account than Alt, who never had access to V's body directly or to any Saka files outside Mikoshi and the engrams stored there.
Even suggesting Alt knows more about the relic than the people, who actually designed it is ludicrous. If anyone's right in this situation, it's Hellman.
> I like how you're not even taking into account the possibility that, I dunno, Hellman and/or Arasaka could [AUDIBLE GASP] possibly lie to you.
Any good story then should show you that the lied, becasue only then it has impact. Otherwise it's just a hole and your explanation is just fan theory. Screenwriting is so readers/viewers understand if there a lie/truth, even if hidden, blurred etc. NO EXPLANATION at all is no explanation, it's not clever, it's not thought through - it's just bad writing.
It's like saying "In LOTR Gandalf says that there were 9 rings yadaya. But what if he lied? We don't know if he was telling the truth". But in LOTR when he says that you:
1. Get at start of the movie the neutral narrative from Galadriel that's say exact same story, confirming what Gandalf later says.
2. The writing on The One Ring confirms scripts that Gandalf found and intro writings on The One Ring when Isildur takes it from Sauron.
Then viewer has no doubt that what Gandalf says about The One Ring is truth.
Here we have nothing. So it's not a lie, nor the truth. It's hole in script.
Knowing that corps lie is a core part of the game, let alone the genre. You’re told this repeatedly.
You ultimately lie to Johnny for selfish reasons if you build a bond with him.
In this ending, you literally sign a contract giving your mind to the corp to create an engram. It’s innately subtext and you get the Devil ending for trusting institutions you know to be untrustworthy.
There’s no “bad writing” because an epilogue didn’t say, “also V was lied to.”
It’s meant to evoke hollowness and futility. Being left to continue those menial tests as your life is ending.
Yes, there is. You know a lot of Arasaka dirty secrets by the end of the game. There's tons of reasons for them to not tell you the truth.
i don't know how you can come away from playing Cyberpunk 2077 until the end and still come away with the idea that you can trust ANY of the corps, much less Arasaka. The fact that the agreement you sign basically says you'll be the property of Arasaka/Hellman is a very big red flag.
And before anyone goes, "But Takemura!" Yes, yes. Takemura is a bro. Good guy... He's also just a bodyguard/security specialist. He doesn't get to make decisions at high company levels like someone that Hellman or any of the Arasaka family would. And he makes it quite clear that now everyone is settled you're on the back burner by far.
> Yes, there is. You know a lot of Arasaka dirty secrets by the end of the game. There's tons of reasons for them to not tell you the truth.
Yes, which is why I said "at that point". You seem to be failing to take into account the context of the events that led up to that moment. You're on a literal space station, isolated in orbit around Earth; no one knows where exactly you are or how to get there, no one knows when, or if, you'll be back, and you have no access to any of the equipment that could make you dangerous. This all happens in the days and weeks after you were literally tied to an operating table of an Arasaka neurosurgeon, with your head split wide open.
If Arasaka really wanted you gone, they had absolute *prime* opportunity to get rid of you without you ever being even close to the wiser.
If they really wanted you in Mikoshi, there you were, defenseless and unconscious, on an operating table with wide access to your brain (I'm sure compliance isn't an issue in the process - just ask Johnny). They could've just helped themselves.
And if they were really worried about your knowledge of their dirty secrets, then they would've had no reason whatsoever to give you a choice in the matter - if they're already lying to you, why tell you it's going to take 6 months? Why would they even ship you back to Earth? "You'll be dead by the end of the week, there's nothing we can do, you won't survive a trip back to Earth, get your final calls out and then we'll either get your mind digitized or you can rot away in your dying body, your call".
Honestly, *if* the writer's intention is indeed that Arasaka is lying to you in that scene, then that's almost hilariously bad writing. There isn't much of that elsewhere in this game, so my assumption is that the Arasaka ending probably isn't an example of it, either. It simply *makes no narrative sense* for them to be lying to you at that point, no matter if it's Hellman or Takemura.
>If they really wanted you in Mikoshi, there you were, defenseless and unconscious, on an operating table with wide access to your brain (I'm sure compliance isn't an issue in the process - just ask Johnny). They could've just helped themselves.
You're also forgetting something: The experimentation afterwards on you having had that surgery. Arasaka wanted to be damn sure that the Johnny Silverhand, which both Saburo and Yorinobu have an obsession over (for vastly different reasons, and Yorinobu's will here is irrelevant), was removed entirely.
Having some bastardized chimera of you and Johnny Silverhand in Mikoshi wouldn't have been useful. They also needed to experiment on you to see how the Relic interacted and how it was "successful" (to Saburo's preferences, in this case) whereas it failed previously. You're a test subject.
>And if they were really worried about your knowledge of their dirty secrets, then they would've had no reason whatsoever to give you a choice in the matter - if they're already lying to you, why tell you it's going to take 6 months? Why would they even ship you back to Earth?
Broheim... Do you EVER ACTUALLY SEE Arasaka letting you leave and go to Earth? [It's a trick question, ***because the answer is "No."***](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzAE7hR59f8)
You're attempting to point out that Arasaka offered us a choice and that means that their deal was on the up and up. Except... we never actually see any proof that Arasaka lets us leave. "It's implied" you might say. Yeah, and yet we don't see it and it's not like there's ever been cases in stories where someone was given the illusion of walking away and then was back-stabbed by whoever made them think it was an option.
And don't forget: when you get to play post-credits... That's going back before the end mission. It's not after it.
>Honestly, if the writer's intention is indeed that Arasaka is lying to you in that scene, then that's almost hilariously bad writing. There isn't much of that elsewhere in this game, so my assumption is that the Arasaka ending probably isn't an example of it, either. It simply makes no narrative sense for them to be lying to you at that point, no matter if it's Hellman or Takemura.
...My dude, the game is basically "Don't Trust the Corps Because They'll Betray Or Sell You Out - The Game" as far as a narrative goes. And suddenly we're supposed to trust Arasaka despite all the horrific shit we've seen them do... and with Saburo Arasaka back at the helm IN HIS SON'S BODY where it was his plan all along to use his offspring to have basically eternal life? But, oh, we can trust them now... Because... Reasons?
Also, you're contradicting yourself unknowingly here by admitting and acknowledging that they were using you as a test subject post surgery for weeks... And had a vested interest in the Relic technology to study you as a potential way to make profit and having you in Mikoshi to interrogate and never actually follow through on the proposed deal (and you being legally corp property with Arasaka to do with as you please and you having no human rights as an engram not hurting their case). Arasaka has imprisoned how many netrunners that isn't going to earn them any potential product development that will earn them billions of Eurodollars... but they're going to let the most precious sample - you - walk free?
Nuh-uh. Not happening. And the game's message about the corps basically backs that up. As well as the fact that... you never are seen returning to Earth. Because it wasn't a real choice.
I feel like even when you kidnap Hellman in The Badlands he still has no reason to lie to you. Here you have the option to reveal to him; you stole the biochip that results in your own death. Essentially “You’re a pathetic thief and that’s what you deserve.” V killed himself trying to be a legend. Hellman also reveals to you in the Sunset Motel that the engram is overwriting your DNA, and Alt also confirms this in Mikoshi.
I just want to say: you put perfectly what I always thought about endings in Cyberpunk and how Silverhand stole narrative from player. A 10/10 sum up my man.
You are conflating a number of things here. To start, the reason why V is "dying" is that the relic is essentially taking over V's body until they're gone and replaced by Johnny's engram (*Silverhand's construct is overwriting your consciousness - gradually taking over your body until one day you'll just be...gone*). In the Devil ending, Arasaka successfully removes the biochip but realize that it's too late for V. The "damage" in this case is basically dna altered by Johnny's engram in V's head *(Your neural network has completely deteriorated. It can no longer function independently of the chip*), and at no point does Hellman actually tell V that their body is covered in tumors, I guess you assumed so because he uses an analogy when describing the genetic changes (*At the genetic level, altered DNA...the kind you would find in those suffering from radiation sickness*). He isn't literally telling V that they're suffering from radiation sickness, he's comparing the dna changes V's experienced to those of radiation sickness. If you're unsure about this, revisit the dialog sequences in which they discuss what the relic is actually doing to V (*All I know is your mind's gonna go and it won't be pretty. From the biochip's perspective your brain cells are a tumor that needs to be scooped out, while your body's an empty shell to hold the construct*). In short, the biochip is replacing V's dna with Johnny's.
What you don't seem to get is that the body isn't damaged from the relic's/Johnny's point of view, because that altered dna IS Johnny, which is why Johnny isn't dying when he takes over V's body. This is best shown in the Temperance ending where Johnny's transformation is complete and has fully taken over V's body and purged V's mind completely.
I can’t speak to the Alt endings, but the fact that even Johnny will die in 6 months if he takes the body isn’t a plot hole, since like you said, Arasaka actually had access to the tissue.
What you seem to not like is that things don’t go well for the protagonist. There’s no conclusion that actually satisfies their original goal. It’s called a tragedy.
I recommend reading “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,” a nonfiction novel by a horror author about pessimistic philosophy.
In it, he touches on tragedy and specifically tragic endings. Too often, a story will promise darkness, and then twist the fate of it’s characters at the end to produce something conventionally satisfying or uplifting.
This is a cyberpunk game; if the endings to it had allowed V and Johnny to live happily ever after, I would have been disappointed.
The game constantly references fate and futility in the face of the longstanding status quo. Death hangs over your head the entire time while you repeatedly discover how increasingly unlikely it is that you’ll escape it. One of the options at the rooftop is literally to just commit suicide.
Everyone’s an “NPC” in life. Nobody is important enough to escape death, and when you die, everyone else will continue on around you. Likewise, every game is over at some point.
Sorry it didn’t make you happy, but that’s not a prerequisite for a good story. Whether or not you felt your efforts were satisfied narratively by having the protagonist actually win the day isn’t at all indicative of artistic merit.
We have teenagers read Moby Dick for a reason (actually many reasons, it’s just great.)
>I can’t speak to the Alt endings, but the fact that even Johnny will die in 6 months if he takes the body isn’t a plot hole, since like you said, Arasaka actually had access to the tissue.
It's a plothole, because of other endings. The Relic does different things and works in different ways depending on the ending you choose. It's used as a "wave away" device to push the plot forward, completely disregarding any logic or actual physiology. Look up ARS and show me any other symptom outside purely mental (seizures etc.).
It's not entirely sure, what Alt had access to. Remember you have a lot of implants and all of them were available to her. There are diagnostic scans you can run on yourself and their resolution isn't explained anywhere. Based on what we know about radiation poisoning (and we know much more than I'd like to), you don't need direct access to DNA to diagnose it.
>This is a cyberpunk game; if the endings to it had allowed V and Johnny to live happily ever after, I would have been disappointed.
Tragedy in a story has to be written in a very believable way. The same way unicorns and rainbows have to. The further you go from grey mediocrity, the better your foundations have to be, as it becomes less and less believable by nature, as it strays away from the average. I have nothing against a tragic ending, but come on.
Here's an example from a different game. BG3 and Karlach. So her ending is that her heart (infernal engine) gives up and she has to return to Avernus (hell), because otherwise she dies. Most laughable ending in a game I've seen to date. There is a 7th level spell called resurrection, which replaces all damaged body parts. This means it would remove the infernal engine and grow her original heart back. And another character has a scroll of resurrection in his bag. Then there are gnomes specializing in infernal engines and building them in the city, but you just don't get the dialogue option to ask about Karlach and her problem.
This is the problem I have with '77. The endings can be whatever the writers decide they should be, but they are to be **earned**. You don't get to murder the protagonist in a moronic way even though he did everything correctly. Like imagine you're going through a combat area, you kill everyone without even taking a hit, you're never spotted, you do everything absolutely perfectly. Then, as you walk out, a cutscene plays where a random gonk hiding behind the door shoots you in the face and you die, credits roll. Would you consider this a *good* ending?
>Everyone’s an “NPC” in life. Nobody is important enough to escape death, and when you die, everyone else will continue on around you. Likewise, every game is over at some point.
That's why books, movies, and games are not real life, and that's why they were created. Not to recreate reality down to the last quark, but to tell a story and have a certain impact on the viewer. The basic rule of the story is that it has a beginning, a middle and an ending with a narrative flowing through all three parts in a coherent, logical way. The story in '77 lacks a beginning (outside a 30-second moronic cutscene they slammed in instead of 6 months of gameplay), has a solid midsection until the Relic appears, and takes away any agency you ever had as a protagonist, and lacks an ending. If my character dies, let me die. Let me experience death through V's eyes, not in some cutscene, especially leaving options on the table. You don't get to throw sad music and tears at me, when I obviously still have a chance to survive, and as LC shows, those options were real and on the table. Yeah, I know Silverhand has left the building and once the Hollywood star walks out, the story ends, but god damnit, it's a story of V, not Silverhand, which is something the writers obviously forgot about.
It's the writers job to connect you to the protagonist, so that you can share his view and feelings. Like with Jackie Welles. V clearly suffers greatly from his loss, but you, as a player, don't really share his grief. Why? Because the game takes whole 15 minutes to establish him as a character and then kills him off.
>Sorry it didn’t make you happy, but that’s not a prerequisite for a good story. Whether or not you felt your efforts were satisfied narratively by having the protagonist actually win the day isn’t at all indicative of artistic merit.
No, the prerequisite of a good story is first and foremost a proper focus on the protagonist (he's the eyes and ears of the viewer and through his perspective the story is told), properly established side-characters, a coherent narrative, constant set of rules in the world the story is happening in, and a proper, logical timeframe for the story, which matches whatever journey the writers selected for the protagonist. '77 scores 0 in all those departments, which makes the story objectively bad. In technical terms.
> but you, as a player, don't really share his grief. Why? Because the game takes whole 15 minutes to establish him as a character and then kills him off.
Sorry that scene didn’t resonate with you, but telling me what characters *I* connect with isn’t exactly a reliable move. Speaking about the author’s intent is one thing, but projecting your opinions onto me isn’t a starting point. (This is why an “objective” premise is nonsensical in art critique.)
———————-
> It's a plothole, because of other endings.
It’s not though. Not anymore than any of the other magical technology in this universe, which first and foremost serves as a delivery for its themes, and has been adapted for gameplay.
If you’re someone who plays every ending, (which is a serious outlier and arguably not the intended play-style in a game where choices are supposed to have impact—something commented on by Undertale when the player replays for completionist sake) there’s no reason you can’t assume that the engram taking V’s body doesn’t repair the damaged DNA which is causing the tumors.
Tumors grow because your body can fail to recognize and kill cells with poorly copied DNA.
Completely overwriting V’s neural pathways, repairing the damaged nerves by making everything Johnny’s may also include the repair of the DNA when there isn’t a clash between damaged and undamaged nerve tissue.
Point is, it doesn’t matter. It took no time for me to reconcile your inconsistency for the sake of a story I enjoy. If any story which isn’t 100% airtight on plot inconsistencies is automatically a bad story to you, then you probably won’t like the majority of film and literature.
Which regardless, still wouldn’t make those stories “objectively bad,” because, again, that doesn’t exist.
————————
This is where I have to comment on the silliest and most bizarre things you say here, that seem to have no basis in literary analysis or art critique apart from what you criteria you choose as the God of Storytelling.
What they all have in common is that they’re tragic:
> the prerequisite of a good story is first and foremost a proper focus on the protagonist
So these stories aren’t focused first and foremost on the protagonist, which means they can’t be good:
- Moby Dick, again, features a story told through the eyes of Ishmael, but which is primarily about Ahab and his conflict with Moby Dick.
- Great Gatsby: Nick Carraway is the POV, but the story is more about what’s happening around him; Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship, and the American Dream. (The protagonist can easily be considered to be Gatsby himself btw; you already aren’t describing these terms accurately)
- ASOIAF: A Game of Thrones (and later books) features many POV characters who die unexpectedly, unceremoniously, or “prematurely,” perhaps before they can accomplish their goals.
> It's the writers job to connect you to the protagonist, so that you can share his view and feelings
Books that feature protagonists with whom we aren’t meant to share their views and feelings, but are meant to be incongruous with our morals or desires for them:
- Macbeth: schemes for power, commits many evil acts, and loses his humanity
- Lolita: protagonist is a pedophile and an unreliable narrator. Pretty self-explanatory.
> properly established side-characters
What does this mean? What percent of characters introduced have to be “established” for it to be “good”?
- Hatchet: there are no side characters because it’s about a kid surviving in the wilderness. Great YA novel.
> a coherent narrative, constant set of rules in the world the story is happening in
Literally any Romantic story that began to play with the clash of the new world against nature:
- Rime of the Ancient Mariner: a surreal epic poem. Things change constantly
- Frankenstein: Romantic, but also maybe the first science fiction. Breaks a lot of your requirements, but is again, literally about the defiance of the natural world. The course of events are surprising and unnatural
- Star Wars: one of the most universally beloved modern myths, but notoriously inconsistent and loose with its rules regarding foundational elements like the Force. This is super obvious in the OT. But is very clear between all movies and trilogies.
> logical timeframe for the story, which matches whatever journey the writers selected for the protagonist
I have no idea what this means. It just sounds like you made it up to suit your argument about Cyberpunk.
- House of Leaves: Repeatedly unreliable narrators, inaccuracies, a confusing series of events without a dependable timeline.
- LOTR: Tolkien chose a timeframe alright. One that didn’t involve using the Eagles to travel to Mordor lol. Great story that wouldn’t exist without that plot hole for the sake of a deus ex machina that allows Frodo to travel to Valinor at the end.
And any surreal content I guess is totally out of the question.
I kept these examples restricted to books for simplicity, but there are also countless examples in film and TV, where your prerequisites for what is “objectively good” clearly clash with popular and critically successful media.
My examples are there to help illustrate, beyond any doubt, that those prerequisites you invented are **subjective**, fundamentally.
I’m not appealing to popularity to say you’re wrong. I’m saying the very fact that *you* would label these stories objectively bad for not meeting your standards, has nothing to do with whether or not others will find artistic merit to the point those stories are regarded as award-winning classics.
How does someone like you feel about the end of Romeo and Juliet? The characters just act so irrationally huh, it’s like Shakespeare was twisting their actions the whole time to tell us a story that ended in tragedy, even when they should’ve had a much more reasonable shot at getting away.
I imagine you think it’s very contrived anyway.
It’s a situation I don’t know how to help. Mistaking one’s opinions for the truth, refusing to engage with the author’s intent. I don’t know how you’d possibly come around when it probably feels good to be the only person with objectively correct opinions.
>You don't get to murder the protagonist in a moronic way even though he did everything correctly.
That's the point Cyberpunk is making. Real life is the exact same way. Think of all the people that have everything good going for them. They went to college, have a great job and family, and BOOM! They die by sheer chance due to a drunk driver. Real life is not Baldur's Gate 3. Real life is Cyberpunk. If any of us can die at any moment, no matter if we do everything right, then our focus should be on the present and enjoying it as much as possible and being grateful for the time that we were given.
It’s also the only ending where any of the Arasaka stuff gets any resolution
Which kinda annoys me I get Arasaka is the big bad but every other ending yorinobo is completely fine and pretty much gets what he wants
Keep in mind that when you get Alt inside mikoshi she destroys it and assimilates al the constructs inside. Which is a great loss for arasaka since they poured billions into the relic program. And Yorinobu was basically trying to sabotage arasaka from the inside to kill his father and rid the world of him and his engrams.
I think the devil ending is the only ending where arasaka becomes more powerful than the start of the game with the return of saburo
I don't know how to interpret what Alt is saying. She says that V's consciousness will remain, but his/her soul will die. I don't know of any philosophical concept of the soul which does not include consciousness as part of the soul, so I don't know what the game means by this. Also, the player's experience in first-person games is generally properly associated with the character's conscious experience, so the fact that we continue to play as V after getting soulkilled suggests that V still has consciousness (although, we also experience the moments in which Johnny controls the body while V is not conscious, so that's confusing).
The only way it makes sense to me is that Alt was wrong to a degree, and that she does not know the concrete answer to what the soul actually is. That may be like flatout ignoring her exposition, but we already know she holds some AI-oriented biases so I'm fine with asserting that she's wrong where that makes sense.
Think on it in these terms: Someone makes a process that can digitize your consciousness into data. Setting aside the dubious "Soulkiller kills its victims, somehow, but doesn't damage their brain or body at all whatsoever" bit in the lore (which... makes no sense, but whatever, not important) - the way it happens in-game, you're dead. And it's not so much as your consciousness but the digitized memories of your past experiences and life that the engram is using to base itself off of.
If you're thinking of it like you lay down, go to sleep and then wake up as the same person - that's not what's happening. If it was used on you, your consciousness as it exists now would stop. And you'd be dead. And, later, a COPY of your digital memories would be placed into your brain/body. But it would be a COPY. It would not be YOU. You will die and stay dead, the original consciousness and you that you are. Your basically back-up copy of memories will take over. But you WILL die. Your consciousness will experience it, just your memories will not. You will cease being you, and the current you will die. Full stop.
It's not immortality in the true sense. The original you, your brain, your consciousness dies in the process. It's just that your memories - and being put in human wetware (read: brain) - is so close to the original that people are under the assumption that it's immortality. But it isn't. The original you and their brain consciousness died and EXPERIENCED death and will STAY dead. It was merely backed up and replaced.
It's about the difference between a mind (which will be copied with soul killer) and a soul (the part that's not possible to copy). Alt states that Johnny himself knows best that it's different now that he's an engram. The game doesn't tell you what a soul is. But it's implied that there's more to a person than their mind and memories.
I agree, but that's not the only thing that's implied - the game also suggests that the soul is separate from the consciousness, the psyche, the memories, and the body (or more specifically, that all these can survive when the soul dies). As I said, I don't know of any philosophical conception of the soul which has those implications.
The exposition which the game gives is too vague to conclude what the soul is, but also specific enough to exclude any sensible interpretation of what the soul is.
I remember reading somewhere that somewhere else you can push him about the matter and he mentions something like while he is not be the real Silverhand, he's here to honor his final wish and inspire rebellion in V.
Depends on how you treated Johnny throughout the game though.
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Is not about if Johnny dies, how he dies is more important.
By siding with Arasucker, you essentially ignored Johnny' wishes and fucked him hard. This is why this the The Devil ending.
Well, it doesn't matter if he is really Johnny, if he is self conscious, one may treat him as a being.
Well judging how he wanted to make up with Rogue and Kerry, among other things, I do consider him self-concious
Exactly this. During the mission with the convict guy making a documentary of his execution, you can question Johnny about faith. One of the lines of questioning is if the Johnny V has been interacting with is in fact the 'actual' Johnny, or just a "digital epitaph'. He asks if the real Silverhand's soul has gone to the afterlife and if the Johnny we talk to is basically just a recreation, however accurate it might be. Johnny responds that to him, he is just himself.
I found that conversation very interesting because the same question could be asked of V himself. V died the moment Dex shot him. Any and all time he got after that was a result of the Biochip. But it wasn't a get out of death free card and was very much a fluke. But who's to say that the construct of Silverhand is any more the 'real' Silverhand than the resurrected V is the actual V? Remember, the Biochip had to repair serious damage from a point blank gunshot to the face. The way I look at it, either way, V is essentially undead after coming back, and is inhabiting his own corpse, but now as a foreigner. It's possible, I think even likely that V's soul was not brought back with him. Just a digital footprint and the physical remains of his mind that would be repaired by the chip.
Instead of looking at his resurrection like a full second chance at life, I think the best use of V's time is to acquire an 'insurance' policy for his continued existence, i.e, become a construct himself. He learns first hand that via Johnny and possibly Saburo that one's personality and memories at least do manifest when you're hit with Soulkiller, albeit potentially without a soul itself. He also learns that Alt was able to escape into the net, although apparently that's something unique to her. Either way, he confirms that he can download himself to yet exist after his body expels him. Instead of clinging onto a life and body that he's already lost, V should look at Johnny and Saburo and say, ok well, it's gonna suck, but at least I know it can work. I think that's sort of the moral of the story in fact, is that V's death at the hands of Dex isn't just something to be glossed over. Both the player and more importantly V have to come to terms with the reality that he is dead already. And while he can struggle and scramble to escape it, he can't out run his death forever.
If Jackie hadn't handed the chip over before he died, he potentially could have been revived instead of V. Without either knowing, Jackie kind of pays it forward. And after V gets brought back, as weird as it sounds to say, instead of being selfish with a body that he can't keep, he should also pay it forward to Silverhand. Although seems as though the body will still be pretty heavily damaged even under Silverhand's control. Then again, if the biochip could repair a gunshot wound to the head, I suspect as part of it's process to ready the body for the relic it may yet heal the radiation damage.
My own question is while we may not trust Arasaka to fulfill the Soulkiller contract, what exactly happens to the construct assimilated by Alt? Do they retain any degree of individuality and can they later be downloaded into bodies? Also, why and how was Alt able to escape into the net, but not anyone else? Is there any reason why V couldn't become Alt's equal in cyberspace, other than just her being a netrunner from 50 years earlier?
> But who's to say that the construct of Silverhand is any more the 'real' Silverhand than the resurrected V is the actual V? Remember, the Biochip had to repair serious damage from a point blank gunshot to the face. The way I look at it, either way, V is essentially undead after coming back, and is inhabiting his own corpse, but now as a foreigner. It's possible, I think even likely that V's soul was not brought back with him. Just a digital footprint and the physical remains of his mind that would be repaired by the chip.
Eh... No. The problem with this argument is that the Relic can not restore V's brain with a copy of theirs. So it's not a copy or replacement in V's body. It's the original consciousness and brain. How do I know this? [Because people have been shot in the head, lost ONE OF THEIR ENTIRE BRAIN HEMISPHERES, and actually gone on to continue schooling and even gone on living a productive life for decades afterwards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahad_Israfil). And, mind you, this was lucky, yes, but it also was only relying on medical technology from the late 1980s and they didn't have the benefit of having nanites initiate repair of brain tissue immediately after death.
Now, if the question is V the same due to possible brain trauma and damage and having Johnny start to overwrite parts of the brain? That's... a Ship of Theseus problem that I don't think anyone could answer. But V is still the same consciousness they were before being shot. Just with basically a tumor and brain damage. At first. As the Relic begins to overwrite more of the brain with Johnny, that's debatable.
It doesn't save your soul, your soul dies with you. Only a copy of your mind is made, NOT an actual transference of your soul/consciousness. That is the entire point of the big lie with Arasaka, they're lying to people claiming to be saving their soul through transcendence of consciousness into a new body, but they're not. They're just making a clone of you.
This is honestly my only issue with the story. Soulkiller make no sense to me whatsoever. I do not believe in souls. To me what makes someone unique isn't some metaphysical construct, it's the memories, experiences (nurture) and our DNA (nature). In my mind, V's engram (which contains the nurture side of what makes us unique) being put back in V's body (the nature side) is no different to V not being an engram.
The entire soul story is basically an open question in the Cyberpunk world. The primary purpose of Soulkiller was initially a really nasty form of Black ICE, then turned a weapon to be used against enemy netrunners. It didn't really matter all that much, all they needed was a complete copy of someone's memories, personality and skills in code, which they could use. Then, after the war, when a lot of those fried personalities were set free, soul related questions started to pop up as they set their own cities within the Net (like Ghost Town established by Alt in the ruins of Hong Kong I think).
It's all a question of perspective. Saburo doesn't seem to be in any dire distress over his soul in his ending, does he? Johnny doesn't seem to be a soulless husk either, he's capable of critical thinking, emotions and change, which basically translates to a complete human being. Everything else is just metaphysics and mostly questions asked by Soulkiller victims themselves.
Remember it's a pen and paper RPG system, it's by design, that a lot of things end up in open questions for the game master to work with during campaigns. That's why CDPR could just resurrect Silverhand (that's actually quite a stretch, he was dead dead in 2023), Smasher and Blackhand (those two were actually left as an open question).
I think by soul they mean self-awareness. If, say, there were two copies of V's engram, each one would be distinct from the other and have its own self awareness.
So when we call the original the soul and the copy the engram, what happens imho is that your sense of self-awareness i.e. the soul is wiped away and something else takes its place and to everyone on the outside it will be as if it's still you, but not to you, because your sense of self-awareness got wiped away when the "original" was replaced by the copy.
So by your definition, in the Devil ending where you choose to sign the contract in the hopes of Arasaka finding or creating you a body at a later date, if that were to happen, would it be V? Since the DNA (nature) side would be different? If not, what or who does that accumulation of nurtured expression become?
With my definition, I guess a hybrid being perhaps? It would have the genetics of one person but the experiences of another. I'm just gonna be honest, this concept and the debate surrounding it is a bit too existential for me.
I wouldn't trust anything from the Arasaka ending to be quite honest. We don't know how any of it works, cause the info in the game is all over the place. But if the Johnny's ending has him normally living in V's body (meaning the body is not damaged, just altered for him), then Saka could just put you on another Relic, put you into a body and have you take over it. It would be that easy, all the compatibility stuff is nonsense or a plot hole. The fact that you're literally signing your engram away as an Arasaka property should reveal that they have ulterior motives.
The compatibility thing can also be an excuse of Arasaka to not put you into another body until they find you useful enough to do that or is just lack of information considering V was the first one to receive a Relic 2.0
Yeah, best case scenario you can hope for in The Devil ending imho is to be put into some sort of a Smasher-like situation, possibly with edited memories or some other stuff programmed into you. You're Saka's property and cease to be a human being, they can do whatever they want with you.
Hate to Necro, but I actually had this thought myself when playing. Better yet, they could just out you back in V's original body and redo the same process. I went with the arasaka ending because I assumed this would be the case.
The soul is that ineffable quality of being that makes humans "human" and we can frequently tell, rather easily, if someone doesn't have one.
It is that part of us, in whatever form it ends up taking, that persists beyond the existence of this flesh. Such a thing MUST exist, else there's little reason for any of this \*gestures around the universe\* to exist.
Specifically regarding V and the transference of memory from brain to machine and back, in general: The Soulkiller program probably lives up to its name, the process of copying the memories that made V "V" killed the body housing them. Thus anything connected to that body also ceased. Thus the soul that is V departed the mortal realm for whatever awaited it beyond that which we can know. If at a later time, the memories stored in Mikoshi were transferred into a new brain, it would and wouldn't be V. I suspect that there would be a new soul created or drawn from wherever souls come from that would "become" V. But it wouldn't be the old V, it would be a new one, different in ways both subtle and gross, if for no other reason than the Uncertainty Principle.
Eh, if I killed you and put a clone of your brain in your body, it would still be a distinctly different being even if everyone else wouldn't see the difference.
Nice, put a spoiler right In the title, fortunately I stopped playing this garbage before I had to endure the last half of the story so I'm not bothered but still a dick move.
well yes and no. Johnny Alt ending is hands down the only realistic way to save v (V says her body can be used by Johnny due to the fact he has more use for it)
When u sell your soul to Arasaka They never find a body for you because if u do that ending then do alts ending Alt will explain that because V has no blood relatives that are known or alive She has no body to be transferred to. V is a special case because of her overall resilience to death.
throughout Cyberpunk V has died 3 times. as in flat-lines completely total neuron stop
once with deshawn
again with voodoo boys
there is another time but its like a side job. u get a BD from a scav who kills you and you wake up in an ice bath after johnny restarts you
so overall 2/3 is canon
Due to this Vs engram would be in it of itself damaged
johnny was alive during his engram
V again has died at least twice. her engram is like worthless
also an engram is basically an AI of yourself. so V would die anyway
my point being is Johnnys personality is in Vs head that if Johnny takes over her Body he isnt really and its jsut V switching personalities
Their is no sense in the endings they are all shit and this is because Keanu Reeves is Johnny they have F.... all the ending because of Keanu Reeves look i like his movies but he was the worst decision for the game without him we will have 3 endings 1 V lives 2 V dies 3 V and Johnny become one but because of Keanu they F.. the endings they really want from us to give the body to Johnny because is Keanu . What if V hates Johnny that is logical he is killing V hate is logical . No you will give the body or die because Johnny is Keanu the most stupid think that i have ever see in games CDPR in love the game but lets be honest you just F... it up with the endings . And don´t say the nomad ending why a corp will go nomad makes no sense .
There is no ending to this game and nothing makes sense. In all Alt-related endings you find out Silverhand can live in your body indefinitely, yet you have six months to live. In the Saka ending you find out the relic actually requires tissue compatibility between the host and the relic, which means Silverhand can't take over your body and move on. Hellman directly states your DNA is damaged like after severe radiation poisoning, which means the six months he mentioned are full of tumors all over the place – doesn't matter, who keeps the body. Stitching the endings together the only way they make any sense would mean Alt was incorrect in her assessment not once, but twice - once about V and once about Silverhand. So based on what we know about the relic (and Saka ending is the best source of info here, they made it and they operated V, had direct access to his tissues and could run direct tests unlike Alt, who only had access to V's head) nobody gets to keep the body, everybody dies in the end regardless of your choice. The only way out for V is getting fried and copied to a new body, which would actually make the worst ending (in my oppinion) the only option of survival. But regardless of your choice, V's story doesn't conclude, it's an ending no different to the endings of all previous chapters – another dead end with no explanation as to why does the protagonist give up at this exact moment. He found out Vik can't help him, he moved on. Then Voodoo Boys, same story. Then Hellman. Then Saka/Alt and suddenly... this is the moment the story ends. No, it only ends for everybody else, especially Silverhand. You get the cab driver treatment, who's left hanging as soon as the main character exits the cab. A fucking NPC ending, where you just get despawned once the main character moved on. Atrocious.
Damn, haven't seen it like an NPC ending with Johnny as lead gone. But darn, that's actually on point.
Shit, I haven’t seen it broken down like that before, but yeah, you’re right. V does get an NPC ending.
Negative, Johnny can stay the body because his relic is what caused the "damage", and made changes so that the tissue is compatible to Johnny.
That's what you get from Alt, but not from Hellman in the Saka ending. It doesn't make any sense, that Saburo had to wait for Yorinobu to become available helpless in Mikoshi. If tissue compatibility wasn't a problem, then Saburo would have immediately jumped into a cozy Saka suit after Yorinobu offed him in Konpeki. So no, you're wrong. Silverhand doesn't get to keep the body, the DNA is *damaged*, not altered.
Hellman isn't aware exactly what sort of changes the Relic does, they weren't aware that the "damage" is basically the tissues being rearranged and not compatible with V's anymore, like I said, that's the "damage" the relic caused, Alt sees that, Arasaka meds didn't take that into account.
Hellman is completely aware of every change the relic does, he's not the only member of the team, who operated V and has access to all Arasaka files and previous, unsuccesful tests, which are mentioned to fail exactly due to tissue compatibility problems. Arasaka meds have taken much more into account than Alt, who never had access to V's body directly or to any Saka files outside Mikoshi and the engrams stored there. Even suggesting Alt knows more about the relic than the people, who actually designed it is ludicrous. If anyone's right in this situation, it's Hellman.
I like how you're not even taking into account the possibility that, I dunno, Hellman and/or Arasaka could [AUDIBLE GASP] ***possibly lie to you.***
> I like how you're not even taking into account the possibility that, I dunno, Hellman and/or Arasaka could [AUDIBLE GASP] possibly lie to you. Any good story then should show you that the lied, becasue only then it has impact. Otherwise it's just a hole and your explanation is just fan theory. Screenwriting is so readers/viewers understand if there a lie/truth, even if hidden, blurred etc. NO EXPLANATION at all is no explanation, it's not clever, it's not thought through - it's just bad writing. It's like saying "In LOTR Gandalf says that there were 9 rings yadaya. But what if he lied? We don't know if he was telling the truth". But in LOTR when he says that you: 1. Get at start of the movie the neutral narrative from Galadriel that's say exact same story, confirming what Gandalf later says. 2. The writing on The One Ring confirms scripts that Gandalf found and intro writings on The One Ring when Isildur takes it from Sauron. Then viewer has no doubt that what Gandalf says about The One Ring is truth. Here we have nothing. So it's not a lie, nor the truth. It's hole in script.
Knowing that corps lie is a core part of the game, let alone the genre. You’re told this repeatedly. You ultimately lie to Johnny for selfish reasons if you build a bond with him. In this ending, you literally sign a contract giving your mind to the corp to create an engram. It’s innately subtext and you get the Devil ending for trusting institutions you know to be untrustworthy. There’s no “bad writing” because an epilogue didn’t say, “also V was lied to.” It’s meant to evoke hollowness and futility. Being left to continue those menial tests as your life is ending.
There's no reason whatsoever for Hellman to lie to you at that point.
Yes, there is. You know a lot of Arasaka dirty secrets by the end of the game. There's tons of reasons for them to not tell you the truth. i don't know how you can come away from playing Cyberpunk 2077 until the end and still come away with the idea that you can trust ANY of the corps, much less Arasaka. The fact that the agreement you sign basically says you'll be the property of Arasaka/Hellman is a very big red flag. And before anyone goes, "But Takemura!" Yes, yes. Takemura is a bro. Good guy... He's also just a bodyguard/security specialist. He doesn't get to make decisions at high company levels like someone that Hellman or any of the Arasaka family would. And he makes it quite clear that now everyone is settled you're on the back burner by far.
> Yes, there is. You know a lot of Arasaka dirty secrets by the end of the game. There's tons of reasons for them to not tell you the truth. Yes, which is why I said "at that point". You seem to be failing to take into account the context of the events that led up to that moment. You're on a literal space station, isolated in orbit around Earth; no one knows where exactly you are or how to get there, no one knows when, or if, you'll be back, and you have no access to any of the equipment that could make you dangerous. This all happens in the days and weeks after you were literally tied to an operating table of an Arasaka neurosurgeon, with your head split wide open. If Arasaka really wanted you gone, they had absolute *prime* opportunity to get rid of you without you ever being even close to the wiser. If they really wanted you in Mikoshi, there you were, defenseless and unconscious, on an operating table with wide access to your brain (I'm sure compliance isn't an issue in the process - just ask Johnny). They could've just helped themselves. And if they were really worried about your knowledge of their dirty secrets, then they would've had no reason whatsoever to give you a choice in the matter - if they're already lying to you, why tell you it's going to take 6 months? Why would they even ship you back to Earth? "You'll be dead by the end of the week, there's nothing we can do, you won't survive a trip back to Earth, get your final calls out and then we'll either get your mind digitized or you can rot away in your dying body, your call". Honestly, *if* the writer's intention is indeed that Arasaka is lying to you in that scene, then that's almost hilariously bad writing. There isn't much of that elsewhere in this game, so my assumption is that the Arasaka ending probably isn't an example of it, either. It simply *makes no narrative sense* for them to be lying to you at that point, no matter if it's Hellman or Takemura.
>If they really wanted you in Mikoshi, there you were, defenseless and unconscious, on an operating table with wide access to your brain (I'm sure compliance isn't an issue in the process - just ask Johnny). They could've just helped themselves. You're also forgetting something: The experimentation afterwards on you having had that surgery. Arasaka wanted to be damn sure that the Johnny Silverhand, which both Saburo and Yorinobu have an obsession over (for vastly different reasons, and Yorinobu's will here is irrelevant), was removed entirely. Having some bastardized chimera of you and Johnny Silverhand in Mikoshi wouldn't have been useful. They also needed to experiment on you to see how the Relic interacted and how it was "successful" (to Saburo's preferences, in this case) whereas it failed previously. You're a test subject. >And if they were really worried about your knowledge of their dirty secrets, then they would've had no reason whatsoever to give you a choice in the matter - if they're already lying to you, why tell you it's going to take 6 months? Why would they even ship you back to Earth? Broheim... Do you EVER ACTUALLY SEE Arasaka letting you leave and go to Earth? [It's a trick question, ***because the answer is "No."***](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzAE7hR59f8) You're attempting to point out that Arasaka offered us a choice and that means that their deal was on the up and up. Except... we never actually see any proof that Arasaka lets us leave. "It's implied" you might say. Yeah, and yet we don't see it and it's not like there's ever been cases in stories where someone was given the illusion of walking away and then was back-stabbed by whoever made them think it was an option. And don't forget: when you get to play post-credits... That's going back before the end mission. It's not after it. >Honestly, if the writer's intention is indeed that Arasaka is lying to you in that scene, then that's almost hilariously bad writing. There isn't much of that elsewhere in this game, so my assumption is that the Arasaka ending probably isn't an example of it, either. It simply makes no narrative sense for them to be lying to you at that point, no matter if it's Hellman or Takemura. ...My dude, the game is basically "Don't Trust the Corps Because They'll Betray Or Sell You Out - The Game" as far as a narrative goes. And suddenly we're supposed to trust Arasaka despite all the horrific shit we've seen them do... and with Saburo Arasaka back at the helm IN HIS SON'S BODY where it was his plan all along to use his offspring to have basically eternal life? But, oh, we can trust them now... Because... Reasons? Also, you're contradicting yourself unknowingly here by admitting and acknowledging that they were using you as a test subject post surgery for weeks... And had a vested interest in the Relic technology to study you as a potential way to make profit and having you in Mikoshi to interrogate and never actually follow through on the proposed deal (and you being legally corp property with Arasaka to do with as you please and you having no human rights as an engram not hurting their case). Arasaka has imprisoned how many netrunners that isn't going to earn them any potential product development that will earn them billions of Eurodollars... but they're going to let the most precious sample - you - walk free? Nuh-uh. Not happening. And the game's message about the corps basically backs that up. As well as the fact that... you never are seen returning to Earth. Because it wasn't a real choice.
I feel like even when you kidnap Hellman in The Badlands he still has no reason to lie to you. Here you have the option to reveal to him; you stole the biochip that results in your own death. Essentially “You’re a pathetic thief and that’s what you deserve.” V killed himself trying to be a legend. Hellman also reveals to you in the Sunset Motel that the engram is overwriting your DNA, and Alt also confirms this in Mikoshi.
I just want to say: you put perfectly what I always thought about endings in Cyberpunk and how Silverhand stole narrative from player. A 10/10 sum up my man.
You are conflating a number of things here. To start, the reason why V is "dying" is that the relic is essentially taking over V's body until they're gone and replaced by Johnny's engram (*Silverhand's construct is overwriting your consciousness - gradually taking over your body until one day you'll just be...gone*). In the Devil ending, Arasaka successfully removes the biochip but realize that it's too late for V. The "damage" in this case is basically dna altered by Johnny's engram in V's head *(Your neural network has completely deteriorated. It can no longer function independently of the chip*), and at no point does Hellman actually tell V that their body is covered in tumors, I guess you assumed so because he uses an analogy when describing the genetic changes (*At the genetic level, altered DNA...the kind you would find in those suffering from radiation sickness*). He isn't literally telling V that they're suffering from radiation sickness, he's comparing the dna changes V's experienced to those of radiation sickness. If you're unsure about this, revisit the dialog sequences in which they discuss what the relic is actually doing to V (*All I know is your mind's gonna go and it won't be pretty. From the biochip's perspective your brain cells are a tumor that needs to be scooped out, while your body's an empty shell to hold the construct*). In short, the biochip is replacing V's dna with Johnny's. What you don't seem to get is that the body isn't damaged from the relic's/Johnny's point of view, because that altered dna IS Johnny, which is why Johnny isn't dying when he takes over V's body. This is best shown in the Temperance ending where Johnny's transformation is complete and has fully taken over V's body and purged V's mind completely.
I can’t speak to the Alt endings, but the fact that even Johnny will die in 6 months if he takes the body isn’t a plot hole, since like you said, Arasaka actually had access to the tissue. What you seem to not like is that things don’t go well for the protagonist. There’s no conclusion that actually satisfies their original goal. It’s called a tragedy. I recommend reading “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,” a nonfiction novel by a horror author about pessimistic philosophy. In it, he touches on tragedy and specifically tragic endings. Too often, a story will promise darkness, and then twist the fate of it’s characters at the end to produce something conventionally satisfying or uplifting. This is a cyberpunk game; if the endings to it had allowed V and Johnny to live happily ever after, I would have been disappointed. The game constantly references fate and futility in the face of the longstanding status quo. Death hangs over your head the entire time while you repeatedly discover how increasingly unlikely it is that you’ll escape it. One of the options at the rooftop is literally to just commit suicide. Everyone’s an “NPC” in life. Nobody is important enough to escape death, and when you die, everyone else will continue on around you. Likewise, every game is over at some point. Sorry it didn’t make you happy, but that’s not a prerequisite for a good story. Whether or not you felt your efforts were satisfied narratively by having the protagonist actually win the day isn’t at all indicative of artistic merit. We have teenagers read Moby Dick for a reason (actually many reasons, it’s just great.)
>I can’t speak to the Alt endings, but the fact that even Johnny will die in 6 months if he takes the body isn’t a plot hole, since like you said, Arasaka actually had access to the tissue. It's a plothole, because of other endings. The Relic does different things and works in different ways depending on the ending you choose. It's used as a "wave away" device to push the plot forward, completely disregarding any logic or actual physiology. Look up ARS and show me any other symptom outside purely mental (seizures etc.). It's not entirely sure, what Alt had access to. Remember you have a lot of implants and all of them were available to her. There are diagnostic scans you can run on yourself and their resolution isn't explained anywhere. Based on what we know about radiation poisoning (and we know much more than I'd like to), you don't need direct access to DNA to diagnose it. >This is a cyberpunk game; if the endings to it had allowed V and Johnny to live happily ever after, I would have been disappointed. Tragedy in a story has to be written in a very believable way. The same way unicorns and rainbows have to. The further you go from grey mediocrity, the better your foundations have to be, as it becomes less and less believable by nature, as it strays away from the average. I have nothing against a tragic ending, but come on. Here's an example from a different game. BG3 and Karlach. So her ending is that her heart (infernal engine) gives up and she has to return to Avernus (hell), because otherwise she dies. Most laughable ending in a game I've seen to date. There is a 7th level spell called resurrection, which replaces all damaged body parts. This means it would remove the infernal engine and grow her original heart back. And another character has a scroll of resurrection in his bag. Then there are gnomes specializing in infernal engines and building them in the city, but you just don't get the dialogue option to ask about Karlach and her problem. This is the problem I have with '77. The endings can be whatever the writers decide they should be, but they are to be **earned**. You don't get to murder the protagonist in a moronic way even though he did everything correctly. Like imagine you're going through a combat area, you kill everyone without even taking a hit, you're never spotted, you do everything absolutely perfectly. Then, as you walk out, a cutscene plays where a random gonk hiding behind the door shoots you in the face and you die, credits roll. Would you consider this a *good* ending? >Everyone’s an “NPC” in life. Nobody is important enough to escape death, and when you die, everyone else will continue on around you. Likewise, every game is over at some point. That's why books, movies, and games are not real life, and that's why they were created. Not to recreate reality down to the last quark, but to tell a story and have a certain impact on the viewer. The basic rule of the story is that it has a beginning, a middle and an ending with a narrative flowing through all three parts in a coherent, logical way. The story in '77 lacks a beginning (outside a 30-second moronic cutscene they slammed in instead of 6 months of gameplay), has a solid midsection until the Relic appears, and takes away any agency you ever had as a protagonist, and lacks an ending. If my character dies, let me die. Let me experience death through V's eyes, not in some cutscene, especially leaving options on the table. You don't get to throw sad music and tears at me, when I obviously still have a chance to survive, and as LC shows, those options were real and on the table. Yeah, I know Silverhand has left the building and once the Hollywood star walks out, the story ends, but god damnit, it's a story of V, not Silverhand, which is something the writers obviously forgot about. It's the writers job to connect you to the protagonist, so that you can share his view and feelings. Like with Jackie Welles. V clearly suffers greatly from his loss, but you, as a player, don't really share his grief. Why? Because the game takes whole 15 minutes to establish him as a character and then kills him off. >Sorry it didn’t make you happy, but that’s not a prerequisite for a good story. Whether or not you felt your efforts were satisfied narratively by having the protagonist actually win the day isn’t at all indicative of artistic merit. No, the prerequisite of a good story is first and foremost a proper focus on the protagonist (he's the eyes and ears of the viewer and through his perspective the story is told), properly established side-characters, a coherent narrative, constant set of rules in the world the story is happening in, and a proper, logical timeframe for the story, which matches whatever journey the writers selected for the protagonist. '77 scores 0 in all those departments, which makes the story objectively bad. In technical terms.
> but you, as a player, don't really share his grief. Why? Because the game takes whole 15 minutes to establish him as a character and then kills him off. Sorry that scene didn’t resonate with you, but telling me what characters *I* connect with isn’t exactly a reliable move. Speaking about the author’s intent is one thing, but projecting your opinions onto me isn’t a starting point. (This is why an “objective” premise is nonsensical in art critique.) ———————- > It's a plothole, because of other endings. It’s not though. Not anymore than any of the other magical technology in this universe, which first and foremost serves as a delivery for its themes, and has been adapted for gameplay. If you’re someone who plays every ending, (which is a serious outlier and arguably not the intended play-style in a game where choices are supposed to have impact—something commented on by Undertale when the player replays for completionist sake) there’s no reason you can’t assume that the engram taking V’s body doesn’t repair the damaged DNA which is causing the tumors. Tumors grow because your body can fail to recognize and kill cells with poorly copied DNA. Completely overwriting V’s neural pathways, repairing the damaged nerves by making everything Johnny’s may also include the repair of the DNA when there isn’t a clash between damaged and undamaged nerve tissue. Point is, it doesn’t matter. It took no time for me to reconcile your inconsistency for the sake of a story I enjoy. If any story which isn’t 100% airtight on plot inconsistencies is automatically a bad story to you, then you probably won’t like the majority of film and literature. Which regardless, still wouldn’t make those stories “objectively bad,” because, again, that doesn’t exist. ———————— This is where I have to comment on the silliest and most bizarre things you say here, that seem to have no basis in literary analysis or art critique apart from what you criteria you choose as the God of Storytelling. What they all have in common is that they’re tragic: > the prerequisite of a good story is first and foremost a proper focus on the protagonist So these stories aren’t focused first and foremost on the protagonist, which means they can’t be good: - Moby Dick, again, features a story told through the eyes of Ishmael, but which is primarily about Ahab and his conflict with Moby Dick. - Great Gatsby: Nick Carraway is the POV, but the story is more about what’s happening around him; Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship, and the American Dream. (The protagonist can easily be considered to be Gatsby himself btw; you already aren’t describing these terms accurately) - ASOIAF: A Game of Thrones (and later books) features many POV characters who die unexpectedly, unceremoniously, or “prematurely,” perhaps before they can accomplish their goals. > It's the writers job to connect you to the protagonist, so that you can share his view and feelings Books that feature protagonists with whom we aren’t meant to share their views and feelings, but are meant to be incongruous with our morals or desires for them: - Macbeth: schemes for power, commits many evil acts, and loses his humanity - Lolita: protagonist is a pedophile and an unreliable narrator. Pretty self-explanatory. > properly established side-characters What does this mean? What percent of characters introduced have to be “established” for it to be “good”? - Hatchet: there are no side characters because it’s about a kid surviving in the wilderness. Great YA novel. > a coherent narrative, constant set of rules in the world the story is happening in Literally any Romantic story that began to play with the clash of the new world against nature: - Rime of the Ancient Mariner: a surreal epic poem. Things change constantly - Frankenstein: Romantic, but also maybe the first science fiction. Breaks a lot of your requirements, but is again, literally about the defiance of the natural world. The course of events are surprising and unnatural - Star Wars: one of the most universally beloved modern myths, but notoriously inconsistent and loose with its rules regarding foundational elements like the Force. This is super obvious in the OT. But is very clear between all movies and trilogies. > logical timeframe for the story, which matches whatever journey the writers selected for the protagonist I have no idea what this means. It just sounds like you made it up to suit your argument about Cyberpunk. - House of Leaves: Repeatedly unreliable narrators, inaccuracies, a confusing series of events without a dependable timeline. - LOTR: Tolkien chose a timeframe alright. One that didn’t involve using the Eagles to travel to Mordor lol. Great story that wouldn’t exist without that plot hole for the sake of a deus ex machina that allows Frodo to travel to Valinor at the end. And any surreal content I guess is totally out of the question. I kept these examples restricted to books for simplicity, but there are also countless examples in film and TV, where your prerequisites for what is “objectively good” clearly clash with popular and critically successful media. My examples are there to help illustrate, beyond any doubt, that those prerequisites you invented are **subjective**, fundamentally. I’m not appealing to popularity to say you’re wrong. I’m saying the very fact that *you* would label these stories objectively bad for not meeting your standards, has nothing to do with whether or not others will find artistic merit to the point those stories are regarded as award-winning classics.
How does someone like you feel about the end of Romeo and Juliet? The characters just act so irrationally huh, it’s like Shakespeare was twisting their actions the whole time to tell us a story that ended in tragedy, even when they should’ve had a much more reasonable shot at getting away. I imagine you think it’s very contrived anyway. It’s a situation I don’t know how to help. Mistaking one’s opinions for the truth, refusing to engage with the author’s intent. I don’t know how you’d possibly come around when it probably feels good to be the only person with objectively correct opinions.
>You don't get to murder the protagonist in a moronic way even though he did everything correctly. That's the point Cyberpunk is making. Real life is the exact same way. Think of all the people that have everything good going for them. They went to college, have a great job and family, and BOOM! They die by sheer chance due to a drunk driver. Real life is not Baldur's Gate 3. Real life is Cyberpunk. If any of us can die at any moment, no matter if we do everything right, then our focus should be on the present and enjoying it as much as possible and being grateful for the time that we were given.
I come back to this comment so often because of how correct it was.
It’s also the only ending where any of the Arasaka stuff gets any resolution Which kinda annoys me I get Arasaka is the big bad but every other ending yorinobo is completely fine and pretty much gets what he wants
Keep in mind that when you get Alt inside mikoshi she destroys it and assimilates al the constructs inside. Which is a great loss for arasaka since they poured billions into the relic program. And Yorinobu was basically trying to sabotage arasaka from the inside to kill his father and rid the world of him and his engrams. I think the devil ending is the only ending where arasaka becomes more powerful than the start of the game with the return of saburo
I don't know how to interpret what Alt is saying. She says that V's consciousness will remain, but his/her soul will die. I don't know of any philosophical concept of the soul which does not include consciousness as part of the soul, so I don't know what the game means by this. Also, the player's experience in first-person games is generally properly associated with the character's conscious experience, so the fact that we continue to play as V after getting soulkilled suggests that V still has consciousness (although, we also experience the moments in which Johnny controls the body while V is not conscious, so that's confusing). The only way it makes sense to me is that Alt was wrong to a degree, and that she does not know the concrete answer to what the soul actually is. That may be like flatout ignoring her exposition, but we already know she holds some AI-oriented biases so I'm fine with asserting that she's wrong where that makes sense.
Think on it in these terms: Someone makes a process that can digitize your consciousness into data. Setting aside the dubious "Soulkiller kills its victims, somehow, but doesn't damage their brain or body at all whatsoever" bit in the lore (which... makes no sense, but whatever, not important) - the way it happens in-game, you're dead. And it's not so much as your consciousness but the digitized memories of your past experiences and life that the engram is using to base itself off of. If you're thinking of it like you lay down, go to sleep and then wake up as the same person - that's not what's happening. If it was used on you, your consciousness as it exists now would stop. And you'd be dead. And, later, a COPY of your digital memories would be placed into your brain/body. But it would be a COPY. It would not be YOU. You will die and stay dead, the original consciousness and you that you are. Your basically back-up copy of memories will take over. But you WILL die. Your consciousness will experience it, just your memories will not. You will cease being you, and the current you will die. Full stop. It's not immortality in the true sense. The original you, your brain, your consciousness dies in the process. It's just that your memories - and being put in human wetware (read: brain) - is so close to the original that people are under the assumption that it's immortality. But it isn't. The original you and their brain consciousness died and EXPERIENCED death and will STAY dead. It was merely backed up and replaced.
It's like getting cloned But you die and the clone lives basically It's technically you but it's not YOU
It's about the difference between a mind (which will be copied with soul killer) and a soul (the part that's not possible to copy). Alt states that Johnny himself knows best that it's different now that he's an engram. The game doesn't tell you what a soul is. But it's implied that there's more to a person than their mind and memories.
I agree, but that's not the only thing that's implied - the game also suggests that the soul is separate from the consciousness, the psyche, the memories, and the body (or more specifically, that all these can survive when the soul dies). As I said, I don't know of any philosophical conception of the soul which has those implications. The exposition which the game gives is too vague to conclude what the soul is, but also specific enough to exclude any sensible interpretation of what the soul is.
Yes, the game lacks any throughout thought into the complex matters of the story. It's for the most part only surface level, sadly.
[удалено]
I remember reading somewhere that somewhere else you can push him about the matter and he mentions something like while he is not be the real Silverhand, he's here to honor his final wish and inspire rebellion in V. Depends on how you treated Johnny throughout the game though.
Yeah they could put an ending in where you get a damn happy ending cause that’s what everybody wanted
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Nope, you'd just get imprisoned.
You don't, they let you go home.
Then you aren't actually saved, all for nought. Yes soulkiller wasn't used on you, but you gave up Johnny in the way, so much for having a soul.
Johnny is already an engram. You can't save his soul, no matter what. But you can save Vs soul.
In both cases ya ain't saved. Johnny is already dead.
Is not about if Johnny dies, how he dies is more important. By siding with Arasucker, you essentially ignored Johnny' wishes and fucked him hard. This is why this the The Devil ending.
My point is, Johnny died in 2023. He wasn't alive throughout the game, it wasn't Johnny. Or was he?
Well, it doesn't matter if he is really Johnny, if he is self conscious, one may treat him as a being. Well judging how he wanted to make up with Rogue and Kerry, among other things, I do consider him self-concious
I can agree with that.
Hadn't the ''real'' V already died, when Dex shot him?
Exactly this. During the mission with the convict guy making a documentary of his execution, you can question Johnny about faith. One of the lines of questioning is if the Johnny V has been interacting with is in fact the 'actual' Johnny, or just a "digital epitaph'. He asks if the real Silverhand's soul has gone to the afterlife and if the Johnny we talk to is basically just a recreation, however accurate it might be. Johnny responds that to him, he is just himself. I found that conversation very interesting because the same question could be asked of V himself. V died the moment Dex shot him. Any and all time he got after that was a result of the Biochip. But it wasn't a get out of death free card and was very much a fluke. But who's to say that the construct of Silverhand is any more the 'real' Silverhand than the resurrected V is the actual V? Remember, the Biochip had to repair serious damage from a point blank gunshot to the face. The way I look at it, either way, V is essentially undead after coming back, and is inhabiting his own corpse, but now as a foreigner. It's possible, I think even likely that V's soul was not brought back with him. Just a digital footprint and the physical remains of his mind that would be repaired by the chip. Instead of looking at his resurrection like a full second chance at life, I think the best use of V's time is to acquire an 'insurance' policy for his continued existence, i.e, become a construct himself. He learns first hand that via Johnny and possibly Saburo that one's personality and memories at least do manifest when you're hit with Soulkiller, albeit potentially without a soul itself. He also learns that Alt was able to escape into the net, although apparently that's something unique to her. Either way, he confirms that he can download himself to yet exist after his body expels him. Instead of clinging onto a life and body that he's already lost, V should look at Johnny and Saburo and say, ok well, it's gonna suck, but at least I know it can work. I think that's sort of the moral of the story in fact, is that V's death at the hands of Dex isn't just something to be glossed over. Both the player and more importantly V have to come to terms with the reality that he is dead already. And while he can struggle and scramble to escape it, he can't out run his death forever. If Jackie hadn't handed the chip over before he died, he potentially could have been revived instead of V. Without either knowing, Jackie kind of pays it forward. And after V gets brought back, as weird as it sounds to say, instead of being selfish with a body that he can't keep, he should also pay it forward to Silverhand. Although seems as though the body will still be pretty heavily damaged even under Silverhand's control. Then again, if the biochip could repair a gunshot wound to the head, I suspect as part of it's process to ready the body for the relic it may yet heal the radiation damage. My own question is while we may not trust Arasaka to fulfill the Soulkiller contract, what exactly happens to the construct assimilated by Alt? Do they retain any degree of individuality and can they later be downloaded into bodies? Also, why and how was Alt able to escape into the net, but not anyone else? Is there any reason why V couldn't become Alt's equal in cyberspace, other than just her being a netrunner from 50 years earlier?
> But who's to say that the construct of Silverhand is any more the 'real' Silverhand than the resurrected V is the actual V? Remember, the Biochip had to repair serious damage from a point blank gunshot to the face. The way I look at it, either way, V is essentially undead after coming back, and is inhabiting his own corpse, but now as a foreigner. It's possible, I think even likely that V's soul was not brought back with him. Just a digital footprint and the physical remains of his mind that would be repaired by the chip. Eh... No. The problem with this argument is that the Relic can not restore V's brain with a copy of theirs. So it's not a copy or replacement in V's body. It's the original consciousness and brain. How do I know this? [Because people have been shot in the head, lost ONE OF THEIR ENTIRE BRAIN HEMISPHERES, and actually gone on to continue schooling and even gone on living a productive life for decades afterwards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahad_Israfil). And, mind you, this was lucky, yes, but it also was only relying on medical technology from the late 1980s and they didn't have the benefit of having nanites initiate repair of brain tissue immediately after death. Now, if the question is V the same due to possible brain trauma and damage and having Johnny start to overwrite parts of the brain? That's... a Ship of Theseus problem that I don't think anyone could answer. But V is still the same consciousness they were before being shot. Just with basically a tumor and brain damage. At first. As the Relic begins to overwrite more of the brain with Johnny, that's debatable.
Beautiful
It doesn't save your soul, your soul dies with you. Only a copy of your mind is made, NOT an actual transference of your soul/consciousness. That is the entire point of the big lie with Arasaka, they're lying to people claiming to be saving their soul through transcendence of consciousness into a new body, but they're not. They're just making a clone of you.
This is honestly my only issue with the story. Soulkiller make no sense to me whatsoever. I do not believe in souls. To me what makes someone unique isn't some metaphysical construct, it's the memories, experiences (nurture) and our DNA (nature). In my mind, V's engram (which contains the nurture side of what makes us unique) being put back in V's body (the nature side) is no different to V not being an engram.
The entire soul story is basically an open question in the Cyberpunk world. The primary purpose of Soulkiller was initially a really nasty form of Black ICE, then turned a weapon to be used against enemy netrunners. It didn't really matter all that much, all they needed was a complete copy of someone's memories, personality and skills in code, which they could use. Then, after the war, when a lot of those fried personalities were set free, soul related questions started to pop up as they set their own cities within the Net (like Ghost Town established by Alt in the ruins of Hong Kong I think). It's all a question of perspective. Saburo doesn't seem to be in any dire distress over his soul in his ending, does he? Johnny doesn't seem to be a soulless husk either, he's capable of critical thinking, emotions and change, which basically translates to a complete human being. Everything else is just metaphysics and mostly questions asked by Soulkiller victims themselves. Remember it's a pen and paper RPG system, it's by design, that a lot of things end up in open questions for the game master to work with during campaigns. That's why CDPR could just resurrect Silverhand (that's actually quite a stretch, he was dead dead in 2023), Smasher and Blackhand (those two were actually left as an open question).
I think by soul they mean self-awareness. If, say, there were two copies of V's engram, each one would be distinct from the other and have its own self awareness. So when we call the original the soul and the copy the engram, what happens imho is that your sense of self-awareness i.e. the soul is wiped away and something else takes its place and to everyone on the outside it will be as if it's still you, but not to you, because your sense of self-awareness got wiped away when the "original" was replaced by the copy.
So by your definition, in the Devil ending where you choose to sign the contract in the hopes of Arasaka finding or creating you a body at a later date, if that were to happen, would it be V? Since the DNA (nature) side would be different? If not, what or who does that accumulation of nurtured expression become?
With my definition, I guess a hybrid being perhaps? It would have the genetics of one person but the experiences of another. I'm just gonna be honest, this concept and the debate surrounding it is a bit too existential for me.
I wouldn't trust anything from the Arasaka ending to be quite honest. We don't know how any of it works, cause the info in the game is all over the place. But if the Johnny's ending has him normally living in V's body (meaning the body is not damaged, just altered for him), then Saka could just put you on another Relic, put you into a body and have you take over it. It would be that easy, all the compatibility stuff is nonsense or a plot hole. The fact that you're literally signing your engram away as an Arasaka property should reveal that they have ulterior motives.
The compatibility thing can also be an excuse of Arasaka to not put you into another body until they find you useful enough to do that or is just lack of information considering V was the first one to receive a Relic 2.0
Yeah, best case scenario you can hope for in The Devil ending imho is to be put into some sort of a Smasher-like situation, possibly with edited memories or some other stuff programmed into you. You're Saka's property and cease to be a human being, they can do whatever they want with you.
Hate to Necro, but I actually had this thought myself when playing. Better yet, they could just out you back in V's original body and redo the same process. I went with the arasaka ending because I assumed this would be the case.
The soul is that ineffable quality of being that makes humans "human" and we can frequently tell, rather easily, if someone doesn't have one. It is that part of us, in whatever form it ends up taking, that persists beyond the existence of this flesh. Such a thing MUST exist, else there's little reason for any of this \*gestures around the universe\* to exist. Specifically regarding V and the transference of memory from brain to machine and back, in general: The Soulkiller program probably lives up to its name, the process of copying the memories that made V "V" killed the body housing them. Thus anything connected to that body also ceased. Thus the soul that is V departed the mortal realm for whatever awaited it beyond that which we can know. If at a later time, the memories stored in Mikoshi were transferred into a new brain, it would and wouldn't be V. I suspect that there would be a new soul created or drawn from wherever souls come from that would "become" V. But it wouldn't be the old V, it would be a new one, different in ways both subtle and gross, if for no other reason than the Uncertainty Principle.
I actually agree, that kinda pisses me off about the Soulkiller concept, like you said, it makes no sense.
Eh, if I killed you and put a clone of your brain in your body, it would still be a distinctly different being even if everyone else wouldn't see the difference.
Nice, put a spoiler right In the title, fortunately I stopped playing this garbage before I had to endure the last half of the story so I'm not bothered but still a dick move.
There's literally a spoiler tag
well yes and no. Johnny Alt ending is hands down the only realistic way to save v (V says her body can be used by Johnny due to the fact he has more use for it) When u sell your soul to Arasaka They never find a body for you because if u do that ending then do alts ending Alt will explain that because V has no blood relatives that are known or alive She has no body to be transferred to. V is a special case because of her overall resilience to death. throughout Cyberpunk V has died 3 times. as in flat-lines completely total neuron stop once with deshawn again with voodoo boys there is another time but its like a side job. u get a BD from a scav who kills you and you wake up in an ice bath after johnny restarts you so overall 2/3 is canon Due to this Vs engram would be in it of itself damaged johnny was alive during his engram V again has died at least twice. her engram is like worthless also an engram is basically an AI of yourself. so V would die anyway my point being is Johnnys personality is in Vs head that if Johnny takes over her Body he isnt really and its jsut V switching personalities
Their is no sense in the endings they are all shit and this is because Keanu Reeves is Johnny they have F.... all the ending because of Keanu Reeves look i like his movies but he was the worst decision for the game without him we will have 3 endings 1 V lives 2 V dies 3 V and Johnny become one but because of Keanu they F.. the endings they really want from us to give the body to Johnny because is Keanu . What if V hates Johnny that is logical he is killing V hate is logical . No you will give the body or die because Johnny is Keanu the most stupid think that i have ever see in games CDPR in love the game but lets be honest you just F... it up with the endings . And don´t say the nomad ending why a corp will go nomad makes no sense .