Cyberpunk 2077 Grieving Thread

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"Mr. V, a pleasure. Mind if I ask you something right off the bangle?

Would you rather live in peace as Mr. Nobody, die ripe, old and smelling slightly of urine, or go down for all times in a blaze of glory, smelling near like posies, without seeing your thirtieth?"


That's the first question you get asked on your first big job, and it's a question that gets repeated a lot throughout the entire game. Is it better to live like a normal person without anyone knowing your name or die in a blaze of glory?

Johnny Silverhand died in a blaze of glory and his name is probably going to be remembered forever, but ultimately he was a fuckup that ruined the lives of the people he cared about and everything he thought he was fighting for turned to shit and meant nothing. Alt's still gone, Johnny's still dead and Arasaka just built another tower.

Jackie died on the op that led to the death of the Emperor of Japan, he'll probably be remembered forever too. But what's that worth to V? Or his family? Or Misty?

The moral of the story;
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Chasing glory in a place like California Night City just leads to broken dreams and dead friends and maybe a really famous death if you're lucky.

Being a nobody ain't so bad. Everyone else seems to live with it just fine.
This is a really good analysis actually. When you really look into it, people like Johnny and V (depending on your choices) are really just products of a culture that worships violence and crime fuelled by sensationalised media which lauds them as gods. Now, it never actually ends well for any of the "major" league players, or all those around them, but they still feed into the cycle of crime to inspire the next generation of short lived players. Like, neither V/johnny made NC a better place, Arasaka is still there, and the NUSA is still fucked, but hey, maybe their legend will live on for a few more years, before the next guy takes its place.
 
Finally managed to finish the damn thing after multiple crashes. Really hate how it's all random. At first, I was going to do The Sun ending, but it crashed the moment I was descending the well, so when I reloaded I went through the Temperance ending instead. That final goodbye to Johnny in the cyberspace where he couldn't let go of V, the moment he put his pendant in the niche... Absolutely not a happy ending, but in a way it's the most fitting the story. The fate that was sealed the moment that bullet hit V's skull, and any attempt at turning fate around would result in him eventually dying or becoming a complete nobody.

"Haven't forgotten a thing, never will."
 
Finally managed to finish the damn thing after multiple crashes. Really hate how it's all random. At first, I was going to do The Sun ending, but it crashed the moment I was descending the well, so when I reloaded I went through the Temperance ending instead. That final goodbye to Johnny in the cyberspace where he couldn't let go of V, the moment he put his pendant in the niche... Absolutely not a happy ending, but in a way it's the most fitting the story. The fate that was sealed the moment that bullet hit V's skull, and any attempt at turning fate around would result in him eventually dying or becoming a complete nobody.

"Haven't forgotten a thing, never will."
I mean I am willing to bet a pretty penny that is what the devs consider to be the "cannon" ending and how they will manage to get silverhand in the next game.
 
I mean I am willing to bet a pretty penny that is what the devs consider to be the "cannon" ending and how they will manage to get silverhand in the next game.
realistically theyre going to ask the player which choices they made and the ending they picked and then have the game adjust for said factors affecting it. either way, aside form the suicide ending which already isnt considered a real ending anyway, somehow silverhand returned
 
I mean I am willing to bet a pretty penny that is what the devs consider to be the "cannon" ending and how they will manage to get silverhand in the next game.
Honestly in any ending you can bring back Johnny, Including the suicide.
To be fair, Johnny's engram still definitely exists within Mikoshi, since no one said that it cannot be copied. Thing is that it's gonna be hard to have Reeves play Silverhand again and make it make sense. When Johnny's engram takes over V's body, he still has V's voice. And bringing back his engram? Really hard to tie it back with the rest of the story, unless we assume that the canon ending was the one where Johnny went beyond the Blackwall and we somehow encounter him in Cyberspace again. or, again, we could have a prequel or a prequel sequence that would show us what was actually going on when the Night City Holocaust happened.

The point is that Keanu wants to play the role again, mocap and everything, because he enjoyed it. Actor things, sometimes it really clicks for them. The real challenge will be writing in a sequence where he can play Silverhand in full.
realistically theyre going to ask the player which choices they made and the ending they picked and then have the game adjust for said factors affecting it
Realistically they'll just look into your save folder to pull that data from your 2077 playthrough. This was common practice in the PS2 era, for example getting a cash bonus in Most Wanted when an Underground 2 save was detected so you could start off with a Golf. On Windows it's just a matter of looking into the usual data paths to see if anything's there.

As for the whole "V and Jackie are idiots" discussion, in all fairness, the entire heist plan was basically flawless from start to finish, but no one could've accounted for the fact that on this exact day, in this exact moment, not only did Saburo fucking Arasaka decide to pay Yorinobu a visit, but Yorinobu offed the old cunt as well. That event alone was what resulted in everything going tits up. If not for that, V and Jackie would get out scot free, sell the Relic to Evelyn, Evelyn would then get sold off to the Scavs anyways, Voodoo Boys would likely get fried by Alt anyways if they managed to fuck with Johnny's engram to get to her, then V and Jackie would go on as somewhat known mercs. Not big league legends, but they'd do alright. Obviously, not only would it neuter the entire storyline, it would neuter the entirety of PL as well since So Mi likely wouldn't crash Space Force One if V wasn't there to help her in her plan, nor would he be in Pacifica for that to happen.

Speaking of, only today when I eyeballed all the crap in a tech store I realized the meaning of the DLC's title when I looked at the adverts for the Switch 2 version. In Polish it's "Widmo Wolności", which translates more as "Phantom of Freedom". When I rephrased it like that it clicked. Reed, Alex and Song all sought freedom from the FIA. Song also sought freedom from the Blackwall. And V sought freedom from the Relic. But in the end, this freedom was illusionary, as the grasp of FIA on Reed, Alex and Song was inescapable, as was the grasp of the Blackwall on Song and the grasps of the Relic on V.

Anyways, think I'm gonna sperg about the cars in the game at some point later on.
 
To be fair, Johnny's engram still definitely exists within Mikoshi, since no one said that it cannot be copied. Thing is that it's gonna be hard to have Reeves play Silverhand again and make it make sense. When Johnny's engram takes over V's body, he still has V's voice. And bringing back his engram? Really hard to tie it back with the rest of the story, unless we assume that the canon ending was the one where Johnny went beyond the Blackwall and we somehow encounter him in Cyberspace again. or, again, we could have a prequel or a prequel sequence that would show us what was actually going on when the Night City Holocaust happened.

The point is that Keanu wants to play the role again, mocap and everything, because he enjoyed it. Actor things, sometimes it really clicks for them. The real challenge will be writing in a sequence where he can play Silverhand in full.
In Cyberpunk Red, Johnny’s body is in New Mexico on the black dog storyline, and it’s heavily implied that Johnny’s consciousness was copied over multiple times. In Cyberpunk, conscious or the “soul” is like a computer file. You can copy it again and again and theoretically have many Johnny Silverhands. The same thing happened with Alt Cunningham. The Alt we meet in 2077 is a fragmented piece of the original Alt. But in 2045, during Cyberpunk RED (the tabletop prequel to 2077), Alt copied her consciousness to a new female clone body named Angel, who takes possession of Johnny’s corpse and gear in New Mexico, heavily implying that a clone Alt/clone Johnny Silverhand exists out there.

Remember this is cyberpunk we’re talking about. Nobody truly dies. Saburo didn’t truly die and neither did Johnny. The only people that die in Cyberpunk are the poor and helpless but legends and the elite do not. Legends because of their skill set and the elite because they have a bottomless pit of eddies to spend on life extension technologies/clone bodies.

Pondsmith said in the recent interview with CDPR that he “has ways to make it work with Keanu”. I think he was implying the whole cloning bit. The same can be said for Morgan Blackhand.
 
Pondsmith said in the recent interview with CDPR that he “has ways to make it work with Keanu”. I think he was implying the whole cloning bit. The same can be said for Morgan Blackhand.

Was it ever really disputed that that specific engram being wiped at the end of the game was the final end of Johnny? Like you and others said, it's just a computer file that can be copied infinitely, and having only one copy on a fragile piece of hardware when Arasaka has a data fortress in space is kinda silly.

And isn't Blackhand not dead? I thought CDPR was doing their usual telegraphing of what the sequel will be like with that convo with the tranny in Afterlife.
 
And isn't Blackhand not dead? I thought CDPR was doing their usual telegraphing of what the sequel will be like with that convo with the tranny in Afterlife.
There's also a tidbit of lore on the Net suggesting that Blackhand is alive and well, so the general idea is that everyone just doesn't know if he's dead or not, but he is alive and living off the grid doing Blackhand stuff.
 
Was it ever really disputed that that specific engram being wiped at the end of the game was the final end of Johnny? Like you and others said, it's just a computer file that can be copied infinitely, and having only one copy on a fragile piece of hardware when Arasaka has a data fortress in space is kinda silly.

And isn't Blackhand not dead? I thought CDPR was doing their usual telegraphing of what the sequel will be like with that convo with the tranny in Afterlife.
Adam Smasher is alive in his original body, though he dies at the hands of V in most endings besides the Devil & Tower endings. Blackhand is definitely alive though I have a theory that Smasher may also be revived somehow, given his deep connections to Arasaka. It’s also implied that Blackhand is a Militech/NUSA asset, so naturally he either has life extension technology or a new body altogether.

Cyberpunk 2 is 100% going to be about a fifth corporate war and then the AI invasion into meatspace. Theres a whole hidden plot line within 2077 that hints at this from side missions to shards. Not to mention NUSA/Voodoo Boys piercing beyond the blackwall or the whole Delamain arc. And if Blackhand comes, chances are he’ll serve as a major character within Cyberpunk 2, probably akin to Johnny except instead of being an engram he’ll likely be some spook who’ll play a major role in battling Arasaka or rogue AIs.

Given Phantom Liberty’s dabbling into Cyberpunk’s relatively interesting geopolitical lore, I think Cyberpunk 2 can definitely expand on that aspect even more. Maybe we can see what other activities the FIA are doing or what Blackhand’s role is in all of this.
 
Recently I've been seeing alot of comments supporting Arasaka and the devil ending, claiming they did nothing wrong. Is that a genuine sentiment among the fan base, reddit contrarianism, or do people actually side with the soul stealing corporate cult that loves fucking with the digital gates of hell?
 
To be fair, Johnny's engram still definitely exists within Mikoshi, since no one said that it cannot be copied.

Seeing as Saburo personally visited his son just to retrieve Silverhand's engram, I doubt it's within Mikoshi and doesn't seem that Arasaka can copy his engram. Why? My best theory is that he was an old and experimental engram or an engram Cunningham only thoroughly knows, so the existence of a copy is entirely on her netrunning wizardry hands.
 
Seeing as Saburo personally visited his son just to retrieve Silverhand's engram, I doubt it's within Mikoshi and doesn't seem that Arasaka can copy his engram. Why? My best theory is that he was an old and experimental engram or an engram Cunningham only thoroughly knows, so the existence of a copy is entirely on her netrunning wizardry hands.
Saburo couldn't give two shits about the engram, that was just the data that was on the chip. The chip itself is what he wanted to recovered. Yorinobu klepped the prototype Relic that doesn't just project the engram, but instead overwrites the host body with it. Johnny's engram being on that prototype was more or less a coincidence, and the entire project was something Saburo has ordered as he wanted to maintain the control over the corporation forever and ever even if his 158 year old ass croaked, which is what he accomplished in one of the endings where his engram overwrites Yorinobu's body. Of course, the Voodoo Boys didn't care as they only wanted Johnny's engram to contact Alt, when the heist went tits up neither Jackie nor V activated it's function by just slotting it in since they were alive, and only after Dex packed a bullet in V's forehead did it started to do it's magic and rewriting V's body to accommodate for Johnny's engram, which kickstarted the entire storyline of V trying to save himself even though his options were either a) give his body to the new host or b) eventually get rejected by the body that's not his and die in half a year.
 
Saburo couldn't give two shits about the engram, that was just the data that was on the chip. The chip itself is what he wanted to recovered. Yorinobu klepped the prototype Relic that doesn't just project the engram, but instead overwrites the host body with it. Johnny's engram being on that prototype was more or less a coincidence, and the entire project was something Saburo has ordered as he wanted to maintain the control over the corporation forever and ever even if his 158 year old ass croaked, which is what he accomplished in one of the endings where his engram overwrites Yorinobu's body. Of course, the Voodoo Boys didn't care as they only wanted Johnny's engram to contact Alt, when the heist went tits up neither Jackie nor V activated it's function by just slotting it in since they were alive, and only after Dex packed a bullet in V's forehead did it started to do it's magic and rewriting V's body to accommodate for Johnny's engram, which kickstarted the entire storyline of V trying to save himself even though his options were either a) give his body to the new host or b) eventually get rejected by the body that's not his and die in half a year.
I am mostly basing it off of the corpo politics and Silverhand's place in it.
The only reason why people care for Silverhand's engram is to contact or bait AI Cunningham, particularly Netwatch, Why does Arasaka still keep him? probably to use as leverage for something.
And we know Silverhand being in the engram is more than a coincidence, because we know Yorinobu and Evelyn made a deal with Netwatch and they specifically want Silverhand.
 
Its all but openly stated. In the actual tabletop he and Smasher were philosophical rivals on the topic of skills versus ware and he did a ton of work for Militech/USA during the Fourth Corporate War.
Which is why I predict Cyberpunk 2 will have the NUSA be featured more prominently. Given Arasaka’s defeat in Night City at the hands of V and or Militech, it naturally makes sense that they would be featured much more in depth regarding the further expansion of the timeline. More Myers, Blackhand being a rival of Smasher/Arasaka, and more. Not to mention V being a potential asset for the NUSA. Phantom Liberty sort of sets up the themes that are going to be present in Cyberpunk 2. More politico games fused with corpo intrigue. Itll be fascinating.
 
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