The human body is a complex system and reacts to external stimulants in various ways. For example, the brain and the guts are connected, causing them to violently react depending on the intensity of specific emotions such as satisfaction, joy, happiness, fear, anger, sadness. And how art resonates within a person, how it is perceived, admired and even felt... is different from person to person.
Why am I saying all this?
Because Cyberpunk's beautifully captivating story which I love so much and its overwhelmingly emotional endings which I fear so much, deeply immersed me, captivated me and then painfully brutalized me to the point it feels as if each ending kept executing its own Soulkiller program upon me, each one ripping out a piece of my soul and leaving open wounds in their wake.
So I am here, to share and leave whichever part of my soul remains in this digital vast cyberspace. Both as a love letter and as a monument to a beloved game, story and most of all its beloved characters.
It might be an interesting read to those interested, while for me it will be a process of healing.
I personally played countless of games from all sorts of genres and I've been deeply immersed and emotionally impacted by many... but when I started Cyberpunk, I was not expecting nor was I ready for what was to come. I was not expecting my one and only playthrough to take over 530 hours. I never expected this richly immersive and beautifully emotional lifelike piece of art to so deeply resonate within me that I would feel genuine affection, joy, fear, anxiety and even tremendous physical pain caused by sadness the closer I got to endgame, especially going through it and accepting the ending afterwards.
The wonderful thing about Cyberpunk is it never was about reaching the finish line, it never was about "beating the game"... It was about the journey. It was about living it and surrendering to it. To Valerie and the streets and the life in Night City. Living this wonderful journey together through her and in a way she through me.
From the moment I started as Nomad Valerie, we became one together. Cherami Leigh's beautifully unique and captivating emotional performance as V captured my soul immediately to such extent that it felt like two minds merged into a singular being. It stopped being a question of what I would do or what she would do, and instead a question of what WE would do. With Johnny Silverhand as a companion, who grew to be someone tremendously respected and admired for his integrity and code.
We spent over 530 hours living in Night City in the most immersive way imaginable. Aimlessly wondering through its streets and deserts with the intent to discover all of its beauty and horror and deceased persons of interest, having our ears perk up at every single line of lore and dialogue imaginable, feeling deeply connected to all of the relationships made within Night City, trying to achieve the best outcomes with the cards being dealt at every given moment.
We drove everywhere, walked everywhere, never used the map or fast-travel. Stopped to admire the view all the time. We'd go home at certain times of the day, take a shower, sit down, listen to the city, sleep, eat, drink, pet Nibbles, check on all acquaintances made. We belonged to the world... a world I enjoyed living in. A world where I actively avoided the main missions with passion and focused exclusively on everything else. It was glorious and wondrous.
But... eventually after 530 hours I exhausted every piece of content imaginable and reached the point of no return, the one moment I never wanted to reach, the one I feared the most. And realizing that the only thing left undone is this one final dance in the moonlight with Johnny, who became a really caring friend that we would both take a bullet for eachother... is when the heart started slowly bleeding.
My daily playtime which used to be dozen of hours each day for months, plummeted drastically to barely a few minutes each day upon reaching it. Just thinking about it would cause my body's temperature to spike up and force me to step away.... because I wasn't ready to let go of neither Valerie nor Johnny, despite knowing everything I accomplished in 530 hours of our life in Night City is leading up for the best outcome for everyone; a happy, positive and hopeful ending. She deserves a happy ending and a chance at life after all we went through together.
I've been playing since September 2022 up until now. And it took me three weeks since I reached this point to muster enough courage just to enter the final mission in the story, but it was not enough and I was still not ready for the emotional punches it was about to deliver. The overwhelming emotional weight was so massive that it took me 5 days painfully dragging myself step by step through the best ending, because I couldn't go through it in one go.
Every step closer and closer to the end kept making me physically sick, weak and terribly twisting my guts harder and tighter. Every struggling step she took felt equally as painful for me as well. I guess after 530 hours I was more attached and connected to V than I realized in these final moments. Goes to show just how much immersed I was and how much I cared about ensuring her survival and how much I love the game, the story and most of all its characters and how personal the journey felt because of it.
And despite how happy and hopeful and absolutely beautiful it was to witness Valerie finally get away from all the crap she went through in Night City, it completely tore my soul apart as well.
Because The Guy Who Saved My Life who was ready to bash my brains at the start of the game and bickered with me at every step of the way, ended up fighting for me so I don't end up like him. Urging me to listen to him for once, to not give up, to take control of my life and keep fighting as I always have when the final moment came into play... His unwavering rebel attitude and loyalty, but most of all his integrity and sheer effing will to do right by his only remaining friend in a lifetime of mistakes... broke me into tears...
"Never stop fighting", his final words to me were. And so he sent me back to life as he promised he would... and I just died inside as he slowly faded away... a part of my soul forever ripped away...
It was eons ago when I first started the game, it literally feels like another lifetime and another person who played it. Back then when life was simple and all about Jackie and the streets and the reputation... all I had on my mind were street gangs. I just never expected the story to evolve that much from a rookie street Merc struggling in Night City, to a deep and complex emotional existential rollercoaster about death, about the relationship between Valerie and Johnny and their growth, about the very core question of what truly makes a soul, about what things matter keeping in life and which to let go, about what is even considered being alive...
So many difficult life lessons, so many hard questions and an infinity of overwhelming emotions every step along the way... what a beautiful and touchingly emotional story, yet so hard. So so hard, as I've never felt so much pain going through a game's ending, let alone the remaining ones which my V would never go for. Never would betray her friends or worst of all, herself.
None of the endings feel like a closure, but rather a continuation and a start of something greater. Especially due to Johnny's final words to V. He knows V won't ever give up and won't succumb, because she will always carry a part of that rebel soul with her.
Which is why I feel both Cherami Leigh and Keanu Reeves and the rest of the wonderful cast deserve their stories to continue with expansions and even more so a properly treated sequel, because they have done so wonderfully well with the story and their unique characters, brought so many amazingly written characters to life and explored so many fascinating topics, that it would be one of the biggest mistakes ever not to expand further, especially since the endings are so open and set up beautifully for a sequel with endings acting as lifepaths once again.
As for the Phantom Liberty expansion, although I am very excited about it and buying it the moment it becomes available because my heart craves for Valerie and Johnny, I am also incredibly and deeply devastated that it's the only one we'll be getting because I feel both Cherami Leigh, Keanu Reeves and the entire rest of the cast deserve so much more.
There is no denying that Cyberpunk is a game that incredibly oozes with passion and love and artistry, but there's also no denying that its management and reception at launch hindered it and did not do justice to its wonderfully talented cast and their stories, because the negative consequences that it produced from launch ended up not only taking away all the well-deserved praise, recognition, nominations and awards, but also an entire expansion which was supposed to bring even more life to this magical world of Cyberpunk and its captivating inhabitants, which so many ended up loving and feeling attached to. Something that a sequel without them could never fulfill, because it's not about the place... it's about its characters and their stories.
So because of what happened at launch, even Cyberpunk 2077 as a game ends on a bittersweet note, because a part of its soul will be forever stripped away and we'll never get to experience everything that Cyberpunk 2077 wished to beautifully portray and tell so it could properly end on a positive note. Knowing that we might never see Valerie again as a protagonist and that her massively talented potential will forever remain within an unfinished game fills me with actual dread, because she is one of the most uniquely written characters out there and deserves a proper treatment, a properly treated game unstained by the mistakes of upper management.
The massive resurgence of players with the Edgerunners show and the game's updates + expansion hopefully shows that so many people always wanted Cyberpunk to succeed as it should have and to keep going. You have on your hands one of the most unique performances of a lifetime, some of the most unique characters of a life time in a tremendously emotional, immersive and realistic story set in Cyberpunk...
So please don't let them fade away!
Thank you so much for Cyberpunk 2077, for Valerie, for Johnny and all the wonderful characters and I hope to see much more of them. Otherwise I'm just The Fool, yet another big dreamer in a "City of Dreams".
Cyberpunk ripped my soul apart and broke me into tears.
One of my strongest hopes is that the sequel continues with V's story and keeps building upon it, as all of the plots and especially endings are so wonderfully open and do not feel like closure at all, but rather a beginning of something greater. And could easily continue into the sequel in the form of lifepaths which would then merge into a single point and create an even more epic story that would continue its legacy.
On top of that, a very strong part of me feels that the game's treatment prior to release did not do justice to Cherami Leigh's beautifully unique and captivating emotional performance as Valerie, Keanu Reeves' phenomenal portrayal of Johnny and the entire rest of the wonderfully talented cast, due to state of the game and its reception at launch whose negative effects caused these wonderful actors to miss out on so many well-deserved awards and even an entire expansion.
It breaks my heart knowing that Cyberpunk got up on the wrong foot, when it deserved the utmost complete opposite.
Cyberpunk is a very emotionally impactful and meaningful story and it hurts so much knowing we won't ever get to experience all it wanted to tell nor see a proper closure... This uniquelly wonderful work of art is unlike any other and deserved better and deserves better. It deserves a proper send-off, unstained by the mistakes of the past prior to release. And my only hope is that we get to see this in the form of a proper sequel for Valerie if not the expansion, because the massive resurgence of players with Edgerunners and updates and expansion proves that people always wanted the best for the game and still do, they want it to keep going and witness it properly.
Just like Valerie the Dreamer, I too have a dream and hope it comes true one day. Such a wonderfully written unique character deserves better.
One of my strongest hopes is that the sequel continues with V's story and keeps building upon it, as all of the plots and especially endings are so wonderfully open and do not feel like closure at all, but rather a beginning of something greater. And could easily continue into the sequel in the form of lifepaths which would then merge into a single point and create an even more epic story that would continue its legacy.
On top of that, a very strong part of me feels that the game's treatment prior to release did not do justice to Cherami Leigh's beautifully unique and captivating emotional performance as Valerie, Keanu Reeves' phenomenal portrayal of Johnny and the entire rest of the wonderfully talented cast, due to state of the game and its reception at launch whose negative effects caused these wonderful actors to miss out on so many well-deserved awards and even an entire expansion.
It breaks my heart knowing that Cyberpunk got up on the wrong foot, when it deserved the utmost complete opposite.
Cyberpunk is a very emotionally impactful and meaningful story and it hurts so much knowing we won't ever get to experience all it wanted to tell nor see a proper closure... This uniquelly wonderful work of art is unlike any other and deserved better and deserves better. It deserves a proper send-off, unstained by the mistakes of the past prior to release. And my only hope is that we get to see this in the form of a proper sequel for Valerie if not the expansion, because the massive resurgence of players with Edgerunners and updates and expansion proves that people always wanted the best for the game and still do, they want it to keep going and witness it properly.
Just like Valerie the Dreamer, I too have a dream and hope it comes true one day. Such a wonderfully written unique character deserves better.
Last edited:
