So many plot holes when it comes to the Engram technology

[topmoinger]

This is from the Cyberpunk Wikipedia

"Two versions of the Relic were developed by Arasaka according to an internal project report. The first, Relic 1.0, was intended for the commercial market and announced in 2077. It was advertised as a means for wealthy elites to store a digitized engram of their personality and memories that would be capable of basic communication with their descendants, but lacked true self-awareness.
The second version, Relic 2.0, was a secret prototype personally approved by Saburo Arasaka and designed by Anders Hellman. It was intended for internal use within the corporation only, never to be sold. Unlike the original biochip, Relic 2.0 contained both the engram and an enhanced, self-aware personality construct. The biochip was intended to be re-implanted into a new host body that had ceased all neural and cardiac functions, at which point it would automatically expand into the host's brain using nanotechnology and take over the body. In short, a person who copied their mind onto Relic 2.0 and then died could be restored to life in a new body using the chip, effectively granting them immortality."

In other words, the version of the relic being sold to the public is like a hologram. However, Relic 2.0 is the technology that allows Silverhand to have consciousness and self awareness, as well as be transferred to another body which can host the Engram.

So is Soulkiller needed for the engram technology/Secure Your Soul Program? How was Saburo Arasaka able to create digitized versions of himself before dying? When you meet engram Saburo on the Arasaka ending he appears to have a certain level of consciousness similar to the Relic 2.0, even though his engram should theoretically be the Relic 1.0 since it was taken prior to his death and is suppose to lack true self awareness. Or perhaps when you do speak to engram Saburo, he was indeed able to transfer his full consciousness under the Relic 2.0, but how was be able to achieve this prior to his death? We hear other members are part of the program, and in the Lizzy Wizzy side quest we uncover there are multiple versions of herself, but were these taken via soulkiller when she originally died or not? It is never really explained.

 

[Pandaman102]

You're confusing some of the technologies here, it's not the engram that's 1.0 or 2.0, it's the portable hardware the engram will be stored on that has two different version.

Arasaka has always had a copy of Soulkiller, it's what they used to turn Johnny into an engram 50 years ago and the updated version is what they've been using in the Secure Your Soul program, so there's no reason Saburo wouldn't have access to it before his death; we're never told what the difference between the new and old Soulkillers are, but given Johnny's engram seems to run fine on the Relic 2.0 it doesn't seem like there's anything different about the resulting engrams. Maybe the old Soulkiller fries whoever it's making an engram of while the new Soulkiller simply makes a copy without the messy brain death, hence why Johnny's last memories are being hit by Soulkiller while Saburo is alive and well despite having a copy made of himself.

That being said, in your conversations with Johnny he describes being vaguely conscious while stuck in Mikoshi, that suggests that Relic 2.0 isn't the only way for an engram to be able to retain consciousness; when you meet Saburo, he's streaming (for the lack of a better word) from Mikoshi's servers, so there's no contradiction about him being conscious despite not being in a Relic 2.0 biochip.

What is kinda odd is why would Hanako show any interest in getting her hands on the old version of Soulkiller when she knows she'll have access to the new version if her overthrowing Yorinobu succeeds? Was that just an oversight in writing to justify the whole mission with the Voodoo Boys?