Expanding on this, I feel that people need to remember that Johnny's point of view on Soulkiller is painted by his life-experiences as a War Veteran and personal bias. He's a very troubled man, you can see this all throughout his past - so his view on Soulkiller should be taken with a pinch of salt and not the complete picture. When you get hit by it through Alt in Mikoshi, you literally do not even experience a thing any differently than you did experience things hours beforehand.
Alt even says that she's not really 'Alt' any more on this matter, but that is because she's an AI at that point in the game. She has no 'body', a floating entity within Cyberspace that is lacking emotion and passions and is essentially just protocols acting out a point in her life in defiance of Arasaka. This whole element is emphasized by how the Voodoo Boys require a pure, extracted memory from Johnny's Engram that Alt will recognize, because she will not recognize anything else—think of it as Game Coding in the C++ engine, certain things have to tick certain boxes in order to the code to operate properly, without hostility.
Yes, she is capable of developing further nuances and associated data within that AI of hers, but without a body, without the ability to accumulate human experience, emotion, and drive, she is not a 'Human' any more.
Johnny grows. Develops, within V - he experiences things, he shares the same neural pathways and body. He even states that for 50 years, he was locked in that moment of death, a prison, festering over the same memories and never actually able to do anything else - like a sensory deprived chamber. Before he ended up in V, he was cell-locked in that moment.
The game also questions at what point in life within the Cyberpunk universe do we lose our humanity? Think about that.
This is why I am of the opinion that the 'Going with Alt' ending is actually one of the worst ones. You're casting aside what makes a person a human, entirely.
You're certainly right about this, it's a lot more in-depth than it seems. And it fits the name of Soulkiller. Without a body, without those further developments, your soul will die. Just like it dies in real life when you don't expand yourself.
Regardless, I hope they expand on this.
Completely random, but I find it funny that Alt + V is a shortcut to view a file (Soul). And (control) Ctrl + Alt + V is smart copy and past command. Makes me wonder if they did that on purpose.
You're certainly right about this, it's a lot more in-depth than it seems. And it fits the name of Soulkiller. Without a body, without those further developments, your soul will die. Just like it dies in real life when you don't expand yourself.
Regardless, I hope they expand on this.
Completely random, but I find it funny that Alt + V is a shortcut to view a file (Soul). And (control) Ctrl + Alt + V is smart copy and past command. Makes me wonder if they did that on purpose.
I wouldn't be surprised. They are known for smart easter eggs.
Also, that is exactly the original description of Soulkiller in the PnP game. It doesn't actually kill the soul in it's literal meaning, but the soul dies because of lack of stimulants.
The more I go over it and look into the endings, personally, the more I realize that the endings for CP2077 are not to be taken at face value - and that the element people will take it at face value was actually taken into the equation by the writers. It was supposed to happen that you would initially think, "Oh.. this is what we get?"
When it's not; there's a lot of depth to these endings, and there is definitely a hook for each ending that has good potential for V to return. The Secret Ending is a major spoiler for that. ME3, what you get is at face value. CP2077, the endings require a bit more thinking. It depends on what you're looking for by 'Good'.
The more I go over it and look into the endings, personally, the more I realize that the endings for CP2077 are not to be taken at face value - and that the element people will take it at face value was actually taken into the equation by the writers. It was supposed to happen that you would initially think, "Oh.. this is what we get?"
When it's not; there's a lot of depth to these endings, and there is definitely a hook for each ending that has good potential for V to return. The Secret Ending is a major spoiler for that.
At this current point in time? Cyberpunk. Because in ME you at least save the entire Universe regardless of the BS ending. You do something of value. V dying is absolutely pointless and influences or changes literally 0 in all of Night City. The best thing you can pull off is cripple Arasaka but you cant even destroy that company.
I'm sure that a lot of content was cut, so they could release in Dec 2020. When you compare the older trailers, from E3, they teased different outcomes.
Like the trailer about Jackie's death. At the same time everyone got the impression that they spoiled this outcome, because it would only be one of many. And now it turned out that it was a massive spoiler and a part of the story that is set in stone.
Then all the interviews about your life paths and how much of a difference they would make.
Or the trailer where we shred Dex's bodyguard with our Mantis Blades. Another option that was never realized.
During The Heist we can get to the landing platform where Saburo's air car is parked. Inside is a glowing tablet with a quest marker. Clicking it does nothing. This is obviously a leftover from an alternate outcome that was cut at the last minute.
And then the countless plotholes:
Did you notice that Yorinobu Arasaka never sends killers after us again - after the Takemura rescue?
Stuff he must know:
2 guys ran from the building during lockdown and fled in a Delamain.
The chip was stolen from his hotel room
If he adds 1+1 and if he follows a shred of logic, then he would have to do everything in his power to get rid of us, cause we might be witness to what he did. Also Takemura had no problems finding Dex and thereby finding us. Why does Takemura know more than Yorinobu, who has way more resources at hand?
In the Arasaka ending it is stated that we cannot get a replacemant body any time soon, because our neural network and genetics are such a mess after our time with Johnny.
At the same time Saburo could only take over Yorinobu's body, since they are father and son, and thereby a perfect genetic match.
So - question - why can AI Alt transfer Johnny into our body, when a genetically compatible body is required (unless Johnny is our grandpa or something)?
In the corpo ending Yorinobu tells how he wants to end the grip of fear his father had on the world. He does not care about the chip anymore after he kills his father, he has the whole of Arasaka to lead and fight its inner politics to gain control. There should have been other parties that would have sent assassins looking for the presumed killers for sure.
The relic in Vs head was an experimental version of the engram biochip and Arasaka had never actually successfully used it before. When V got shot in the head, the bullet hit the chip and lead to an anomaly, both resurrected V and activated the transfer/molding process. The data Hellman later would get from this probably cracked the code for Arasaka and they were able transfer Saburo into Yorinobu. The story about genetic compatibility is probably bullshit to not let their competition know that Saburo is now immortal. Alt did tell multiple times that the relic was changing and molding Vs neural network to host Johnny and talked nothing about genetics or even gender.
Life is not fair. Not our own lives nor the dystopian cyberpunk lives of V and Rogue and Johnny. "We need more prostitutes and fuckbudy options, but the ending needs to be less depressing!" You want it mature are dark and dystopian and adult or not?
BTW all of the 6 months to live - endings are open. Dark yes, but still open. The only one where V truly dies is the suicide one.
Is it dark or is it open? telling me V dies is dark, telling me V might live is hopeful (opposite of dark). So what exactly is it, because it's not clear.
If we talk about the release versions. Mass Effect.
You had the greatest Sci-Fi RPG franchise of its time and let it end with 3 different colours of poop. It also was very enjoyable to play and didnt have the terrible launch Cyberpunk currently has. That made it even worse for the ending to dissappoint.
Cyberpunk is a new franchise. So the damage is there because of the hype but I still think Mass Effect 3 at its release was worse.
However comparing these two is hard.
It boils down to "Do you prefer a kick in the face or a kick in the balls?"
At this current point in time? Cyberpunk. Because in ME you at least save the entire Universe regardless of the BS ending. You do something of value. V dying is absolutely pointless and influences or changes literally 0 in all of Night City. The best thing you can pull off is cripple Arasaka but you cant even destroy that company.
I love the irony that in the "best" outcome all you can do to Arasaka is put a little dip into their stock price. Pretty much the same what is currently happening to CDPR stock.
I was hoping I had the "wrong" ending until I made some research and found this thread. What's the damn point of replaying the game then? Everything I did was just pointless. I don't want to surrender my body to Johnny even though I actually like him. I feel like Mass Effect ending all over again.
The Mass Effect 3 Ending was horrible in it's lazyness. It didn't bother me that Shepherd died in all of them but one. It was clear to me, that my mission is to save organic life and not my own. The mission was so big that self-sacrifice was foreshadowed in a meaningful way and I accepted that practically after the attack on earth.
The 3 color explosion and the non-existing epilogue were just lazy af, but after all I archieved what the game set out as my mission: I beat the reapers. So at least I wasn't a failure, the self sacrifice made it even more impactful for me.
Cyberpunk tells me the mission is to save my own ass, to survive the engram of Johnny and the relic chip. I can't do that. There is no way to archieve the main mission of the game. That is just bleak.
Johnny survives and hasn't even the decency to call my girlfriend Judy who he has witnessed suffer through A LOT to tell her of my heroic sacrifice and that I didn't just forget and ghost her. He prefered giving some rando a present and forget about me, his savior as fast as possible. What a dick. Bleak experience.
I want the avocados to pay back what they owe me and in some magical way the game understands that as my wish to spend the rest of my life with this bunch of trailer trash losers, who cry about everything and have a maturity level of an infant? Then I want them to play some Samurai before the big battle, but they refuse just to play cry-country music. There even stands a guy in his underwear with fli-flops and a beer looking like the perfect meme.
I hated every single bit of that because that was never what I meant, when I wanted to keep the casualties to the avocados, because they needed to pay up and I didn't wish to risk any friends besides Panam. Set out to be a legend, now settling for crybaby loser trash. Yeah, bleak experience.
Didn't experience the others but read about them and watched some video footage. Seemed all very bleak to me.
So in a way I haad a better experience with Mass Effect 3, I was just angry about the lazyness. They fixed a lot of that with all the DLC who let you wrap up things with your friends and expand the ending. In Cyberpunk I strongly disagreed with MANY railroaded events and chats during the endings. That wasn't what I was going for. I wanted my last scene to be sitting in an ultra stylish neon-chrome looking appartment, glancing over my new chrome, having a line and some liquor and meaningless sex or my love interest by my side, looking stylish af and having no worries about anything. Living fast, living hard. No fs given. Looking good while doing it, making it look easy.
Mass Effect promised a story about becoming the hope of mankind and fight against seemingly unbeatable odds a mission most likely doomed to fail. It delivered this experience.
Cyberpunk didn't. Where is my neon-chrome ending, just having a great time living the street-samurai/solo lifestyle as the best mercenary in Night City? Being the one in a million to make it big in Night City, while others are eaten alive? That was promised, that wasn't archieved.
