Most of us want a happy ending, but if the game would tell you that you die at the beginning, you wouldn´t even play. you would stop it right there. this game just fucks you really hard. point.
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Most of us want a happy ending, but if the game would tell you that you die at the beginning, you wouldn´t even play. you would stop it right there. this game just fucks you really hard. point.
Exaclty! And now that I know due to my first play through, I have no intentions of playing through it again! If only you could finish the game in 2 hours, then you could refund it within the refund timer.
Edit: I'm being harsh and unreasonable here, but yeah, it doesn't change the fact that the endings kill off any desire to replay this game.
I forgot about this entirely but they haven't announced what the DLC is going to be about due to not wanting to spoil the game in its entirety (all we knew going in was we stole a chip and we're dying from it).
This is contrary to what they did with Witcher 3 where it was all laid out before the game even came out with a short summary of what to expect.
I suspect we'll be looking at a continuation of V or engram V's story.
This is contrary to what they did with Witcher 3 where it was all laid out before the game even came out with a short summary of what to expect.
I suspect we'll be looking at a continuation of V or engram V's story.
I don't know about that. I'd probably still play, but I think my next question would be, "Alright, but is it my choice and on my own terms?"
For me a clear NO! Theres so many scenes, where I would decide something else in this game, but almost all of the scenes I mean, you´re not given a choice! At first this game invites you for an adventourous ride and gives you hope that you´re situation will turn out fine, but in the end this game just rapes our mind & heart
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Boy if i was the narrative director I would be on the phone right now with Mike Pondsmith and try to get some additional ways we could explore getting rid of this chip or what ever and cheating death one final time. Is there no examples or solutions that are from the Tabletop sourcebooks? If I was a DM running a game like this I would either go with the Johnny Silverhand arm solution or just go with the V2 route. I think there is some room to develop the story and 6 months is enough time to motivate V (Whatever version of her it might be) to push forward.
Holy cow it took me forever to read all of this thread but I did it!
Be warned rant incoming lol
Now I have to talk about how I feel bro. Honestly all of these endings feel like a bad joke to me. Are you telling me that 7 flavors of death is all we get in a supposed RPG about choice? Like are you for real? You play the entire game searching for a cure for what. Nothing is what. My V was just a streetkid trying to survive but nah man that ain't in the cards for him. However for Johnny the terrorist completely fine to let him live another life.
Don't get me wrong I liked Johnny near the end of the game but I'll be damned if CDPR didn't push him on us HARD. Like if you wanted to make a game about Johnny then that's what you should've done. Why even have us play as V then... why not just have V die and Johnny take over in the beginning? Why bother making us get attached to V and his struggle to survive when you just gonna kill him off anyways.
They have stated Johnny is supposed to serve as a second protagonist but tell me how is it fair he gets a somewhat happy end but V doesn't. This is supposed to be an RPG right? I don't need a perfect ending but these are awful. Even the best endings aren't satisfying at all. The V that gets to live is a COPY and even then they tack on the whole you have 6 months to live BS. Like c'mon man WTF.
I get it the cyberpunk genre is supposed to be dark and depressing but seriously they couldn't have added 1 good ending for Original V out of all of them really? And please don't give me the, "That just isn't possible in this genre" excuse because as others have stated it can and has been done before.
I really can't muster up the motivation to play again because no matter how I play my V it doesn't matter in the end. There is no choice really and it sucks. I grew attached to my V and was punished for it. This all just doesn't seem right... especially with how they advertised the game. It really makes me sad to say that at lease with ME3 they added a "Good ending" if you had a high enough EMS score. Unlike in this game where it doesn't matter if you did all the side stuff or make an effort to kit yourself out because in the end you die anyway...
There seriously needs to be a mid-game DLC that opens up a new branch to the final quest that unlocks a better ending for those who want it. I don't care how hard the good ending is to get I just want it to be possible. Or add in a secret ending that triggers if you complete a certain amount of side objectives. Just SOMETHING,,,, please. This way everyone will be pleased snowflakes like me and edgelords alike.
It honestly just leaves me feeling hopeless when I see people only really seem to care about the bugs right now and fail to notice how little choices actually matter in this game. Especially with the endings.... because the only way anything will change is if the backlash is big enough and right now I just don't know.
Anyways thank you for listing to my TED talk lol.
I'm glad I found this thread to see I am not alone.
Be warned rant incoming lol
Now I have to talk about how I feel bro. Honestly all of these endings feel like a bad joke to me. Are you telling me that 7 flavors of death is all we get in a supposed RPG about choice? Like are you for real? You play the entire game searching for a cure for what. Nothing is what. My V was just a streetkid trying to survive but nah man that ain't in the cards for him. However for Johnny the terrorist completely fine to let him live another life.
Don't get me wrong I liked Johnny near the end of the game but I'll be damned if CDPR didn't push him on us HARD. Like if you wanted to make a game about Johnny then that's what you should've done. Why even have us play as V then... why not just have V die and Johnny take over in the beginning? Why bother making us get attached to V and his struggle to survive when you just gonna kill him off anyways.
They have stated Johnny is supposed to serve as a second protagonist but tell me how is it fair he gets a somewhat happy end but V doesn't. This is supposed to be an RPG right? I don't need a perfect ending but these are awful. Even the best endings aren't satisfying at all. The V that gets to live is a COPY and even then they tack on the whole you have 6 months to live BS. Like c'mon man WTF.
I get it the cyberpunk genre is supposed to be dark and depressing but seriously they couldn't have added 1 good ending for Original V out of all of them really? And please don't give me the, "That just isn't possible in this genre" excuse because as others have stated it can and has been done before.
I really can't muster up the motivation to play again because no matter how I play my V it doesn't matter in the end. There is no choice really and it sucks. I grew attached to my V and was punished for it. This all just doesn't seem right... especially with how they advertised the game. It really makes me sad to say that at lease with ME3 they added a "Good ending" if you had a high enough EMS score. Unlike in this game where it doesn't matter if you did all the side stuff or make an effort to kit yourself out because in the end you die anyway...
There seriously needs to be a mid-game DLC that opens up a new branch to the final quest that unlocks a better ending for those who want it. I don't care how hard the good ending is to get I just want it to be possible. Or add in a secret ending that triggers if you complete a certain amount of side objectives. Just SOMETHING,,,, please. This way everyone will be pleased snowflakes like me and edgelords alike.
It honestly just leaves me feeling hopeless when I see people only really seem to care about the bugs right now and fail to notice how little choices actually matter in this game. Especially with the endings.... because the only way anything will change is if the backlash is big enough and right now I just don't know.
Anyways thank you for listing to my TED talk lol.
I'm glad I found this thread to see I am not alone.
I knew I was forgetting something. I actually have an example of a game where a completely new and different ending was added in a DLC - although, technically, it's not a game but a huge stand-alone mod for Skyrim called Enderal made by SureAI, a small studio from Germany.
the gist of it for those who don't want to play this masterpiece or don't care about the spoilers:
if some german enthusiasts working for donations did it, why wouldn't CDPR, really?
the gist of it for those who don't want to play this masterpiece or don't care about the spoilers:
basically, the plot is the same as ME - there are entities that reap humanity in cycles. you are The Chosen One™ who has to stop it, but there are several twists along the way.
in the original version, there are 2 possible endings:
- you either temporarily stop the cleansing, sacrificing yourself and the whole continent to buy some time for the rest of the world;
- or you with your love interest go to an abandoned city in the sky, protected from the cleaning, in hopes of becoming guides for the next generation of humans.
both of these endings are pretty bleak because of the lore reasons and actual implications given through the story (for example you actually meet a possible survivor of the last cycle, and it doesn't look too good for either them or humanity).
however, about a year or two later SureAI made a DLC, Forgotten Stories, which adds a completely different ending. here during one of the new side quests, you can find a special flower which, when made into a potion, is said to transport the drinker into a parallel reality where everything is okay for them. the caveat is - there is no guarantee that you are being transported anywhere, you might just go into a coma and dream of "another reality" until the moment you die.
if you do take the potion in the game, you wake up on another continent, miraculously alive, with your love interest by your side. the cleansing has been stopped, for now, the continent of Enderal is destroyed, but you can actually tell other people what is going on, how the bad guys are manipulating humanity, and so on. you can actually save the world and be happy. who cares if it's a dream? what is reality, anyway? (which is literally the name of the achievement you get on steam after that ending).
in the original version, there are 2 possible endings:
- you either temporarily stop the cleansing, sacrificing yourself and the whole continent to buy some time for the rest of the world;
- or you with your love interest go to an abandoned city in the sky, protected from the cleaning, in hopes of becoming guides for the next generation of humans.
both of these endings are pretty bleak because of the lore reasons and actual implications given through the story (for example you actually meet a possible survivor of the last cycle, and it doesn't look too good for either them or humanity).
however, about a year or two later SureAI made a DLC, Forgotten Stories, which adds a completely different ending. here during one of the new side quests, you can find a special flower which, when made into a potion, is said to transport the drinker into a parallel reality where everything is okay for them. the caveat is - there is no guarantee that you are being transported anywhere, you might just go into a coma and dream of "another reality" until the moment you die.
if you do take the potion in the game, you wake up on another continent, miraculously alive, with your love interest by your side. the cleansing has been stopped, for now, the continent of Enderal is destroyed, but you can actually tell other people what is going on, how the bad guys are manipulating humanity, and so on. you can actually save the world and be happy. who cares if it's a dream? what is reality, anyway? (which is literally the name of the achievement you get on steam after that ending).
if some german enthusiasts working for donations did it, why wouldn't CDPR, really?
I do not only get depressed by the fact V dies, its just that all you try to build up is breaking down with his/her death.
I feel really bad for V and for the loved one(whoever was chosen) because they would loose you as we loose everything. They got a liking to the you that was playing just as much as us got a liking to them. Dark world or not, even in the darkest places there are some rays of light. This game has nothing to achieve. it just pushes you through depression over and over by returning you to the elevator to start over that no good finale. They had the chance to create a real masterpiece, but it turned out to be some overpriced tragedy of a movie
I feel really bad for V and for the loved one(whoever was chosen) because they would loose you as we loose everything. They got a liking to the you that was playing just as much as us got a liking to them. Dark world or not, even in the darkest places there are some rays of light. This game has nothing to achieve. it just pushes you through depression over and over by returning you to the elevator to start over that no good finale. They had the chance to create a real masterpiece, but it turned out to be some overpriced tragedy of a movie
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Well that still doesn't solve the rollback on game completion. We're still dying regardless everytime we load up our save. That hope you speak of never reach conclusion. So unless they allow us to be cured through DLCs, Cyberpunk will forever remains about us possibly dying. You can't even ignore it because the game even throws at you randoms Old Relic malfunctions from time to time.
And beside, this is as open as it can be. When you have to rely on one specific line of dialog to draw your conclusion, there's something wrong somewhere.
Exactly! They ruin replayability by only having those 7 tragic endings. The only thing you get to choose in this game story wise is how you die, and I find that ridiculous in a game where your main goal is to survive. It just kills enjoyment when you understand that nothing you do matters in the end. CDPR supposedly wanted this game to be played multiple times as different lifepaths but why bother when they all die anyways even if you did everything in your power to survive. Not every story has to end in tragedy. I'm not saying there shouldn't be bad endings but all seven seriously? If I want to play an evil corpo sure they deserve a bad ending but what if I want to play an unfortunate streetkid who is just caught up in circumstance. Like there is no reason to replay at all for me because they all die anyway. It is honestly so depressing... and I hope CDPR read this thread and understand this. Maybe DLC... one can only hope I guess.
That's not a good ending at all! All 3 lead to destruction! Frankly, that added ending is completely selfish. Instead of taking responsibility at best your character gets transported to a parallel reality? What about the original reality? You doom the world in that reality. You leave it to it's fate. That is an awful new ending. God I hope cdpr doesn't take notes from that example!
Here's my two cents: Not every story needs a happy ending. Sometimes you try your hardest and you'll still fail. That's life and I love that about the world building of Cyberpunk, that no matter how hard someone can try there's other factors at play to determine the outcome.
But I do feel like there's an imbalance between the endings. There's obviously an "ideal" (nomad) ending that people should play toward. I feel like if you're going through the CORPO ending that there should be a reward for sacrificing happiness and love. The Corp ending doesn't live up to the devil, yes it's the worst ending for some people. But the devil should be powerful as the owner of the hell called Night city. Corpos should represent ruthless pragmatism and use that to achieve their own goals or to help others. But there isn't that navigation of the political/business bureaucracy at all. It falls compare to the other two paths.
But I do feel like there's an imbalance between the endings. There's obviously an "ideal" (nomad) ending that people should play toward. I feel like if you're going through the CORPO ending that there should be a reward for sacrificing happiness and love. The Corp ending doesn't live up to the devil, yes it's the worst ending for some people. But the devil should be powerful as the owner of the hell called Night city. Corpos should represent ruthless pragmatism and use that to achieve their own goals or to help others. But there isn't that navigation of the political/business bureaucracy at all. It falls compare to the other two paths.
After several long days and late nights pondering the ending. I would have liked it to go something like this:
Everything is mostly the same up to the rooftop. You have to get into Mikoshi and are given several options: Get help from Hanako, let Johnny and Rogue do it, or call a friend you made doing side missions (you know, like the future mayor, River and some cops who are sick of Arasaka's shit, or of course Panam). Go through the final mission as normal. Then, when you jack into the big computer, V collapses to the floor and the screen glitches out.
Johnny and Alt are standing over you with bad news. Alt can extract Johnny and stabilize the relic, but your organic systems are so damaged that you will still die in a matter of months. V protests, saying "the relic did this, it must be able to undo it." To which, they admit "Yes, but Alt would have to use Soulkiller on you." Then V has a choice, live a shortened life as the original or a full life as a copy. If you have a high relation with Johnny there could even be a third option to merge your personalities. Finally, they could add some side missions with Alt where you unlock the option to go be immortal in cyberspace. For a full corpo ending, Hellman would replace Alt.
At last, you return to Night City with a quest to talk to everyone you met. With the cyberspace ending, you can call their holos. You can choose from here to leave with Panam, stay a merc, or go back to Arasaka.
I don't feel like any of these endings are too happy, because Cyberpunk stories really should be at best morally ambiguous. However, they wouldn't invalidate V's struggle either. Of course, we'll never see changes like this. We can only hope for a continuation or alternate path in DLC.
Everything is mostly the same up to the rooftop. You have to get into Mikoshi and are given several options: Get help from Hanako, let Johnny and Rogue do it, or call a friend you made doing side missions (you know, like the future mayor, River and some cops who are sick of Arasaka's shit, or of course Panam). Go through the final mission as normal. Then, when you jack into the big computer, V collapses to the floor and the screen glitches out.
Johnny and Alt are standing over you with bad news. Alt can extract Johnny and stabilize the relic, but your organic systems are so damaged that you will still die in a matter of months. V protests, saying "the relic did this, it must be able to undo it." To which, they admit "Yes, but Alt would have to use Soulkiller on you." Then V has a choice, live a shortened life as the original or a full life as a copy. If you have a high relation with Johnny there could even be a third option to merge your personalities. Finally, they could add some side missions with Alt where you unlock the option to go be immortal in cyberspace. For a full corpo ending, Hellman would replace Alt.
At last, you return to Night City with a quest to talk to everyone you met. With the cyberspace ending, you can call their holos. You can choose from here to leave with Panam, stay a merc, or go back to Arasaka.
I don't feel like any of these endings are too happy, because Cyberpunk stories really should be at best morally ambiguous. However, they wouldn't invalidate V's struggle either. Of course, we'll never see changes like this. We can only hope for a continuation or alternate path in DLC.
In Bladerunner, Deckard survives.
In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Jensen CAN survive, or he CAN die. The player has multiple options for both. (I haven't played the first 3 games, and the latest one ends with a cliffhanger.)
I've only played SHadowrun: Hong Kong, but there again, your runners can all survive, some can die, even your character can die. Again, player choice. A little different because it's less "choice" and more "built them strong enough to survive the final boss" but same theory, survival is an option.
I've never watched GITS and the only experience I have with a game was the ill-fated shooter, so I can't speak to that. Still, examples throughout the genre have two things in common:
1) The main character almost always survives.
2) The main character almost always pays a heavy price for their survival.
This is to say that, no, I do not expect a happy ending in the sense that V becomes filthy rich and retires to a mansion on the beach with their love interest. I do expect that V survives, for more than 6 months, and continues to live out their life on the fringes, pulling dangerous jobs and all, until she, most likely, catches a bullet at a relatively young age. I don't expect paradise. I do expect no random, automatic, arbitrary death clock.
I expect that if I put in the work to save V - do all the side quests, build the connections she needs to call on later, etc - then she lives, plain and simple. Her life will be no bed of roses, but it won't be a 6 months march towards death, either.
And that's a VERY reasonable expectation.
That's not a problem to me at least if the story based on certain decisions will end as bittersweet or end badly. That's life, the factors were to hard to overcome and there were consequences of decisions taken. But if every possible outcome lead's to bad ending what's the point in trying? Let's say that a person gets a cancer(Ala johnny ;D) After going from one clinic to another, some will say there is hope , that he or she will live. After therapy he or she got informed that unfortunately it will die soon because therapy didn't work. But he or she got a time machine, he or she can go back to a point when she didnt even had a cancer. he or she tries different aprouches.But he is inevitable. He or she gets it every time and dies soon after. No matter the choice taken. This is my problem with how it was shown. If one posibility, one story is not happy fine. But all of them?
And nomad being ideal? Let's agree to disagree. Copy that gets to live another six months is the worst ending in my opinion.
But his romantic interest is going to die soon. It's also heavily ambiguous at the end of the first movie as to whether or not he is also a replicant, and therefore destined to die soon as well.
Only in 2049 (a movie that came out 35 years later and does kill the protagonist) that we get an answer as to whether Dekker was a replicant or not.
I love that they don't give us the easy out. The whole story is a very cynical take on why and how certain people have power and also a very cynical take on transhumanism. The original sin in the main plot is Saburo Arasaka wanting to essentially become immortal. That idea of "beating" death is literally his impulse the game is (in part) critiquing. The idea that when we try to play God and transcend mortality, it all goes awry. I think it's unlikely to be a coincidence that the one ending where V tries to survive at all cost by trusting Arasaka is - I think - by and large considered a less favorable ending for V. Acceptance of mortality is a healthy thing, even in video games. No matter what V does, her body can't live forever.
Making the player deal with that and still choose how to proceed knowing death (in some shape or form) is coming soon - that's very interesting to me. Not something that video games do a lot. Her death doesn't make the things V has done any less impactful. The protagonist doesn't have to survive for there to be meaning in the things they did and the story that's been told.
Maybe they'll add in something in an expansion that impacts the ending. I kinda doubt it though. I think the story loses it's teeth a bit thematically that way.
Yep, just as Jackie, Dex, and several other non-main characters die in CP2077, all of which I have no problem with. There's a MASSIVE difference between the death of someone who means something to the protagonist, and the death of the protagonist themselves.
I didn't ask for an easy out, nor did anyone else here. My own statement from the reply you're quoting (selectively) here states the following:
"This is to say that, no, I do not expect a happy ending in the sense that V becomes filthy rich and retires to a mansion on the beach with their love interest. I do expect that V survives, for more than 6 months, and continues to live out their life on the fringes, pulling dangerous jobs and all, until she, most likely, catches a bullet at a relatively young age. I don't expect paradise. I do expect no random, automatic, arbitrary death clock."
Which part of that sounds like an "easy out" to you, really?
Of the last 15 RPGs I've played, 14 of them killed the protagonist. The lone exception was Borderlands 3. Killing protagonists I have become emotionally invested in is so common, it's practically a pandemic now. It has exactly as much novelty in video game scripts now as the ending to every Mario game does.
Except it does. The entire point of the setting is that V can impact other characters, even other corporations, but Night City is like War in the Fallout universe - it never changes. V's impact is always limited to her fortunes and the fortunes of those she directly contacts, and in a world as dense and vast as Night City, that's a tiny slice even across the span of a lifetime. Just about the only place V's decisions should make a real impact is on her survival.
And they don't. In the end, we spend 3/4 of the game doing everything in our power to save her, and she dies. That's not deep writing, it's lazy writing. It's very obvious what happened here. CDPR wants a specific ending - I'm guessing most likely to make writing a sequel somewhere down the line easier - and they found a way to railroad us into it no matter what. I'd be fine with that if the game wasn't sold as an RPG where player choice matters.
But it was. And if it wasn't, I would've never purchased the game. If I wanted an on-rails story with a preordained outcome where none of my choices impact the ending, even for my own character, I would've bought the next Call of Duty instead. The gunplay would've been better and it would've launched with fewer bugs.