[Spoiler Alert] About the endings

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Do you want more RPGs with happy endings?


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Regarding the necklace I can only speak for the Nomad ending, but in my understanding V is discarding his old life.

V came to NC to become a legend, very akin to young men getting lured in by the gold rush some centuries ago.
Seeking fame and wealth V made a lot of wrong decisions and in the end was shot by Dex.
From then on survival in NC was the ultimate goal.
Now, leaving NC for good, realizing there is more to a good life than fame and fortune (namely a place to belong to with the avocados/love interest)V discards the necklace, ready to begin a new chapter.

Then V dies in 6 months, because reasons.
Or die, we dont know this, for now
 
The chip is not damaged, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. It's explained in the story, that this special prototype, which was Saburo's secret project, is meant to be plugged into a neurally inactive, e.g. brain wiped body. Meaning you want to plug it into a body that had Soulkiller used on it.

However, V was never brain wiped, but flatlined from the gun shot to the head. But that was enough to trigger the chip's functions, which had the nice side effect of initially saving your life.

Unfortunately this is not where it stops....
Atleast two mega-corps (Arasaka being one of them) had been experimenting with human cloning and 'uploading' AI or engrams to the brains of human clones, whose brains are effectively clean slates to begin with. That was most likely the original idea, for Saburo to extend his life by using the chip on a clone of himself. But then Yorinobu threw a wrench in the works and they had to improvise.
 
But as a street kid you were born in NC and even left just come back since Atlanta isn't better. Abd V even says NC is like any other city, just bigger. He seems rather content what he had.

Well third time's the charm?

On a serious note, that viewpoint could have very well changed after experiencing Evelynn, Takemura, the madman from the River storyline.
There are only so many hits the human psyche can take.
 

Guest 4490510

Guest
Guys I need backup, Does anyone know when you end the story by arasaka you kill Johny silver hand or what happened to him? because I have all the other side missions to do so
 
Many stories have made so dependent on this "I am the one hero that the world rotates around" - idea that when our game characters life and its end turns out to be not so spectacular, things do fell kinda off. instead of lazy or bad writing, I think its a powerful storytelling tool and is used here well.

But all in all, there are a billion ways how the same V can come back, as long as you all start thinking engrams as people. Check out SOMA and Altered Carbon: life does not become unlife when it is transformed to binary.

The AI route seems most plausible: some other AI could snatch Vs engram from Alt before he/she gets assimilated and gives V a new body and a new main quest line. Or this could happen in the Nomad ending as a silly burning bush - situation with a new AI.

I can already visualize the questions "do you wish to keep your original appearance? [yes/no]" when a new bioengineered body is prepared for Vs engram in some corpo vat and back to NC you go. The characters we lose in different endings are Saul and Rogue, so all of the fixers (Rogue outcluded) and everyone else are still there. The city is a beautiful stage for a totally new story as long as the original main quest line.
What's the point of playing a game you can't win? I don't care about heroes, V is a criminal
 
Regarding the necklace I can only speak for the Nomad ending, but in my understanding V is discarding his old life.

V came to NC to become a legend, very akin to young men getting lured in by the gold rush some centuries ago.
Seeking fame and wealth V made a lot of wrong decisions and in the end was shot by Dex.
From then on survival in NC was the ultimate goal.
Now, leaving NC for good, realizing there is more to a good life than fame and fortune (namely a place to belong to with the avocados/love interest)V discards the necklace, ready to begin a new chapter.

Then V dies in 6 months, because reasons.

Well i don't know if it's that simple because then why is V/Johnny grabing it right before chosing to get back to your body or not ? Why V is holding it tight when arasaka transfer his mind into the prison ? Why is V taking it off with anger in the getting back to earth ending ? And as far as i remember, the only ending where V don't really interact with is the heist one.
 
Well i don't know if it's that simple because then why is V/Johnny grabing it right before chosing to get back to your body or not ? Why V is holding it tight when arasaka transfer his mind into the prison ? Why is V taking it off with anger in the getting back to earth ending ? And as far as i remember, the only ending where V don't really interact with is the heist one.

Could also be a sign indicating that the V we know is gone and Engram V took over.
 
What is this laptop and why can't I activate it? Is this a bug or a secret?
 

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Well third time's the charm?

On a serious note, that viewpoint could have very well changed after experiencing Evelynn, Takemura, the madman from the River storyline.
There are only so many hits the human psyche can take.
Exactly, is this game supposed to fill me with hope, confidence and power. To think that if I put my nose to the grind I can achieve whatever I want? Or make me feel depressed as heck?

In regards to engram's are just a memory trace, that's their meaning. But doesn't that make a person? Soulkiller makes a brain completely blank, it literally copied and pasted you. In reality of it, an engram is probably still a person. The only thing they're lacking is the hormones, slap them back into a body and they'll have that. What's worse than death about it is that you're robbed of your body. You wake up on the other side, and you may realise what happened to you. It's the forcible removal of a 'soul' that's the issue. In regards to the main religion shown in cyberpunk, the fact your soul is now a tangible item it goes against the teachings of Buddha.
 
A friend just told me something i could not counter in any way shape or form.

And i quote: "Aside from a few minor things like graphic or physics! Kotor 1 and 2 had a better story, better immersion, better dialouge, better character depth and way more influence on the overall story with your choices as well as better endings. Good and Bad ones. Hell even the romances felt more real as in Cyberpunk. And you know what's funny about that. That game was from 2004."
Quote end.

Of course i wanted to counter some of that....... but the more i think about it. The more i realize....... he is absolutely right. And that is just horrible..... I pray to god the CDPR proofs me wrong but i highly doubt aside from bug fixes etc. There will be alot of changes in the story or the questlines.......
 
The two endings in the game seemed very incomplete to me. I think it could have better endings if these were handled like below.

Stepping down the Arasaka tower alone with Johnny: What I hate the most in this ending is that this ending gave us a small reward like just saving his friends. I think this ending should show us how precious the bond between V and Johnny are and allow us to adapt and live with him. V would have shared the same body with Johnny until his/her death. I think that would be a great ending.

Johnny sacrifices himself: This is actually handled correctly at Rogue ending. But the trouble is, we still have a short life. When Johnny sacrificed himself to prevent V from dying, V could continue to be V, even if some of Johnny's traits were added to V's personality. So his consciousness is V, but with some personality traits from Johnny. He could continue to live forever.

Also it's not CDPR's style to explain an ending in DLC. And I don't think there will be a DLC for these endings. Of course, I can expect everything from CDPR on these days. I hope I'm wrong.
 
Exactly, is this game supposed to fill me with hope, confidence and power. To think that if I put my nose to the grind I can achieve whatever I want? Or make me feel depressed as heck?

In regards to engram's are just a memory trace, that's their meaning. But doesn't that make a person? Soulkiller makes a brain completely blank, it literally copied and pasted you. In reality of it, an engram is probably still a person. The only thing they're lacking is the hormones, slap them back into a body and they'll have that. What's worse than death about it is that you're robbed of your body. You wake up on the other side, and you may realise what happened to you. It's the forcible removal of a 'soul' that's the issue. In regards to the main religion shown in cyberpunk, the fact your soul is now a tangible item it goes against the teachings of Buddha.
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.
 
I used to think Fallout 4 had a boring ending. Apocalypse games are darker than cyberpunk games, and you still manage to survive in that one. I'm starting to really loathe the idea of "well it's a dark game, so of course you have to die!"

I also don't like that guy who said "why would you want to replay a game that's 100+ hours long."

Nah buddy, you don't understand. I bum rushed the main quest in 15ish~ hours, because it kept hounding me that I was going to die. And since I'm not an RPG expert, I legitimately thought I was going to die if I ignored the quest long enough. Like I believed the timer was real and not some hoax. So I totally disregarded every side quest to get the cure, so that I could swing back and to them after the fact.

That's what I did in Fallout 4 and GTA 5. I just assumed that's how open world games worked. They gave you a main-story quest you can finish, and then get dumped back into the world to explore and have fun.
 

Guest 4500701

Guest
Atleast two mega-corps (Arasaka being one of them) had been experimenting with human cloning and 'uploading' AI or engrams to the brains of human clones, whose brains are effectively clean slates to begin with. That was most likely the original idea, for Saburo to extend his life by using the chip on a clone of himself. But then Yorinobu threw a wrench in the works and they had to improvise.

There's also an unknown entity messing with the Peralez, altering and rewriting their personality and memories.
It's being hinted at that this entity could be an AI, possibly from beyond the black wall. Which isn't all too unlikely given how effortlessly Art was able to pass through the barrier at will.

Ironically, the game is missing the one profoundly obvious ending choice that often defines cyberpunk as a genre.

It is missing the Ghost In the Shell (original) movie ending - the classic outcome where V and Johnny's consciousnesses merge into a new combined being that is simultaneously neither and both of them.

That's the ending I've been chasing in both of my playthroughs. I really thought it was achievable given how much points in that direction. On the one hand, there's an UI element displaying a percentage of "synergy" between V and Johnny. On the other hand, the twins have merged into a single entity with two bodies.

Such an ending might have been left out for future expansion or, and this would be sad, was cut due to time constraints.
 
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)?

A few things... a lot of this is explained or easily extrapolated from the story.

  1. Yorinobu is a spoiled, rebellious child. Even Dex says Yorinobu is not fit to rule his father's Empire. He stole the chip to spite his dad because he knew how important it is to him. He doesn't care about the chip insofar as what he can do with it to piss his dad off. With his dad dead there's really no reason to care about the biochip.
  2. Takemura was found because of the implants. He removed or deactivated the majority of them after Yorinobu betrayed him. Takemura also found Dex because he was still working under Arasaka and the resources to turn over a few stones.
  3. The biochip was prototype tech. It aggressively converted the body to suit the mind it was housing, but the long term effects are unknown. It's entirely possible that Johnny Silverangst develops issues down the road should he remain in the body. The version of technology that Saburo used is the market-ready version that is used on a genetically similar body. V's current body is a neurological mess so they can't really use it. They have to clone him a new one (which the game doesn't explain how long this takes). I'm going to assume the cloning process takes a very long time, hence why they have to put Saburo in Yorinobu's body, or V has to wait in Mikoshi if he has any hope of survival in the Arasaka path.
 
Saying the ending is dark because the game is set in a Cyberpunk world, is literally the laziest excuse I can think of. It's like saying every horror movie needs to have jump-scares, or every action movie needs to have explosions. Well guess what, if every single movie/game/story followed the same exact rules, everything will be the same exact boring shit.

Not only that, but also, this game is supposed to be an RPG, and it was marketed as such, which means that players should be able to make their own decisions, and choose how their story ends. Making us choose between 7 flavors of death is not a choice. It would be like selling a Swiss Army knife with no other tools but 7 different knives, and calling it a Swiss Army knife.
 
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