[Spoiler Alert] About the endings

[Mushashi7]

All the seven ends are really dark and sad. Like really. we need a happy ending.


Edit: What do you think of the alternative endings, all of them are sad, and from what I see that people want at least one a happy one, atleast like a Top secret-Easter Egg, at least to achieve it with legendary clothes and level 50, or at least in extreme hard mode. What would be the best idea to fit?

What a relief!

I'm not the only one in this I can see. Phew.., that makes me feel better.
I just wrote a 'hateful' reply to this forum a couple of minutes ago.

I am so tired of all these sad endings. Really! It makes me mad! I feel raped and having wasting my money and time.
I took a sneak peek at the ending options just to make sure I did the right thing. And I did it because I am very serious about how I play and the choices I make.
But this sneak peek completely knocked me off my feet. I don't really want to finish the game. I am completely honest about this. I simply got mad, then frustrated and finally tired. There's just no point in finishing it?

Mass Effect 3 did it. How could they think the audience has changed since then?
I know sad endings makes money. But it's so damn cheap to use this as a tool in your story.

I was getting my hopes up on Cyberpunk 2077 made space for other things. And my suspicion right now circles around weather I should by the next game (-s) or not?
I will be more careful slinging my credit card around just like that. I hate spending money on something that disappoints me. I don't pay to feel sad!

Just like The Witcher where almost all stories also ended in a sad way? I should have suspected Cyberpunk 2077 would be more of the same.

I simply feel trapped!

 

[tavellone]

Hahahahahaha

 

[Guest 4522391]

.

 

[Mushashi7]

1. There's already a thread on this (discussing endings and in specific the lack of a "happy" ending)

2. Have you never seen a sad movie before??

Yes, I just noticed this thread. A relief I'm not the only one being frustrated about this!

And yes, I've seen my share of 'sad movies'. And I avoid them now. I'm tired of it. Simply tired. It's cheap, frustrating and boring. I haven't watched a movie in about 16 years by now.

 

[BigRock22]

I don't believe a happy ending is always required and I commend CDPR for taking this approach.

If you follow the story and dialogue closely it is implied that V has been dead ever since he got shot by Dex. Everything else has been just a lease on life and you've been half-passenger, half-driver in your own body. The endings just reinforce this since in most of them you are killed via Soulkiller.

I think the endings really fit the cyberpunk genre as well. When you die from Soulkiller, are you really dead or does the engram give you eternal life (which is what Saburo Arasaka seems to have been obsessed with)? Will V have enough determination to live to switch to a different body from his dying original one?

 

[Mushashi7]

I don't believe a happy ending is always required and I commend CDPR for taking this approach.

If you follow the story and dialogue closely it is implied that V has been dead ever since he got shot by Dex. Everything else has been just a lease on life and you've been half-passenger, half-driver in your own body. The endings just reinforce this since in most of them you are killed via Soulkiller.

I think the endings really fit the cyberpunk genre as well. When you die from Soulkiller, are you really dead or does the engram give you eternal life (which is what Saburo Arasaka seems to have been obsessed with)? Will V have enough determination to live to switch to a different body from his dying original one?

You know, I could have chosen to tend to my garden or bought my self a new jacket. But I didn't. I bought Cyberpunk 2077. I thought it would give me a good experience, an adventure, that in the end would give me a good feeling of something nice.

But it turned out to be a sad experience. I just spend my money on something that gave me a sad feeling. All because there was no way to have influence on how things should end. There are actually SIX different endings - and they all end bad.

So, do you think I should have spend my money on a new jacket? I bet I would have felt a lot more happy by doing so.

 

[BigRock22]

You know, I could have chosen to tend to my garden or bought my self a new jacket. But I didn't. I bought Cyberpunk 2077. I thought it would give me a good experience, an adventure, that in the end would give me a good feeling of something nice.

But it turned out to be a sad experience. I just spend my money on something that gave me a sad feeling. All because there was no way to have influence on how things should end. There are actually SIX different endings - and they all end bad.

So, do you think I should have spend my money on a new jacket? I bet I would have felt a lot more happy by doing so.

Why the focus on the ending itself and not the journey of getting there?

I also feel that calling all six "sad" is a bit of a stretch. The nomad endings are fairly positive and make you look towards the future and what you do with the hand you've been dealt by fate.

The cyberpunk genre itself is a dystopian futuristic world. Not unicorns and rainbows.

I appreciate this is subjective and it won't be everyone's cup of tea.

 

[ChallengerV8]

Hey hey, nobody said it's another happy ending story.
It's the journey you have been through and choices you made that count. Bad ending will stay in your head forever while happy ending will be forgotten, cause there are dozens of stories that end up good.

Mafia's main character Tommy Angelo died at the end, RDR1 character John Marston died at the end, RDR2 character Arthur Morgan died at the end, Artyom can die in Metro if you made some wrong choices. Does it make these games bad? No, the story was a great adventure.

 

[LordSareth]

Why the focus on the ending itself and not the journey of getting there?

I also feel that calling all six "sad" is a bit of a stretch. The nomad endings are fairly positive and make you look towards the future and what you do with the hand you've been dealt by fate.

The cyberpunk genre itself is a dystopian futuristic world. Not unicorns and rainbows.

I appreciate this is subjective and it won't be everyone's cup of tea.

The thing is, you said it yourself that V dies to soullkiller. So how can it be positive? I see a contradiction here. Btw I also don't like the endings, they may fit the overall "die you ant" perspective but I didn't see on a description page of a game or trailers any noir, nihilism grimdark etc tags. What did i see tho was action packed trailers with guns, car chases, cool body modifications, fast cars and a promise to become a Legend of Night City or an awesome merc , corpo whatever. What i got is V with death sentence which is unresolved, tons of bugs, and a not that bad journey soured greatly by endings.

What's more I didn't know that every MC in cyberpunk dies. Blade runner ? Or A PnP games, many propably enjoy when they achieve only prolonged existence in the best possible outcome. Well to each their own it seems.

 

[Lamont_Cranston]

Did you ever see Blade Runner? Deckard doesn't clean up the city, stop the pollution, reform the LAPD, stop Tyrell. He just flees into an uncertain future with Rachel. Same goes for Neuromancer. Same goes for most hardboiled fiction and film noirs cyberpunk derives from. Same goes for the cyberpunk RPG the game is based on.

And V can always join Alt beyond the Blackwall. That and Johnny getting the body to start over and start a real revolution is probably the most cyberpunk ending.

 

[CTPhipps]

V lives in Nomad and Legend.

If you don't pay attention to the Tarot, you aren't playing the game right.

Also, engram V lives beyond the Blackwall or Mikoshi (as a slave). Engram V may be an AI now but that's them.

This isn't SOMA.

 

[axefrog]

2. Have you never seen a sad movie before??

I keep seeing this kind of response and it's honestly stupid. This is not a movie. A movie with a sad ending is about someone else. It goes for maybe two hours. You have no say in what happens in a movie. It's just somebody else's story and it's over shortly after it begins.

In CP YOU are the protagonist. You play for potentially 50-100 hours or more. You are lead to believe you have choice. You are given the tools to become really attached to your character and to feel like you have some control over your destiny. ALL of the marketing insisted that this game is what you make it. Whether you win or lose, the outcome depends on you.

Some games are artistic ideas with sad outcomes, and that's ok, but they don't generally trick you into thinking you've signed up for one kind of experience and then bait-and-switch to another kind of experience.

 

[Loud.mp3]

Just came across this interesting video about the sun ending

 

[Mushashi7]

Hey!

The whole idea with this game was to confront you with the dilemmas contained in the technology we are facing today: AI (artificial intelligence), artificial human beings and eternal life via this because we are able to change form into less vulnerable ones, and where all this is leading us.

Oh my god, I read all the science fiction released from the forties up to now. There's nothing new there for me - although i sincerely think it's a good thing to confront the younger generations with all this since they are the ones who can (perhaps) influence it.

I also think CDPR hit the nail on the head with bringing up the corporations as they definitely will be a major element in all this.

Apart from that I still want the option for a good ending. I don't think a good ending will prevent me from evaluating the ethics in the subject?

 

[Pomian]

I wanted to start a new thread, but I cant - so I'll just write it here.
The story of Cyberpunk does not make sense from the point of view of a computer game (in my opinion), but before about it...

I am a CDPR psychophane. I have a collector's edition, I have a dedicated console, posters on the wall, I even bought the RTX 3080 to play on ultra. Like a real Pole, I have been playing the Witcher series for over 10 years. As well as other great games from our backyard - SuperHot, This War of Mine, FrostPunk etc. A computer game is something different than a movie or a book, the story being told is not closed. The Witcher doesn't have the best mechanics, but the way a story is written allows you to recreate the Geralt's path without feeling pointless.

Once upon a time, CDPR called Cyberpunk an "RPG". Now, it's just a lootershooter.
No matter what you do, no matter how you try - your hero will die. You can't save the city, you can't save Johnny (well he died 50 years ago), you can't even save yourself.

I will choose Panam, my soul will be destroyed with the soulkiller and my body dies six months later, I will choose Rogue, same. I will choose Arasaka, I will die shortly after.
And now we're just getting into the replayability. Because I don't talking about bugs right now. I played both Xbox One X and PC for the price of a good car. There are bugs - as in any computer program. But why should I play again when I know that the more I try, the further I go in the story, the closer I get to death. I have the same feeling in real life, I don't need it in the game.

"No less than in The Witcher 3" - what is it? Mid-game expansion that will extend my path to death Or after the events from the base game - but how do you see it then - we keep playing with a copy of dead V's brain? Or the new V, then what was the first for? Why all this effort?

Bugs can be fixed, mechanics can be restored, the cut content can be pasted back... But the feeling that I have no point in striving for my hero if he is facing death in glory or death and oblivion.

I go back to playing The Witcher and hanging pictures in Corvo Bianco, with the thought that it was worth it. And when I want to shoot, I will play the WarZone.

CDPR doesn't have to change the whole game. It is enough when we are in Mikoshi to allow the chip to be reprogrammed. For example, requiring intelligence and technology to work with Alt to remove Johnny, or to remove code that breaks our brain and continue with Johnny. Or continue to die, then we will have 13 endings.

(The game is beautiful, the animations and characters are wonderful, I like the fight, implants, clothes and story but now I can't forget that in the end it's just a depression generator.)

 

[Kyrielle]

"Thank you Mario, but the princess is in another castle." That's it, that's the ending.

But it's not a satisfying or deep ending. V's goal from the moment they wake up at Vik's is to live. No matter what V does, they are no closer to surviving and one of the endings is actually justifying suicide over trying any further. Why is straight up suicide a legitimate ending choice, but any kind of hopeful ending would be, what? Unrealistic? I'm not playing a video game to be told that life sucks and killing yourself is the easiest way out, and there's no hope for the future.

I'd love to hear that V returns in a sequel, however they manage to write their way out of the hole, but I definitely would not buy a future CP2077 title where V is just gone and nobody knows what happened to them. CP2077 is entertaining, but knowing that a character whom I've grown to care about over many hours of story can just be thrown away like that isn't my idea of fun.

 

[Lamont_Cranston]

V lives in Nomad and Legend.

If you don't pay attention to the Tarot, you aren't playing the game right.

Also, engram V lives beyond the Blackwall or Mikoshi (as a slave). Engram V may be an AI now but that's them.

This isn't SOMA.

V has six months to live.

 

[CasperTheGhost]

I don't believe a happy ending is always required and I commend CDPR for taking this approach.

If you follow the story and dialogue closely it is implied that V has been dead ever since he got shot by Dex. Everything else has been just a lease on life and you've been half-passenger, half-driver in your own body. The endings just reinforce this since in most of them you are killed via Soulkiller.

I think the endings really fit the cyberpunk genre as well. When you die from Soulkiller, are you really dead or does the engram give you eternal life (which is what Saburo Arasaka seems to have been obsessed with)? Will V have enough determination to live to switch to a different body from his dying original one?

personally, whether an ending is happy or not doesn't concern me as much as it does others, however, i'd typically like a to see both options in a story, or even the choice of sacrificing a victory for survival or vice versa, i'd love some amount of nuance to the whole affair. though what i find most important is an ending that actually makes some kind of sense, and not a bunch of tacked on nonsense that no one actually put any thought into. i can't stand these endings, not because they're sad, or not victories, but because even when i turn my brain off and try to just enjoy the ride the sheer stupidity in the ending somehow turns my brain back on and ruins everything.

---edit)
if you're looking for an example: the whole "engram being rejected by V's body because the DNA in V's body is no longer V's but johnny's." not only does this not make any sense at all, it actually contradicts what is not only canon, but established within the game itself. an engram is completely digital, it's just information, it's not even physical, let alone biological, an engram has no dna to conflict with.

in 5 minutes i came up with a basic replacement for the dna bs: so, remove the dna nonsense as it's just on the verge of insanity. now, the issue is that the biochip is damaged, and now degrading since pacifica (alt doesn't know this at the time as the chip is still functioning when we meet alt), by the time we get to soulkiller the chip's read/write functions are compromised, meaning if V tried to reinsert his/her engram into their body it would get corrupted, and for a time (6 months maybe) they would be able to function, however; as the errors compile V becomes less and less operational, untill the engram completely fails.

if this was one of the endings i'd be fine with it. (though still maybe not the others if they're still crap)

---edit again) the only thing you'd have to change is adding something like "alt surgically removed you using soulkiller, instead of pulling both you and johnny", or perhaps johnny wasn't integrated into your brain and still existed primarily on the biochip, or soulkiller didn't grab johnny as he's already an engram.

 

[Pomian]

E3

V has six months to live.

V is killed by a Soulkiller, and his engram, loaded into his former body, lives as a Nomad. He's as dead as Johnny

 

[CannedPlayer]

V has six months to live.

alt says directly without any chance for a dubious thought, SOUL KILLER DOES WHAT IT INTENDS TO... it kills the person and builds an engram of the person itself (psyche + memories).

from the moment V plugs himself and enter the pool, HE´S DEAD. PERIOD.

all other things that happen after this, original V (meaning the soul of V) resides no more in the body.

the only ending where V is truly alive is ARASAKA > BACK TO EARTH.